"CASTE SYSTEM".. Is it good or bad? Origins and historical Perspective..
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Are they really serving the purpose?
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It is more than 60 years since independence and it is time to assess the impact of the reservations, to check whether they are serving the purpose for which they are intended to.
So..what to do now? My conclusion..
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Anger at reservations is common, but such anger may be better channelled when it is targeted at the real problem. The few tens of thousands of jobs or college places that are subject to state policy on reservation are very small in comparison to the daily problems that hundreds of millions of citizens endure. Almost all reservations are caste based which is more like a social custom and feeling among the people.
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Origins of caste system are not known for sure, there are only proposed theories. There are religious-mystical theories. There are biological theories. And there are socio-historical theories.
According to vedas the primal man - Purush - destroyed himself to create a human society. The different “Varnas” were created from different parts of his body.. The hierarchy of Varnas is determined by the descending order of the different organs from. Other religious theory claims that the Varnas were created from the body organs of Brahma, who is the creator of the world. The religious theories explain how the four Varnas were founded, but they do not explain how the Jatis in each Varna or the untouchables were founded
According to biological theories all creatures living or non-living will have inherent properties and people are divided into castes based on it. For example Rajas include qualities like passion, pride, valour and other passionate qualities. Like human beings, food also inherents different dosage of these qualities and it affects its eater's intelligence..
According to socio-historic view the caste system began with the arrival of the Aryans in India. When the Aryans arrived in India their main contact was with the Dravidians. They began conquering and taking control over regions in north India and at the same time pushed the local people southwards or towards the jungles and mountains in north India. The Aryans organized among themselves in three groups. The first group was of the warriors and they were called Kshatriya. The second group was of the priests and they were called Brahmans. The third group was of the farmers and craftsmen and they were called Vaisias. The Aryans who conquered and took control over parts of north India subdued the locals and made them their servants. In this process the Vaisias who were the farmers and the craftsmen became the landlords and the businessmen of the society and the locals became the peasants and the craftsmen of the society.
A 2001 genetic study, led by Michael Bamshad of University of Utah, found that the genetic affinity of Indians to Europeans is proportionate to caste rank, the upper castes being most similar to Europeans, whereas lower castes are more like Asians. The researchers believe that the Indo-European speakers entered India from the Northwest, admixing with or displacing the proto-Dravidian speakers. Subsequently they may have established a caste system and placed themselves primarily in higher castes. –Wikipedia.
According to Hindu mythology, as mentioned in vedas, caste is not rigid.it does not come to by birth but it is due to their duties and qualities (karma).It was even mentioned in Bhagavad-Gita by lord Krishna
Lord Krishna as saying, in response to the question— "How is Varna (social order) determined? “
“Birth is not the cause, my friend; it is virtues which are the cause of auspiciousness. Even a chandala (lower caste) observing the vow is considered a Brahman by the gods."
Rig Veda 9.112.3
—I am a bard, my father is a physician, and my mother's job is to grind the corn
There was also no discriminations against sudras in Vedic period. Over centuries caste became heredity and situation became worse due to exploitation of this by some people and some socio-economic elements.
In many historians opinion Caste system has enabled Hindu civilization to survive all invasions and made Indian society stronger. Caste system served a purpose, performed certain functions, and met the needs appropriate to the times in history. It ensured the continuity of the traditional social organization of India. It has accommodated multiple communities including invading tribes in the Indian society Cast system has undergone many changes in non-vedic period and the worst part of all was the emergence of Discrimination and Untouchability of some caste by others. . Caste system has been exploited against the Hindus, for the last two centuries by the British government, Secular historians, Pre and Post-Independence Indian politicians and Journalists for their own ends.
The word “CASTE” itself is not indigenous to our country. The British who came to India from a society divided by classes, tried to equate our caste system to their class system.to understand Indian population and society census was their main tool. In census they collected the information of caste, religion, race, tribe etc. but it was not needed for their governance or policies. Caste was seen as an indicator of occupation, social standing, and intellectual ability. British conceptions of racial purity were interlinked with these census information of people based on caste.
Caste system might have been found useful for division of labour and specialization in the society once upon a time, when there were a number of limitations in Knowledge Management. It was all right till the various divisions were able to live harmoniously and specialize in the tasks allotted to them.
In this modern and scientific, more rationalised and modern world the present caste system is not helping the survival of society but itself is problem for survival our INDIAN society.
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Reservation policy as an Affirmative Action
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if we want to understand why and how the reservation policy took birth, we should first know about the caste system and some of its features.
