FINALLY understanding CASTE better. Friday March 2, 2012

For Wednesday, we had to read a chapter from the book "Arrow of the Blue Skinned God" for our individual group. At first, I was trying to understand what the chapter was about, since it started out with the story of Sita, and how she was being pestered by a crow, and then her husband Rama destroys the unruly bird. As I kept reading, I saw that Rama stayed true to his caste, to his order of warrior.

I noticed that the men being interviewed were explaining that cast was something that made everyone stay to their own order. It was sort of a divine responsibility, with the ability to keep everyone organized and in harmony. It was only when the government and modern politics banned it, that problems started arising. Those at the "bottom" were all of the sudden given things and those who were at the top, had to fight to keep their "standing" in society.

Caste has also had an impact on the culture of India, although it was mostly paired with Hinduism. I thought that it was interesting that there was that deep connection between the culture and the religion, yet when religion was taken out of the equation, the aspects of the religion still applied to the culture. That sounds a lot more confusing than I intended it to be, but the best example that I can find is when I talked to Venkat, our Tamil teacher, and I asked him if he worshiped in the Hindu temple. He said "well, no, I am not Hindu by religion, but I am still Hindu by culture".

The fact that caste has been banned, does not separate the people from their deep culture, that is tightly interwoven with the Hindu religion. This helps me better understand why certain things are done in the villages and even in the cities of India--at least from the little that I have read. I am sure much more will make sense, or I'll be even more confused once I enter the field and see things for myself.