How is the discriminatory caste system justifiable?

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Transcript

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So, the caste system or varnashram in which there are four varnas, often Western people see that as discriminatory and exploitative. So, how can we explain that? So, you see there are two things.
Based on how they are ranked and how is it not discriminatory. The first thing is that the caste system that is there in India today, it is very discriminatory. We just have to begin by acknowledging that.
It is very discriminatory. And many of the people in the lower caste have been exploited, misused, denied privileges and necessities. The caste system as it exists in India now is a great evil.
And it needs to be corrected. And then if we present Krishna Consciousness as a correction to that, that actually in Krishna Consciousness, we are presenting the bhakti wisdom, which focuses on transcendence. So, everybody can approach transcendence.
So, that’s the first point. But even if we talk about specifically the caste system, I have a whole PowerPoint presentation on the caste system, but I’ll focus on two, three points over here. First is that actually discrimination is just a nature of the human ego.
Whoever is in power, they discriminate against those who do not have power. America champions itself as a land of equality. But when the original pilgrims came from Europe to India, what did they do to the Native Americans? It is not just discriminated against, they were eliminated.
In India, the lower castes are still existing. Existing a large number. So, the discrimination had been so bad.
In America, discrimination was much, much worse. So, actually the Protestants came to North America. The Catholics went to South America.
And if you see the Mayan civilization that was there, the Catholics, Spain and Portugal, Spain primarily, just eliminated everything. Destroyed it. So, even in USSR, which was supposed to be like the land of equality, everybody is equal, communism, that was the idea.
Everybody should have equal rights or equal property or whatever. What happened over there? Within USSR and China, three times more people were killed by the government itself. Then where the number of people who were killed in World War I and World War II combined together.
In order to establish equality, the government’s version of equality, what happened was that anybody who was perceived as a threat was just eliminated. So, discrimination, exploitation, these are just facts of human nature. They are regrettable, sometimes reprehensible facts.
But it’s facts of human nature. And they may acquire different rationalizations at different times. So, yes, in Indian history, this tendency to discriminate and exploit, that has rationalized itself through the caste system.
But objective historical record can show that actually things were not as bad in India as they are portrayed. And things were much worse in other countries. This is not to say that what happened in India was good.
Admitting it is bad, but there is no need to demonize India and India’s caste system. Single it out because that’s a universal human pattern. Now, as far as the original intent was concerned, the original intent was not discrimination, but cooperation.
The whole idea is that any form of demarcation, it involves separation. It also involves union. Say, for example, one state in India, some states are divided.
Say Uttar Pradesh was divided into two states. And when there is a division, it can lead to separation of two groups, but it can also bring a group together closer. So, actually, traditionally, the caste functioned in the role of a greater family.
The people within one caste, they were in similar professions, similar inclinations, they all came together. So, it created a greater sense of belonging to a unit bigger than one’s own family. And that’s how it sustained social fabric.
You see, the caste system was bad, but if you consider a few countries in the world have been as invaded by foreigners as India has been. And despite all, if you consider among all the civilizations in the world, the only living ancient civilization is the Indian civilization. The only.
You know, China is still existing, but China is only existing as a political entity. Much of Chinese civilization, like Confucianism, Taoism and all that, that is only in the history books. So, Chinese culture itself is not existing as it existed in the past.
As a political entity, it is existing. So, the only living Egyptian civilization is not there. Mesopotamian civilization is not there.
So, even if the Indian culture had supported a discriminatory caste system, then why is it that there is no internal rebellion and why was that survived in spite of so much external aggression also? Certainly, there has been reform from within against this, but it could not have been entirely all bad. It would have been entirely all bad, it would not have survived for so long. So, the original purpose was cooperation, that belonging to a greater family among people who have similar vocations.
Now, the caste system was by qualities, but it was also by birth. That means what? That it was guna karma vibhashya Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita. But also Krishna talks about certain classes of people as Papayonaya.
That means he says right from birth itself these can be of sinful wounds. That means from birth itself somebody can be sinful. Now, what he means by that is that the problem is not to, if somebody is born in a doctor’s family, that person has much more facility to become a doctor.
Now, it’s not that they will, the problem is when birth itself is assumed as a qualification. Not just the qualification, the complete qualification. But birth, even from the point of view of upbringing, it affects the possibility of somebody taking up a particular vocation.
If somebody is born in a doctor’s family, they want to become a doctor. Since childhood they have that atmosphere. They learn what it takes, what a doctor’s life is like.
And on top of that, if we consider further that, if we consider the philosophical understanding, say a soul who has a brahminical inclination, that soul by the arrangement of the law of karma would take birth in a family of brahmanas. So the possibility of brahmanas begetting brahmanas is more. So to say that the caste system was never by birth, that is also not entirely correct.
The caste system was, the problem is to say that caste system was only by birth. Traditionally, genealogy and psychology matched by the law of karma. So based on the kind of psychology a person has, they will be born in that kind of family.
But over time that things changed. The important thing is that today it is discriminatory. And within the bhakti tradition, we have some of the greatest saints who were from the lower caste, who were outcaste, they are still considered exalted.
So we see the bhakti tradition as a inner reform. Now today people are criticizing from outside, this is so bad, this is so bad. But the bhakti tradition was like an inner reform.
So we see all the bhakti saints, whichever state of India you go to, there are stories of bhakti saints who were from lower caste, they were persecuted by the brahmanas, but then some miraculous interventions and then their glory was established and then the whole of society accepted it. The whole bhakti movement was an internal reform. So there are problems with it.
The original intent was cooperation. Historically there have been problems. That’s simply because of the human tendency to exploit.
And there have been internal attempts also to reform. And we show that what we are is a part of the internal attempt at reform. When we explain things that way, then we see that we can actually explain things in a way that is intelligible to people.
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