The Caste System

The Caste system is strong. That’s probably an obvious statement considering how long it’s existed here but it’s still a surprise to me. For some reason, I thought that because I was going to work on for a social organization, they would’ve found a way around the caste system. Quite the contrary, it’s highly dependent upon it. There are different caste employees for each task: cleaning the offices, cooking the food, working in the office, managing projects, etc. Each individual stays strictly within the boundaries of that tasks associated with that caste. For example, those who conduct tasks at the table level (cooking, etc.) would never be found cleaning the floor.

Caste and language are strongly related. Those with more education here, speak English and those with higher caste have greater access to employment and jobs. The only benefit of British rule that I have heard of is that before the British came, lower castes had no access to education whatsoever. Now they a little bit of access. Members of service castes usually speak little or no English. Merchants usually know enough language to lure in customers at the market (“Hello, madame. Hello, madame. Beautiful stoles and saris here. Hello madame.”) They know bargaining language (“fixed price”) and numbers to tell you the price of their goods.

Currently, there are a number of caste-related issues in the media. One is similar to affirmative action, in which there is a debate over whether their version of affirmative action should apply to the “creamy layer” of scheduled castes and tribes. Scheduled castes, tribes, and "other backward castes" are the service workers. They compose the majority of the population (>75%) and are the lowest rung of the four categories, below Brahmins (priests and intellectuals), warriors, and merchants.

As the name implies, the “creamy layer” are those service workers who have experienced some amount of success relative to their social position-- financial & job secuirty. The debate for it is whether to include the creamy layer in the reservation system of who gets a spot in schools, government jobs, etc. If they take away the creamy layer reservation system, it means that if your father had access to the reservation system, you won't. However, the system has flaws that go beyond the creamy layer debate. No matter how many reservations are made, until the larger issue of the caste system is addressed, the poverty in India will not significantly improve. The reservation system also does not address the fact that there is a wide economic range in all castes—that is, just because you’re in a higher caste doesn’t mean you’re well off. So, it would make more sense to do it on a purely economic basis but then you run into the numbers game. How can you really quantify poverty, much less the cycle of poverty. It would make most sense to eliminate the caste system all together. But that's not happening anytime soon since 1) it is an an inherent part of Hinduism and 2) most of those in power are all above service workers (which is how they got there), and they are obviously for maintaining their status so it’s unlikely that little will change anytime soon.

A major class/caste issue is discrimination against the Dalits, an indigenous group that composes ~14% of the population falls into scheduled tribe category (lower than any castes). They are discriminated against in villages in a range of ways—from not being able to take water from the village well, to not being able to own land or businesses, to not being able to ride a horse to their wedding ceremony, as is the tradition. People from higher castes refuse to drink out of a glass from a Dalit household. This is still true even for people who have been trained in social work! Thousands of Dalits have converted to Buddhism for the reason that Buddhism does not recognize castes and this is one way out of their birthright.

What boggles my mind is how the caste system preserves itself. Take a village I recently visited a couple hours outside of Delhi. It is an agricultural village of ~3K, composed equally of two different castes. One caste is the agricultural laborers and the other is the land owners. The laborers live in small grass huts and the land owners live in constructed houses. Everybody works hard but the laborers are the only ones relegated to toil in the fields harvesting rice and sugar cane—not easy tasks. They all go to school together and live together in this small village where everyone knows everyone else and yet the caste system preserves itself. Upon trying to learn more about it, a friend explained that most Indians don’t even fully understand the caste system, other than knowing where they are placed and that it's hierarchical.

Then there’s a whole part of the population outside the Hindu caste system in India. Different forms of discrimination are used for these groups. Even though India has the largest population of Muslims in the world (exceeding 142 million), overt discrimination of Muslims is practiced, as evidenced by the 2002 slayings of Muslims in Gujarat (see http://www.coalitionagainstgenocide.org/news/2002/mar/3.wp.india.php). Here in Delhi, Muslims often live as second class citizens and are segregated in ghettos with sub-standard living conditions and limited access to education.

Caste systems can be found among different religions, ethnicities, and countries around the world. For a more complete description of the caste systems, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste#Caste_system_among_Indian_Muslims