Origins of the Indian Caste System: Part – 1

Disclaimer: I’m not going to talk about the vices of the caste system nor the oppression that arose from it. I will only be exploring the origins of the caste system. I may probably blog later about the impact of the caste system. I have used Hindu and Indian interchangeably throughout the post because, I haven’t had the time to explore the stratification of society in other religions (it does exist, from whatever little I have read) and most of the philosophical thought in modern India is still influenced by the Hindu philosophy. You are welcome to correct me, if I have taken too much liberty in quoting something not trustworthy or if I have erroneously made assumptions.

Our society has been and continues to be based on a division of classes. Be it social or economic, we the people of India are taught to respect that division. We think of ourselves as global citizens and yet somehow, we have not been able to break the shackles off, of our stratified society. Why? How did this division come into being? And why is that every Indian subconsciously at some level or the other feels that it should be respected?

Before we anxiously protest that the second question is too generalized and that it includes everyone in the same boat; let me ask this, “How far have we gone, to step over the boundaries imposed around us?” My honest answer is, not very far. Yours might be different. But, then again you would have seen the resistance and friction that envelops you, even as you reach for the boundary and this should have been good enough reason to ask yourself, why?

The answer to why we accept the stratification, is however surprisingly simple; the boundaries have been around for a few hundred years and we have been made to accept them, via administrative seasoning, as a part of our life. Only, in the last few decades have we been seriously probing this rigid framework called the caste system. There is a reason, for the debate to have started only a few decades ago. We will explore that in a later post.

As for the How?, the answer is a little tricky as it involves, following the development of our civilization and a little about the evolution of its philosophy. Let’s see the evolution of the philosophy first. The most common misconception is that the whole of Indian philosophical thought that forms the fundamentalist basis of the Hindu religion was born from the Vedas. To me, the Vedas are just an amassment of knowledge, Knowledge gained from observation, experimentation and formulation of logical theories, which was passed down from generation to generation verbally. So, they do not put much emphasis on a stratified social system.

So, where did the Indian philosophical thought originate from? The philosophical thought, actually draws a lot from the Samhitas, Brahmanas, Upanishads and Aranyakas.  These are actually texts primarily discussing philosophy, meditation, rituals and the nature of God; these form the core spiritual thought of Hinduism. To put, it in a simpler way; these texts are discourses about the Vedas and what they meant to each teacher. And hence, are an individual’s interpretations of Vedas. Interestingly, even these later texts lack any serious mention of a hereditary caste system but, some later texts do contain the division of society based on the jobs undertaken by a person. The first mention of this is found in scriptures like Bhagvad-Gita and Manusmriti, which talk about the four Varnas, as being part of God’s creation. Even these scriptures emphasize that the Indian caste system was originally non-hereditary. The general idea was always that the migration from one caste to the other was possible by switching jobs or changing ones guna. For example, Bhagavad-Gita says that varnas are decided on the grounds of Guna which is basically the union of the five elements and Karma.

Among the above texts, the Brahmanas are commentaries on the four Vedas, detailing the proper performance of rituals. Since, they were just instructions on how to properly perform rituals; they were available to all.