essay on caste system in school

What the Indian Caste System Taught Me About Racism in American Schools

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This story is part of a special project called Big Ideas in which EdWeek reporters ask hard questions about K-12 education’s biggest challenges and offer insights based on their extensive coverage and expertise.

I was a local reporter in Bangor, Maine, in December 2019 when I heard three Black students first voice their complaints at a joint school committee and city council meeting about years of racism they endured at one of the state’s largest high schools. Black students, who make up less than 4 percent of the school’s population, said their white classmates justified white supremacy during classroom discussions, defended the enslavement of Black people, told them to “go back where they came from,” and regularly said the “N” word in the schools’ hallways and classrooms, according to six months of reporting I conducted in 2020.

For years, Bangor’s school officials ignored the litany of complaints students filed, but when my article, “ Racism Is My High School Experience ,” was published last May, amid nationwide protests spurred by the murder of George Floyd, the response from the school department was swift and abrupt.

The district hired a Black-led equity and justice institute to offer diversity training for teachers, commissioned an independent investigation of the students’ claims that cost the district at least $70,000, and overhauled the high school’s history and English curriculum to include more voices of color. And it set up a way for middle and high school students to report discrimination using their school-issued devices. Claims now go directly to the newly hired affirmative action coordinator.

But was it enough to change the high school experience of students of color in Bangor?

Initially, I thought it must be. The administrators seemed committed to equity in school, and the district appeared to be investing lots of money and time into these initiatives. But I’ve been watching and reporting what’s been happening in the country in the year following Floyd’s murder. I’ve also thought back to my own high school experience in India where I was part of the dominant caste. And I’m no longer so convinced.

Across the nation, America’s school districts are rapidly diversifying. This has accelerated in recent years K-12 leaders’ historically fitful efforts to make classrooms and schools equitable for students of color.

Racism inside America’s classrooms received outsized attention during the pandemic as disparities widened, student activism revved up, and the parents of students of color peeked over their children’s shoulders during remote schooling, many witnessing teachers’ biases and microaggressions up close.

After last spring and summer’s Black Lives Matter protests, superintendents across the country pledged in seemingly heartfelt letters to parents that they’d do everything in their power to fight racism in their schools. Several dozen districts abolished their school police force. A handful of others overhauled the way they screen children for their gifted programs. Still others set up affinity groups for their students of color.

But when a recently conducted EdWeek Research Center survey asked principals and district leaders what, if any, anti-racism efforts their district or school took on following the calls for racial justice last year, the most common response—with 34 percent of respondents—was diversity or anti-bias training, which research suggests isn’t promising for long-term change . Almost as many—33 percent—said their districts or schools made no changes.

In Bangor, efforts have gone above and beyond just diversity training. This April, the school committee hired Superintendent James Tager, who said the district would continue working on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Later this year, the district plans to conduct an “equity audit,” starting with the high school, to assess culture and opportunity gaps.

But experts warn that might not be enough to create lasting change, especially since those efforts were driven by public—not district-level— pressure.

“My hunch is that a lot of districts, when the pressure is taken off, ultimately resort back to who they were in the first place and go back to some same practices they had beforehand. That’s why you have to put mechanisms in place via committees or policies to ensure that the work does not stop,” said Tyrone Howard, a professor of education at University of California, Los Angeles, and associate dean for equity and inclusion for the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies.

“One way to do that is to make sure you commit ongoing resources to the efforts that are dedicated to these kinds of initiatives.”

Even as districts try to sustain their anti-racism initiatives, they face a new nationwide, legislative threat aiming to erase that work.

Even as districts try to sustain their anti-racism initiatives, however, they face a new nationwide, legislative threat aiming to erase that work.

When I was hired by Education Week this spring as one of two new Race & Opportunity reporters, I expected that my reporting and writing efforts would focus mostly on how all these post-George Floyd efforts would shake out.

But after the contested defeat of President Donald Trump in November, the backlash to Black Lives Matter began. Republican state legislators across the country began outlawing districts’ anti-racism efforts, and I quickly pivoted to untangling a convoluted debate over systemic racism and how teachers talk to students about America’s racist past.

Today, 12 states have restricted classroom conversations about racism and sexism, which puts anti-racism initiatives, including anti-bias training and culturally responsive teaching at risk. Some have even banned The New York Times’ 1619 Project, a series of essays published on the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery that put the legacy of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at its center. Republican lawmakers claim these efforts make white students feel uncomfortable and are demoralizing and anti-American.

But while the country is wrapped up in debating critical race theory, an academic framework that explains the systemic nature of racism, students of color continue to face discrimination in schools across the nation, just as the Bangor students had. Racism against students of color in America’s public school system is real, and the resulting lag in test scores for a growing chunk of the student body reflects this fact. Denying this reality won’t make it go away.

Coming from India, I learned that people can’t be passive about discrimination. But it took my move to America and my reporting in Bangor and at Education Week to see this fully. Here, in America, I’m a brown woman and an immigrant, but in my private high school in India, I was part of the privileged group. Indian casteism and colorism were as present in my high school as racism is here. No curriculum change or affirmative action coordinator could have prevented all of the discrimination students faced. That would have required all of us in the dominant caste to get on the same page about the origins and history of the caste system, how it’s present in the modern day, and why it’s morally wrong. And because our teachers and administrators and our families could not identify the ways in which the school system was inherently casteist—we perpetuated it. Collectively.

You probably won’t be surprised to learn that Bangor’s efforts continue to meet roadblocks. Even after the district offered diversity training to students and staff, overhauled its history and English curriculum, and hired an affirmative action officer among other inclusion efforts, the Black students—two of the five I had originally interviewed—said the anti-racism initiatives were a mixed success.

Angela Okafor, the city’s first and only Black city councilor, put it this way: “I would not necessarily say that things have changed, neither can I say that things have remained the same.”

If there’s one thing I can say with confidence after talking to Bangor’s high schoolers for six months, it’s that they are willing to step up. And that’s good news. If schools keep doing the best they can to help everyone, and, particularly, if white students and teachers understand the history of how and why people of color were treated as they were in the past and why that needs to change with the investment of a lot of time, money, and commitment, the experiences of students of color in school may improve.

But I remain skeptical. I don’t know that schools can fundamentally change the mindset of teachers, administrators, parents, and students, perhaps because I come from a culture where racism, too, is so deeply embedded. The answer might be that it can’t. Because unless you acknowledge that systemic racism is ingrained in schools, pledge to identify how, and work constantly to make changes, the education system will not get better. I stand on more than 3,500 years of Indian history to prove it.

A version of this article appeared in the September 15, 2021 edition of Education Week as What the Indian Caste System Taught Me About Racism

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Caste Discrimination Essay

People are categorised according to their place of birth, community, and place of employment under the caste system. The practise of caste discrimination in India has its roots in history but has undergone numerous significant alterations since then and now the practice has been banned and declared illegal by the government. Here are a few sample essays on the topic ‘Caste Discrimination’.

100 Words Essay On Caste Discrimination

200 words essay on caste discrimination, 500 words essay on caste discrimination.

Indian society has long been heavily dominated by the caste system and became corrupt because of the nation's obsession with it. Originally, the caste system was intended to create distinct groups within our community in order to create social stratification and a separation of occupations. However, over time, this division took the form of a pyramidal structure, with the highest caste being linked to receiving the most respect. The rigid adherence to traditions, customs, and certain beliefs like superstitions or reincarnation and the deeds of previous lives was what made this patriarchal system toxic. All of this led to the treatment of Dalits and other members of the untouchable caste with cruelty and oppression.

In Indian society, the caste system has existed for a very long time and has a strong foundation. The Hindu community was divided into four main castes: Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, and Shudras. Apart from this, there exists tens of thousands of sub-castes and communities. Instead of fostering a sense of respect for all professions, the caste system ultimately became a tool for discrimination. In the Indian caste system, people began constructing a ladder or pyramid structure to represent the degree of respect that should be accorded to each caste. The group of persons connected to the caste "shudras," subsequently known as the "untouchables," was the most persecuted and disadvantaged caste.

They were later given the name "Harijans" by Mahatma Gandhi. The scenario of the caste system in India has altered due to social reformers such as Dr. Ambedkar and Raja Rammohan Roy, as no caste discrimination is now permitted. They actively fought for the rights of OBCs, STs, and other caste groups. But despite their struggles and development of society, the caste system continues to have a negative impact on people's attitudes. It is essential to raise awareness, particularly in rural areas, to encourage people to get over their fixation on the caste system and to end all forms of caste-based discrimination by speaking out against them.

Indian society has a caste system that has existed for thousands of years. Ancient scriptures also make a categorical mention of castes. Eventually, this sort of segregation gave way to greed, which led to the higher castes oppressing the lower caste. Over time, the caste system changed and produced worse social ills.

However, as of now caste-based unfairness and prejudice are illegal in Independent India according to the law. Additionally, the government established a reservation system or "quota" for those from ST, SC, and OBC families in order to make up for the injustice done to lower castes or scheduled tribes in the past.

Even though the goal of the quota system was to give jobs and education to those who needed them and belonged to the socially backward classes, people soon began to abuse it for unfair means, such as obtaining reservations or opportunities for employment or education when they didn't need them and came from wealthy families.

Our worth should never be determined by our birth. We ought to be judged on how well we behave and how much we contribute to society through our employment.

Ancient Caste System

The ancient caste system divided the Indian society into four main castes and provided an account of their duties and ranks as mentioned below-

Brahmins | The highest position in society was granted to Brahmins. They portrayed well-known characters like the priest and the instructor. They were revered and worshipped by everyone else. Brahmins were regarded as the protectors of the society who set the rules for religion. As outlined in the sacred texts, they had a duty to uphold that order.

Kshatriyas | After the Brahmins, came the Kshatriyas. In ancient times, both of them had a friendly relationship. Kshatriyas played the parts of landlords and warriors. They served in the kings' and princely states' armies of India and were renowned for their bravery and valour.

Vaishyas | The Vaishyas were those who worked in commerce and other occupations. They were small traders, goldsmiths, and merchants. They served as society's primary producers of goods and communities. Following the Brahmins and the Kshatriyas, Vaishyas held a strategically significant position in society.

Shudras | Shudras were people who worked as labourers, artisans, and other menial jobs. They were not allowed to participate in the ‘upnayan sanskar’ or the Vedic studies initiation ceremonies held at that time in order to become full members of the religious society.

While the first four classes were described in ancient literature, a fifth one known as ‘Dalits’ or ‘untouchables’ evolved from the Shudra caste. Other castes regarded Shudras who worked as sweepers, washers, shoemakers, and foragers as untouchables and thought their labour to be unclean. The untouchables experienced severe social, economic and educational discrimination. They were barred from attending religious events and even from sitting in front of ‘upper’ caste individuals.

The purpose of the caste system was to maintain order in the society but unfortunately, it eventually turned into a justification for harassing a certain community, depriving it of its basic rights and honour. As the rightful citizens of the largest democracy in the world, it is our obligation to ensure that all citizens, regardless of caste or other distinctions, enjoy equal freedom and position.

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Speech therapist, gynaecologist.

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An oncologist is a specialised doctor responsible for providing medical care to patients diagnosed with cancer. He or she uses several therapies to control the cancer and its effect on the human body such as chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiation therapy and biopsy. An oncologist designs a treatment plan based on a pathology report after diagnosing the type of cancer and where it is spreading inside the body.

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Copy Writer

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America’s Enduring Caste System

Our founding ideals promise liberty and equality for all. Our reality is an enduring racial hierarchy that has persisted for centuries.

Credit... Photo illustration by Chris Burnett

Supported by

By Isabel Wilkerson

• Published July 1, 2020 Updated Jan. 21, 2021

W e saw a man face down on the pavement, pinned beneath a car, and above him another man, a man in uniform, his skin lighter than the man on the ground, and the lighter man was bearing down on the darker man, his knee boring into the neck of the darker man, the lighter man’s hands at his sides, in his pockets — could it be that his hands were so nonchalantly in his pockets? — such was the ease and casual calm, the confidence of embedded entitlement with which he was able to lord over the darker man.

We heard the man on the ground pleading with the man above him, saw the terror in his face, heard his gasps for air, heard the anguished cries of an unseen chorus, begging the lighter man to stop. But the lighter man, the dominant man, looked straight at the bystanders, into the camera, and thus at all of us around the world who would later bear witness and, instead of heeding the cries of the chorus, pressed his knee deeper into the darker man’s neck as was the perceived right granted him in the hierarchy. The man on the ground went silent, drained of breath. A clear liquid crept down the pavement. We saw a man die before our very eyes.

What we did not see, not immediately anyway, was the invisible scaffolding, a caste system with ancient rules and assumptions that made such a horror possible, that held each actor in that scene in its grip. Off camera, two other men in uniform, who looked like the lighter man, were holding down the darker man from the other side of the police car as dusk approached in Minneapolis. Yet another man in uniform, of Asian descent and thus not in the dominant caste, stood near, watching, immobilized, it seemed, at a remove from his own humanity and potential common cause, as the darker man slipped out of consciousness. We soon learned that the man on the ground, George Floyd, had been accused of trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill, and, like uncountable Black men over the centuries, lost his life over what might have been a mere citation for people in the dominant caste.

[Listen to Sway: A Black and Asian Female V.P. Doesn’t Mean We’ve Escaped Caste .]

In the weeks leading up to the country’s commemoration of its founding, protests and uprisings took hold in cities in every state, in Bakersfield, Charleston, Buffalo, Poughkeepsie, Wichita, Boise, Sioux Falls. Protesters tore down a statue of Christopher Columbus in St. Paul, Minn. They toppled a statue of Jefferson Davis in Richmond, Va. And the country was forced to contemplate the observation of Frederick Douglass a century and a half before : “What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?” What, we might ask in our day, is freedom to those still denied it as their country celebrates its own?

An Old House and an Infrared Light

The inspector trained his infrared lens onto a misshapen bow in the ceiling, an invisible beam of light searching the layers of lath to test what the eye could not see. This house was built generations ago, and I had noticed the slightest welt in a corner of plaster in a spare bedroom and chalked it up to idiosyncrasy. Over time, the welt in the ceiling became a wave that widened and bulged despite the new roof. It had been building beyond perception for years. An old house is its own kind of devotional, a dowager aunt with a story to be coaxed out of her, a mystery, a series of interlocking puzzles awaiting solution. Why is this soffit tucked into the southeast corner of an eave? What is behind this discolored patch of brick? With an old house, the work is never done, and you don’t expect it to be.

America is an old house. We can never declare the work over. Wind, flood, drought and human upheavals batter a structure that is already fighting whatever flaws were left unattended in the original foundation. When you live in an old house, you may not want to go into the basement after a storm to see what the rains have wrought. Choose not to look, however, at your own peril. The owner of an old house knows that whatever you are ignoring will never go away. Whatever is lurking will fester whether you choose to look or not. Ignorance is no protection from the consequences of inaction. Whatever you are wishing away will gnaw at you until you gather the courage to face what you would rather not see.

