caste systems

• caste systems

68:6.7All down through the ages the stan­dards of liv­ing have de­ter­mined the qual­ity of a sur­viv­ing pop­u­la­tion in con­trast with mere quan­tity. Lo­cal class stan­dards of liv­ing give ori­gin to new so­cial castes, new mores. When stan­dards of liv­ing be­come too com­pli­cated or too highly lux­u­ri­ous, they speed­ily be­come sui­ci­dal. Caste is the di­rect re­sult of the high so­cial pres­sure of keen com­pe­ti­tion pro­duced by dense pop­u­la­tions.

70:8.119. Racial—the pres­ence of two or more races within a given na­tion or ter­ri­to­rial unit usu­ally pro­duces color castes. The orig­i­nal caste sys­tem of In­dia was based on color, as was that of early Egypt.

94:2.1As the Salem mis­sion­ar­ies pen­e­trated south­ward into the Dra­vid­ian Dec­can, they en­coun­tered an in­creas­ing caste sys­tem, the scheme of the Aryans to pre­vent loss of racial iden­tity in the face of a ris­ing tide of the sec­ondary San­gik peo­ples. Since the Brah­man priest caste was the very essence of this sys­tem, this so­cial or­der greatly re­tarded the prog­ress of the Salem teach­ers. This caste sys­tem failed to save the Aryan race, but it did suc­ceed in per­pet­u­at­ing the Brah­mans, who, in turn, have main­tained their re­li­gious hege­mony in In­dia to the pres­ent time.

94:2.5Caste alone could not per­pet­u­ate the Aryan re­li­gio-cul­tural sys­tem, and as the in­fe­rior re­li­gions of the Dec­can per­me­ated the north, there de­vel­oped an age of de­spair and hope­less­ness. It was dur­ing these dark days that the cult of tak­ing no life arose, and it has ever since per­sisted. Many of the new cults were frankly athe­is­tic, claim­ing that such sal­va­tion as was at­tain­able could come only by man’s own un­aided ef­forts. But through­out a great deal of all this un­for­tu­nate phi­los­o­phy, dis­torted rem­nants of the Mel­chiz­e­dek and even the Adamic teach­ings can be traced.

94:7.2Gau­tama for­mu­lated those the­o­ries which grew into the phi­los­o­phy of Bud­dhism af­ter six years of the fu­tile prac­tice of Yoga. Sid­dhartha made a de­ter­mined but un­avail­ing fight against the grow­ing caste sys­tem. There was a lofty sin­cer­ity and a unique un­selfish­ness about this young prophet prince that greatly ap­pealed to the men of those days. He de­tracted from the prac­tice of seek­ing in­di­vid­ual sal­va­tion through phys­i­cal af­flic­tion and per­sonal pain. And he ex­horted his fol­low­ers to carry his gospel to all the world.

133:0.3One day while rest­ing at lunch, about half­way to Tar­en­tum, Ga­nid asked Je­sus a di­rect ques­tion as to what he thought of In­dia’s caste sys­tem. Said Je­sus: “Though hu­man be­ings dif­fer in many ways, the one from an­other, be­fore God and in the spir­i­tual world all mor­tals stand on an equal foot­ing. There are only two groups of mor­tals in the eyes of God: those who de­sire to do his will and those who do not. As the uni­verse looks upon an in­hab­ited world, it like­wise dis­cerns two great classes: those who know God and those who do not. Those who can­not know God are reck­oned among the an­i­mals of any given realm. Man­kind can ap­pro­pri­ately be di­vided into many classes in ac­cor­dance with dif­fer­ing qual­i­fi­ca­tions, as they may be viewed phys­i­cally, men­tally, so­cially, vo­ca­tion­ally, or morally, but as these dif­fer­ent classes of mor­tals ap­pear be­fore the judg­ment bar of God, they stand on an equal foot­ing; God is truly no re­specter of per­sons. Al­though you can­not es­cape the rec­og­ni­tion of dif­fer­en­tial hu­man abil­i­ties and en­dow­ments in mat­ters in­tel­lec­tual, so­cial, and moral, you should make no such dis­tinc­tions in the spir­i­tual broth­er­hood of men when as­sem­bled for wor­ship in the pres­ence of God.”

