Vacation Travel India

It is difficult for any newcomer to be accepted until the locals can slot the person into a category. The inevitable grilling, “What is your native place?” is not just some tiresome gambit to keep a conversation from flagging. The responses are of intense interest, for the name of someone’s village, town or locality reveals a great deal to the knowledgeable.

Being able to pigeonhole a newcomer in the social hierarchy eases tensions between strangers. Indians are open and noticeably un-neurotic because they are confident that their social responses are completely correct. If a guest is not shown proper respect, it is taken as a deliberate insult towards his or her group, and the onus is upon the insulted to figure out why. Such caste concerns meant that the adoption of orphans with unknown origins was quite rare until the late 1990s. Now, more couples dare to adopt an abandoned child, usually a girl.

Converts to different religions, particularly Christianity and Buddhism, often maintain their caste links and sometimes never entirely relinquish their Hindu beliefs. Modern-day Mazbhis of Punjab, adherents of the Sikh faith, recognize the primacy of their caste origin (sweeper) in intermarriages with sweepers who converted to Christianity. Though the bride wears white, a vermilion spot on her forehead symbolizes her married status in a traditionally Hindu way.

Religious order

Schisms and sects combined with caste to complicate India’s religious order, even across religions that claim to have transcended caste, such as Islam.

Buddhism and Jainism were early religious and social movements that revolted against a strict caste structure and against the Brahmanical rigidities of Vedic ritual sacrifice. Buddhism was perceived as an assertion of Kshatriya power against Brahman supremacy.

Pali, the language of early Buddhist texts, became a vehicle of protest against elitist Brahmanical Sanskrit. Jainism found support among the trading caste. Neither movement completely severed its links with Hinduism and in turn lost much support with the rise of bhakti, devotional Hinduism.

Modern movements, the rationalist philosophy of the Brahmo Samaj and the evangelical fervour of the Arya Samaj’s shuddi conversions, may be seen as Western and Christian in inspiration. However, explanation was also sought from within Hindu philosophy - a characteristic accommodation of new ideas and influences.

Even today, language represents power and access to knowledge. Riots erupt if regional languages are seen to be snubbed by the English- and Hindi-speaking elite. When television newscasts were broadcast only in Hindi, Tamil Nadu erupted in violence. This was a grassroots refusal to accept the tongue of the conqueror, and some South Indian politicians are actively lobbying for Tamil to be ranked alongside Hindi and English as an official language for government documents.

Proselytising religions, particularly Islam and Christianity, encountered resistance at first, but both could offer concepts of immediate salvation to the dispossessed and, more crucially, both were associated with ruling powers of long tenure. Caste Hindus sometimes resent any favouritism shown to these groups by government authorities.

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You can choose from several India tour packages but one of the most important parts of your travel must be getting to know the Indian people.

Hindu scriptures predict a time of chaos and deprivation when the Code of Manu will be forgotten, and the caste structure will come crashing down. Some claim these bad times, called kaliyuga, are here already. Unemployment has forced many Hindus to desert the old village ways in order to eke out a living in contemporary India. Originally, the needy could approach sympathetic members of their own jati, who would provide a meal, a job or shelter. The traditional division of labor is breaking down, albeit slowly. K.R. Narayanan was born a Dalit and had to fight convention for an education. Following years as a high-profile lawyer and diplomat, he was President of the Republic between 1997 and 2002.

In India’s big cities, people from different castes often end up as neighbors and can’t help rubbing shoulders on the bus or in cinema halls. Unlike in the villages, where caste groups tend to live in segregated areas and traditionally only eat with their own caste members, there is some leeway for intermingling in the cities. Living in such close proximity occasionally sparks confrontation between different caste groups, especially those jockeying for position. Attempts to prove status are as crucial for career advancement as for family alliances. Opportunities, whether through quotas or connections, hinge on an Indian’s caste and community.

Although banned by the Indian constitution for 50 years, atrocities against the lowest castes occur daily. In the early 20th century Mahatma Gandhi insisted that everyone must take turns cleaning the toilet, and renamed outcastes (then known as “Untouchables”) the Harijans (”Children of God”). But many now prefer the less patronizing term Dalit (literally “the oppressed”), which is more forthright than the bureaucratic acronym SC & ST (Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes). This terminology comes from the Indian constitution, written by B.K. Ambedkar, an early Dalit campaigner and brilliant lawyer, who converted to Buddhism in protest at what he saw as the divisive Hindu veneration of caste.

When New Delhi tried to implement an affirmative action plan to set aside half of all federal jobs for the officially underprivileged - which make up 85 percent of India’s population -dozens of middle-class students burnt themselves alive to protest at their loss of opportunities. These so-called “caste martyrs” contributed to the overthrow of Prime Minister V.P. Singh, and reservation continues to be a controversial issue in many areas of the country.

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