We in this country are like homeowners who inherited a house on a piece of land that is beautiful on the outside but whose soil is unstable loam and rock, heaving and contracting over generations, cracks patched but the deeper ruptures waved away for decades, centuries even. Many people may rightly say: “I had nothing to do with how this all started. I have nothing to do with the sins of the past. My ancestors never attacked Indigenous people, never owned slaves.” And yes. Not one of us was here when this house was built. Our immediate ancestors may have had nothing to do with it, but here we are, the current occupants of a property with stress cracks and bowed walls and fissures in the foundation. We are the heirs to whatever is right or wrong with it. We did not erect the uneven pillars or joists, but they are ours to deal with now.

And any further deterioration is, in fact, on our hands.

Unaddressed, the ruptures and diagonal cracks will not fix themselves. The toxins will not go away but rather will spread, leach and mutate, as they already have. When people live in an old house, they come to adjust to the idiosyncrasies and outright dangers skulking in an old structure. They put buckets under a wet ceiling, prop up groaning floors, learn to step over that rotting wood tread in the staircase. The awkward becomes acceptable, and the unacceptable becomes merely inconvenient. Live with it long enough, and the unthinkable becomes normal. Exposed over the generations, we learn to believe that the incomprehensible is the way that life is supposed to be.

In my own house, the inspector was facing the mystery of the misshapen ceiling, and so he first held a sensor to the surface to detect if it was damp. The reading inconclusive, he then pulled out the infrared camera to take a kind of X-ray of whatever was going on, the idea being that you cannot fix a problem until and unless you can see it. He could now see past the plaster, beyond what had been wallpapered or painted over, as we now are called upon to do in the house we all live in, to examine a structure built long ago.

Like other old houses, America has an unseen skeleton: its caste system, which is as central to its operation as are the studs and joists that we cannot see in the physical buildings we call home. Caste is the infrastructure of our divisions. It is the architecture of human hierarchy, the subconscious code of instructions for maintaining, in our case, a 400-year-old social order. Looking at caste is like holding the country’s X-ray up to the light.

[The 1619 project: reframing the legacy of slavery in the United States.]

A caste system is an artificial construction, a fixed and embedded ranking of human value that sets the presumed supremacy of one group against the presumed inferiority of other groups on the basis of ancestry and often immutable traits, traits that would be neutral in the abstract but are ascribed life-and-death meaning in a hierarchy favoring the dominant caste, whose forebears designed it. A caste system uses rigid, often arbitrary boundaries to keep the ranks apart, distinct from one another and in their assigned places.

Throughout human history, three caste systems have stood out. The lingering, millenniums-long caste system of India. The tragically accelerated, chilling and officially vanquished caste system of Nazi Germany. And the shape-shifting, unspoken, race-based caste pyramid in the United States. Each version relied on stigmatizing those deemed inferior to justify the dehumanization necessary to keep the lowest-ranked people at the bottom and to rationalize the protocols of enforcement. A caste system endures because it is often justified as divine will, originating from sacred text or the presumed laws of nature, reinforced throughout the culture and passed down through the generations.

As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power — which groups have it and which do not. It is about resources — which groups are seen as worthy of them and which are not, who gets to acquire and control them and who does not. It is about respect, authority and assumptions of competence — who is accorded these and who is not.

As a means of assigning value to entire swaths of humankind, caste guides each of us often beyond the reaches of our awareness. It embeds into our bones an unconscious ranking of human characteristics and sets forth the rules, expectations and stereotypes that have been used to justify brutalities against entire groups within our species. In the American caste system, the signal of rank is what we call race, the division of humans on the basis of their appearance. In America, race is the primary tool and the visible decoy for caste.

Race does the heavy lifting for a caste system that demands a means of human division. If we have been trained to see humans in the language of race, then caste is the underlying grammar that we encode as children, as when learning our mother tongue. Caste, like grammar, becomes an invisible guide not only of how we speak but also of how we process information, the autonomic calculations that figure into a sentence without our having to think about it.

Many of us have never taken a class in grammar, yet we know in our bones that a transitive verb takes an object, that a subject needs a predicate; we know without thinking the difference between third-person singular and third-person plural. We may mention “race,” referring to people as Black or white or Latino or Asian or Indigenous, when what lies beneath each label is centuries of history and assigning of assumptions and values to physical features in a structure of human hierarchy.

What people look like, or rather, the race they have been assigned or are perceived to belong to, is the visible cue to their caste. It is the historic flashcard to the public of how they are to be treated, where they are expected to live, what kinds of positions they are expected to hold, whether they belong in this section of town or that seat in a boardroom, whether they should be expected to speak with authority on this or that subject, whether they will be administered pain relief in a hospital, whether they are more or less likely to survive childbirth in the most advanced nation in the world, whether they may be shot by the authorities with impunity.

We know that the letters of the alphabet are neutral and meaningless until they are combined to make a word, which itself has no significance until it is inserted into a sentence and interpreted by those who speak or hear it. In the same way that “black” and “white” were applied to people who were literally neither, but rather gradations of brown and beige and ivory, the caste system sets people at poles from one another and attaches meaning to the extremes, and to the gradations in between, and then reinforces those meanings, replicates them in the roles each caste was and is assigned and permitted or required to perform.

And yet, in recent decades, we have learned from the human genome that all human beings are 99.9 percent the same. “Race is a social concept, not a scientific one,” said J. Craig Venter, the genomics expert who ran Celera Genomics when the initial sequencing was completed in 2000. “We all evolved in the last 100,000 years from the small number of tribes that migrated out of Africa and colonized the world.” Which means that an entire racial caste system, the catalyst of hatreds and civil war, was built on what the anthropologist Ashley Montagu called “an arbitrary and superficial selection of traits,” derived from a tiny fraction of the tens of thousands of genes that make up a human being. “The idea of race,” Montagu wrote, “was, in fact, the deliberate creation of an exploiting class seeking to maintain and defend its privileges against what was profitably regarded as an inferior social caste.”

Caste and race are neither synonymous nor mutually exclusive. They can and do coexist in the same culture and serve to reinforce each other. Race, in the United States, is the visible agent of the unseen force of caste. Caste is the bones, race the skin. Race is what we can see, the physical traits that have been given arbitrary meaning and become shorthand for who a person is. Caste is the powerful infrastructure that holds each group in its place. Its very invisibility is what gives it power and longevity. And though it may move in and out of consciousness, though it may flare and reassert itself in times of upheaval and recede in times of relative calm, it is an ever-present through line in the country’s operation.

Caste is rigid and deep; race is fluid and superficial, subject to periodic redefinition to meet the needs of the dominant caste in what is now the United States. While the requirements to qualify as white have changed over the centuries, the fact of a dominant caste has remained constant from its inception — whoever fit the definition of white, at whatever point in history, was granted the legal rights and privileges of the dominant caste. Perhaps more critical and tragic, at the other end of the ladder, the subordinated caste, too, has been fixed from the beginning as the psychological floor beneath which all other castes cannot fall.

Thus we are all born into a silent war game, centuries old, enlisted in teams not of our own choosing. The side to which we are assigned in the American system of categorizing people is proclaimed by the team uniform that each caste wears, signaling our presumed worth and potential. That any of us manages to create abiding connections across these manufactured divisions is a testament to the beauty of the human spirit.

An American Untouchable

In the early winter of 1959, after leading the Montgomery bus boycott that arose from the arrest of Rosa Parks and before the trials and triumphs to come, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta, landed in India, in the city then known as Bombay, to visit the land of Mohandas K. Gandhi, the father of nonviolent protest. They were covered in garlands upon arrival, and King told reporters, “To other countries, I may go as a tourist, but to India I come as a pilgrim.”

He had long dreamed of going to India, and they stayed for more than a month, welcomed by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. King wanted to see for himself the place whose fight for freedom from British rule had inspired his fight for justice in America. He wanted to see the so-called untouchables, the lowest caste in the ancient Indian caste system, whom he had read of and had sympathy for, and who were left behind after India gained its independence the decade before.

He discovered that people in India had been following the trials of his own oppressed people in America, knew of the bus boycott he led. Wherever he went, people on the streets of Bombay and Delhi crowded around him for an autograph.

One afternoon, King and his wife journeyed to the southern tip of the country, to the city then known as Trivandrum in the state of Kerala, and visited with high school students whose families had been untouchables. The principal made the introduction.

“Young people,” he said, “I would like to present to you a fellow untouchable from the United States of America.”

King was floored. He had not expected that word to be applied to him. He was, in fact, put off by it at first. He had flown in from another continent, had dined with the prime minister. He did not see the connection, did not see what the Indian caste system had to do directly with him, did not immediately see why the lowest-caste people in India would view him, an American Negro and a distinguished visitor, as low-caste like themselves, see him as one of them.

“For a moment,” he would later recall, “I was a bit shocked and peeved that I would be referred to as an untouchable.”

Then he began to think about the reality of the lives of the people he was fighting for — 20 million people, consigned to the lowest rank in America for centuries, “still smothering in an airtight cage of poverty,” quarantined in isolated ghettos, exiled in their own country.

And he said to himself, “Yes, I am an untouchable, and every Negro in the United States of America is an untouchable.” In that moment, he realized that the Land of the Free had imposed a caste system not unlike the caste system of India and that he had lived under that system all his life. It was what lay beneath the forces he was fighting in America. He would later describe this awakening at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta in 1965 during his sermon for the Fourth of July.

“Caste” is not a word often applied to the United States. It is considered the language of India or feudal Europe. But some anthropologists and scholars of race in America have made use of the word for decades. Before the modern era, one of the earliest Americans to take up the idea of caste was the antebellum abolitionist and U.S. senator Charles Sumner as he fought against segregation in the North. “The separation of children in the Public Schools of Boston, on account of color or race,” he wrote, “is in the nature of Caste, and on this account is a violation of Equality.” He quoted a native of India: “Caste makes distinctions among creatures where God has made none.”

What are the origins and workings of the hierarchy that intrudes upon the daily life and life chances of every American? That had intruded upon my own life with disturbing regularity and consequences? I wanted to understand the origins and evolution of classifying and elevating one group of people over another and the consequences of doing so to the presumed beneficiaries and to those targeted as beneath them. Moving about the world as a living, breathing caste experiment myself, I wanted to understand the hierarchies that I and many millions of others have had to navigate to pursue our work and dreams.

Once awakened to the underlying power of caste, we can better see the tool of race for what it is. What we face in our current day is not the classical racism of our ancestors’ era but a mutation of the software that adjusts to the updated needs of the operating system. In the half century since civil rights protests forced the United States to make state-sanctioned discrimination illegal, what Americans consider to be racism has shifted, and now the word is one of the most contentious and misunderstood in American culture. For many in the dominant caste, the word is radioactive — resented, feared, denied, lobbed back toward anyone who dares to suggest it. Resistance to the word often derails any discussion of the underlying behavior it is meant to describe, thus eroding it of meaning.

Social scientists often define racism as the combination of racial bias and systemic power, seeing racism, like sexism, as primarily the action of people or systems with personal or group power over another person or group with less power, as men have power over women, white people over people of color and the dominant over the subordinate.

But over time, racism has often been reduced to a feeling, a character flaw, conflated with prejudice, connected to whether one is a good person or not. It has come to mean overt and declared hatred of a person or group because of the race ascribed to them, a perspective few would ever own up to. While people will admit to or call out sexism or xenophobia or homophobia, people may immediately deflect accusations of racism, saying they don’t have “a racist bone in their body” or are the “least racist person you could ever meet,” that they “don’t see color,” that their “best friend is Black,” and they may have even convinced themselves on a conscious level of these things.

What does racism mean in an era when even extremists won’t admit to it? What is the litmus test for racism? Who is racist in a society where someone can refuse to rent to people of color, arrest brown immigrants en masse or display a Confederate flag but not be “certified” as a racist unless he or she confesses to it or is caught using derogatory signage or slurs? The instinctive desire to reject the very idea of current discrimination on the basis of a chemical compound in the skin is an unconscious admission of the absurdity of race as a concept.

With no universally agreed-upon definition, we might see racism as a continuum rather than an absolute. We might release ourselves of the purity test of whether someone is or is not racist and exchange that mind-set for one that sees people as existing on a scale based on the toxins they have absorbed from the polluted and inescapable air of social instruction we receive from childhood.

Caste, on the other hand, predates the notion of race and has survived the era of formal state-sponsored racism long officially practiced in the mainstream. The modern-day version of easily deniable racism may be able to cloak the invisible structure that created and maintains hierarchy and inequality. But caste does not allow us to ignore structure. Caste is structure. Caste is ranking. Caste is the boundaries that reinforce the fixed assignments based upon what people look like. Caste is a living, breathing entity. It is like a corporation that seeks to sustain itself at all costs. To achieve a truly egalitarian world requires looking deeper than what we think we see.

Caste is the granting or withholding of respect, status, honor, attention, privileges, resources, benefit of the doubt and human kindness to someone on the basis of their perceived rank or standing in the hierarchy. Caste pushes back against an African-American woman who, without humor or apology, takes a seat at the head of the table speaking Russian. It prefers an Asian-American man to put his technological expertise at the service of the company but not aspire to chief executive. Yet it sees as logical a white 16-year-old serving as store manager over employees from the subordinate caste three times his age. Caste is insidious and therefore powerful because it is not hatred; it is not necessarily personal. It is the worn grooves of comforting routines and unthinking expectations, patterns of a social order that have been in place for so long that it looks like the natural order of things.

What is the difference between racism and casteism? Because caste and race are interwoven in America, it can be hard to separate the two. Any action or institution that mocks, harms, assumes or attaches inferiority or stereotype on the basis of the social construct of race can be considered racism. Any action or structure that seeks to limit, hold back or put someone in a defined ranking, seeks to keep someone in their place by elevating or denigrating that person on the basis of their perceived category, can be seen as casteism.

Casteism is the investment in keeping the hierarchy as it is in order to maintain your own ranking, advantage or privilege or to elevate yourself above others or keep others beneath you. For those in the marginalized castes, casteism can mean seeking to keep those on your disfavored rung from gaining on you, to curry the favor and remain in the good graces of the dominant caste, all of which serve to keep the structure intact.

In the United States, racism and casteism frequently occur at the same time, or overlap or figure into the same scenario. Casteism is about positioning and restricting those positions, vis-à-vis others. What race and its precursor, racism, do extraordinarily well is to confuse and distract from the underlying structural and more powerful Sith lord of caste. Like the cast on a broken arm, like the cast in a play, a caste system holds everyone in a fixed place.

For this reason, many people — including those we might see as good and kind people — could be casteist, meaning invested in keeping the hierarchy as it is or content to do nothing to change it, but not racist in the classical sense, not active and openly hateful of this or that group. Actual racists, actual haters, would by definition be casteist, as their hatred demands that those they perceive as beneath them know and keep their place in the hierarchy.

In everyday terms, it is not racism that prompts a white shopper in a clothing store to go up to a random Black or brown person who is also shopping and to ask for a sweater in a different size, or for a white guest at a party to ask a Black or brown person who is also a guest to fetch a drink, as happened to Barack Obama as a state senator, or even perhaps a judge to sentence a subordinate-caste person for an offense for which a dominant-caste person might not even be charged. It is caste or rather the policing of and adherence to the caste system. It’s the autonomic, unconscious, reflexive response to expectations from a thousand imaging inputs and neurological societal downloads that affix people to certain roles based upon what they look like and what they historically have been assigned to or the characteristics and stereotypes by which they have been categorized. No ethnic or racial category is immune to the messaging we all receive about the hierarchy, and thus no one escapes its consequences.

