Caste refers to the endogamous communities that constitute most of the Indian population, largely belonging to the Hindu religion. While there are thousands of castes or “jatis”, they belong to the following broad categories:
HINDU "VARNA" SYSTEM
- Brahmins or scholars
- Kshatriyas or rulers
- Vaishyas or merchants
- Shudras or laborers
HINDU "AVARNA"
- Dalits or the untouchables
NOT PART OF THE BROAD HINDU SYSTEM
- Tribals or the purported pre-Indus civilization natives
Rabindranath Tagore, the famous Nobel laureate poet, denounced the caste system as an experiment in racial unity that has caged mutability, which is the law of life [2]. In saying so, he criticized the systematic exploitation of Dalits and tribals for over two millennia.
The so-called lower castes, Dalits (constitutionally known as Scheduled Castes, SC), have been associated with “impure” occupations. Their jobs traditionally were of sanitation workers, cleaners, and tanners (working with dead animals with bare hands). The “unclean” profession was associated with an unclean being by the scholarly classes, who forced them to live an impoverished life, discriminated against them for even basic rights, and subjected them to inhuman treatment, like untouchability. Upper-caste Hindus have actively resisted improvement in Dalit lives and forced them to continue the same professions over several generations. Also, tribal (constitutionally known as Scheduled Tribes, ST), or the natives were considered aliens and subjected to similar atrocities as the Dalits.
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