It is an exhaustive painstaking job that I have been researching in for sometime. I beg excuse from my honourable readers for its length but such topics need dealing at length to clarify and substantiate the various views supported with quotes from experts. Space constraint will either spoil or confuse it. As noted, authors have published voluminous books on these topics. Islam is about 1400 years old but Sikhism is only three to four centuries old. I am amazed to find such an extensive caste degradation in Sikhism, which is my next topic to dwell on. I certainly would welcome the esteemed readers to point out any erratum or if I erred somewhere in my work.
@Irfan Bhai,
First I welcome you here to express your personal opinion, right or wrong. You are entitled to. My contention is not to malign Islamic scriptures. In fact I am agreeable to your gut feeling about Quran and Hadiths.
Despite that the caste exists in Muslim societies. I have quoted the experts in my write up. I hope you have cared to read it carefully before posing the question.
In such a situation, if the castes are extant and being practiced blatantly in Muslim society without Quranic or Hadith authority, it certainly makes it worst and shameful; as I percieve it. It concerns me and I have succeeded in my point. Your non-denial by asking your question do not wipe out the malaise from the society in question. I have not intended a religious discourse but a prevailing system, please note the difference.
One can go on endlessly, and fruitlessly to deal on this topic of universal social malady wherein directly or indirectly, every existent society is involved with a continued hidden interest. It is being used more as rhetoric and sloganeering to exploit one section than explicitly eliminate it by demoralising. Caste appears like the system of flesh trade, which is denounced by everybody but nobody is prepared to eliminate it. They all like to immerse in it in the darkness of their daytime and enjoy it in the light of night time.
Dr. O. P. Sudrania
The Sachar Committee report of 2006 revealed that scheduled castes and tribes of India are not limited to the religion of Hinduism. The 61st round Survey of the NSSO found that almost nine-tenths of the Buddhists, one-third of the Sikhs, and one-third of the Christians in India belonged to the notified scheduled castes or tribes of the Constitution: In Buddhism, scheduled castes are 89.50% and scheduled tribe 07.40%. Peruse at:
At any rate, nothing in Buddhist history justifies the modern romance of Buddhism as a movement for social reform. Everywhere it went, Buddhism accepted the social mores prevalent in that country, be it Chinese imperial-centralistic bureaucracy, Japanese militaristic feudalism, or indeed Hindu caste society.
A deeper unbiased analysis may depict that either it is human ignorance or their materialistic greed or other weaknesses. Unfortunately the masses in any or every community are like a flock of sheeps which move in herds, led by the front leader. They hardly seem to have their individual say. Thus the so called human societies behave no different in this respect. Another human aspect of sensibility is a sentimental phenomenon which help create a mass movement; political, religious, sports, games, nationalism, or otherwise. All these factors work in tandem to divide et impera. In such matters, the individuals hardly seem to have their choice. There are extraneous factors also with their vested interests in creating further diversity
ChakraNews.com-16-Sep-2012
Ambedkar described the Untouchables as belonging to the same religion and culture, yet shunned and ostracized by the community they lived in. The Untouchables, observed Ambedkar, recognised the sacred as well as the secular laws of India, but they derived no benefit from this. They lived on the outskirts of a village. Segregated from the rest, bound down to a code of behavior, they lived a life appropriate to a servile state. According to this code, an untouchable could not do anything that raised him or her above his or her appointed station in life. The caste system stamped an individual as untouchable from birth. Thereafter, observed Ambedkar, his social status was fixed, and his economic condition was permanently set. The tragic part was that the Mahomedans, Parsis and Christians shunned and avoided the Untouchables, as well as the Hindus. Ambedkar acknowledged that the caste system wasn’t universally absolute in his time; it was true, he wrote, that some Untouchables had risen in Indian society above their usually low status, but the majority had limited mobility, or none, during Britain’s colonial rule. According to Ambedkar, the caste system was irrational. Ambedkar listed these evils of the caste system: it isolated people, infused a sense of inferiority into lower-caste individuals, and divided humanity. The caste system was not merely a social problem, he argued: it traumatized India’s people, its economy, and the discourse between its people, preventing India from developing and sharing knowledge, and wrecking its ability to create and enjoy the fruits of freedom. The philosophy supporting the social stratification system in India had discouraged critical thinking and cooperative effort, encouraging instead treatises that were full of absurd conceits, quaint fancies, and chaotic speculations. The lack of social mobility, notes Ambedkar, had prevented India from developing technology which can aid man in his effort to make a bare living, and a life better than that of the brute. Ambedkar stated that the resultant absence of scientific and technical progress, combined with all the transcendentalism and submission to one’s fate, perpetrated famines, desolated the land, and degraded the consciousness from respecting the civic rights of every fellow human being.