When we assume that a woman is not equipped to lead the meeting or the company or the country, or that a person of color or an immigrant could not be the one in authority, is not a resident of a certain community, could not have attended a particular school or deserved to have attended a particular school, when we feel a pang of shock and resentment, a personal wounding and sense of unfairness and perhaps even shame at our discomfort upon seeing someone from a marginalized group in a job or car or house or college or appointment more prestigious than we have been led to expect, we are reflecting the efficient encoding of caste, the subconscious recognition that the person has stepped out of his or her assumed place in our society. We are responding to our embedded instructions of who should be where and who should be doing what, the breaching of the structure and boundaries that are the hallmarks of caste.

Race and caste are not the cause of and do not account for every poor outcome or unpleasant encounter. But caste becomes a factor, to whatever infinitesimal degree, in interactions and decisions across gender, ethnicity, race, immigrant status, sexual orientation, age or religion that have consequences in our everyday lives and in policies that affect our country and beyond. It may not be as all-consuming as its targets may perceive it to be, but neither is it the ancient relic, the long-ago anachronism, that post-racialists, post-haters of everything, keep wishing away. Its invisibility is what gives it power and longevity. Caste, along with its faithful servant race, is an X-factor in most any American equation, and any answer one might ever come up with to address our current challenges is flawed without it.

Through the Fog of Delhi to the Parallels in India and America

My flight to India landed in a gray veil that hid the terminal and its tower at the international airport in Delhi. It was January 2018, my first moments on the subcontinent. The pilot searched for a jetway through the drapery of mist. It was 2 in the morning, and it was as if we had landed in a steam kettle, were still airborne in a cloud, the night air pressing against cabin windows, and we could see nothing of the ground. I had not heard of rain in the forecast and was fascinated by this supernatural fog in the middle of the night, until I realized that it was not fog at all but smoke — from coal plants, cars and burning stubble — trapped in stagnant wind. The pollution was a shroud at first to seeing India as it truly was.

At daybreak, the sun pushed through the haze, and once I connected with my hosts, I raced along with them to cross an intersection, an open stretch of asphalt with cars hurtling in every direction with no lanes or speed limits. We made our way along the side streets to the conference we were attending. I saw the wayside altars and mushroom temples with their garlands and silk flowers to the Hindu deities at the base of the sacred fig trees. There, commuters can pause for reflection as they head to work or an exam or a doctor’s visit. The sidewalk shrines seemed exotic to me until I thought of the American ritual of spontaneous altars of flowers and balloons at the site of something very different, at the site of an accident or tragedy, as for Heather Heyer, the counterprotester killed at the infamous neo-Confederate rally in Charlottesville, Va., just months before. Both reflect a human desire to connect with and honor something or someone beyond ourselves.

The United States and India are profoundly different from each other — in culture, technology, economics, history, ethnic composition. And yet, many generations ago, these two great lands paralleled each other, each protected by oceans, fertile and coveted and ruled for a time by the British. Each adopted social hierarchies and abides great chasms between the highest and the lowest in their respective lands. Each was conquered by people said to be Aryans arriving, in one case, from across the Atlantic Ocean, in the other, from the north. Those deemed lowest in each country would serve those deemed high. The younger country, the United States, would become the most powerful democracy on Earth. The older country, India, would become the largest.

Their hierarchies are profoundly different. And yet, as if operating from the same instruction manual translated to fit their distinctive cultures, both countries adopted similar methods of maintaining rigid lines of demarcation and protocols. Both countries kept their dominant caste separate, apart and above those deemed lower. Both exiled their Indigenous peoples — the Adivasi in India, the Native Americans in the United States — to remote lands and to the unseen margins of society. Both countries enacted an amalgam of laws to chain the lowliest group — Dalits in India (formerly known as the untouchables) and African-Americans in the United States — to the bottom, using terror and force to keep them there.

“Perhaps only the Jews have as long a history of suffering from discrimination as the Dalits,” the American civil rights advocate Yussuf Naim Kly wrote in 1987. “However, when we consider the nature of the suffering endured by the Dalits, it is the African-American parallel of enslavement, apartheid and forced assimilation that comes to mind.”

The United States and India have since abolished the formal laws that defined their caste systems — the United States in a series of civil rights laws in the 1960s and India more than a decade before, starting in 1949 — but both caste systems live on in hearts and habits, institutions and infrastructures. Both countries still live with the residue of codes that prevailed for far longer than they have not.

In both countries and often at the same time, the lowest castes toiled for their masters — African-Americans in the tobacco fields along the Chesapeake or in the cotton fields of Mississippi, Dalits plucking tea in Kerala and cotton in Nandurbar. Both worked as enslaved people and later for the right to live on the land that they were farming, African-Americans in the system of sharecropping, Dalits in the Indian equivalent, known as saldari , both still confined to their fixed roles at the bottom of their respective societies.

While doors have opened to the subordinated castes in India and in America in the decades since discrimination was officially prohibited, the same spasms of resistance have afflicted both countries. What is called “affirmative action” in the United States is called “reservations” in India, and they are equally unpopular with the upper castes in both countries, language tracking in lock step, with complaints of reverse discrimination in one and reverse casteism in the other.

There are many overarching similarities to the countries’ caste systems, but they are not the same in how they are structured or operate. The American system was founded as a primarily two-tiered hierarchy with its contours defined by the uppermost group, those identified as white, and by the subordinated group, those identified as Black, with immigrants from outside Europe forming blurred middle castes that sought to adjust themselves within a bipolar structure, and Native Americans largely exiled outside it.

The Indian caste system, by contrast, is an elaborate fretwork of thousands of subcastes, or jatis , correlated to region and village, which fall under the four main varnas — the Brahmin, the Kshatriya, the Vaishya, the Shudra and the excluded fifth, the Dalits. It is further complicated by non-Hindus — including Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs and Christians — who are outside the original caste system but have incorporated themselves into the workings of the country, at times in the face of resistance and attack, and may or may not have informal rankings among themselves and in relation to the varnas .

The Indian caste system historically has been said to be stable and unquestioned by those within it, bound as it is by religion and the Hindu belief in reincarnation, the belief that a person carries out in this life the karma of the previous ones, suffers the punishment or reaps the rewards for deeds in a past life, and that the more keenly you follow the rules for the caste you were born into, the higher your station will be in the next life.

Some observers say that this is what distinguishes the Indian caste system from any other, that people in the lowest caste accept their lot, that it is fixed and unbending, that Dalits presumably live out their karma decreed by the gods and do their lowly work without complaint, knowing not to dream of anything more. In order to survive, some people in a subordinated caste may learn and believe that resistance is futile. But this condescending view disregards generations of resistance, and the work of the beloved Dalit leader Bhimrao Ambedkar and the reformer Jyotiba Phule before him. It was also wrongly assumed of enslaved Africans, and it disregards a fundamental truth of the species, that all human beings want to be free.

The Dalits were no more contented with their lot than anyone would be. In a caste system, conflating compliance with approval is dehumanizing in itself. Many Dalits looked out beyond their homeland, surveyed the oppressed people all over the world and identified the people closest to their lamentations. They recognized a shared fate with African-Americans, few of whom would have known of the suffering of Dalits. Some Dalits felt so strong a kinship with one wing of the American civil rights movement and followed it so closely that in the 1970s they created the Dalit Panthers, inspired by the Black Panther Party.

Several years ago, a group of largely African-American professors made a trip to a rural village in the Indian state Uttar Pradesh. There, hundreds of villagers from the lowliest subcaste, the scavengers, came together for a ceremony to welcome the Americans.

The villagers sang Dalit liberation songs for the occasion. Then they turned to their American guests and invited them to sing a liberation song of their own. A law professor from Indiana University, Kenneth Dau-Schmidt, began a song that the civil rights marchers sang in Birmingham and Selma before they faced sheriffs’ dogs and fire hoses. As he reached the refrain, the Dalit hosts joined in and began to sing with their American counterparts. Across the oceans, they well knew the words to “We Shall Overcome.”

The Mudsill and the Jatis

When a house is being built, the single most important piece of the framework is the first wood beam secured to the foundation. That piece is called the mudsill, the sill plate that runs along the base of a house and anchors the entire structure above it. The studs and subfloors, the ceilings and windows, the doors and roofing, all the components that make it a house are built on top of the mudsill. In a caste system, the mudsill is the bottom caste that everything else rests upon.

In the Indian caste system, an infinitely more elaborate hierarchy, the subcaste, or jati , to which a person was born established the occupation their family fulfilled, from cleaners of latrines to priests in the temples. Those born to families who collected refuse or tanned the hides of animals or handled the dead were seen as the most polluted and lowest in the hierarchy, untouchable because of the dreaded and thankless though necessary task they were presumably born to fulfill.

Similarly, African-Americans, throughout most of their time in this land, were relegated to the dirtiest, most demeaning and least desirable jobs by definition. After enslavement and well into the 20th century, they were primarily restricted to the role of sharecroppers and servants — domestics, lawn boys, chauffeurs and janitors. The most that those who managed to get an education could hope for was to teach, minister to, attend to the health needs of or bury other subordinate-caste people.

The state of South Carolina, right after the Civil War, effectively prohibited Black people from performing any labor other than farm or domestic work, defining their place in the caste system. In North Carolina, during slavery, people in the lowest caste were forbidden to sell or trade goods of any kind or be subject to 39 lashes, a custom that echoed into the era of sharecropping. This blocked the main route to earning money from their own farm labors and forced them into economic dependence on the dominant caste, as intended.

“Anything that causes the Negro to aspire to rise above the plow handle, the cook pot — in a word the functions of a servant,” said Gov. James K. Vardaman of Mississippi, elected in 1903, “will be the worst thing on earth for the Negro. God Almighty designed him for a menial; he is fit for nothing else.”

Those who managed to go North after the Civil War and in the bigger waves of the Great Migration, starting during World War I, found that they could escape the South but not their caste.

They entered the North at the bottom, beneath Southern and Eastern Europeans who might not yet have learned English but who were permitted into unions and into better-served neighborhoods that barred Black citizens whose labor had cleared the wilderness and built the country’s wealth. While there was no federal law restricting people to certain occupations on the basis of race, statutes in the South and custom in the North kept lower-caste people in their place. Northern industries often hired African-Americans only as strikebreakers, and unions blocked them from entire trades reserved for whites, such as pipe fitters or plumbers. City inspectors would refuse to sign off on the work of Black electricians. A factory in Milwaukee turned away Black men seeking jobs as they walked toward the front gate. Even before many Black Southerners arrived in the North, Black people in New York and Philadelphia were denied licenses merely to drive carts.

Thus, the caste lines in America may have at one time appeared even starker than those in India. In 1890, “85 percent of Black men and 96 percent of Black women were employed in just two occupational categories,” wrote the sociologist Stephen Steinberg, “agriculture and domestic or personal service.” Forty years later, as the Depression set in and as African-Americans moved to Northern cities, the percentages of Black people at the bottom of the labor hierarchy remained the same, though by then, nearly half of Black men were doing manual labor that called merely for a strong back. Only 5 percent were listed as white-collar workers — many of them ministers, teachers and small-business owners who catered to other Black people.

The historic association between menial labor and Blackness served to further entrap Black people in a circle of subservience in the American mind. They were punished for being in the condition that they were forced to endure. And the image of servitude shadowed them into freedom.

As the caste system evolved in the 20th century, the dominant caste found ever more elaborate ways to enforce occupational hierarchy. “If white and colored persons are employed together,” the sociologist Bertram Doyle wrote in the 1930s, “they do not engage in the same tasks, generally, and certainly not as equals.” He continued: “Negroes are seldom, if ever, put into authority over white persons. Moreover, the Negro expects to remain in the lower ranks; rising, if at all, only over other Negroes.” No matter how well he does his job, Doyle wrote, “he cannot often hope for promotion.”

Since the early 20th century, the wealthiest African-Americans — from Louis Armstrong to Muhammad Ali — have traditionally been entertainers and athletes. Even now, in a recent ranking of the richest African-Americans, 17 of the top 20 — from Oprah Winfrey to Jay-Z to Michael Jordan — made their wealth as innovators, and then moguls, in the entertainment industry or in sports.

Historically, this group would come to predominate the realm carved out for them, often celebrated unless they went head to head against a person in the dominant caste, as did the Black boxer Jack Johnson when he was pitted against the white boxer James J. Jeffries in 1910. Many white people resented Johnson after he became the first Black heavyweight champion in 1908. They mounted a campaign to coax Jeffries, the undefeated former champion, out of retirement to reclaim the title they believed was theirs. In an era of virulent race hatred, the press stoked passions by calling Jeffries “the Great White Hope.”

The two faced off on the Fourth of July at a packed stadium built just for the occasion in Reno, Nev. It was billed as the “Fight of the Century,” with bookies heavily favoring Jeffries to win. Johnson knocked Jeffries down in the 15th round and was declared the victor, to jeers and epithets. It was taken as an affront to white sovereignty and triggered white riots across the country, in the North and the South, including 11 separate ones in New York City, where white mobs set fire to Black tenements and tried to lynch two Black men over the defeat. The message was that, even in an arena into which the lowest caste had been permitted, they were to know and remain in their place.

Mistaken Identity

Some years ago, I was a national correspondent at The New York Times, based in Chicago, and decided to do a lighthearted piece about Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, a prime stretch of Michigan Avenue that had always been the city’s showcase, but now several big luxury names from New York and elsewhere were about to take up residence. I figured retailers would be delighted to talk. As I planned the article, I reached out to them for interviews. Everyone I called was thrilled to describe their foray into Chicago and to sit down with The Times.

The interviews went as expected until the last one. I had arrived a few minutes early to make sure we could start on time, given the deadline I was facing.

The boutique was empty at this quiet hour of the late afternoon. The manager’s assistant told me the manager would be arriving soon from another appointment. She went to a back corner as I stood alone in the showroom. A man in a business suit and tie finally walked in, harried and breathless. From the back corner, she nodded that this was he, so I went up to introduce myself and get started. He was out of breath, had been rushing, coat still on, checking his watch.

“Oh, I can’t talk with you now,” he said, brushing past me. “I’m very, very busy. I’m running late for an appointment.”

I was confused at first. Might he have made another appointment for the exact same time? Why would he schedule two appointments at once? There was no one else in the boutique but the two of us and his assistant in back.

“I think I’m your appointment,” I said.

“No, this a very important appointment with The New York Times,” he said, pulling off his coat. “I can’t talk with you now. I’ll have to talk with you some other time.”

“But I am with The New York Times,” I told him, pen and notebook in hand. “I talked with you on the phone. I’m the one who made the appointment with you for 4:30.”

“What’s the name?”

“Isabel Wilkerson with The New York Times.”

“How do I know that?” he shot back, growing impatient. “Look, I said I don’t have time to talk with you right now. She’ll be here any minute.”

He looked to the front entrance and again at his watch.

“But I am Isabel. We should be having the interview right now.”

He let out a sigh. “What kind of identification do you have? Do you have a business card?”

This was the last interview for the piece, and I had handed them all out by the time I got to him.

“I’ve been interviewing all day,” I told him. “I happen to be out of them now.”

“What about ID? You have a license on you?”

“I shouldn’t have to show you my license, but here it is.”

He gave it a cursory look.

“You don’t have anything that has The New York Times on it?”

“Why would I be here if I weren’t here to interview you? All of this time has passed. We’ve been standing here, and no one else has shown up.”

