What is the Hindu caste system?

Although the earlier Hindu scriptures had mentioned many gods, the highest goal, according to the later Vedic literature, was union with Brahma, the impersonal absolute. The priests of Brahma became known as the Brahmins, who performed the ritual duties for the community, which were demanded in the early Vedic writings to appease the many gods. The Brahmins also maintained a monopoly on the higher truths of pantheistic Brahmanism. Brahmins grew more and more powerful until they became the highest social class.

Around 500 B.C., still more writings were added to the Hindu scriptures. Their purpose was to establish Varna, a rigid caste system, or social hierarchy. One hymn tells how four castes of people came from the head, arms, thighs and feet of the creator god, Brahma. The four castes were the Brahmins (priests); the Kshatriyas (warriors and nobles); Vaisyas (merchants and artisans); and Shudras (slaves). Each caste was then subdivided into hundreds of subcastes, arranged in order of rank. Only Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaisyas were allowed to take full advantage of all that the Hindu religion has to offer, but the Shudras were not allowed to hear the Vedas or to use them to try to find salvation.

Even lower on the social totem pole were the Untouchables who, until the twentieth century, were considered so low they were outside the caste system and, most of the time, were treated as subhuman. In the past, Untouchables always had the dirtiest and filthiest jobs, drank polluted water, ate carrion meat, wore clothing of disgrace and

The Hindus are divided into several classes, called castes. Each caste keeps itself to itself, as we say sometimes, and will not even eat with the members of another caste. Those of high caste will refuse to give a drink of water or a piece of bread to one of a lower caste. But in one thing high and low caste Hindus are alike: they want salvation—a salvation of which many of them have never heard, for as soon as a Hindu becomes a Christian he loses his caste, and is often called to suffer the loss of all his property and friends for Christ’s sake. But I have not told you anything about Indian babies yet, have I, Jenny?”

When India became a nation in 1947, the government officially outlawed discrimination against Untouchables. The greatest force for changing these laws and customs, which kept Untouchables in virtual slavery, has been the influence of Christian missionaries, who have played a major role in challenging the social‑economic‑religious power blocs in India. Still, the social reality in many Indian villages is that change comes slowly and grudgingly.

There are many problems and responsible brethren will always find themselves on the horns of a dilemma. There are so many astonishingly poor people who suffer immensely under a grinding poverty. There are many orphans and undernourished, neglected children. The iniquitous caste system still exerts its pressure, even influencing believers in marriage choices. The unchristian dowry system, whereby a father must pay his future son in law to take his daughter in marriage, still persists. The ignorance of many means that diseases such as polio and leprosy, besides almost every other kind of tropical disease, are found untreated among the saints. The problems of India are exacerbated by poor medical resources, lack of hygiene and sanitation. There are beggars everywhere, and even little children are sent out at all hours of the day and night to beg.

Other Hindu concepts Buddha rejected included the Brahmin priesthood and the entire Hindu sacrificial system; instead, he emphasized ethics over ritual. He rejected the caste system and taught that enlightenment was open to anyone‑including women‑not just Brahmin males. Finally, Buddha radically challenged all the indifferent Hindu gods and goddesses, saying they were essentially unimportant in the quest for enlightenment.

A more difficult way to achieve moksha is the path of knowledge (inana), which includes self‑renunciation and meditation on the supreme pantheistic reality of Hinduism. This very aesthetic path is open to men only in the highest castes, and it is described in the Upanishads, a series of philosophical treatises composed beginning around 600 B.C. The Upaninshad texts teach that the world as we experience it is mere maya (illusion) and that Brahma is the only thing that really exists and has meaning.

We were able to spend one Lord's Day with the saints in the village of Bro. Sunil Ghosh, and were encouraged to see these simple poor believers living for the Lord amongst Hindu neighbours. It is not easy to be a Christian in an Indian village surrounded by Hindus and all the strange customs of village life. In India, people think that only low castes become Christians.

They do not go to any day or Sunday school, but are taught by their mothers how to plait their hair, paint their faces, cook rice, and embroider on silk or muslin. If the parents are poor, they sometimes allow their daughters to go to the well for water, or to the market to buy food, always taking care that their faces are quite covered with a large white or blue cotton veil; but if the parents are of high caste, their daughters never go out except when carried by native servants in a kind of covered chair, or box, called a palanquin, or palky.

The ancient form of Hinduism differs from its present, winch is known under the name of Brahman-ism. But a mere glance at the course of idolatry after its authoritative establishment and organization in Egypt does not require more that the notice of the transition from the pantheistic aspect of the ancient Hindu mythology to the fundamental idea of one god, as Brahm, with polytheistic associations. There is another idolatrous system, that of Buddha. This is said to be less gross and barbarous than Brahmanism. While Brahm is a myth, Buddha may have been a real personage who, disgusted with the cruelties practised by the Brahmans, formed a sect of his own. But the Buddhists were driven out of India and settled principally in Ceylon. Some went to China, others to Tartary, and possibly even to Scandinavia. The Brahmans on the contrary would not go beyond the limits of India, their sacred region. In their emigration the Buddhists carried images of Buddha into these countries whither they went, and worshipped him as supreme, but mixed with his worship some of the Brahminical or Egyptian mythology. Thus the stream of that system of idolatry which had its beginning in Egypt has flowed thence over the greater part of the East and a modification of it sweeping back overflowed all Europe. And this must have happened between the years B.C. 1635 and B.C. 542, for at the later date the Buddhists had been driven out of India.

The word "Hinduism" comes from the Indus River, which flows through what is now Pakistan. In the third millennium B.C., the great civilization of Mohendo‑jaro flourished there, populated by the darkskinned Dravidians. From what archaeologists have been able to discover, the Dravidians had a polytheistic fertility religion that centered upon worship of the forces of nature and use of rituals, merging human sexuality with the hope for abundant crops.