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From Cynthia Tablot’s Precolonial India in Practice[0] > One peculiarity of Andhra society is that many of the leading warrior families made no pretensions to
by dilippkumar 6y ago
From Cynthia Tablot’s Precolonial India in Practice[0]
> One peculiarity of Andhra society is that many of the leading warrior families made no pretensions to ksatriya status but instead proudly proclaimed their descent from the creator Bramha’s feet. This is an allusion to the famous origin myth first found in the Rig Veda wherein the four varnas are said to have originated from different portions of the body of Purusha, the primordial man. It was from the creator’s feet that the fourth, or sudra, class sprang, and another way of expressing sudra status was to say that one belonged to the fourth order of society. The pride in sudra origin is especially prominent in two records from the fourteenth century, in which sudras are said to be the best of the four varnas because they are the bravest or the purest. Families in what was theoretically the lowest social category, and not the ksatriya lineages of the costal subregion, possessed the greatest degree of actual political power in medieval Andhra, despite their relatively humble ancestry.
India’s history of caste in society is far more complicated than what’s portrayed in popular depictions of India. Add to this, India’s insane cultural diversity. When Ibn Batuta was traveling through (presumably north) India recording how women were uneducated, forced into marriage and how Brahmins held the highest social status, the Bhakti movement (sort of similar to Europe’s protestant movement) was brewing in the south[1], the Virasaivas were trying to form a caste free society in what is now Karnataka[2] and you have sudra rulers over modern day Andhra Pradesh.
This complicated history has largely been forgotten, Indian textbooks do not come anywhere close to exploring the complexity of the origins of Caste.
I appreciate NPR taking an interest in talking about Caste in India, but this treatment is extremely disappointing. Indian society can not discuss caste freely - there is too much political baggage that gets in the way (notice how all the references below aren’t from Indian scholars). NPR has an incredible opportunity to be the swiss neutral ground when talking about caste and how it impacts every day life in India.
I really hope they don’t bring that baggage over to America and end all possibility for level headed discourse.
[0] Cynthia Talbot, “Precolonial India in Practice - Society, Region and Identity in Medieval Andhra”. Chapter 2, page 51.
[1] John Stratton Hawley, “A storm of songs”
[2] Gil Ben-Herut, “Silva’s saints - the origins of devotion in Kannada according to Harihara’s Ragalegalu”
- drieddust 6y agoEdit: I would truly appreciate a discourse. Simple downvoting provides no feedback. India suffers from this colonial system and unfortunately media takes every single opportunity. Like recent rape cases. Only case with victim from lower class and culprits from higher class is getting all the media attention. I am not saying it's unnecessary but having a dialog requires honest intentions. Just like BLM these media hype cases don't help. In my 20 years of experience I have seen caste discrimination in villages but not in modern offices. People from all creed and caste work together and progress together. As far as marriages are concerned , how many Europeans marry outside their social class? I would guess not many.
- sudosysgen 6y agoTo be fair, classes in Western societies, like lower, middle, upper middle, and upper, are essentially "fake" classes, and have no real definition as well as don't actually fit the generally accepted definition of class in sociology. If you try to do a class analysis of Western capitalist societies, pretty much everyone is of the same class, which is the working class and comprises anyone from foodstore clerk to tech lead. There are at the margins different classes, like the owner class, the landlord class and the destitute class, but those account altogether for less than 10% of society, and actually see a lot of class mobility. So while people tend not to marry in such a way that their income will be drastically reduced, it's not really fair to say that outclass marriage is rare, because it generally isn't, and because western societies are fully proletarized and dominated by the working class, which is actually a good thing in many ways.
- puranjay 6y ago> Only case with victim from lower class and culprits from higher class is getting all the media attention Or maybe it was because of the exceptional brutality of the crime itself, and the shocking behaviour of the police - cremating the body at 2:30AM without the family's approval.
- drieddust 6y agoWhy police decides to cremated the body should be investigated for sure. But Equally brutal cases have happenned recently with no outrage at all.[1] Sharing it here for argument's sake. Personally I don't like to share these shitty stories usually. [1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/indianexpress.com/article/india/balrampur-victim-had-10-injuries-on-body-postmortem-report-6664167/lite/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/indianexpress.com/article/india...