“She must be running late. I’m going to have to ask you to leave so I can get ready for my appointment.”

I left and walked back to the Times bureau, dazed and incensed, trying to figure out what had just happened. This was the first time I had ever been accused of impersonating myself. His caste notions of who should be doing what in society had so blinded him that he dismissed the idea that the reporter he was anxiously awaiting, excited to talk to, was standing right in front him. It seemed not to occur to him that a New York Times national correspondent could come in a container such as mine, despite every indication that I was she.

The article ran that Sunday. Because I had not been able to interview him, he didn’t get a mention. It would have amounted to a nice bit of publicity for him, but the other interviews made it unnecessary in the end. I sent him a clip of the piece along with the business card that he had asked for. To this day, I won’t step inside that shop. I will not mention the name, not because of censorship or a desire to protect any company’s reputation but because of our cultural tendency to believe that if we just identify the presumed-to-be-rare offending outlier, we will have rooted out the problem. The problem could have happened anyplace, because the problem is, in fact, at the root.

The Race to Get Under the White Tent

At the turn of the 20th century, as the country began refining the rules of admittance to the dominant caste and further tightened the restrictions on those at the bottom, Ybor City, Fla., as elsewhere in the South, began to segregate its streetcars. Cubans there, uncertain as to how they would be classified, were relieved “to discover that they were allowed to sit in the white section,” according to the historical researcher Jan Voogd.

By extending the dream of dominion over the land and all others in it to anyone who could meet the definition of white, the American caste system became an all-or-nothing gambit for the top rung.

Those permitted under the white tent could reap the rewards of full citizenship, rise to positions of high status (or as far as their talents could take them), get access to the best the country had to offer or, at the very least, be accorded respect in everyday interactions from subordinate groups who risked assault for any misstep. A two-tiered caste system raised the stakes for whiteness, leading to court dockets filled with people on the borderline seeking admission to the upper caste.

A Japanese immigrant named Takao Ozawa had lived in the United States for more than 20 years. He tried to make the case that he was worthy of citizenship and should qualify as white because his skin was lighter than that of many “white people.” What did it mean to be white if someone with actual white skin was not white? His case went all the way to the Supreme Court. In 1922, the court held unanimously that white meant not skin color but “Caucasian,” and that Japanese were not Caucasian, notwithstanding the fact that few white Americans had origins in the Caucasus Mountains of Eurasia either and that those who did were at that very moment being kept out, too.

The Ozawa decision and others of that era were a heartbreaking catastrophe for Asians seeking citizenship. With pro-Western European sentiment running high, the government began rescinding the naturalized citizenship of people of Asian descent who were already here. This amounted to an abandonment of people who had lived legally in the United States for most of their adult lives, as would echo a century later with undocumented immigrants crossing the U.S. border with Mexico.

An Indian immigrant named Vaishno Das Bagai had been in the United States for 10 years when he was stripped of his citizenship in 1925 as a result of these rulings. By that time, he had a wife and three children and his own general store on Fillmore Street in San Francisco. He lost the business he had built, because of a California law restricting the economic rights of people who were not citizens. He was left without a passport and thus was thwarted in his attempt to get back to India, and made a man without a country. He was far from his original home and rejected by his new one. One day, he traveled alone to San Jose and rented a room. There, he turned on the gas and ended his life.

No matter which route a borderline applicant took to gain acceptance, the caste system shape-shifted to keep the upper caste pure by its own terms. What a thin, frayed thread held the illusions together. A Japanese novelist once noted that, on paper anyway, it was a single apostrophe that stood between rejection and citizenship for a Japanese Ohara versus an Irish O’Hara.

These cases laid bare not just the absurdity but the inaccuracy of these artificial labels and the perception of purity or pollution implied by them. At the same time, they exposed the unyielding rigidity of a caste system, defiant in the face of evidence contrary to its foundation, how it holds fast against the assault of logic.

The Intrusion of Caste in Everyday Life

On an otherwise ordinary Sunday afternoon in October 2018, a white woman began to track a Black man in Georgia when she saw him out and about with two white children. The Black man, Corey Lewis, was the children’s babysitter, and from her car, the woman stalked him as he drove them from a Walmart to a gas station and then to his home. She first began tracking Lewis after he did not permit her, a complete stranger, to talk with the older of the two children to confirm to her satisfaction that they were all right.

If there is anything that distinguishes caste in America, it is, first, the policing of roles and behavior expected of people based on what they look like, and second, the monitoring of boundaries — the disregard for the boundaries of subordinated castes or the passionate construction of them by those in the dominating caste, to keep the hierarchy in place.

Modern-day caste protocols are often less about overt attacks or conscious hostility. They are like the wind, powerful enough to knock you down but invisible as they go about their work. They are sustained by the muscle memory of relative rank and the expectations of how one person interacts with others based on their place in the hierarchy. It is a form of status hypervigilance, the entitlement of the dominant caste to step in and assert itself wherever it chooses, to monitor or dismiss those deemed beneath them, as they see fit.

That afternoon, Lewis, a youth mentor who runs an after-school program, took notice of the woman trailing him and started recording the situation on his cellphone. In a video, the children can be seen calm and unfazed, buckled in their seatbelts in the back of his car.

His voice is strained and disbelieving. “This lady is following me,” he says, “because I got two kids in the back seat that do not look like me.”

The woman called 911 and asked if she should keep following him. She continued to trail him even though she was told not to. Soon after Lewis arrived home with the children, a patrol car pulled up behind him. An officer got out and headed toward him.

The officer told the children, a 6-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl, to step out of Lewis’s car, and Lewis’s voice began to grow tense. The outcome of this police encounter and his safety and very life depended on what those children said, and he asked them to please tell the officer who he was.

“Please,” he said to them.

The officer asked the children repeatedly, “Are y’all OK?”

“Jesus have mercy — what is wrong with this country?” a Black woman outside cried.

Satisfied that Lewis was, in fact, their babysitter and that the children were not in danger, the officer took the additional step of calling the parents, who were out at dinner.

“It just knocked us out of our chair,” the children’s father, David Parker, told The New York Times.

Caste had intruded into all of their lives. Caste entitlement is not about luxury cars and watches, country clubs and private banks, but knowing without thinking that you are one up from another based on rules not set down on paper but reinforced in commercials, television shows and billboards, from boardrooms to newsrooms to gated subdivisions to who gets killed first in the first half-hour of a movie, and affects everyone up and down the hierarchy. This is the blindsiding banality of caste.

After the incident, a reporter asked the 10-year-old girl, Addison, what she would tell the woman who followed them that day. Her father told The Times her response: “I would just ask her to, next time, try to see us as three people rather than three skin colors, because we might’ve been Mr. Lewis’s adopted children.”

The Inevitable Narcissism of Caste

Through no fault of any individual born to it, a caste system centers the dominant caste as the sun around which all other castes revolve and defines it as the default-setting standard of normalcy, of intellect, of beauty, against which all others are measured, ranked in descending order by their physiological proximity to the dominant caste.

They are surrounded by images of themselves, from cereal commercials to sitcoms, as deserving, hardworking and superior in most aspects of American life, and it would be the rare person who would not absorb the constructed centrality of the dominant group. It would be the rare outliers who would go out of their way to experience the world from the perspective of those considered below them, or even to think about them one way or the other, and the caste system does not require it of them.

Society builds a trapdoor of self-reference that, without any effort on the part of people in the dominant caste, unwittingly forces on them a narcissistic isolation from those assigned to lower categories. It replicates the structure of narcissistic family systems, the interplay of competing supporting roles — the golden-child middle castes of so-called model minorities, the lost-child Indigenous peoples and the scapegoat caste at the bottom.

The centrality of the dominant caste is not lost on those considered beneath them in the hierarchy. The highest and lowest rungs are seen as so far apart as to seem planted in place, immovable. Thus those straddling the middle may succumb to the greatest angst and uncertainty as they aspire to a higher rung.

Everyone in the caste system is trained to covet proximity to the dominant caste: an Iranian immigrant feeling the need to mention that a relative had blond hair as a child; a second-generation child of Caribbean immigrants quick to clarify that they are Dominican and categorically not African-American; a Mexican immigrant boasting that one of his grandfathers back in Mexico “looked just like an American” — blond hair and blue eyes — at which point he was reminded by an African-American that Americans come in all colors of hair and eyes.

Those accustomed to being the measure of all that is human can come to depend on the reassurance that while they may have troubles in their lives, at least they are not at the bottom. As long as the designated bottom dwellers remain in their designated place, their own identities and futures seem secure.

“No matter how degraded their lives, white people are still allowed to believe that they possess the blood, the genes, the patrimony of superiority,” the political scientist Andrew Hacker wrote in his 1992 book, “Two Nations.” “No matter what happens, they can never become ‘Black.’” Hacker continued, “White Americans of all classes have found it comforting to preserve Blacks as a subordinate caste: a presence that despite all its pain and problems still provides whites with some solace in a stressful world.”

We are accustomed to the concept of narcissism — a complex condition of self-aggrandizing entitlement and disregard of others, growing out of a hollow insecurity — as it applies to individuals. But some scholars apply it to the behavior of nations, tribes and subgroups. Freud was among the earliest psychoanalysts to connect a psychiatric diagnosis to Narcissus of Greek mythology, the son of the river god who fell in love with his own image in a pool of water and, not realizing that it was he who was “spurning” his affection, died in despair. “Narcissus could not conceive that he was in love with his own reflection,” wrote the Harvard clinical psychologist Elsa Ronningstam in her 2005 book, “Identifying and Understanding the Narcissistic Personality.” “He was caught in an illusion.”

So, too, with groups trained to believe in their inherent sovereignty. “The essence of this overestimation of one’s own position and the hate for all who differ from it is narcissism,” wrote Erich Fromm, a leading psychoanalyst and social theorist of the 20th century. “He is nothing,” Fromm wrote, “but if he can identify with his nation, or can transfer his personal narcissism to the nation, then he is everything.”

Fromm well knew the perils of group narcissism from both his training in psychoanalysis and his personal experience. He was born into a Jewish family in Germany and came of age during World War I, witnessing the hatred and fervor that took hold in that conflict, only to see it resurface again with the ascension of the Third Reich. He managed to flee Germany after the Nazis took power in 1933, forced to abandon the psychoanalytic institute he had built, and immigrated to the United States.

He saw firsthand, and through a psychoanalyst’s lens, the seductive power of nationalistic appeals to the anxieties of ordinary people. When a person is deeply invested in his group’s dominance, he “has a euphoric ‘on-top-of-the-world’ feeling, while in reality he is in a state of self-inflation,” Fromm wrote. “This leads to a severe distortion of his capacity to think and to judge. … He and his are overevaluated. Everything outside is underevaluated.” And underneath may lie the fear that he cannot live up to the constructed ideal of his own perfection.

History has shown that nations and groups will conquer, colonize, enslave and kill to maintain the illusion of their primacy. Their investment in this illusion gives them as much of a stake in the inferiority of those deemed beneath them as in their own presumed superiority. “The survival of a group,” Fromm wrote, “depends to some extent on the fact that its members consider its importance as great as or greater than that of their own lives.”

Thus, when under threat, they are willing to sacrifice themselves and their ideals for the survival of the group from which they draw their self-esteem. The political theorist Takamichi Sakurai, in his 2018 examination of Western and Eastern perspectives on the topic, and channeling Fromm, wrote bluntly: “Group narcissism leads people to fascism.” He went on, “An extreme form of group narcissism means malignant narcissism, which gives to rise to a fanatical fascist politics, an extreme racialism and so on.”

Fromm identified this kind of group narcissism in two nations in particular: “the racial narcissism which existed in Hitler’s Germany, and which is found in the American South,” he wrote in 1964, at the height of the civil rights era. In both instances, Fromm found the working class to be among the most susceptible, harboring an “inflated image of itself as the most admirable group in the world, and of being superior to another racial group that is singled out as inferior,” he wrote. A person in this group “feels: ‘Even though I am poor and uncultured, I am somebody important because I belong to the most admirable group in the world — I am white’; or ‘I am an Aryan.’”

A group whipped into narcissistic fervor “is eager to have a leader with whom it can identify,” Fromm wrote. “The leader is then admired by the group which projects its narcissism onto him.” The right kind of leader can inspire a symbiotic connection that supplants logic. The susceptible group, Fromm teaches us, sees itself in the narcissistic leader, becomes one with the leader, sees his fortunes and his fate as their own.

The Price We Pay for a Caste System

In the winter of 2019, an invisible life form awakened in the Eastern Hemisphere and began to spread across the oceans.

The earth’s most powerful nation watched as faraway workers in hazmat gear tested for what no one could see, and deluded itself into believing that American exceptionalism would somehow grant it immunity from the sorrows of other countries.

Yet the virus arrived on these shores, and it planted itself in the gaps of disparity, the torn kinships and fraying infrastructure in the country’s caste system, just as it exploited the weakened immune system in the human body.

Soon, America had the largest coronavirus outbreak in the world. The virus exposed both the vulnerability of all humans and the layers of hierarchy.

While anyone could contract the virus, it was Asian-Americans who were scapegoated for it merely because they looked like the people from the part of the world that the virus first struck. As the crisis wore on, it was African-Americans and Latinos who began dying at higher rates. Pre-existing conditions, often tied to the stresses on marginalized people, contributed to the divergence. But it was the castelike occupations at the bottom of the hierarchy — grocery clerks, bus drivers, package deliverers, sanitation workers, low-paying jobs with high levels of public contact — that put them at greater risk of contracting the virus in the first place. These are among the mudsill jobs in a pandemic, the jobs less likely to guarantee health coverage or sick days but that sustain the rest of society, allowing others to shelter in place.

As the number of deaths climbed to the highest of all nations, America — and those looking to it for leadership — had to come to terms with the untested fragilities of its social ecosystem. The pandemic, and the country’s fitful, often self-centered lack of readiness, exposed “a failure of character unparalleled in U.S. history,” Stephen Walt, a professor of international relations at Harvard University, wrote in Foreign Policy. The pandemic forced the nation to open its eyes to what it might not have wanted to see but needed to see.

“This is a civilization searching for its humanity,” Gary Michael Tartakov, a social and cultural historian, said to me as we discussed caste in America at a conference in 2018. “It dehumanized others to build its civilization. Now it needs to find its own.”

It was earlier that spring that I was forced to face the mystery of the misshapen corner of the ceiling in my own old house and summoned inspectors to try to solve it. One man used an infrared light. Others went into the attic and onto the roof. The bow in the corner had come from a long-ago leak that had grown beyond notice, unattended by a series of previous owners, the moisture from the original leak long evaporated but leaving the plaster weakened over time, heavy and tugging at adjacent seams, inch by inch, until a section of the ceiling was now threatening to cave in on itself and perhaps take the rest of the ceiling with it.

I hadn’t caused this problem, hadn’t been there when the leak first crept toward the ceiling. In fact, I had been the one to install the new roof. But it fell to me to fix it or suffer the consequences. Contractors offered to trim it out and Sheetrock over it. A plasterer said he could replaster the fragile section to blend with the rest of the old ceiling. It would be indistinguishable to the naked eye but would not protect against further weakness in what remained of the original plaster, strained as it was from the adjacent frailties.