Basic caste division
· Brahmins – priests, teachers
· Kshatriyas -warriors, kings, administrators
· Vaishyas -merchants, agriculturists
· Shudras -artisans, service providers
o Harijans or Dalits-outcastes, untouchables
Harijans or dalits are recognized as scheduled castes by government of india. Historically these people were treated as impure souls, and they were associated with occupations such as leatherwork, butchering, or removal of rubbish, animal carcasses, and waste which are considered as impure. Dalits are seen as polluting for higher caste people. If a higher caste Hindu is touched by an untouchable or even had a Dalit's shadow across them, they consider themselves to be polluted and have to go through a rigorous series of rituals to be cleansed. they are marginalised and kept away from mainstream social life of Hindu society. They are not allowed to enter temples or schools along with other caste people. As a result, Dalits are poor, deprived and socially backward. In India there are approximately 240 million Dalits. This means that nearly 25% of the population is Dalit. It also means that in a country, where everybody is supposed to have equal rights and opportunities, 1 out of 5 persons is condemned to be “untouchable”.
This system of untouchability exists even now in rural areas where cast is very important factor of society. But in urban areas where caste origins are less apparent, many Dalits are integrated into social life. “Untouchability” was abolished by constitution of India in 1950. But still even now villages in many states are separated on basis of caste. It was called "hidden apartheid." These people should not enter the higher-caste sections of villages, may not use the same wells, wear shoes in the presence of upper castes, visit the same temples, and drink from the same cups in tea stalls and many other restrictions imposed unofficially.
Schedule tribes:
The case tribes is much different than that of Dalits. They are also referred as Adivasi. They are group of tribal communities with distinct culture, language, religious beliefs, arts and crafts and not integrated with the mainstream society. They are socially and geographically isolated from rest of Hindu or Indian society. Along with being geographically and socially isolated, the tribal groups have historically been politically under-represented. Their regions of residence also have been economically underdeveloped.
So both these groups Scheduled castes and scheduled Tribes were treated as backward classes by government of India after independence.in 1953 Kalelkar Commission was established to assess the situation of the socially and educationally backward class. “Affirmative action” or reservations was started by government to provide positive preferential treatment in allotment of jobs and access to higher education. By doing so they wanted to accelerate the integration of these marginalised people into mainstream society. Currently SCs have 15% and STs have 7.5% reservations in higher education institutes (IITs, IIMs etc.). The percentage reservation varies from state to state.
OBC or Other Backward Classes are other group of people classified by government based on their social and economic status. They are a large group in terms of population. They constitute about half of our nation’s population and they currently possess 27% reservation quota._____________________________________________
Are they really serving the purpose?
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It is more than 60 years since independence and it is time to assess the impact of the reservations, to check whether they are serving the purpose for which they are intended to.
Despite of all this affirmative action taken by Indian government, most sections of scheduled casts, scheduled tribes and other backward classes are not developed or became non-backward.one major argument is that the reservation system is used by the people who are already rich. Many of the people who support reservations also will agree with this argument.It has been around 60 years since affirmative action started in favour of backward castes, so significant portion of people are already made use of reservation quota in their education or /and job and became wealthy and influential. So there is competition among SC and SC people it is obvious that the people who are already developed will make best use of them. So the genuine backward families will have much less chance for getting developed, which is the main aim of Reservation policy.
Let’ssee the impact of Reservations in society. It was originally intended to integrate the marginalised people into the mainstream society and eliminate inequalities of social status of being higher or lower caste and thus the discrimination or Untouchability which was once present. But in reality nothing has changed much in that perspective. Still caste feelings prevail in many parts of country. We still see increasing cases of abusing or ill-treating of Dalits in society. In fact the Affirmative action made the non-backward people to feel jealous that they are enjoying bonuses from government.
But it is not a complete failure. It helped many backward caste people to develop, there are people making correct use of it. Problem is that the policy has to be assessed and modified to help the people who REALLY deserve it.
Who are real BACKWARD people?
The poor people of non-backward castes are helpless in current situation. They are getting a few/ no incentives from governments. And caste status is of no use to improve their economic or educational status. On the other end even the families of ministers, doctors etc. of SC or ST category are getting help. So the current policy is an absolute failure in that perspective.
Political game and Threat to national Integrity:
Caste systemis considered to be one of the main threats to national integrity. Especially when it comes to political power, caste is an important equation everyone thinks about. Caste politics are very common in all parts of our country. There are many parties took birth from this feeling. No politician feels guilty to speak publicly about political situation. If one caste consists majority population of a division parties put their contestant of same caste. Unfortunately people are also supporting the same. But there are no significant proofs that if same one is in power the same caste will benefitted.
Caste Based Reservations (on basis of current policy) are also a part of political trick played on society for their votes. Parties or governments support implementation of reservation based on their caste so that in return the people belonging to that caste will vote those parties. As a result the ideal Indian society of casteless and equality is always remains as a myth.
