I read today 2 very interesting online articles on the Caste system of India . … and they both set me thinking about an earlier book I had read on Manu Smriti.
The true picture of Hindu social structure
Is ‘Caste’ different from social stratification? Does data support the ‘caste violence’ narrative?
After I had read the commentary on “Manu Smriti” written by Prof. K V Rangaswami Iyengar ….
… and I had spent some time dwelling upon the book’s larger implications and unspoken verities … it began to slowly dawn on me that “varnashrama” system was never really intended to serve nor to be misused or abused in ancient India as any kind of deviously conceived tool to keep society iniquitously divided between ruling classes and the working classes but only to keep it united instead as a cohesive and productive social unit well protected against external foreign incursions.
The great Islamic Dynasts in our history too recognised the fact and that is why during their 300 years long rule of our country, they plundered and occupied the country of course but stopped short of totally Islamizing it. They thought it was best not to try breaking up Hindu society by driving all kinds of wedges through its basic caste cohesion and caste fabric. Doing so would have made their task of ruling the vast country infinitely more arduous. So, quite prudently they shied away from following the policy of Islamic Imperialism which was followed elsewhere by Islam in the Asia Minor, Levantine and North African regions.
However when Christian Europe and Britain came to first trade with and then later to conquer India , they succeeded spectacularly within 250 years in doing what the Muslims had decided not to do — viz. to portray and project Varnaashrama as the fundamental cause of all evils and wealth inequalities in India’s society and use that as the leverage to upturn and disrupt the social cohesion and identities of Hindus …. We all know that many of those societal inequalities were actually themselves caused and engineered by the imperialistic policies of British colonial rule.
To this very day in India the vilification of caste or Varnaashrama system continues to be the most handy tool of exploiting and exacerbating social divisions within the Hindu population purely for political gain and opportunity. The Constitution of India which we as a proud Republic gave to ourselves, if you think about it, was merely a continuation and native reaffirmation of faith in the old European/British “divide and rule” policy. In much the same insidious ways in which colonial Britain scattered and tattered our Hindu society to shreds, shards and smithereens, the Indian Constitution too thanks to our present-day political machinery, chicanery and machinations, helps do the same today but all in the name of preserving the “pluralistic traditions” of ancient India ! What a historic irony!
Today in India it is well nigh impossible for the Hindus to be both faithful to the Constitution and to the taboo of varnaashrama order that prevailed through much of their ancient cultural past at the same time. The two are mutually exclusive and antipathic… exactly as the Western Imperialist powers that ruled over us until 1947 had also wanted it to be.
Sudarshan Madabushi