This episode examined the formation and subsistence of caste in the Indian culture. There are suppositions to its beginning and more importantly, its sustenance over the last 4,000 years or more.
The upper castes had a very clear incentive in keeping the lower castes suppressed and they continuously jockeyed to maintain their position. While this may have been a socioeconomic necessity early on it eventually led to the marginalization of a large group of people that clearly left the society worse off in the long run. A civilization can be driven by the necessary evils during its formation but as it civilizes, it needs to continuously reevaluate its belief system and change course. The Indian Caste system, among its various ills, is most guilty of not doing that.
The stories in this episode and perhaps the conventional wisdom over the years highlights the importance in Indian culture of social order over individual morality or choice. The prioritization of social order might clue us as to how and why a group of largely disparate tribes managed to survive under a loosely defined concept of an Indian nation, howsoever it may have been stated at the time.
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As the Vedic people started descending on the fertile plains of Northern India, it seems they had hit upon all the ingredients required for establishing a relatively modern civilization. They had fertile lands, water and lots of food in the form of crops and small animals. They also had a fairly well established religious order which generally held people together. They needed a strong labor force to continue their growth. The caste system seemed a great way to establish ready supply of all types of talents required to run a society. The brahmins provided education and connection with God. Kshatriyas provided leadership and protection. Vaishyas felicitated commerce. The Shudras provided labor for the farms and all other menial work. In the absence of establish educational institutions, the hereditary caste system was a convenient way to promote education mostly as vocational training. Moreover, it fostered specialization. A particular craft and its esoteric knowledge would get passed down generations leading to evolutionary improvements.
The much-maligned caste system was a perfect engine of socio-economic growth at the time!
A fledgling society needs a ready supply of labor. The Vedic people devised this via the Caste system and the Greeks and Romans devised it via slavery. So, evil as the caste system was, it served a critical purpose at the time and was actually a better system than slavery. The caste system also offered much better inter-caste mobility than slavery did.
The discussion quickly drifts to the definition of “Yuga” and one extremely interesting definition, outside the usual time-based measures, is that in “Sata-Yuga” only the Brahmins can perform Yagna. In “Treta-Yuga” the privilege is extended to Kshatriyas as well, in Dvapara-Yuga, to Vaishyas and finally in Kali-Yuga - Shudras can perform Yagna as well. And here “Yagna” really stands for pursuit of power and spirituality by acquisition and exploitation of knowledge.
The episode features 3 really interesting stories. The first one took me aback a bit. I didn’t know that Ram, who is from the Treta-Yuga once put a Shudra to death for the sin of performing Yagna. The more I age and the more I observe, I find Ram’s character fascinating. Here is a someone highly celebrated for being the ideal man and yet, he does weird things as a king. Kills an innocent man and later throws out his innocent wife on a mere allegation. In his pursuit of a social order, he does things that Machiavelli would readily approve but a strict moralist would not. Being a leader is so much more about “order” than about “morality" and “good”. In modern times you can so see Obama struggling with this constantly. A just King is mostly ineffective. After Ram returns from Lanka, he seems to wish more to be a good king than a good man. If you follow that thought then his actions make a lot more sense.
Then we hear about the famous Eklavya story. Evlavya wasn’t exactly of a lower caste. He was literally an “outcast”. He was a “Nishad” who, among with “Chandals” were outside the caste system. They were lower than the low caste. His story is easily the saddest in Mahabharata, which is full of other terribly sad stories. But again, what Drona does is appropriate from his perspective and where his loyalties lie - with the kingdom and then to Arjun, his favorite pupil. This is another example (this time from Dvapara-Yuga, where a higher caste chooses to punish a lower caste but in pursuit of perceived social order. If Eklavya was actually allowed to learn archery under Drona, or even just allowed to pursue his craft, he probably would have fought on the Kaurav’s side and that would’ve complicated things for Arjuna and the overarching social order that the story is pursuing.
The last story is probably the most intriguing and it talks about inter-caste mobility and highlights that it wasn’t unheard of to put individual actions decide the caste rather than birth. This is portrayed via a fascinating story about a boy with three fathers. A Shudra rebel who marries his mother, a Brahmin who becomes his biological father and the king that raises him to be a Kshatriya. The boy is eventually thought of as a Shudra because it is the Shudra who sets the story of the boy in motion. The rights of the Brahmin and the Kshatriya king are considered secondary. The interesting little story deals with themes of greed, duty, social order, loyalty and revenge among others.
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Finally, we must see caste for what it is: like race, another uncivilized way to look at humans which prioritizes birth over native skill and actions and marginalizes large portions of the society leading to great socioeconomic disservice to humanity as a whole.