Prejudice & Cast System

As a white Englishman living in Scotland, I understand too well the evil of prejudice, whether it be based on colour of skin, religion, or indeed any difference between people. Therefore, can anyone please explain why the cast system prevails amongst Indian people?
Thanks

Why are Indians and India so obsessed with caste. on a recent visit i was disgusted to see the way "dark skinned" are looked down upon. the funny thing is that to foreigners like me all Indians are the same colour

The British promoted and fortified it to place themselves on top of the heap.Just as the white Americans did to the negroes and the Kaburus of South Africa to the blacks in that country.

Most illogical and shameful of the Indians to look down upon the dark skinned since Shree Krishna was shyam--i.e. dark skinned

I was educated in the western tradition along with Arya Samaj teachings and have lived in the west for over thirty years. There are some deep misunderstandings of what cast was and continues to be.Indian intelligentia often blames cast for all Indian problems, without addressing the reality that most developing countries have similar problems and they do not have the cast tradition. Our lack of infra structure, lack of oppertunity for the youth, lack of education,employment,medical, facilities are not due to the cast system but due to the 1300 years of struggle to keep our body and soul together. We are not poor and deprived because we have cast, but because we were ed dry by 150 years of colonial rule. For those who have a kneejerk reaction to cast please keep in mind that India produced over 40% of the worlds GDP till 18th century. We were the richest nation inspite of the cast. All Europian powers were fighting and salivating to trade with us. This does not excuse or is a defense of the practice of untouchability. The untouchability within the cast was being addressed by our sages very effectively. In my openion people,s attitude, belief and convictions are the source of social issues and are changed thru education and rarely reslved thru legislation. In India there is entirely too much trash talk against the cast wars. However I have not found any movement to this day to protect the high cast priveledge,and I am unaware of any legislation in the indian historical context which awarded or institutionalized high cast priveledge. Is there any scholar out there who believes that Manusmriti was adopted by the Moguls or the British. It is truly ironic that a system which provided stabilty, protection, and development for millions and for hundreds if not thousands of years has been relegated to the dust bin of history without any impirical research. I live in the most powerful democracy and have witnessed its citizens falling in line to give up their mos
rized fundamental rights after one 9/11. Indians have lived thru thousand years of 9/11. How much of our problem is due to having not caring rulers vs result of cast system. I believe it may be a worth while investigation.

Why do so many Indians put people down when they are not technically skilled or analytical? I have seen many Indian young people get depressed and suicidal because of the arrogance they face from other Indians. Anyways it takes more than JUST a technical degree to survive in the U.S. You need good interpersonal and communication skills too, for example.

Does the caste system affect the use of Indian language? Or, do people from different castes speak differently?

Is the usage of the language between the Brahmin and the non- Brahmin totally different? Or the differences only occur in “lexicon”(vocabulary)? How about the grammatical structure?

"The Brahmin word for "milk" in the Kannada language is "haalu", while non-Brahmin dialects say "aalu"
Can anyone provide more examples like this?

Is there any barriers of communicating between the Brahmin and the non- Brahmin? If so, how do they overcome the language barriers?

Does this system still operate strictly nowadays?
Is there anything you want to clarify about the prejudice of the castes?

Thank you for answer these questions patiently!!

Tamilian:
. . . let me ask you a few questions.
1.What do you call a religion which has made 90% of Indians to be slaves to the 10% of the population for the last 4000 years?
2.Why have millions of Indians who could have been inventors,mechanics,artists,poets,painters,philosphers have their dreams shattered and relegated to cleaning toilets and taking out trash because their religion told them that their 'karma' wad cleaning their superiors toilet waste?
3.what would you call a religion that made Indian society so weak by discarding low castes to be servants only that any passing army from Iran,Syria,Central Asia,Mongolia,Arabia or Britain could conquer India with a minimal army? All the
british wanted to do was buy was a few peppers.Instead, in a few years, they were able to conquer the whole country with a few thousand soldiers.
4.The Bible says a 'pure and undefiled religion' is taking care of their 'widows and orphans'.Hinduism had a shameful background of throwing away widows to the scrap heaps of Vrindavan to beg.Any temple in India has hundreds of orphans and widows begging in wretched conditions.
5.What would you call a religion which is so narrow minded which says that Salvation or 'Nirvana' is only possible when you are reborn as a high caste brahmin?
Posted by Tamilian | July 15, 2007 6:34 PM