In fact caste is not a measure to divide society into classes as backward and non-backward classes, because properties of a class are significantly different from that of caste.
Caste comes with birth or as heredity and is characterized by endogamy, whereas class is an open group and anybody who shares common features with the class will be in.
People can move from one class to upper or lower class by development or cease. But there is no such mobility in caste system; from born to death one has same caste.
A class can be distinguished from another class in terms of some economic criteria, e.g. income, occupation, ownership of land or other means of production, place of residence (rural, urban, slums etc.). But in caste system they are basically nothing have in common except that they traditional or hereditary occupation.
If caste is the only ground for Social Backwardness, how actions of giving jobs or education will remove social backwardness. In Southern India, the members of royal families, ruling classes, land-lords, and rich businessmen are considered to be backward by the Government because of their castes. If all these people are still “backward” because of their cast there is no point in giving them bonuses to remove their backwardness“ because it is impossible to do so.
So the appropriate perspective of society is not CASTE but it is CLASS. Making policies in this perspective will help the backward people to develop and improve their quality of lives.
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Some arguments and discussion...
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Reservations cannot eliminate social inequality.In fact in many instances they cause to show up the differences. If one gets a job or educational seat, it makes a general student to think that other student is helped by quota because he doesn’t have potential to get the seat by merit.
The government should help him/her by giving him opportunity, to get the potential needed to get qualified. That’s how the society will believe that they also possess abilities, and there are chances for them to be treated as equal.
Also, if a person get into an Institute or job by using his/her reservation quota, he/she does not possess all the skills to work (or at least when compared to the people who are selected on basis of merit), so they cannot perform well in their job or studies and there many cases in which scst students are dismissed due to their poor academic performance. The mistake here is not with the students but with the policy of reservations. Even with reservation quota government should ensure that the students have abilities to perform well after joining.
In many cases merit students go out of country because of lack of opportunitiesinspite of their merit and skills. In the present economic situation where India needs to use its full resources, man power and skilled people. And this reservation quota is bringing in the people who have lesser skills. So it is creating hindrance to our economic development. The term Brain Drain is often used by people opposing reservations, and I support this fact.
One major argument of reservation supporters is that only forward class people are enjoying the fruits of development of our country, so it has to be shared among all backward caste people. So reservations are must. But the development itself is not coming from outside. Development and its benefits are mutual. So replacing the skilled people with unskilled people will result in degrading of growth. True solution lies not in giving them jobs who don’t have skills but lies in giving the people skills and participating in actual development.
If the argument is that they do not have enough resources, opportunities to compete with the higher cast people, it is not a valid argument at all. It is the problem faced by most of the rural students, the problem is not limited lower caste but to broader group of people, which cannot be solved by caste based reservation policy.
In IITs every year about 100 seats are going waste because sc/st students are not able to meet the minimum required cut-off for qualification.100 seats may not seem like a big number but for IITs where about 100 students compete for one seat, it is really a big problem to deal with.
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Anger at reservations is common, but such anger may be better channelled when it is targeted at the real problem. The few tens of thousands of jobs or college places that are subject to state policy on reservation are very small in comparison to the daily problems that hundreds of millions of citizens endure. Almost all reservations are caste based which is more like a social custom and feeling among the people.
First of all government should be clear about this issue. They have to decide their goal, whether to give all castes equal power or to eliminate the caste system.in either way the current policy is not appropriate. Initially the primary goal was to eliminate caste system and discontinue the reservation after few years. But politicians who wanted to exploit this issue for them self, made the situation very complex.
There is only one solution to eliminate caste system. The government should ban use of CASTE. It should not offer any incentives on basis of castes. Instead it should it should divide the society into classes to help who really deserve it. The people should be given better education in primary and secondary level so that the backward class people have enough skills to compete with those of higher class for jobs or educational seats. It should give importance and incentives for their primary and secondary education. Then we will not have the problem of unskilled people or economic development. Even if the reservations are present government should make sure that there is a little difference between skills of merit students and reservation quota students. The reservations should be periodically assessed and should be modified so that only backward people make use of it.
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By
KANCHARLA PRADEEP,
Caste system is the social stratification and social restriction in India. How can we be humans with all this cruelty, prejudice, hatred and above all the differences between the people??
ReplyDeleteVarious people in India have been categorised into various castes after the independence of India. The backward castes have been given reservation opportunities to uplift their standard of living. But is it the same status of the people now?? Are all the backward class people poor?? There are few situations where the higher caste people change their caste to the backward class to get reservation facilities and other opportunities.
I strongly feel that a new caste system should be developed based on the annual income of a person. Reservation should not be given based on caste system but should be given to the poor who are not able to meet their daily necessities.