Bruh can someone explain to me how the Indian caste system works? Cause I don't get it. Is it a skin color thing? And how do people even know what caste someone else is? Also, why does this shit only exist in India?
>>674492>Also, why does this shit only exist in India?Does it?
< Oxbridge full of same ‘elite’ names hundreds of years on<According to research conducted by LSE, the same ‘elite’ surnames are still dominating Oxbridge just as they did during the Norman Conquest hundreds of years ago.
<Surnames such as Darcy, Baskerville, Mandeville and Montgomery are still just as common within the elitist universities as they were nearly 1000 years ago.
>Bruh can someone explain to me how the Indian caste system works? Cause I don't get it. The same way it works in any society. Do you know what it means to be from a good family? What's in a name? In Europe all the nobility are Von Der Scheiss or something. You know from someone's family name what caste they are.
Its a bit complicated.
It started out first as a ethnic/race-based class system, putting people of more Central-Asian/Iranic (or Indo-Aryan as its also called) heritage on a higher class, ruling over a darker-skinned indigenous population. Mainly because people from those tribes conquered the indigenous population and then became the exploiting ruling class.
But it did not start immediately. First there was a considerable amount of inter-mixture between these 2 main groups, and then at some point the caste system emerged and increasingly formalized. This is why you can't really neatly seperate Indians as belonging to this or that group, rather its a continuous spectrum
Then due to cultural diffusion, the caste system spread to even places where there wasn't a big presence of Indo-Aryan heritage. So you have the caste system even in places where the upper castes don't meaningfully look any different from the lower castes.
Also, apart from merely heritage, the caste system also became the ideological superstructure justifying the economic system - this is what really sealed the deal and made it a permanent fixture. Because now the economy was divided into inherited occcupations.
This economic system based on inherited occupational roles is one of the biggest reasons for the survival of the caste system despite massive upheavals in Indian history, like Buddishm, Islamic rule, British rule etc. Just like how capitalism survives all kinds of upheavals - because the economic system is the base and superstructural upheavals don't eliminate it.
It was only with the introduction of capitalism, and its destruction of old social forms, that the caste system began losing its importance as far as economic matters are concerned.
With increasing industrialization and the elimination of old occupations, especially farming and small crafts, that caste system's economic basis has been erode.
Nevertheless, it's superstructural effects remain deeply ingrained. Indians remain deeply connected to their castes and proud of their caste origin. Even people who belong to middle-castes or some backward castes are proud of their origin, and do not wish to eliminate their heritage, even if that heritage was one of oppression.
That explains why lower caste Hindus still even exist at all, instead of them all converting into Buddhists or Islam or Christianity, which would have been the logical thing to do. Not that conversion would protect them from oppression (it doesnt, lower caste converts to Christianity or Islam are still oppressed), but it would at least be more dignified than remaining in the religion that considers them subhuman.
Also the Indian constitution provides a ton of affirmative action policies for lower-caste people, ostensibly to uplift them. Personally I think its a cynical ploy to keep the caste system alive so that lower caste people have some financial incentive to remain in the Dharmic system.
Also a lot of Indian local politics is entirely about castes. Like dominant castes electing politicians of their own caste, who then provide kickbacks to businessmen of their own caste etc.
The naive hope that capitalism might entirely destroy the old caste system has been shattered, caste has been integrated into capitalism. Although its plays a much lesser role than in the past, it endures and influences politics and social life to this very day.
>>674515 (me)
Sorry I forgot to answer your specific questions.
>Is it a skin color thing?In general, people of lighter skin color tend to belong to a higher caste (but not necessarily the highest castes - aka Brahmins or Kshatriyas)
But this is not a hard and fast rule. There are dark skinned Brahmins and light skinned lower castes. It depends a lot on which area of India we're talking about.
>And how do people even know what caste someone else is? Indians cannot tell which caste another Indian is just by looking at them. Their name provides a bit of a clue, but some general names like Kumar or Rao can belong to a lot of different castes.
So yeah, unless that person outright tells you their caste, or by looking at their caste certificate, you can't tell for sure which caste a person belongs to.
Also, why does this shit only exist in India?
Almost every nation in South Asia and South-east Asia has this phenomenon of political and economic power being unequally spread between ethnicities.
>>674492Pic related, the difference is that the caste system is also an ethno-religious doctrine so it persists despite feudalism not existing anymore, and since coming out of the previous mode of production, higher castes would naturally retain their privilege because they'd have a headstart of capital accumulation so the dominant ideology is retained through cultural hegemony via state apparatuses
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