The only way to truly fix it, he said, was to tear out the plaster, down to the beams, inspect and rebuild the rotting lath and replaster the entire ceiling. And so we did. It took days to scrape and inspect, recast and reconstruct. When it was done, it was quietly glorious, as ceilings go.

And I could breathe free, knowing, as we now are called upon to do in our era, in the house we all live in, that it was sound and secure, not merely patched and papered over, but maybe even better than it was, for ourselves and for the generations that come after us.

Isabel Wilkerson, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Humanities Medal, is the author of “The Warmth of Other Suns,” which was named one of Time’s 10 Best Nonfiction Books of the 2010s and won the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction. This article is adapted from her forthcoming book, “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.”

Source photographs, top: Martin Luther King Jr. in India: Rangaswamy Satakopan/Associated Press. Rosa Parks silhouette: UPI/Daily Advertiser/Associated Press. Above: Rodney King verdict protest: Alex Brandon/Associated Press. Man on ground and officer with gun: Jim Wilson/The New York Times. Arms and hands during George Floyd protests: Malike Sidibe for The New York Times. Both, flag: Choness/Getty Images.

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Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation

• 4. Attitudes about caste

Table of Contents

• The dimensions of Hindu nationalism in India
• India’s Muslims express pride in being Indian while identifying communal tensions, desiring segregation
• Muslims, Hindus diverge over legacy of Partition
• Religious conversion in India
• Religion very important across India’s religious groups
• Near-universal belief in God, but wide variation in how God is perceived
• Across India’s religious groups, widespread sharing of beliefs, practices, values
• Religious identity in India: Hindus divided on whether belief in God is required to be a Hindu, but most say eating beef is disqualifying
• Sikhs are proud to be Punjabi and Indian
• 1. Religious freedom, discrimination and communal relations
• 2. Diversity and pluralism
• 3. Religious segregation
• 5. Religious identity
• 6. Nationalism and politics
• 7. Religious practices
• 8. Religion, family and children
• 9. Religious clothing and personal appearance
• 10. Religion and food
• 11. Religious beliefs
• 12. Beliefs about God
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix A: Methodology
• Appendix B: Index of religious segregation

The caste system has existed in some form in India for at least 3,000 years . It is a social hierarchy passed down through families, and it can dictate the professions a person can work in as well as aspects of their social lives, including whom they can marry. While the caste system originally was for Hindus, nearly all Indians today identify with a caste, regardless of their religion.

The survey finds that three-in-ten Indians (30%) identify themselves as members of General Category castes, a broad grouping at the top of India’s caste system that includes numerous hierarchies and sub-hierarchies. The highest caste within the General Category is Brahmin, historically the priests and other religious leaders who also served as educators. Just 4% of Indians today identify as Brahmin.

Most Indians say they are outside this General Category group, describing themselves as members of Scheduled Castes (often known as Dalits, or historically by the pejorative term “untouchables”), Scheduled Tribes or Other Backward Classes (including a small percentage who say they are part of Most Backward Classes).

Hindus mirror the general public in their caste composition. Meanwhile, an overwhelming majority of Buddhists say they are Dalits, while about three-quarters of Jains identify as members of General Category castes. Muslims and Sikhs – like Jains – are more likely than Hindus to belong to General Category castes. And about a quarter of Christians belong to Scheduled Tribes, a far larger share than among any other religious community.

Caste segregation remains prevalent in India. For example, a substantial share of Brahmins say they would not be willing to accept a person who belongs to a Scheduled Caste as a neighbor. But most Indians do not feel there is a lot of caste discrimination in the country, and two-thirds of those who identify with Scheduled Castes or Tribes say there is  not widespread discrimination against their respective groups. This feeling may reflect personal experience: 82% of Indians say they have not personally faced discrimination based on their caste in the year prior to taking the survey.

Still, Indians conduct their social lives largely within caste hierarchies. A majority of Indians say that their close friends are mostly members of their own caste, including roughly one-quarter (24%) who say all their close friends are from their caste. And most people say it is very important to stop both men and women in their community from marrying into other castes, although this view varies widely by region. For example, roughly eight-in-ten Indians in the Central region (82%) say it is very important to stop inter-caste marriages for men, compared with just 35% in the South who feel strongly about stopping such marriages.

India’s religious groups vary in their caste composition

Most Indians (68%) identify themselves as members of lower castes, including 34% who are members of either Scheduled Castes (SCs) or Scheduled Tribes (STs) and 35% who are members of Other Backward Classes (OBCs) or Most Backward Classes. Three-in-ten Indians identify themselves as belonging to General Category castes, including 4% who say they are Brahmin, traditionally the priestly caste. 12

Hindu caste distribution roughly mirrors that of the population overall, but other religions differ considerably. For example, a majority of Jains (76%) are members of General Category castes, while nearly nine-in-ten Buddhists (89%) are Dalits. Muslims disproportionately identify with non-Brahmin General Castes (46%) or Other/Most Backward Classes (43%).

Caste classification is in part based on economic hierarchy, which continues today to some extent. Highly educated Indians are more likely than those with less education to be in the General Category, while those with no education are most likely to identify as OBC.

But financial hardship isn’t strongly correlated with caste identification. Respondents who say they were unable to afford food, housing or medical care at some point in the last year are only slightly more likely than others to say they are Scheduled Caste/Tribe (37% vs. 31%), and slightly less likely to say they are from General Category castes (27% vs. 33%).

The Central region of India stands out from other regions for having significantly more Indians who are members of Other Backward Classes or Most Backward Classes (51%) and the fewest from the General Category (17%). Within the Central region, a majority of the population in the state of Uttar Pradesh (57%) identifies as belonging to Other or Most Backward Classes.

Indians in lower castes largely do not perceive widespread discrimination against their groups

When asked if there is or is not “a lot of discrimination” against Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes in India, most people say there isn’t a lot of caste discrimination. Fewer than one-quarter of Indians say they see evidence of widespread discrimination against Scheduled Castes (20%), Scheduled Tribes (19%) or Other Backward Classes (16%).

Generally, people belonging to lower castes share the perception that there isn’t widespread caste discrimination in India. For instance, just 13% of those who identify with OBCs say there is a lot of discrimination against Backward Classes. Members of Scheduled Castes and Tribes are slightly more likely than members of other castes to say there is a lot of caste discrimination against their groups – but, still, only about a quarter take this position.

Christians are more likely than other religious groups to say there is a lot of discrimination against Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in India: About three-in-ten Christians say each group faces widespread discrimination, compared with about one-in-five or fewer among Hindus and other groups.

At least three-in-ten Indians in the Northeast and the South say there is a lot of discrimination against Scheduled Castes, although similar shares in the Northeast decline to answer these questions. Just 13% in the Central region say Scheduled Castes face widespread discrimination, and 7% say the same about OBCs.

Highly religious Indians – that is, those who say religion is very important in their lives – tend to see less evidence of discrimination against Scheduled Castes and Tribes. Meanwhile, those who have experienced recent financial hardship are more inclined to see widespread caste discrimination.

Most Indians do not have recent experience with caste discrimination

Not only do most Indians say that lower castes do not experience a lot of discrimination, but a strong majority (82%) say they have not personally felt caste discrimination in the past 12 months. While members of Scheduled Castes and Tribes are slightly more likely than members of other castes to say they have personally faced caste-based discrimination, fewer than one-in-five (17%) say they have experienced this in the last 12 months.

But caste-based discrimination is more commonly reported in some parts of the country. In the Northeast, for example, 38% of respondents who belong to Scheduled Castes say they have experienced discrimination because of their caste in the last 12 months, compared with 14% among members of Scheduled Castes in Eastern India.

Jains, the vast majority of whom are members of General Category castes, are less likely than other religious groups to say they have personally faced caste discrimination (3%). Meanwhile, Indians who indicate they have faced recent financial hardship are more likely than those who have not faced such hardship to report caste discrimination in the last year (20% vs. 10%).

Most Indians OK with Scheduled Caste neighbors

The vast majority of Indian adults say they would be willing to accept members of Scheduled Castes as neighbors. (This question was asked only of people who did not identify as members of Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes.)

Among those who received the question, large majorities of Christians (83%) and Sikhs (77%) say they would accept Dalit neighbors. But a substantial portion of Jains, most of whom identify as belonging to General Category castes, feel differently; about four-in-ten Jains (41%) say that they would not be willing to accept Dalits as neighbors. (Because more than nine-in-ten Buddhists say they are members of Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes, not enough Buddhists were asked this question to allow for separate analysis of their answers.)

About three-in-ten Brahmins (29%) say they would not be willing to accept members of Scheduled Castes as neighbors.

In most regions, at least two-thirds of people express willingness to accept Scheduled Caste neighbors. The Northeast, however, stands out, with roughly equal shares saying they would (41%) or would not (39%) be willing to accept Dalits as neighbors, although this region also has the highest share of respondents – 20% – who gave an unclear answer or declined to answer the question.

Indians who live in urban areas (78%) are more likely than rural Indians (69%) to say they would be willing to accept Scheduled Caste neighbors. And Indians with more education also are more likely to accept Dalit neighbors. Fully 77% of those with a college degree say they would be fine with neighbors from Scheduled Castes, while 68% of Indians with no formal education say the same.

Politically, those who have a favorable opinion of the BJP are somewhat less likely than those who have an unfavorable opinion of India’s ruling party to say they would accept Dalits as neighbors, although there is widespread acceptance across both groups (71% vs. 77%).

Indians generally do not have many close friends in different castes

Indians may be comfortable living in the same neighborhoods as people of different castes, but they tend to make close friends within their own caste. About one-quarter (24%) of Indians say all their close friends belong to their caste, and 46% say most of their friends are from their caste.

About three-quarters of Muslims and Sikhs say that all or most of their friends share their caste (76% and 74%, respectively). Christians and Buddhists – who disproportionately belong to lower castes – tend to have somewhat more mixed friend circles. Nearly four-in-ten Buddhists (39%) and a third of Christians (34%) say “some,” “hardly any” or “none” of their close friends share their caste background.

Members of OBCs are also somewhat more likely than other castes to have a mixed friend circle. About one-third of OBCs (32%) say no more than “some” of their friends are members of their caste, compared with roughly one-quarter of all other castes who say this.

Women, Indian adults without a college education and those who say religion is very important in their lives are more likely to say that all their close friends are of the same caste as them. And, regionally, 45% of Indians in the Northeast say all their friends are part of their caste, while in the South, fewer than one-in-five (17%) say the same.

Large shares of Indians say men, women should be stopped from marrying outside of their caste

As another measure of caste segregation, the survey asked respondents whether it is very important, somewhat important, not too important or not at all important to stop men and women in their community from marrying into another caste. Generally, Indians feel it is equally important to stop both men and women from marrying outside of their caste. Strong majorities of Indians say it is at least “somewhat” important to stop men (79%) and women (80%) from marrying into another caste, including at least six-in-ten who say it is “very” important to stop this from happening regardless of gender (62% for men and 64% for women).

Majorities of all the major caste groups say it is very important to prevent inter-caste marriages. Differences by religion are starker. While majorities of Hindus (64%) and Muslims (74%) say it is very important to prevent women from marrying across caste lines, fewer than half of Christians and Buddhists take that position.

Among Indians overall, those who say religion is very important in their lives are significantly more likely to feel it is necessary to stop members of their community from marrying into different castes. Two-thirds of Indian adults who say religion is very important to them (68%) also say it is very important to stop women from marrying into another caste; by contrast, among those who say religion is less important in their lives, 39% express the same view.

Regionally, in the Central part of the country, at least eight-in-ten adults say it is very important to stop both men and women from marrying members of different castes. By contrast, fewer people in the South (just over one-third) say stopping inter-caste marriage is a high priority. And those who live in rural areas of India are significantly more likely than urban dwellers to say it is very important to stop these marriages.

Older Indians and those without a college degree are more likely to oppose inter-caste marriage. And respondents with a favorable view of the BJP also are much more likely than others to oppose such marriages. For example, among Hindus, 69% of those who have a favorable view of BJP say it is very important to stop women in their community from marrying across caste lines, compared with 54% among those who have an unfavorable view of the party.

CORRECTION (August 2021): A previous version of this chapter contained an incorrect figure. The share of Indians who identify themselves as members of lower castes is 68%, not 69%.

• All survey respondents, regardless of religion, were asked, “Are you from a General Category, Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe or Other Backward Class?” By contrast, in the 2011 census of India, only Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists could be enumerated as members of Scheduled Castes, while Scheduled Tribes could include followers of all religions. General Category and Other Backward Classes were not measured in the census. A detailed analysis of differences between 2011 census data on caste and survey data can be found here . ↩

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Essay on Caste System in India

List of essays on caste system in india, essay on caste system in india – for children (essay 1 – 250 words), essay on caste system in india – short essay on the caste system in india (essay 2 – 300 words), essay on caste system in india – for school students (class 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 standard) (essay 3 – 400 words), essay on caste system in india – introduction, types, effects and conclusion (essay 4 – 550 words), essay on caste system in india – origin, implications and solution (essay 5 – 600 words), essay on caste system in india – for college and university students (essay 6 – 800 words).

• Essay on the Caste System in India – Long Essay for Competitive Exams like IAS, IPS and UPSC (Essay 7 – 1000 Words)

The caste system in India is defined as the identification of a person as to from which family he belongs to. Since centuries, the caste system in India has been the basis of division among the Hindus. But, how has it affected society as a whole? Or how has it evolved over time is something which the students should definitely know about.

There are positives and negatives of everything including the caste system in India which should be known to the students. Therefore, we have come up with long essays for students along with some short essays so as to give them an insight on this ancient system of division of the society, prevalent even today.

Audience: The below given essays are exclusively written for school students (Class 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 Standard) and college students. Furthermore, those students preparing for competitive exams like IAS, IPS and UPSC can also increase their knowledge by studying these essays.

The caste system in India is one of the world’s oldest form of social stratification that is still surviving. Originally, the caste depended on a person’s work but it soon changed to hereditary. The caste system in India has been modified and evolved over the centuries by the rulers and those in power. There was a significant change in the caste system in India during the Mughal Raj and the British Rule. Although four primary castes were defined by Vedas – Brahmins, Kshatriya, Vaisya and Shudra, there are thousands of sub-castes and communities within the Indian society.

Independent India has banned any discrimination based on caste and in an attempt to correct the previous injustices against traditionally disadvantaged, the government has announced quotas in government jobs and educational institutions. It was meant to support scheduled castes and tribes but now it has transformed into a whole different issue. Many communities are fighting and protesting violently to be recognized as OBCs. And even though most of such communities are prospering, they still want the caste quota by claiming that they are poor and suffering.

This problem is exacerbated by politicians and media. During the times of election, politicians woo a particular caste block by offering them certain benefits and such. Even though, the support to unprivileged was necessary, it has now become a vote-grabbing exercise for politicians and a short-cut to gain quotas for some communities. Caste system in India has simply become a system to gain reservation and benefits when people are acquiring education or applying for jobs.

Caste System in India came into existence in the period of ancient times and it still holds a sturdy base in the Indian society. On the other hand, the Caste system in India might not be incorrect to tell that the mentality of people is also changing with the passing time.

People who are living in the urban areas that comprise of an educated section are overcoming the firm caste system in India that was established eras back. The modifications in our laws have also transformed our old Indian society into a modern one.

