>They have a particular job that is theirs by tradition, the Nai being the barbers, the Lohar the blacksmiths, the Dhobi the washermen, and so on. Traditionally they would do these jobs at the command of the high caste individuals in exchange for shares of grain, but this part has broken down and they work for cash.
Since he’s going all ethnographical here, fun fact – in the Punjab these castes were grouped together as Kammi’s (workers) historically and Jats really looked down on them, because Jats thought someone who had to labor and then get grain from someone else was a loser and the Jat ideal was a yeoman farmer type.
Borysk5 on
Sometimes it really seems like India needs someone like Mao to crush down traditional caste and dowry system for the country prosper, but I can’t imagine how it could be done without Mao’s extremism
HoveringMango on
Caste system is bad, not saying otherwise but I feel people need to go to India or interact with more Indians before writing about it. Caste =/= varna, mistake from the first para of that article itself. Caste == jati which is hereditary and endogamous.
It’s also regional, a caste can be considered upper caste in one region whereas it will become a lower caste in another.
My problem isn’t with analysing caste, my issue is about western writers who have never been to India, barely talk to maybe 2 Indians and then writing entire thesis about it.
That kind of discourse creates a lot of problem, one of the prominent one is equating it with racism+ slave trade in contemporary history.
3 Comments
>They have a particular job that is theirs by tradition, the Nai being the barbers, the Lohar the blacksmiths, the Dhobi the washermen, and so on. Traditionally they would do these jobs at the command of the high caste individuals in exchange for shares of grain, but this part has broken down and they work for cash.
Since he’s going all ethnographical here, fun fact – in the Punjab these castes were grouped together as Kammi’s (workers) historically and Jats really looked down on them, because Jats thought someone who had to labor and then get grain from someone else was a loser and the Jat ideal was a yeoman farmer type.
Sometimes it really seems like India needs someone like Mao to crush down traditional caste and dowry system for the country prosper, but I can’t imagine how it could be done without Mao’s extremism
Caste system is bad, not saying otherwise but I feel people need to go to India or interact with more Indians before writing about it. Caste =/= varna, mistake from the first para of that article itself. Caste == jati which is hereditary and endogamous.
It’s also regional, a caste can be considered upper caste in one region whereas it will become a lower caste in another.
My problem isn’t with analysing caste, my issue is about western writers who have never been to India, barely talk to maybe 2 Indians and then writing entire thesis about it.
That kind of discourse creates a lot of problem, one of the prominent one is equating it with racism+ slave trade in contemporary history.