Ambedkar condemned Gandhi’s use of the term Harijans as saying that Dalits were socially immature, and that privileged caste Indians played a paternalistic role. Ambedkar and his allies also felt Gandhi was undermining Dalit political rights. Gandhi had also refused to support the untouchables in 1924–25 when they were campaigning for the right to pray in temples. Because of Gandhi’s actions, Ambedkar described him as “devious and untrustworthy”. Gandhi, although born into the Vaishya caste, insisted that he was able to speak on behalf of Dalits, despite the presence of Dalit activists such as Ambedkar.
Unfortunately this is merely being talked about lately for two reasons: One is vote bank political tool for Indian myopic leaders and second by the more vicious and powerful non Hindu machinery with a vested interest of predatory proselytisation on one hand and politico-religious exploitation on the other hand for divide et impera. Even the current UPA II central government wants the embers of caste burning.
Christian Missionaries and Indian Caste Cancer
It is unfortunate that both Christians and Muslims are predating on the soft Hindu community for the conversion politics of their brand of global caliphate where both of these Abraham’s offsprings are badly competing in the market to harvest the Hindu souls by misguiding the gullible people to divide and conquer. That is the reason for repeatedly branding, “Who is a Hindu”? They incite the various subgroups by saying, “So and so is not a Hindu because they say so”. This is maliciously absurd and rumour mongering technique to incite the illiterate rural folks and then using them by enticing with the basic living requisites in life e.g. health care through their establishment of hospitals and medical colleges, education through their missionary controlled schools from nursery till the highest post graduation standard in all fields, the religious proselytisation through their Churches tagged with both the previous types of institutions for health and education where there is a direct interference of Church from admission to funding all other privileges which acts as a cushion of incentives as well as draws respect for their brand of God and religion. Lastly the multinational business houses act as their final saviors in providing the jobs for their living. This projects the image of Christian Missionaries as their sole guardian and apostle on the earth.
Conclusion:
In a globalised world, where there are many players calling the tune, it has to be a well intentioned sincerely selfless approach devoid of any vested interest that this malaise can be remedied. The more it is discussed, the more smug it becomes because it is not the discussion and laws or reservations and one off temporary subsidy that will eliminate caste but a well intentioned unbiased approach away from the politics of caste by concentrating on the socio-economical status of the affected selective groups; will only mitigate this problem, which is not just confined in India alone. Its slur and impact is far wider and ramifications global. The Christian proselytising industry must awake to the monstrous virus of caste which has at last engulfed even the Christianity and Islam, as clearly observed in the Afro-Asian nations; documented in my earlier series. Further the preferential caste based treatments have its demerits. Among the common consequences of caste based preference policies are:
-They encourage non-backward groups to redesignate themselves as members of backward groups to take advantage of group preference policies;
-They tend to benefit primarily the most fortunate among the backward caste (e.g. creamy layer), often times to the detriment of the least fortunate among the non-backward (e.g. poor upper caste Hindu);
-They reduce the incentives of both the backwards and non-backward to perform at their best — the former because doing so is unnecessary and the latter because it can prove futile — thereby resulting in net losses for society as a whole; and
-They engender animosity toward backward groups as well as on the part of backward groups themselves, whose main problem in some cases has been their own inadequacy combined with their resentment of non-backward groups who — without preferences — consistently outperform them.