Law against Caste System in India:

The caste system in India was always criticized by everybody and numerous people volunteer to battle against it, however, such effort could not shake the base of this evil system. After India got freedom from the British, the constitution of India declared to place a prohibition on discrimination over the basis of the caste system in India. It was a clear and loud message to all such people who mistreated the lower caste people.

Introduction of the Reservation System:

The formation of law against the caste system in India was a smart step but one more decision i.e., introduction of the quota or the reservation system has shown to be damaging for our modern Indian society. In such a system, there are reserved seats for the lower caste people in the government jobs and in the education sector. Such type of system was introduced to raise the backward class’ standard of living.

But, it has turned into a reason of great worry in modern India. Owing to this quota system, numerous times the worthy contenders from the general group do not have an employment opportunity whereas the applicants from the scheduled tribe or scheduled caste acquire the same without being enough capable or skilled.

Conclusion:

The system of the caste system in India has already spoiled the image of the nation on various international levels. The caste system in India must be totally abolished in modern India for the country to prosperous growth and development.

Introduction:

One of the ugliest words of human races is Caste. Caste system in India is one of the unjustifiable acts of our ancestors. Caste system in India appeared in the Vedic ages itself and distinguished people based on their tribe, region, class, and religion. It is very similar to the concept of racism in Western Countries. Caste System is a huge hindrance to the development of a country and it stops a country from becoming an absolute empowered entity.

Meaning & Origin:

Jati or Varna are the two terms alternatively used in the place of Caste , which merely enhances the cruelty of the word usage. The four major hereditary castes prevalent in India are Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaisya and Sudra . The scholars and the priests form the top most in this structure and are termed Brahmins. Kshatriyas are soldiers and political leaders while the Vaisya and Sudra’s are the merchants and servants respectively. They even had a sect of people not categorized in any of these called untouchables who were mostly janitors.

Negative Effects of Caste System in India:

Some of the negative impacts of the caste system earlier were that not all people can access the temple, take water from wells, and eat with lower caste people. Modern India still has the impacts but in a different way whereby occupation of a certain family is carried down and mobilizes the other sect of people to pick up jobs in that Job family. Inter-caste marriages and honor killings have become common. National development has gone downhill since Caste System still exists in India.

Government Reforms:

The upper castes usually treated the lower castes people as their slaves and mostly occupied the higher positions in all the institutions.To rectify the past unfairness effects of the Caste System in India, Government has introduced quotas and reservation systems thereby giving access to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes to help them ramp up to positions that matter. Discrimination based on Caste System is a crime.

It is a common say that Caste System in India would’ve long gone if the politicians didn’t fan it up for their conveniences. Despite many reforms and government regulations it is unfortunate that caste system in India still exists. We as citizens must take cautious steps and uphold discrimination as a serious offense. Equality of human race regardless of their gender, tribe, race, colour and the Job they do is a must. Whilst we look out to human kind for the paradigm shift, it is necessary stricter rules apply when inequality shows up.

Caste system in India is a huge hindrance to the development of our country. During British rule, millions of lives were lost in the struggle for freedom, only to establish a society of equality. But their efforts seem fruitless due to the divide caused by caste system in India. Caste system in India is derived from the ancient Varna system. Varna means colours and denotes various races of people. As India is a country of many races having their own language, customs, traditions and dressing, caste system in India was introduced to celebrate the differences between castes and eliminate discrimination. However, the caste system in India only established a complete divide between each caste.

Different Types of Castes in India:

Initially caste system in India was based on the work a person did. Priests in the temples were called Brahmins and regarded highly in the society as they were close to God in work. Secondly, those who were involved in ruling the country, chiefs of army and warriors were called Kshatriyas and regarded next to Brahmins.

Caste system in India defined a third class of people called Vaishyas who were tradesmen, artists and farmers and made up the business class of the society. Below them came the Shudras, people who did manual work and were called labourers. There was a class even below Shudras, the Dalits which referred to people who did cleaning works.

Due to caste system in India, Dalits were regarded as untouchables by the other four castes. Since the kind of work done by a person determined his status in the society, as time went by, a priest’s son became a priest, a king’s son became the next ruler and so on and even before anybody realized, caste system in India was firmly established.

People retained the work line of their older generations to retain their identity in the society. Finally, caste system in India divided people into different classes of status and nobody could move up a class or down a class. It became hereditary and a child was labelled with the caste of his parents’ right at birth.

Effects of Caste System in India:

Caste system in India totally eliminated the freedom of choice of occupation and every person was forced to take up the occupation of his family. Its workings are against that of a democracy which preaches equal rights and opportunities to all while caste system in India inflicts discrimination based on status. Inter-caste marriages were considered immoral and unholy and even punished by death.

Marrying with sub-castes was also not allowed. This resulted in poor health of descendants as marrying within the family or with close relatives led to children being born with immunity disorders. Untouchability came into practise due to caste system in India.

Caste system in India is still prevalent; however, today the impact of caste has diminished subsequently due to education and modernization of the society. People of different castes live side-by-side and inter-caste marriages are encouraged and have become a norm. Still it is necessary that caste system in India is fully abolished in papers and in the minds of people to truly realize and experience democracy in the country. This is possible only when the educated members of the society join hands in denouncing orthodox beliefs that have been passed down from generation to generation and take measures against the caste system in India.

The origin of caste system in India can be traced back to the ancient times, more importantly the Mughal Empire. It is hard to pinpoint a specific era wherein the caste system in India became prevalent but it has been mostly seen that just when the Mughal era began to collapse, there was a strata of the society who rose to power and they started this segregation of people into several caste. The British rule farther strengthened the principle of caste system in India and thereby led to this vice getting a strong grip in the Indian society.

Let us check out more details pertaining to the caste system in India.

What is the caste system in India?

The caste system in India essentially refers to segregation of people on the basis of their race, lineage and breed. Therefore, this is the form of segregation wherein people are positioned not on the basis of talent or merit rather by their birth and descent.

The Origin of the Caste System in India:

There are different theories with regards to the origin of caste system in India. Some people believe that the caste system can be traced back to the divine origin. It is also perceived as an extension of the varna system because there are 4 varnas which are:

Brahmins – the top class

The Kshatriyas – the warrior section

The Vaishyas – the traders

The Shudras – the lowest caste

As it is believed that Shudras were made from Lord Brahma’s feet, they were designated to serve others and so they were not allowed to be at par with people of other caste.

Further, the segregation was also done on the basis of occupation. People who were employed doing dirty and filthy jobs were hailed to be untouchables and they were segregated from the upper caste and labelled to be the ones belonging to lower caste.

The Implications of Caste System in India:

There were several implications of the caste system in India. As per the dogma of the caste system, people hailing from the lower caste could only marry within their caste. They were not allowed access to temples and other religious buildings. At the same time, there was also restriction on their use of food and drinks. They were not allowed to touch the same vessels as the ones used by the members of the upper caste. It was believed that if a person from the lower caste would touch a vessel, the food would become polluted.

The treatment met out to members of the lower caste was so harsh that it led to scholars fighting for the need of reforms.

The Solution:

There were a lot of scholars who put forth their voice against the caste system in India. They fought for the need of reforms. Raja Ram Mohan Roy and even Mahatma Gandhi were phenomenal in their work. It is believed that it was with the right awareness that things started taking a turn for the good.

However, we are far away from reaching the state of equality. Even today, the fighting for the need of reforms still needs to go on.

Caste system in India still has its root firmly set. The lower segment of the society does not have easy access to all the facilities and they cannot walk with their head held high. It is important to create education and awareness campaign because such vices can cripple not just the society but the nation as a whole.

The youth needs to understand the futility of the concept behind the caste system in India and come forth with the right ideas to eradicate the problem once and for all.

The caste system in India has been prevalent in Hindus since ancient times. In fact, it has remained the main basis of division of the society and now is the main basis for reservation in education and jobs as well. But who laid down the principles of the caste system in India and what is it that this system has been followed as it is for centuries?

History of Caste System in India:

Early available evidence about the caste system in India shows up in the Vedas, Sanskrit-dialect writings from as back as 1500 BC, which is the base on which the Hindu scriptures rest. The Rigveda, from 1700-1100 BC, also makes reference to caste system in India and shows that social division was acceptable. The Bhagavad Gita, dated as back as 200 BC, also mentions the significance of caste. Likewise, the Laws of Manu or Manusmriti from a similar period characterizes the rights and obligations of the four unique castes or varnas. Therefore, it appears that the Hindu castes system in India started to set at some point somewhere in the range of 1000 and 200 BC.

The caste system in India was not an absolute reality during some part of Indian history. For instance, the prestigious Gupta Dynasty, which ruled from 320 to 550 BC, were from the Vaishya rank as opposed to the Kshatriya. Numerous later rulers likewise were from various caste system in India, for example, the Madurai Nayaks (1559-1739) who were Balijas, commonly known as dealers.

Divisions under the Caste system in India:

There are four major divisions of the caste system in India namely, the Brahmins which are considered as the priests, the Kshatriyas who take on the role of warriors and rulers, the Vaishyas who are the farmers, artisans and traders and lastly the Shudras who are servants and tenants.

The Significance of the Caste System in India:

Practices related with the caste system in India changed through time and crosswise over India, however, all have some regular features which are integral to the caste system in India. The three key everyday issues ruled by caste system in India are marriage, religious worship and meals.

Marriage crosswise over different castes was entirely prohibited in earlier times, a great many people even wedded inside their own sub-position or jati, although a lot has been changed now. Similarly, at feast times, anybody could acknowledge meals from the hands of a Brahmin, however, a Brahmin was not allowed to accept a meal from a lower caste. The lower castes, were in fact not allowed to even drain out water from particular wells which were meant for the upper castes. As far as religion, as the Brahmins managed religious ceremonies and other services related to the festivals as well as funerals. The Kshatriya and Vaisya ranks had all the rights to worship, yet in a few spots, Shudras were not permitted to offer their goods in the temples.

The Darker Side – The Untouchables of the Caste System in India:

Although widely it is considered that the Shudra were considered as the untouchables among the caste system in India, the reality, however, is that it was not the case in earlier times. The people who did not follow the social rules or did something which was not acceptable by the society were punished and termed as untouchables. They were considered as impure and were kept out of villages and had to do their chores themselves. They were not even allowed to eat with others and in fact, it is believed that they were not even cremated as per the rituals. However, with time, the untouchables went on to be referred to as the Shudras which created a divide and imbalance in the Hindu culture leading to frequent revolts by the Shudra for the claim to equality with others.

The caste system in India was originally built in order to divide the society as per the role in the development of the society. However, with time the upper castes started thinking of themselves as the superior ones and look down upon the lower castes with disgrace. But, with changing times, awareness among the people and initiatives by the Government things have started to change. Now, we see a lot many inter-caste and even faith marriages happening which was a prohibited act in earlier times.

Moreover, the Shudras are also allowed to enter the temples and there have been efforts to treat all as equal irrespective of their castes. This is in fact has been guaranteed to us in the Constitution of India as well. However, there are still places where the caste system in India in is practiced blindly and it is only through education that we can spread awareness among the people so as to treat all around them as equal and not to have a bias against person belonging to any particular caste system in India.

Essay on the Caste System in India – Long Essay for Competitive Exams like IAS, IPS and UPSC   (Essay 7 – 1000 Words)

Caste System in India: An Overview:

The caste system in India has been dominant since ancient ages. The caste system in India is supposed to be introduced to the Indian society by the Aryans. Even today, both rural and urban areas remain under the spell of the caste system in India. However, the obsession is much more intense in the rural areas.

The caste system in India divides the whole society into many sections. In other words, the caste system in India results in the social stratification of the people. Our ancient Vedas refer to the Chaturvarna system. Here, Chatur means ‘four’ and Varna means ‘color’. So, basically, the caste system in India relies on four main pillars (castes) in the typical Hindu culture.

People were categorized into these four castes depending upon their skin color. From higher to lower status in the society, the four major divisions of the caste system in India are Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Shudra. As stated, Brahmins hold the superior most position in Hindu society whereas Shudras were considered to be the lowest, only above the Dalits.

According to the orthodox rules related to the caste system in India, people belonging to one of the four castes could only opt for a particular set of occupations. For instance, Brahmins were basically involved in the academic and priestly tasks. Kshatriyas were known to become Kings and soldiers.

Trading, farming, and merchant tasks were available to Vaishyas. And lastly, the manual labor was assigned to the Shudras. Dalits were considered so low that they were not even included in the caste system in India and were left with the heinous jobs of manual scavenging.

Factors Flourishing the Caste System in India:

If we look at the factors that have contributed to the caste system in India since the ancient time, the first one happens to be patriarchal mindset and superiority complex of a particular section. This type of caste system in India aided the Kings and priests (religious authorities) to exploit the lower sections and manipulate them to their benefits.

Strict adherence to old customs, traditions, and superstitious beliefs, such as the concept of reincarnation and deeds of past life etc., have played a vital role in nourishing the caste system in India. Even in modern times, such conventional practices exist on a large level in society.

Thanks to our politicians banking on the gullible nature of the Indian public, their political careers and election results thrive on the caste system in India. Indian politics has a significant part in the existence and flourishing of the caste system in India.

Lack of education indirectly strengthens the caste system in India. When people are not well educated, their mindset remains rigid and orthodox. They are never able to develop an inner power to question the unfair practices such as the caste system in India which has been going on for thousands of years.

Perilous Effects of Caste System:

The 18 caste system in India has paralyzed the country in countless ways. First of all, it’s a huge blot on the progressive, democratic, and developing image of India. The caste system in India is also a severe violation of the basic human rights of the citizens of India.

The caste system in India prevents a wholesome and uniform growth of the country. Due to the evil practice of casteism, some sections enjoy a lot of social and economic luxuries whereas other sections struggle for their survival.

Untouchability is one of the many outputs of the caste system in India. It is the most degraded form of human behavior that is practiced in our country. But that is just the tip of the Iceberg. For several years, unreported and unpunished atrocities and killings of the lower castes have been going on.

The unshakable caste system in India is the foundation of honor killings in our society. People are so adamantly attached to their castes that when a couple opts for an inter-caste marriage, their ultimate punishment is death. What a shame!

Even in the job sectors, the caste system in India contributes to so many disparities and partialities when it comes to providing equal opportunities to all the citizens of India. Those occupying high ranks in the offices, do not want people from other castes entering into the system. As a result of the caste system in India, the jobs are given on the basis of caste, not talent.

In the rural areas, the situation is worse. People belonging to lower castes are often stripped of their basic income. Their lands are snatched away from them. Due to the caste system in India, rapes, murders, lynching, and ostracized of particular sections are too common to file a report for.

Counteracting the Caste System in India:

After several amendments in the constitutional rights and resulting influence of human rights, the scenario of the caste system in India is finally changing. Huge credit goes to social reformers like Dr. B R Ambedkar and Raja Ram Mohan Roy. Mahatma Gandhi was also against the practice of untouchability and tried his best to end the caste system in India.

Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes have been given special protection in the legal system of India. Many laws have been created to stop any kind of discrimination on the basis of the caste system in India. The constitution has also abolished the shameful practice of untouchability.

Although it has been a controversial topic, the reservation system has been created for the backward classes, Scheduled Castes, and Scheduled Tribes in the education and job sectors to help them progress.

There are acts that make it formidable to employ a person for the job of manual scavenging. To weaken the caste system in India, the constitution states reckless tortures and atrocities against the lower castes as criminal offenses.

