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The Scheduled Castes, as a constitutional category in India, emerged from the practice of untouchability in the caste system associated with Hinduism. The Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order of 1950 initially recognized only adherents of Hinduism for Scheduled Caste status.
The caste system in India is the paradigmatic ethnographic instance of social classification based on castes. It has its origins in ancient India, and was transformed by various ruling elites in medieval, early-modern, and modern India, especially in the aftermath of the collapse of the Mughal Empire and the establishment of the British Raj.
Each broad caste level is a hierarchical order that is based on notions of purity, non-purity and impurity. It uses the concepts of defilement to limit contacts between caste categories and to preserve the purity of the upper castes. These caste categories have been exclusionary, endogamous and the social identity inherited. [85]
Although Islam does not recognize any castes (only socio-economic classes), [9] existing divisions in Persia and India were adopted by local Muslim societies. Evidence of social stratification exists in later Persian works such as Nizam al-Mulk's 11th-century Siyasatnama, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi's 13th-century Akhlaq-i Nasiri, and the 17th-century Jam-i-Mufidi.
Joanne Rappaport, in her book on colonial New Granada, The Disappearing Mestizo, rejects the caste system as an interpretative framework for that time, discussing both the legitimacy of a model valid for the entire colonial world and the usual association between "caste" and "race". [7] [page needed]
The caste system is among the world's oldest forms of rigid social stratification. It dates back thousands of years and allows many privileges to upper castes but represses lower castes.
While the Indian caste system generally divided the four-fold Varna division of the society into Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras, in Kerala, that system was absent. The Malayali Brahmins formed the priestly class, and they considered all other castes to be either shudra or avarna (those outside the varna system).
The devotees rushed to collect soil from the ground the man had just walked on, thousands thronging to the front of a venue densely crammed with a quarter of a million people, under stifling heat.