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The Caste system does not demarcate racial division. The Caste system is a social division of people of the same race." [336] Various sociologists, anthropologists and historians have rejected the racial origins and racial emphasis of caste and consider the idea to be one that has purely political and economic undertones. Beteille writes that ...
Shudra or Shoodra [1] (Sanskrit: Śūdra [2]) is one of the four varnas of the Hindu class and social system in ancient India. [3] [4] Some sources translate it into English as a caste, [4] or as a social class. Theoretically, Shudras constituted a class like workers. [2] [5] [6]
This quadruple division is a form of social stratification, quite different from the more nuanced system of Jātis, which correspond to the European term "caste". [8] The varna system is discussed in Hindu texts, and understood as idealised human callings. [9] [10] The concept is generally traced to the Purusha Sukta verse of the Rig Veda.
Ambedkar views that definitions of castes given by Émile Senart [5] John Nesfield, H. H. Risley and Dr Ketkar as incomplete or incorrect by itself and all have missed the central point in the mechanism of the caste system. Senart's "idea of pollution" is a characteristic of caste in so far as caste has a religious flavour.
Stephanie Jamison and Joel Brereton, a professor of Sanskrit and Religious studies, state, "there is no evidence in the Rigveda for an elaborate, much-subdivided and overarching caste system", and "the varna system seems to be embryonic in the Rigveda and, both then and later, a social ideal rather than a social reality". [20]
Despite being outlawed in 1950, the caste system, which categorizes Hindus at birth and once forced the so-called “untouchables” or Dalits to the margins of society, is still omnipresent in ...
The details of the caste system, its antiquity and "shrewd and argumentative attack" by a Buddhist, in the words of Hodgson, gained wide interest among 19th-century scholars. [12] The scholarship that followed, surmised that "Ashu Ghosa" is possibly the famous Buddhist scholar Asvaghosa, who lived around the 2nd century CE. [ 18 ]
The different caste populations, unlike tribes, have extensive geographical overlap and members of several castes generally constitute the complex village society. In such a village society, each caste, traditionally self regulated by a caste council, used to lead a relatively autonomous existence.