To sum up, we can say that, our country is taking honest steps to end the caste system in India. Hopefully, in the coming years, the nation would be able to make a significant amount of progress in this context.

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Essay on Casteism in India for Students and Children

500 words essay on casteism in india.

India is a country which is known to be very cultural throughout the world. However, the culture rooted deep in the country also has various problems. We are a country that has a prevalent problem of Casteism. Casteism refers to discrimination based on the caste of a person. It is a great social evil that needs to be done away with. It is responsible for stopping the country from developing. Furthermore, it also causes oppression which is very bad for society.

Impact on Life

Basically, the religious and social circles dictate Casteism in India. Mostly, people living in rural areas are facing this problem tremendously. This problem is centuries old and needs time to be abolished completely.

During the early times, the villages were segregated on the basis of their caste. They were made to live in separated colonies. Even the place for buying food or getting water was segregated from those of the upper castes. For instance, the highest caste i.e. Brahmin never touched anything which belonged to a person of a lower caste. Moreover, they were denied entry into temples as they though them to be impure.

When we look at the present scenario, the impact may not be as severe as in the early periods, but it is still worrying. The people of the upper caste are very much looked up to and given access to all amenities. Whereas, on the other hand, the people of lower caste are not given such respect in certain areas even today. Sometimes, they don’t even get the same rights.

Furthermore, inter-caste marriage is considered such a taboo. It is almost a crime to marry someone you love from the other caste. While the people in urban areas have broadened their thinking, rural ones have still not. The villagers still do not believe in this concept and it also gives rise to honor killings.

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A Social Evil

Casteism is a great social evil that must be fought against. We need to get rid of this unjust system. Moreover, it only exploits the lower caste sector and mends out ruthless treatment. The lower caste people are working hard and making a place for themselves in society today.

We need to abolish this social evil right away for a progressive India. Just because a person is born into a lower caste family, does not mean it will determine their value. Caste is nothing but a concept with no reference to the worth of a person. Therefore, we must not discriminate on the basis of a caste of a person.

The government also tries to help the lower caste people through their reservation system. As they do not get equal opportunities, the government ensures they get it through the reservation. However, it also has its negative points. It kills the opportunity for deserving people and hampers the growth by barring actual talent.

FAQs on Casteism in India

Q.1 How does Casteism impact life?

A.1 Casteism impacts the quality of life of a person. It deprives them of equal opportunities. Further, it also discriminates against them and makes them feel isolated from society. People don’t feel like they belong when we discriminate against them. Moreover, people also kill others in the name of honor killing due to Casteism.

Q.2 How is Casteism a social evil?

A.2 Casteism is a social evil which hinders the growth of a country. You see it is a very regressive concept that determines a person’s worth based on their value, giving no attention to their talent and qualifications. It also causes violence and hatred amongst communities.

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Essay on Casteism in India in English for Children and Students

Table of Contents

India encompasses people belonging to a number of castes and religions. The caste system in our country has been prevalent since the ancient times. It has been a cause of numerous problems in our country. It is considered to be a social evil. Many notable Indian leaders have opposed this system. However, the caste system and the problems related to it continue to haunt our society.

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Long and Short Essay on Casteism in India in English

We have provided below short and long essay on casteism in India in English for your information and knowledge.

The essays have been written in simple yet effective English so that you can easily grasp the information and present it whenever needed.

After going through these casteism in India essay you will know what the effects of casteism in India and its society, what people are most affected by the casteism, how can casteism be controlled and what is already done by the governments etc.

The information given in the essays can be used in school/college during speech giving, essay writing and other competitions.

Short Essay on Casteism – Essay 1 (200 words)

Casteism is a system that finds its roots in the ancient times. It is being followed blindly since years and furthering the interests of the people belonging to the upper castes. The lower caste people are being exploited and there is no one to listen to their concerns.

The Indian society has broadly been classified into people belonging to four castes – The Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras. The Brahmins belong to the upper most class. In the ancient times, these people were involved in priestly activities and people held high regard for them. The Kshatriyas were the rulers and the warriors. They were considered brave and powerful and were seen next only to the Brahmins.

The Vaishyas came next. These people were involved in farming, trade and business. The Shudhras were the lower most caste. People belonging to this caste were labourers. There was also a fifth caste. These people were considered untouchables and were not even treated as humans. Although, people have taken over different professions these days the caste system still exists. People are still judged and treated based on their caste and not their profession, talent or achievements.

Casteism does not only exist in India but is also prevalent in various other countries such as Japan, Korea, Sri Lanka and Nepal to name a few. Just as India, people in these countries are also facing the wrath of this evil system.

Essay on Caste System in Modern India – Essay 2 (300 words)

Introduction

Caste System in India came into being during the ancient times and still has a strong foothold in the society. However, it would not be wrong to say that the mindset of people is changing with time. This particularly holds good for the people living in the metropolitan cities. The educated lot are becoming more accepting and are not stuck with the rigid caste system defined centuries back. The amendments in our laws have also brought about a change in this regard in the modern Indian society.

Law against Caste Discrimination

The age old Indian caste system has earned a lot of criticism. Many people came forward to fight against it but could not shake it. A dire need to establish a law against caste discrimination was felt in order to do away with this heinous social evil. Thus, after India got independence, it was decided to put a ban on discrimination based on Casteism. The constitution of India banned it in its constitution. This was a message loud and clear to all those who ill-treated the people belonging to the lower classes.

The Reservation System

While establishing law against caste discrimination was an intelligent move, another decision taken with this has proved to be destructive for our modern society. It was the introduction of the reservation or the quota system. The quota system reserved certain seats for the lower class people in the education sector as well as government jobs. This system was established to uplift the standard of living of the backward classes.

However, it has become a cause of great concern in modern India. Due to this reservation system, many times the deserving candidates from the general category do not get admission or employment opportunity while the candidates from the scheduled caste/scheduled tribe category get the same even when they are not skilled or capable enough.

Casteism should be completely done away with in modern India if we really want our country to grow and prosper.

Essay on Casteism in Indian Politics – Essay 3 (400 words)

Casteism in India is the root cause of several social and political problems. The people in power are using it as a tool to strengthen their position and juggle money. Casteism plays a major role in the decision making of the general public. It has a big impact on the vote bank and thus the politicians use it tactfully for their gain.

Casteism: A Tool to Earn Votes

Politicians visit different places to seek votes from the general public before the elections. This propaganda begins months before the elections during which the politicians put in all their efforts to persuade and influence the public to vote in their favour. Our politicians are well aware about how sensitive Indians are when it comes to their caste and religion. Thus, they use this as a medium to acquire more and more votes.

Many people, especially in the rural areas do not assess the candidate’s qualification, experience or ability to handle the position and rather vote him if he is from the same caste as them as it gives them a feeling of kinship. The politicians know this and try to stress upon this factor all the more to ensure they get maximum votes.

Lack of Fair Play

While several voters choose their leaders based on their caste, these leaders further choose their staff based on the same criteria. They prefer giving prominent positions in the party office to people belonging to their caste. This bars the deserving candidates from coming to the forefront and taking on key roles. Those who are talented and can actually work for the betterment of the society are thus left behind and the non-deserving ones come to power.

Opposition Parties Use Casteism

Many times, the political parties use Casteism as a tool to invoke hatred among the general public and thus create disturbance. People in our country get hurt very easily in the name of religion and caste. A small issue at times leads to big riots that hamper the peace of the nation. This is the simplest way to create disturbance and gives the opposition a chance to question the ruling party. The position of the ruling party weakens due to such episodes and this usually works against it during the next elections.

The political system in India is known to be corrupt. The politicians make use of all that they can to further their interest. The strong belief of Indians in the caste system is their weakness and the Indian politicians make the most of their weak point.

Essay on Casteism in India – Essay 4 (500 words)

India is known to be divided by Casteism. Among other social evils, Casteism has been a major one that has hindered the growth of talent in our country. It has also been a cause of oppression. People have suffered immensely at the hands of this baseless system in the past and are still suffering. Many learned leaders in our country have tried to oppose and fight the caste system but it still persists and is only growing stronger.

Casteism: Dictates Religious and Social Life

Casteism in India has majorly dictated the religious and social life of people in India particularly of those living in the rural areas of our country. Since centuries, people living in the Indian villages have been segregated based on their caste. They live in different colonies and are treated on the basis of their caste. In the earlier times, people from different castes strictly went to different wells to fetch water and bought food from different places. A Brahmin never had food touched by a person belonging to the lower caste.

The upper class people in India are looked up to and respected. They are the privileged ones. The lower class people on the other hand are looked down upon. They are treated badly and are deprived of many rights. In the earlier times, people belonging to the lower castes were not even allowed to enter the temples as they were considered impure.

Marrying a person belonging to the other caste is considered to be a crime in our country. While people living in the metropolitans have become open to the idea of inter-caste marriages in the modern era, in the villages it is still seen as a heinous crime. People do not hesitate taking the lives of those who marry someone from another caste.

Casteism: A Social Evil

Casteism is considered to be a social evil. It is an unjust system which is ruthlessly exploiting a section of the society. People from the lower classes are trying hard to make a place in the society. However, even if a person from the lower class seeks education and gets a good job, he is still not given the kind of respect he should get in the society. This has been a cause of distress in the people belonging to the lower classes.

Casteism: A Cause of Concern for Upper Classes

Casteism in the modern era has become a cause of concern for the people belonging to the upper classes too. This is because the government of India has introduced quota system in order to raise the standard of living of people belonging to the lower classes. This has been done to provide greater opportunities to the people belonging to the lower classes so that they can come at par with the upper class people. However, this has done more harm than good to the society. This is killing talent and contributing to brain drain in India.

Casteism is hampering the growth and development of our country as it bars the actual talent to nurture properly. It also becomes a basis of hatred among people belonging to different sections. This system is causing harm to the individuals as well as the society as a whole.

Long Essay on Casteism – Essay 5 (600 words)

Casteism divides the society into several parts. It is a threat to any society as it creates biasness and negatively impacts the behaviour of the individuals. It is prevalent in many parts of the world. India has been a victim of casteism since centuries. This evil system has been eating our society and hindering its development.

Origin of Casteism in India

Many theories have sprung up regarding the origin of casteism in India. As per one of these theories, the caste system in India was introduced with the arrival of the Aryans who intruded our country in 1500 BC. It is believed that they came up with this system to segregate the society to make things more manageable and exercise better control.

They segregated people based on their profession. It was their strategy to rule more efficiently. This system should have been done away with as their rule ended however it continued as it was serving the upper caste of the Indian society. The upper caste people have been promoting this system since centuries and the lower class people have been suffering at their hands.

As per Manusmriti, the ancient text on Hinduism, Casteism came into being in 1,000 BC. On the other hand, according to the Hindu theologians, this system was introduced by Brahma who is the creator of the universe. The Hindu theologians believe that the people who came from the head of Lord Brahma became priests or teachers, those who came from his arm became warriors or rulers, those who came from his thighs became labourers or peasants while those who came from his feet indulged in cleaning and sweeping tasks.

Different Castes and Impact on the Society

The Indian society has been divided into four sections based on Casteism. These are Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudhras. The Brahmins are the top most in the hierarchy. They are considered to be the superior caste. In the ancient times, the priests formed a part of this section. Then came the Kshatriyas who were the rulers and warriors in the earlier times.

The Vaishyas belonged to the working class. The merchants, artisans and labourers formed a part of this group in the ancient times. The shudhras were the ones who indulged in cleaning and sweeping tasks. This is the lowest caste. Although people have changed their professions over the time, they are still divided into different castes based on the profession their ancestors were involved in.

The upper caste people look down upon the lower caste people and exploit them. Unity among citizens is important for the growth and development of any country. The citizens must all stand united and get equal opportunities to work, study and prosper. A country where people do not stand together and support each other cannot develop. Unfortunately, Casteism has divided India. People in our country are divided in the name of religion and castes. They have a lot of hatred for the people belonging to other castes and religions. This is proving to be a big hindrance in the growth of our society.

Casteism is a deep rooted evil in the Indian society. Although the mindset of people has been changing with time and laws have been introduced to stop discrimination against it nothing much has been achieved in this direction. The lower class people are still being exploited by the upper class people in India.

On the other hand, the reservation law introduced to uplift the lower class people has proved to be unjust. The constitution of India must do away with the caste system completely. People should be given admission and employment based on their knowledge, skill and ability and not based on their caste. This would bring in true freedom.

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For An Informed Ambedkar Age

Caste In School Education

Pabitra Saha 

The diversity of society in India plays an important role in the assumptions of any theory when we are living in social, economic, political, and cultural hierarchies. The understanding of freedom, dignity, self-esteem, etc. must be seen in the context of Indian society, where these are absent in the unprivileged, marginalized, deprived society. The cognitive and social processes among children give a sense of understanding of the caste system and caste in education. The language of the marginalised in society is one of the most important contextual ways of understanding society, where the mother tongue is valuable in itself. The lack of opportunities and the lack of quality in education in schooling processes differ, but the connection between education and socioeconomic development in the Indian context is completely different. Here is an attempt to describe the caste system and how education plays an important role in the lives of marginalised or deprived people. I’m trying to understand caste and education with the following questions:

• What is caste?
• What could be the role of caste in pedagogical practices in schooling processes?
• Why study caste in education?

I discovered that language is an important part of understanding caste in the educational system. Explicit caste-based discrimination is one of the many evils that the education system must address. The entire identity of a community or caste is marginalised, subjected to deprivation as a result of caste hierarchies, specific bias, discrimination, and so on. The rigidity of the Hindu society is always a barrier to the overall development of the people as well as children in school.

Caste is a dominant reality in society in which privileged upper caste people dominate the lower castes in social, economic, political, and other ways. Caste is a real curse to Indian society as well as the nation. “Caste continues to define access to food, jobs, education, and marriage partners.” (Omvedt, 2004,p.1179). As a result, lower caste people have always attempted to survive while upper caste people have always attempted to rule over them. Upper caste dominance can be seen in the major social and economic institutions of society.

One question here is whether we can speak of caste as a source of national pride when democracy and caste are totally opposed to each other. Because democracy promotes equality rather than caste, and caste is inequality based on birth. Based on my personal experiences in school in my village, I can say that untouchables were completely discriminated against, being forced to sit in the corner of the classroom and eat below the school veranda while upper caste children sat on the veranda. When we celebrated Ganesh puja and Saraswati puja, they were completely discriminated against by teachers and students, and they were not allowed to touch the Ganesh or Saraswati idols, and prasad was passed from upper caste hands. I completely agree with Geeta Nambissan’s statement that “The status of communities as ‘untouchables’ in the Hindu caste system was the most serious impediment to their education.” (Nambissan, G.,1996,p.1011)

Caste in education in India

Education is one of the most important tools for improving the lives of the marginalised. According to Article 46 of the Indian constitution, “The State shall promote with special care the educational and economic interests of the weaker sections of the people, and, in particular, of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes, and shall protect them from social injustice and all forms of exploitation.” This is a constitutional provision for disadvantaged people in India who were historically marginalised and deprived and are still suffering in Indian society. The infrastructural system of the schools where Dalits study must be revisited, and the functioning of the schools observed. Upper caste students, because of their superior social capital and opportunities, are given preferential treatment in school programmes such as mid-day meals, extracurricular activities, and co-curricular activities. The following issues have played a vital role in the functioning of the educational system:

Reservation

In the context of the entire educational system, reservations in employment, education, and institutions play an important part in achieving the values of equality, liberalism, and socialism. When we discussed reservations in Indian society in our class, we would think that they are unfair because they pose problems for people in terms of jobs and education etc. There are many aspects to reservation. While marginalised people are dominated by others everywhere, we always blame the quota system. Reservation is important because education is one of the most important tools for improving the lives of the marginalised communities for improving their lives and verall development of society. (Wankhede, G. 2016, p.83) There is a need for occupational and social mobility in Indian society in all fields, so that no one feels inferior in any kind of circumstances. Throughout history, untouchables have suffered from the social stigma of untouchability, which is why they require reservation to improve their lives not only educationally but also economically and socially.

