This book is an attempt to present caste in its entirety, especially with reference to India, in a common relationship with life as is its starting point. For the reason that caste is a part of life and if you dissect life to examine it, what you end up examining is not life. 1 THEORIES OF CASTE - A PEEP 1.1Racial Theory: The fact that caste names Brahmana, Kshtriya, and Visya are frequently mentioned in the RigVeda along with words like 'dasa', 'varna', gives credence to the theory that caste is an invention of IndoAryans. 1.2Political Theory: In Mahabharata (shantiparva) creation of caste as divine order. 1.3Occupational theory: According to 'Theodosian' code, in early Roman Empire, son was required to follow fathers' profession. 1.4Traditional theory, Guild theory and Religious theory: These theories propose divine intervention in human affairs. 1.5Evolutionary theory: This theory states that over the years, formation of caste is influenced by all factors we have seen earlier, in one form or other. DEVELOPMENT OF CASTE - A GLIMPSE 2.1The origin and development of caste system therefore narrows down to the distinctiveness, of evolution of Indian society which could cause the variations existing among its constituents to transform into a hardened form. 3 EVOLUTION OF CASTE - A REVIEW 3.1 Whatever the shape, the evolution of caste took; it certainly resulted in a large multitude of castes, having easily discernible differences, especially in intellectual ability when compared with one another. 4 PROGRESSION OF CASTE - A SCRUITINY The point to note is that the British saw caste as a way to manage a huge population by breaking it down into discrete chunks, each having specific characteristics and an inbuilt disciplinary structure. 5 CASTE AND NATIONALIST MOVEMENTS - AN APPRAISAL 5.1 History of India is replete with stories of social moderation efforts or other rearrangements, that too of a permanent nature, necessitated by a non homogeneous society. Caste did become the focus of progressive movements and of debates about the character of post colonial politics. It has simultaneously preserved the patriarchy of pre-modern society and is still working to sanction the continued oppression and exclusion of women in nationalist re-imaginings of the past. 6 CASTE - MY SIDE - The Singularities While studying the origin of caste system, an obvious mistake, which seems to have crept into all the theories mentioned earlier without anybody noticing it, is that no doctrine takes the philosophical plane of existence of caste (referring to caste as 'varna', an abstraction), into account. The metamorphosis of the abstract 'varna' into the most widely 'understood' caste took place under the influence of certain singularities during the evolution of Indian society. 6.1 The very first singularity is philosophy or the way it is understood. 6.2Next singularity is the attack by various invaders. 6.3 Another singularity took the form of Mahatma Gandhi. 6.4Communism offered itself as another singularity. 6.5Next singularity, the most potent of all, is reservation or its euphemism, social justice. 6.6Next and probably the ultimate singularity may happen sometime in the future, many (or may be few) generations from today. The intellectual gap between different groups of people will be playing a significant part in deciding the path each culture comes to follow. 7 CASTE - A SUMMARY Caste is a relic of dark ages. It did not evolve into a modernized version in the natural course as we were not the real custodians of our society, having been under foreign rule for many years and those ruled over finding great use in caste, halting any such prospect.
About the Author: A naval officer with engineering background who has taken to writing on retirement from Indian Navy in 2013 after a lengthy career, during which he had the opportunity to come across a true cross section of the society, as colleagues, subordinates and superiors, including quite a few from more than a few countries. Every second person, during those years, that one had to do business with, thus being from entirely different backgrounds and consequently opening up a keleidoscopic view of society, he couldn't but reflect on human transactions in many colors, each of them leading to a horde of imponderables, whether human or non human, both living and non living.