Caste in the past

The English word 'caste' comes from the Portuguese casta, meaning pure breed. Indian languages use two different terms:

• Varna: the four-fold division of society into Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra (with the 'untouchables' kept outside it). It is an all-India scheme.
• Jati: the many local caste groups, numbering in thousands, each with its own name, customs and occupation. In daily life, people belong to a jati.

The varna order is about three thousand years old. In the late Vedic period it was flexible: it was not fixed by birth. Over time it became rigid and hereditary.

Defining features of caste:

• membership is by birth only;
• endogamy: marriage only within the caste;
• rules about food and eating: what you may eat, and with whom;
• hierarchy: every caste has a rank, higher or lower;
• sub-castes within castes (segmental organisation);
• a hereditary occupation, passed from parents to children.

Two principles hold the system together:

• Difference and separation: each caste is kept distinct, with its own rules, marrying and eating separately.
• Wholism and hierarchy: the castes fit together into one whole, ranked by ideas of purity and pollution. Castes seen as 'pure' are on top; those seen as 'polluting' at the bottom.

So castes were unequal but also complementary: each did work the others depended on. This mutual dependence made the system seem natural to those who gained from it, but it was deeply unjust to those at the bottom. Reformers such as Jotiba Phule and Ayyankali fought this injustice.