Is the caste system wrong?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So is the caste system wrong? The person is always judged by the color of their skin then how can they raise themselves up? Yes, the caste system as it exists today is extremely discriminatory and it needs to be rejected so it has led to a lot of injustice which is perpetuated in the name of religion at the same time if we look at the texts which do talk about the division of society they are talking more of a division of labor according to natural orientation it is not according to birth the Bhagavad Gita says It talks about division of society according to people’s qualities and people’s activities so the purpose was for cooperation not discrimination all people we may say that all people are equal so in principle the Bhagavad Gita also agrees that all people are equal what to speak of all people being equal the Bhagavad Gita says all living beings are equal all living beings are equally spiritual that person is a true seer one who sees that all living beings are equal because in their destructible bodies there is an indestructible spiritual spark so in principle we accept that all living beings are equal what to speak of all human beings in practice we all have different sets of abilities so if you put 100 students in a classroom not everybody will be equally intellectually brilliant some people may be good at physical things some people may be good at dancing some people may be good at singing some people may be good at craft some people may be good at technology but not good at concepts so people are different and when they are engaged according to their nature then they can contribute to the maximum if somebody who is artistic is forced to become a technocrat person may not be very happy there is no internal satisfaction nor is there external contribution so the system which was not caste system it was Varanashram Varanashram was originally a system by which people there was division of labour according to national orientation of the people and we often focus on the facet of the discrimination that was caused by the caste system but actually it was not only discrimination it also the division of labour division of society in this way also created an extended family so people who were members of a particular social group vocational group they grouped together as a larger family and yes the discrimination that has happened because of caste system is terrible we are not denying that but still if we see relatively speaking when the protestants came here to America they discriminated against the native Americans and there was not just discrimination there was extermination millions were killed the same happened to many African Americans who were brought here as part of the slave trade so the tendency to abuse power is there in everyone it’s a universal human feeling and any social structure is only as good as its practitioners are especially its leaders are communism was founded on the idea that all living beings are equal all people are equal but George Orwell pointed out that in communism all people are equal but some are more equal than others what happened was that we had basically the ruled and the rulers and the ruled lived in poverty and the rulers lived in enormous luxury so the system of social division called Varanashram was misunderstood, misapplied by some people who were power hungry especially the upper castes, the Brahmins and to some extent the Kshatriyas they wanted to keep their privileges and because of that they changed the system from a system of division of labour according to natural orientation to a division by birth which became discriminatory and yet within the Hindu tradition itself there was vigorous internal reform the Bhakti tradition within India was a tradition which emerged what is now a tradition it emerged, became especially influential in the medieval times and it was a tradition of reform from within which protested strongly against the caste system many of the greatest Bhakti saints were from the lower caste and they were often persecuted by the Brahmins and people of the other higher caste but eventually their deep spirituality showed forth and when that happened it was recognized by the general people and it was recognized by some of the Brahmins also so yes the caste system as it exists today is a perversion of the original system that was there described in the Vedic texts and as it exists in a perverted form it is to be rejected but we shouldn’t throw out as they say, throw out the baby with the dirty bath water so it’s not that the Vedic texts themselves talk about the discriminatory caste system they talk about spiritual equality and they acknowledge material diversity and to accommodate the material diversity they talk of a system of social division and if that system of social division has become a system of social discrimination then that should be rejected but the principle of spiritual equality that is talked about that is something which is egalitarian and that is of great relevance for today’s world Question from