The things you should know about caste

There was a man (a Lohar or blacksmith by profession and belonging to the Vaishya caste) living in a village with his wife once upon a time. They had a beautiful, marriage-age daughter who was their only child. They wanted a suitable Lohar man to be her husband so that he would also look after them during their old age while taking over their family’s smithy business.

One day a young man approached them seeking their daughter’s hand in marriage. When the old man asked the visitor about his family background etc., he replied, “Sir, I belong to a Lohar family, like you.”  

In reality, the young man lied. He came from a family of Rajputs (warriors or Kshtriya) and was just trying to hoodwink the old man so that he could marry his daughter.

The old man looked at the visitor carefully, especially at his hands and complexion, and said, “Your complexion is very fair and hands too smooth and not tough and rough enough to be that of a regular Lohar, who spends hours at a stretch in front of a furnace and under the sun while hammering iron to make implements.”

The man continued, “You are not a right match for my daughter who is brought up and trained to be a Lohar’s consort. Furthermore, there is no way you will be able to take over my business and continue to serve my clients in the farming community satisfactorily after I am gone.”

The young man was disappointed and saw the prospects of getting married to Lohar’s beautiful daughter coming to a premature and abrupt end. He immediately said, while lying once again, “Please trust me, I am a Lohar. Give me a chance and I will prove it to you.”

The old man took out a piece of iron metal from a tool box, handed it over to the young man and said, “Go, make a sickle from it in my work-shed.“   

The young man took the metal piece, went to the Lohar’s work-shed, lighted the furnace and started heating, hammering and shaping the iron in an effort to turn it into a sickle.

After about two hours, the young man emerged from the work-shed. He was sweating profusely and had black ash marks all over his clothes, face and other parts of body (hands, arms etc.). He was carrying in his right hand something which looked more like a sword (used generally by the Rajputs / warriors, people in the young man‘s caste or family occupation) and not anywhere close to a sickle (as demanded by the old Lohar and used mostly by people / farmers in his village, for cutting and harvesting crops etc.). 

The old Lohar laughed at the sight and said to the young man before sending him away empty-handed, “Go, find yourself a Rajput girl … you will be happy and better-off with her as your wife.”

I knew there was a reason this was written under the creative section.

Truth#0: There are over 1000 castes, and 10,000 sub-castes practiced by Indians, mostly Hindus. To justify by over-simplifying it with 4 varnas - Kshatriyas, Vaish, Brahmin, Sudra - just does not cut it. It is more like Yadav, Reddy, Modi, X, Y, Z, A, B, C, D, alpha, beta, gamma, and who cares how many more, but true.

Truth#1: They are all man-made. Nature (even if you are an atheist) did not make them - Caste, Religion, or Politics - and none has any basis in DNA or genes.

Truth#2: The folks who made them - caste, or even religion, had no clue what monster they are creating. They all claimed to be based on ideology, but it ended up as nothing but a division of power. Christians killing Muslims, Muslims bombing Buildings, Hindus killing Hindus. Human being just got lost. So did humanity. Again, Castes and Religion are man made. One must remember and acknowledge it all the time!


Final Truth: What is man-made, can NEVER be greater or bigger than the man himself. Be it a robot, a medicine, a caste, or a religion. Humanity stays at the top. Being humanitarian has no comparison to being a Hindu, Muslim, Iyer or a Modi.

Personally, I hate the folks who propagated or still do, even this acknowledgment of caste.

sensitive topic for me,
TS.

"sensitive topic for me," TS.

>>> It's a very involved subject TS, as indicated by the references listed in the blog  http://creative.sulekha.com/the-things-you-should-know-about-caste_617060_blog