Caste Confusion
I like to read and explore. One of the reasons I do so is, not everything can be experienced by myself in this limited life span. There are tonnes of experience that I don’t have, well there are to a degree I don’t want as well.
Being human, whether we like it or not; we believe in something. Some might say I don’t believe in anything, then basically it is believing in not believing but still it is a belief. Nonetheless, my intention here is not to point out what you believe or not, the play of words can be of anything.
Time and again as I explored the internet, I came across people arguing about caste.
The system created by some humans to contain other humans within a fraction of the wholesome.
Those who consider themselves as free beings are freed from the mental barriers of caste. They wouldn’t think twice to say it is an absurd thing. The same cannot be said about the people who have been told they are marginalized, they are lower-level(it doesn’t exist) people; the chain to their mental horse is so strong that they cannot escape and thus always live their lives crawling. Plus, those people have been indoctrinated via the means of education that promotes division rather than accumulation.
But how can you justify the absurdity of the caste within humans? It was a big confusion for me. I never consider myself tagged to any particular caste for I see all humans the same. It did take time for me to come to this mindset. There might be a person who does good and some who does bad; that is fine by me as those are the results of what treatment they got in life. Still, there will be people pointing at me who say, you are from this caste. Either I don’t understand the absurdity of it or the one pointing at me doesn’t know about it. Something must be wrong here.
PEEK INTO BHAGAVAD GITA: Finding the caste
Exploration of caste led me to the Hindu scripture, The Bhagavad Gita. There were 18 chapters and one chapter led to another, as it progressed I was intrigued more and more.
The caste system seemed to be classified according to the work one did.
I was shocked because what I was fed was being born into a particular family would make you a Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, or Shudra. These are also called Varnas but could be considered as a category of other subcastes.
If you are a person who does hard work like labor or even creates artwork, you’d be referred to as a Shudra. Shudras are more connected with the earth. Vaishyas are the people doing business while Kshatriyas are more connected with the war and protection of the country. Finally, Brahmins are the gurus, scholars who talk about the way of life; knowing self, and thinking more on liberation. Further subdivisions can be created from the above four to create more. But my point is, it is a title received according to the work you do; it is not that you are born with it.
A farmer doing labor in the field will be a Shudra, but if the same person opts for business, he would be a Vaishya. If he joined the army, he would be a Kshatriya, and if he opts for spirituality and explores the phenomenon of life, the same person would be a Brahmin. Also, a proper Brahmin, only when there is no ego left within.
This leads to the conclusion that even in a single house, within the same family, we can have a combination of all.
This finding removed the caste that I was born in for good. What my parents think, is their own belief which I don’t want to question.
I saw the caste that really suits my work now.
PEEK INTO MUNDHUM: Destroying the caste
Still, one narrative lurked, even after studying the Bhagavad Gita; well, to the level that I could comprehend by myself. By no means I would say I know it all. I had scratched the surface and the internal part seemed so bright. For the time being, I took what I could consume or say my brain could handle.
The narrative lurked, what was before the creation of caste itself. What kind of segregation was there, or not?
Pondering upon this narrative, I listened to one of the gurus of the Kirat Civilization, Dr.Chandrakumar Sherma. I don’t know why but, my exploration of what is written in the Mundhum led to his interviews.
Kirat Civilization is one of the ancient civilizations of Nepal, which unfortunately is in decline these days. With only a handful of teachers and scholars, it is in a critical state of extinction. We have learned about the rise and fall of different civilizations, whenever one civilization falls; the ancient knowledge falls alongside, this is the irony.
Unlike Hindus where there are places like temples for worship, Kiratis worship Nature; they have caves, trees, rivers, and their own way of paying homage to the almighty. Everyone has their own belief, so respect to all.
I won’t be diving deep regarding the Kiratis as I too know nothing more than what I have studied so far. Let’s get back to the interview with Dr.Chandrakumar Sherma which shattered my perspectives regarding the discrimination of the caste. I’ll make it brief.
In the interview, Dr. said that a dog and a cat cannot create babies, neither does a chicken and a hen, nor does an alligator and shark. The reason is they are of a different caste. But in the case of us humans, an Aborigine girl dancing right now in the innermost part of the Amazon Jungle and a boy in the sophisticated city of Japan can create a baby.
Now why is that?
It is because they fall under the same category called Humans. Only of the same caste, or you can say species; baby can be yielded.
So one human to another human, there is no red, black, grey, brown, orange, or yellow; if you are yielding babies, you all fall under the same roof. But, we have divided thoughts within our brain that yell out I am superior to you; an illusion garnered by ego and boosted by few people who saw that it can be used as a weapon.
BUT THEN, WHY THE DISPUTES?
Indeed, my thought on caste has changed drastically but not everyone would think the way I might think and stick with the ideology. Plus, we are consuming too much garbage on the internet these days and our brain simply loves conflict.
Show me conflict, is what our brain tells us.
And there are people who benefit from this conflict, be it armed conflict or simple knife stabbing. I don’t know who, but the factors are there who move their fingers and the puppets of war hazards dance to create chaos. The media coverage is also all about war and disputes all over the world. Divide and rule is the motto I guess. They would exaggerate the differences and make it their weapons to create chaos.
We know about the war in Rwanda where millions of people were slaughtered. It was a genocide, the conflict was basically between two ethnic groups, Hutu and Tutsi. Both of them were played upon via a weapon called ethnicity. They were so lost within the small boundary of ethnicity, that they were unable to see the bigger circle; humanity.
Somewhere around the globe, it’s about different religions, in other places, it might be caste, we already know about black and white, a difference in pigment of the skin, and nothing more.
All of these are the weapons that can create rifts in the balanced equation of any stable society if we are not careful.
MY TAKE
My take on it is, we don’t know what we don’t know and the veil of ignorance is a tough nut to crack. I feel like I am boasting myself, but trust me; there are a lot of things I don’t know. I am in exploration mode myself. And if you don’t do your study, and enrich yourself with a bit of life philosophy, you too would never come to this conclusion that I have stumbled upon. I respect you for reading this article and now you know; that you and I are not different, You can read as much as I can, so we are not different at all.
Considering all the findings, let me end up with a Sanskrit Verse,
Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam
which says, “The world is one big family.”
