Week 2 Review/Caste System

Caste System Review Paper #2
Sociology 3380AO: Cross Cultural Relations
Winter Semester 2009
Professor David T. Mayeda, PhD.
January 3, 2010

Is Caste Prejudice Still an Issue?

Story Summation
This paper focuses on a story that was published on the BBC reporting a story on June 8, 2009 on the first world-wide conference of people from different countries each experiencing discrimination because of the religions they practice and therefore are put into different caste rankings. The purpose of the conference is to share the different experiences of these “untouchables”. Though the best known caste system in the world is in India, there are many other caste systems that are well entrenched in high and low social groups in society such as Japan, Nigeria and Britain. The article goes on to state that the conference organizers estimate that at least 250 million people from caste systems who relocate in the world as immigrants are affected citing an example of a young Indian woman now living in Coventry, England making her living as a teacher. Reena Jaisiah, 29, was reared by parents of a Punjabi background in a Dalit society – the lowest rung in the Indian caste system and considered “unclean”. “

“People with a strong religious feeling always want to know what caste you are", she says. Her parents strongly suggested that she not reveal her background, but I felt inferior to children from other castes." She claims to have also experienced prejudice while at university and says she sees evidence that even today the caste system is alive and well being exhibited with younger children perpetuating class consciousness evidenced by their treatment of other students “according to their perceived place in society”.

An organizer from the International Humanist and Ethical Association. Babu Gogineni thinks that India’s political change will not resolve caste prejudice. Although the caste system was outlawed in 1976, "There are Dalit politicians in India, but nothing has changed. The answer is to educate Dalits and empower them." He goes on to state that Dalits also discriminate amongst other Dalits; in other words, there exists “a hierarchy even amongst the untouchables.” To apply it to our readings, social discrimination creates the “social distance” between Dalits.

Reena Jaisiah, however, still believes that her Dalit background still casts a shadow in her daily life. She tells of a customer - who is from the higher Brahmin caste - who is relentless about wanting to know what caste she is from. "She still refuses to take the change from my hand when I serve her."

There is so much to write about the caste system, but in this particular story, the issue hones in on summarizing that not only is the caste system alive and well, but is perpetuated as people migrate throughout the world. Though people migrate they take their culture and upbringing with them and practice it outside of their home country, probably as a means of coping and observing what they understand. The article also illustrates the fact that caste systems are not limited to India, but also to nations that are highly forward thinking, financially and technologically advanced but find the need to have a discriminatory, socially-stratified society, i.e. Japan and Britain.

The caste system in India, as an example, has four main levels; Brahmin, the Kshatriya, the Vaisya, and the Sudra. Dalit fall outside of the hierarchy and considered “untouchables”. Each level or “varna” follows explicit tenets of purity. For instance, Brahmins are considered so uncontaminated only other Brahmins are allowed to prepare food for another Brahmin. Also, one must marry within one's own varna and marriage outside of one’s caste is for the most part, forbidden. This social stratification controls and protects the power and prestige of the higher class, in this case, the different varnas.

We can draw a parallel to what is currently happening when citing ethnic stratification in the United States, specifically, Black-White relations, James M. O’Kane offers that “class differentials, not racial differentials, explain the presence and persistence of poverty in the ranks of the Urban Negro.“

As pointed out in the Parillo text in Chapter 3, “is inequality an inevitable part of society?