Marginalised children have suffered for many years because they have not been guided or supported in any way. And they are alleged to be without merit. How will they improve their skills or knowledge if they are not guided or supported? “Phule wanted a reservation on the basis of caste and believed that it would break the monopoly of Brahmins in the field of administration.” (Raman, K.S., 1991, p.1327). Reservation for SCs, STs, OBCs, and minorities improve their lives while also maintaining equality without discrimination.

Pedagogical practices in schooling processes

Schools are worthy places where marginalised children can be transformed from vulnerable to invulnerable, but they face unexpected discrimination at school. The curriculum and pedagogical practices play an important role in the child’s educational development. M. Murali Krishna said, “Whatever problems SCs, STs, OBCs, and minorities face are the result of economic marginalisation, social vulnerability, and educational backwardness.” If the learning activities in the school are inclusive in nature, it may be beneficial to achieve equity in the society. If teaching strategies in the school meet the needs of the children, the children will feel safe.

The educational experiences of children show how pedagogical practices are being used and misused for the development of children. The constitutional provisions and policies help marginalised children in attending school, but the educational situation in India is fraught with economic problems. Minorities, scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, and other backward classes face problems in school and in society as a result of pressure from schools and authorities, which is an impediment to their development. A year ago, I went to a government school in my village and tried to persuade the teachers to organise an essay competition; they agreed, but they asked what the topic would be. Then I asked if we could take the topic of ‘Caste’. Their reaction was humiliating to me, and we did not organise the essay contest at school. I deduced that they did not want to discuss caste, which is very important today. The curriculum focuses on the perspectives of the upper castes, not the lower castes. For example, in school, I did not study Ambedkar’s thoughts on caste; I studied the constitution, and that too in a limited way.

One of the most important ways to ensure equality is universal access to educational accessibility. Inclusion in education should be possible if the people become aware of the problems of the lower castes and the marginalised.

Article 46 of the Indian constitution talks about promoting the educational and economic interests of the SCs, STs, and other weaker sections, but the reality at the grassroots level is different, with people suffering from various forms of discrimination due to upper castes hindering the spread of education. Lower caste people are always dominated by upper caste people due to a lack of social capital. Reservation is critical for maintaining equality because the upper castes are socially, educationally, and economically privileged. Reservation aids and improves educational mobility and changes the lives of the marginalised.

The pedagogical issues, subject knowledge, and so on are a concern for children’s education as well as higher education, and teacher’s orientation and training programmes play a vital role. Because “If students feel frustration, depression, aggression, it affects academic preparations in school.” (Jojo, B. 2013, p.393). The culture and customs of the upper castes keep the lower castes apart, and this is where inequality is born.

References          

• Geetha B. Nambissan, 1996, Equity in Education- schooling of Dalit Children in India Vol.31, Issue No. 16-17: 1011-24
• Murali Krishna, M. (2012), Pedagogic practice and Violence against Dalits in Schooling, in Sleeter, C. Upadhyaya, S.B., Mishra, A. and Kumar, S. (eds.) school Education, Pluralism and marginality: Comparative Perspectives, New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, pp.54-82
• Bipin Jojo, 2013, Decline of Ashram Schools in Central and Eastern India: Impact on Education of ST children, Social Change 43(3), pp. 377-395
• Ramachandran, V., Naorem, T.C. ( 2013), What it means to Be a Dalit or Tribal child in our schools( A synthesis of a six-state qualitative study), pp.43-52
• Joshi, S., Raman, K.S.,( 1991), Jotirao Phule: An Incomplete Renaissance, pp.1325-1327
• Chandra Pal Singh Chauhan( 2008), Education and caste in India, Asia Pacific Journal of Education,pp.217-233
• Omvedt, G. (2004), Caste system and Hinduism, pp. 1179-1180
• Nadkarni, M.V.(204), Caste Myth in Hinduism, pp.207-208

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Caste System Essay

Caste system is a social evil that is present in the Indian society since the ancient times. It has been criticized immensely by the people over the years. However, it still has a strong hold on the social and political system of the country. A number of social evils have been prevalent in the Indian society since centuries and caste system is one of them. The concept has undergone certain changes over the centuries and is not as stringent as it was in the earlier times. However, it still impacts the religious, social and political lives of the people in the country.

Long and Short Essay on Caste System in India in English

We have provided below short and long essay on caste system in India for your knowledge and information.

After going through these essays you will know where from the caste system originated and its impact on the society and nation’s growth.

You will also know what steps should be taken to eliminate caste discrimination.

You can choose a Caste System in India Essay from the following and present it during your school/college events where you need to write an essay, take part in a debate, give speech etc.

Caste System in India Essay 1 (100 words)

Caste system in India has been prevalent since the ancient times. However, the concept has been moulded and evolved over the centuries by those in power. It underwent a major change particularly during the Mughal Rule and the British Raj. Nevertheless, people were and are still treated differently based on their caste. The social system basically has two varied concepts – Varna and Jati.

While Varna refers to the four broad social divisions namely Brahmins (teacher/priests), Kshatriyas (kings/warriors), Vaishyas (traders) and Shudras (labourers/servants), it got degenerated into Jatis, determined by birth. Jati is generally derived from the trade or occupation of the community, and is known to be hereditary.

Caste System in India Essay 2 (150 words)

India has been under the spell of the evil caste system since centuries. This system finds its roots in the ancient times and has undergone change over the time. The rulers of medieval, early modern and modern India moulded it to suit their convenience. Those belonging to the higher castes were treated with high regard and those from the lower caste were looked down upon all along.

In today’s times, caste system in India has become the basis of reservation when it comes to acquiring education and securing jobs.

The social system in India basically comprises two different concepts, Varna and Jati. Varna is said to be the class of the person. Under this there are four categories – Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras. Jati on the other hand is said to be a person’s caste and finds reference to a person’s birth. There are thousands of Jatis and these are generally determined by the traditional occupation of a community.

Caste System in India Essay 3 (200 words)

The origin of caste system in India dates back to the ancient times. There are two different perspectives for its origin in the country. These are either based on socio-economic factors or ideological factors.

The first school of thought is based on the ideological factors and as per this, caste system finds its base in four Varnas. The perspective formed centuries ago was especially common among the scholars from the British colonial era. This school of thought categorises people based on their class. There are basically four classes – Brahmins (teachers/priests) , Kshatriyas (kings/warriors), Vaishyas (traders) and Shudras (labourers/servants).

The second school of thought is based on the socio-economic factors and as per this the system is rooted in the political, economic and material history of India. This perspective was common among the post-colonial era scholars. This school of thought categorises people based on their caste, which is determined by the traditional occupation of their community.

Caste system has had a strong hold in India and continues to do so. Today, this system has become the basis of reservation in education and jobs. Due to political reasons where castes constitute vote banks for parties; the reservation system is still intact in the country.

Caste System in India Essay 4 (250 words)

Caste System in India divides people into four different categories – Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras. It is believed that these groups came into being from Brahma, the Hindu God of creation. Priests, intellectuals and teachers come under the category of Brahmins. They stand at the top of the hierarchy and it is believed that they came from Brahma’s head. Next in line are the Kshatriyas who are the rulers and warriors. These apparently came from God’s arms. Merchants, traders and farmers come under the Vaishya category and are said to have come from His thighs and the labour class forms a part of the fourth category that is the Shudras – these are said to have come from Brahma’s feet.

Then there is yet another category which was added later on and is now known as the dalits or the untouchables. These comprise of the street sweepers or cleaners. This category was considered to be outcastes.

These main categories are further divided into as many as 3,000 castes and 25,000 sub-castes, based on their occupation.

As per Manusmriti, the most significant book on the Hindu laws, Varna system came into being to establish order and regularity in the society. The concept is said to be 3,000 years old and distinguishes people based on their dharma (duty) and karma (work).

The religious as well as social life of the people in the country has been influenced largely by the caste system since centuries and the trend continues today, with political parties misusing it for their own ends.

Caste System in India Essay 5 (300 words)

Caste system has been prevalent in our country since time immemorial and continues to have a strong hold on the society and political system. People have been divided in four different categories of class – Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras. Historically it is believed that this social system came into being in the country in around 1500 BC with the arrival of the Aryans. It is said that Aryans introduced this system in order to control the local population at that time. In order to make things systematic, they defined main roles and assigned them to groups of people. However, in the 20 th century, this theory was dismissed as it was stated that Aryans never invaded the country.

As per Hindu theologians, it is said that this system came into being with the Hindu God Brahma who is known as the creator of the universe. As per this theory, the people who hold the highest stature in the society that is the priests and teachers came from Brahma’s head, the ones from the second category were the warriors who came from God’s arm, those belonging to the third category, that is, the traders and merchants came from God’s thighs and the peasants and workers, that is, those belonging to the lowest category came from Brahma’s feet.

The actual origin of the caste system is thus not known yet. Manusmriti, the most ancient text on Hinduism, however has cited this system in 1,000 BC. In the ancient times, the communities followed the class system stringently. While the people from the upper classes enjoyed several privileges, those from the lower class were deprived of many things and thus suffered immensely. Though not as stringent as in the earlier times, even today a lot of discrimination is done based on a person’s caste.

Caste System in India Essay 6 (400 words)

India has been under the clutches of the evil caste system since the ancient period though the exact origin of this system isn’t known as there are different theories that state different stories about its initiation. As per Varna system, people were broadly divided into four different categories. Here is a look at the people who fall under each of these categories:

• Brahmins – Priests, Teachers and Scholars
• Kshatriyas – Rulers and Warriors
• Vaishyas – Farmers, Merchants and Traders
• Shudras – Labourers

The Varna system later got degenerated into caste system. The society was divided into 3,000 castes and as many as 25,000 sub-castes based on the occupation of the community that a person was born into.

As per one theory, the Varna system initiated in the country as the Aryans arrived here in around 1500 BC. It is said that Aryans introduced this system to have control over people and make things work more systematically. They assigned different roles to different groups of people. As per the Hindu theologians, on the other hand, the system initiated with Brahma, the Hindu God who is known as the creator of the universe.

As Varna system degenerated into caste system, a lot of discrimination was done on the basis of caste. People belonging to the higher castes were treated with great respect and enjoyed several privileges while those from the lower classes were scorned at and were deprived of several things. Inter-caste marriages were strictly forbidden.

The caste system in urban India today has declined immensely. Though, people from the lower classes are still not respected in the society as the government offers several benefits to them. Caste has become the basis of reservation in the country. People belonging to lower classes have a reserved quota in the education sector and also when it comes to securing government jobs.

After the departure of the British, the Constitution of India banned the discrimination based on the caste system. It is then that the quota system was introduced for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes. BR Ambedkar who authored the Constitution of India was himself a Dalit and the concept of social justice for protecting the interests of these communities on the lower rung of society was considered to be a great move in the Indian history, though now it is being misused for narrow political reasons by different parties in the country.

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Essay on Caste Discrimination

Students are often asked to write an essay on Caste Discrimination in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Caste Discrimination

Understanding caste discrimination.

Caste discrimination is when people are treated badly because of the social group they are born into. This system ranks groups and gives some more power or respect than others. It’s like being picked last for a team, not because you’re not good, but just because of your last name.

Where It Happens

This unfair treatment is most common in some parts of the world, like India. Here, the caste system has been around for a long time. People from lower castes, like the Dalits, often face this discrimination in jobs, education, and in society.

Effects on People

When someone faces caste discrimination, it can hurt their feelings, make it hard for them to find good jobs, or go to school. It’s like being told you can’t play a game even though you want to and are able to.

Fighting Against Discrimination

Many people and groups are working to stop caste discrimination. They teach others why it’s wrong and help those who have been treated unfairly. It’s like standing up to a bully in the playground so everyone can play together.

Also check:

• Speech on Caste Discrimination

250 Words Essay on Caste Discrimination

What is caste discrimination.

Caste discrimination is when people are treated unfairly because of the caste they are born into. Castes are like groups in society, and some people think certain groups are better or worse than others. This unfair treatment can happen in schools, jobs, and even in public places.

In some countries, like India, caste has been a big part of society for a long time. People from lower castes, often called Dalits, face many problems. They can have trouble getting good jobs, and kids might be picked on in school. Sometimes, they are not allowed to use the same wells or temples as people from higher castes.

When people are treated badly because of their caste, it hurts their feelings and can make their lives very hard. They might not get the same chances as others to do well in life. This can mean they stay poor or don’t get the respect they deserve.

Fighting Against Caste Discrimination

Many people and groups are trying to stop caste discrimination. They say everyone should have the same rights and opportunities, no matter what caste they are from. Laws have been made to protect people from being treated badly because of their caste. But even with laws, changing how people think and act takes time.

Caste discrimination is wrong because it judges people by the group they were born into, not by what they can do or who they are as a person. Everyone should be treated fairly, and we all have a part to play in making sure this happens.

500 Words Essay on Caste Discrimination

Caste discrimination is a form of unfair treatment of people based on the caste they are born into. Caste is a system that splits society into different levels, and it has been a part of many cultures, especially in India. The caste system decides what job you can do, who you can marry, and how other people see you.

The Roots of the Caste System

Long ago, society was divided into four main groups called varnas. These were the Brahmins (priests and teachers), Kshatriyas (warriors and rulers), Vaishyas (farmers and merchants), and Shudras (laborers). Over time, these groups got split into many smaller ones called castes or ‘jatis’. This system became very strict, and people were not allowed to change their caste or mix with other castes.

How Caste Discrimination Happens

Caste discrimination can happen in many ways. Some people might not let others from different castes into their homes or eat with them. In schools, children from lower castes might be made to sit separately or even face harsh words from others. At work, people from higher castes might get better jobs or pay, even if they are not more skilled.

The Pain of Being Left Out

Being treated badly because of your caste can hurt a lot. It can make people feel sad, angry, or even hopeless. It is not fair for someone’s future to be limited just because of the family they were born into. Everyone should have the same chance to learn, work, and be happy.

Many people and groups are working hard to stop caste discrimination. They teach others that no one should be treated differently because of their caste. Laws have also been made to protect people from this kind of unfair treatment. For example, in India, there are laws that help people from lower castes get into schools and jobs.

What We Can Do

Everyone can help fight caste discrimination. We can start by treating everyone the same, no matter what caste they come from. We can also stand up for others if we see them being treated unfairly. It’s important to learn about and respect each other’s differences.

Caste discrimination is wrong and hurts our society. By working together and treating everyone with respect, we can create a world where your caste does not decide your future. Let’s aim for a place where every person has the same opportunities to succeed and live a happy life.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

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