79:2.6As it was, these ear­lier And­ite con­querors made a des­per­ate at­tempt to pre­serve their iden­tity and stem the tide of racial en­gulf­ment by the es­tab­lish­ment of rigid re­stric­tions re­gard­ing in­ter­mar­riage. Nonethe­less, the And­ites had be­come sub­merged by 10,000 B.C., but the whole mass of the peo­ple had been markedly im­proved by this ab­sorp­tion.

79:4.5In In­dia many types of so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tions flour­ished from time to time, from the semidemo­cratic sys­tems of the Aryans to despotic and monar­chial forms of gov­ern­ment. But the most char­ac­ter­is­tic fea­ture of so­ci­ety was the per­sis­tence of the great so­cial castes that were in­sti­tuted by the Aryans in an ef­fort to per­pet­u­ate racial iden­tity. This elab­o­rate caste sys­tem has been pre­served on down to the pres­ent time.

79:4.6Of the four great castes, all but the first were es­tab­lished in the fu­tile ef­fort to pre­vent racial amal­ga­ma­tion of the Aryan con­querors with their in­fe­rior sub­jects. But the pre­mier caste, the teacher-priests, stems from the Sethites; the Brah­mans of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury af­ter Christ are the lin­eal cul­tural de­scen­dants of the priests of the sec­ond gar­den, al­beit their teach­ings dif­fer greatly from those of their il­lus­tri­ous pre­de­ces­sors.

79:4.7When the Aryans en­tered In­dia, they brought with them their con­cepts of De­ity as they had been pre­served in the lin­ger­ing tra­di­tions of the re­li­gion of the sec­ond gar­den. But the Brah­man priests were never able to with­stand the pa­gan mo­men­tum built up by the sud­den con­tact with the in­fe­rior re­li­gions of the Dec­can af­ter the racial oblit­er­a­tion of the Aryans. Thus the vast ma­jor­ity of the pop­u­la­tion fell into the bond­age of the en­slav­ing su­per­sti­tions of in­fe­rior re­li­gions; and so it was that In­dia failed to pro­duce the high civ­i­liza­tion which had been fore­shad­owed in ear­lier times.

79:4.8The spir­i­tual awak­en­ing of the sixth cen­tury be­fore Christ did not per­sist in In­dia, hav­ing died out even be­fore the Mo­hammedan in­va­sion. But some­day a greater Gau­tama may arise to lead all In­dia in the search for the liv­ing God, and then the world will ob­serve the fruition of the cul­tural po­ten­tial­i­ties of a ver­sa­tile peo­ple so long co­matose un­der the be­numb­ing in­flu­ence of an un­pro­gress­ing spir­i­tual vi­sion.

79:4.9Cul­ture does rest on a bi­o­logic foun­da­tion, but caste alone could not per­pet­u­ate the Aryan cul­ture, for re­li­gion, true re­li­gion, is the in­dis­pens­able source of that higher en­ergy which drives men to es­tab­lish a su­pe­rior civ­i­liza­tion based on hu­man broth­er­hood.

70:8.13Flex­i­ble and shift­ing so­cial classes are in­dis­pens­able to an evolv­ing civ­i­liza­tion, but when class be­comes caste, when so­cial lev­els pet­rify, the en­hance­ment of so­cial sta­bil­ity is pur­chased by di­min­ish­ment of per­sonal ini­tia­tive. So­cial caste solves the prob­lem of find­ing one’s place in in­dus­try, but it also sharply cur­tails in­di­vid­ual de­vel­op­ment and vir­tu­ally pre­vents so­cial co-op­er­a­tion.

89:1.6Meth­ods of eat­ing soon be­came taboo, and so orig­i­nated an­cient and mod­ern ta­ble eti­quette. Caste sys­tems and so­cial lev­els are ves­ti­gial rem­nants of olden pro­hi­bi­tions. The taboos were highly ef­fec­tive in or­ga­niz­ing so­ci­ety, but they were ter­ri­bly bur­den­some; the neg­a­tive-ban sys­tem not only main­tained use­ful and con­struc­tive reg­u­la­tions but also ob­so­lete, out­worn, and use­less taboos.