Modern Indian Caste System Essay

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Pechimayum Bidyarani Devi

Professor Tapan Basu

M.A.English(previous)semester2

Date : 21st April 2014

THE INHERITED CASTE STATUS QUO IN MODERN INDIA

“The real remedy for breaking caste is intermarriage, nothing else will

Serve as the solvent of caste.”

B.R.Ambedkar

In this article, my attempt is to seek the relation between an individual’s castes with his

society which is much like an umbilical cord and to see how endogamy is used as a tool to

acquire one’s status quo. In this task it become unavoidable to link the association with familial and caste sanction cultural codes with the socio-economic of modern India. In the

Process, I would …show more content…

If we traced back the genesis of so called caste system

One will find the interrelation of its existence with religion, how people are dictated in the name

Of religion for the prestige of upper caste, let’s see the brief timeline of conditions of

Burgeoning of this system, history shows the exploitation of lower caste by the upper caste,right

from the period of stratification of people in the Varna system , scripture in Manu Smriti,

the law which at times become rigid ,to the period of Mughal empire,by then Hindu society

has divided into innumerable castes and sub-caste on the slight pretence of superiority and

in the ground of differences in one’s occupation ,even when British enter in India this system

still persist they introduced Permanent settlement act which is just a new version of zamindery

system, by making the local zaminders as leader thus further exploiting the people. …show more content…

Another poem ‘what would you do?’ by Omprakash Valmiki translated by Pratik Kanjilal from

Hindi, Valmiki show the oppression and discrimination towards lower caste people for thousands

of years in just one Poem, the inhuman treatment that Dalit faces for years and years exploited by

economic condition, he questioned the snobbery of upper caste that even uproot the basic

Rights for living. The poem shows the anguish of all the lower caste people.

‘….would you be lame, a cripple

If you had to live thus for ages

Like me

What would you do?

-Omprakash Valmiki

More or less the same idea of controlling female sexuality to protect the purity of caste

creates problems which is going out of control, the problem is more of insoluble. I agree with

the understanding of Dr.Ambedkar ,that caste is a system of graded inequalities, and that

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