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This is indeed a common point of view among some scholars. But scholarship on such things tends to be very politicised. If the essence of caste is about who you

by iguy 6y ago

This is indeed a common point of view among some scholars. But scholarship on such things tends to be very politicised. If the essence of caste is about who you marry, then we now have excellent genetic evidence that it was a very big deal long before any Europeans showed up. It's simply not factual to claim that it arrived on a boat. (There are of course regional gradients and class gradients in English patterns of descent over the last millennium, but nothing like the archipelago of India.)

vikramkr 6y ago
That I don't doubt. That's also not unique to India (just think about how many people only marry within their church). The discrimination comes in with the formation of the "untouchable" caste and determination of social opportunities based off of caste. This form of discrimination undoubtedly existed to some level in precolonial times there was a reason so many people converted to buddhism and islam. Then again - a lot of people converted back from buddhism too. And what we call "India" was a collection of dozens of kingdoms, each of which undoubtedly had different interpretations (and in the case of Muslim ruled kingdoms, that's a whole different story). It makes it really unclear what pre colonial "india" looked like in terms of caste.
- iguy 6y ago
  Yes the history with buddhism's wax & waning is interesting, I'd like to know more. Especially since it seems both high-class and low-class people were involved. I have the impression many were disappointed in how much conversion to Islam helped their status; it's not about what you claim to believe (like the christian/muslim concept of religion), it seems like what matters is what everyone else knows. There were indeed lots of kingdoms, a whole continent's worth, but for the most part I didn't think the political units much influenced the rules of these things, aside from sometimes incentivising conversion to islam. I don't think there was anything like the european squabbles over who gets to be pope, or whether your country's church follows him, because there's no idea of centralised doctrinal command like that.
- fmajid 6y ago
  The level of endogamy within Indian sub-populations goes far beyond that. It's been going on for thousands of years (so not the British's doing), and is higher than that of Ashkenazi Jews (source: Who We Are and How We Got Here, by David Reich).

by iguy 6y ago

vikramkr 6y ago

That I don't doubt. That's also not unique to India (just think about how many people only marry within their church). The discrimination comes in with the formation of the "untouchable" caste and determination of social opportunities based off of caste. This form of discrimination undoubtedly existed to some level in precolonial times there was a reason so many people converted to buddhism and islam. Then again - a lot of people converted back from buddhism too. And what we call "India" was a collection of dozens of kingdoms, each of which undoubtedly had different interpretations (and in the case of Muslim ruled kingdoms, that's a whole different story). It makes it really unclear what pre colonial "india" looked like in terms of caste.

iguy 6y ago
Yes the history with buddhism's wax & waning is interesting, I'd like to know more. Especially since it seems both high-class and low-class people were involved. I have the impression many were disappointed in how much conversion to Islam helped their status; it's not about what you claim to believe (like the christian/muslim concept of religion), it seems like what matters is what everyone else knows. There were indeed lots of kingdoms, a whole continent's worth, but for the most part I didn't think the political units much influenced the rules of these things, aside from sometimes incentivising conversion to islam. I don't think there was anything like the european squabbles over who gets to be pope, or whether your country's church follows him, because there's no idea of centralised doctrinal command like that.
fmajid 6y ago
The level of endogamy within Indian sub-populations goes far beyond that. It's been going on for thousands of years (so not the British's doing), and is higher than that of Ashkenazi Jews (source: Who We Are and How We Got Here, by David Reich).