Chapter 5 India 173Indian constitution. Scholars have written about the “eternal” caste system,
the “immutable” caste system, as if it has existed unchanged forever. Many
people think the constitution and the law have abolished it. Some claim it no
longer exists.
Yet, the caste system is ever present in the background. People guess each
other’s caste if they don’t already know it. Surnames often reveal it, and in vil-
lage India, everyone knows everyone’s caste. Politicians play to caste blocs, and
people vote in caste blocs. Matrimonial advertisements almost always state or
imply the caste of the girl (or boy) they are looking for. Yet in a nation of 1.3
billion people, caste is still a central organizing principle that impinges on
almost all identities (even Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and Chris-
tians, who all formally oppose it but have been unsuccessful in totally escaping
from it) and provides the principal social identity and local community for the
vast majority of Hindus. It is also considered a social problem requiring gov-
ernment efforts of uplift and remediation for the two hundred million Dalits
(“oppressed,” formerly known as “untouchables”), roughly 20 percent of the
population. The Indian constitution recognizes “Scheduled Castes” and
“Scheduled Tribes,” both historically oppressed groups that have legally
defined rights such as reserved seats in government and places in universities.
There are also “Other Backward Castes,” which seems like an aspersion until
you realize they have certain privileges coming out of the reservations systems,
which have led to even some high-caste groups claiming to be “Backwards” in
order to claim these advantages (see the section, “Social Justice: Reservations
for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes”).
Ancient Sources on the Caste System
The earliest sources on caste are the Vedas and other early texts, most of
them the products of Brahman writers and therefore conveying a Brahmanical
social ideology. Do these texts portray the actual world of the times, or an ideal
world of the Brahmans’ imagining? We cannot firmly answer that question,
other than to point out that over centuries these texts took on a normative role
that acted back on society by forcing conformity. Even if they started out ideal-
istically, they ended up by defining the moral order for society. In this sense it is
correct to say that the caste system is the moral order for much of Indian soci-
ety, past and present.
Take, for instance, the Myth of the Cosmic Sacrifice, found in the Rig-Veda
(10.90). This is only one of several creation myths, but it is the one most rele-
vant to the social order (see box 5.5). Purusha is some kind of primeval man or
cosmic being whose sacrifice by the gods—who seem to already exist—brings
the whole universe into existence. They kill and dismember him; his mouth
becomes the priests (Brahmans, who utter the sacred speech); his arms are the
Kshatriya (warriors, kings); his thighs the Vaishya (the common people, food
producers), and his feet the Shudras (servants). This order is not horizontal but
vertical: Brahmans are superior to Kshatriyas, Kshatriyas to Vaishyas, and