Sasha today in its history.
Author: Sasha
This article is Sasha's original and will not be reprinted by any media
【Sasha Lecture Hall No. 1540】 (Lecture 755 of the Historical Series)
Is there also a replica of the Indian caste system in China? On May 5, 1944, Indian national leader Gandhi was released from prison.
Here we turn to the question of caste in India.
Sasha has seen the Indian movie "Hiccup Teacher", which tells the story of a female teacher who teaches a group of poor children who have abandoned themselves.
This gang of poor children was originally naughty and violent, especially boys who would fight once they were despised.
Once, when two children were fighting, a very pale-skinned child scolded: Naughty ghost, slut!
Attention to the word Untouchable shows that at least in india in the eighties and nineties, there was still some caste consciousness in society.
Nominally, after India's independence from the British Empire on 15 August 1947, the legal status of the caste system was formally abolished. Various caste classifications and discrimination are considered illegal, but in the actual social operation and life, although the caste consciousness is quite diluted, discrimination still exists.
India's caste system has a complex religious and historical tradition.
At the highest level were brahmins, of religious importance, who were mainly engaged in sacrificial duties.
The second layer is the Chatili, who are soldiers and officials of the state, the de facto rulers of the country.
The third layer is the Vedas, who are Indian commoners who perform a variety of ordinary jobs such as farmers, herders, and traders
The fourth level is the Shudra, who are mainly farmers, slaves, and craftsmen.
At the bottom were the Untouchables, who were mainly criminals, prisoners of war, or inter-caste marriages. Dalits are of low status and can only perform the lowest jobs such as cleaners and carcasses.
There are certain historical reasons for the emergence of this caste system in India.
Around 2000 BC, the aryans who invaded from the north spent a long time conquering the Dravidians, the indigenous people of India.
The Dravidians used to be very cattle!
The ancient Indian civilization and the earliest state of Iran, Susa, were founded by the Dravidians.
They created a brilliant civilization, but unfortunately the force was too weak to be an Aryan opponent fighting on horseback.
As Hitler said: If a civilization does not have a powerful force to protect, then it is fragile and will sooner or later be conquered by barbarism.
Eventually, the Dravidians were completely defeated and conquered by the Aryans.
However, the Number of Dravidians was large, accounting for about half of the Population of India at that time.
Naturally, the Aryans could not kill them completely, and they needed to do specific work.
Thus, the Aryans themselves evolved into Brahmins and Kshatriyas, and held the main power of the state.
The Aryans were also hierarchical tribes, and most of the ordinary Aryans became Vedas, i.e., Indian commoners.
The conquered Dravidian became the shudra of farmers, craftsmen, and servants.
You know, this is ancient times, when slavery was still widespread in the world, and this system in India is not unusual.
Although Shudra was of a low status, there were a large number of servants among them, who were completely different from slaves and had certain powers.
Even the lowest-ranking servant in the Shudras was a paid servant, and there was no strict personal dependency. He can serve this master or choose another master.
As for the Dalits, they are actually a product of maintaining the caste system. Once there is cross-caste marriage between castes, it can lead to the collapse of the system.
Therefore, the offspring of cross-caste marriage can easily become dalits to intimidate everyone not to do such things.
The Yi people in our country have long been slaves, and they also have a strict class division. Among them, if the Yi nobleman had sex with a female slave, he had to hand over a huge fine to the tribe as punishment. Yi women, on the other hand, were executed if they had sex with male slaves.
This is actually very similar to the caste system in India.
However, the Indian caste system is not just a reality, but also a religious element.
Hinduism holds that all beings are equal, and all souls are equally noble. But the flesh of the high caste is pure, while the flesh of the lower caste is contaminated.
Therefore, people of the lower castes must be good in this life, content with their own class, and become high castes in the next life.
As long as you are diligent and earnest in this lifetime, suffer a lot, and provide for the messengers of the Brahman God, you can accumulate enough merit that in the next life you can reincarnate into a high-caste family and exchange it for a pure body.
The Indians were convinced of this, and the Sudras and Dalits had failed many rebellions in history, not strong Aryan opponents.
The failure of the armed revolt, coupled with the hypnosis of religion, the caste system took root in India.
Naturally, the Indian caste system also has many variations, and it is not static.
In many Indian states, the Kshatri class has disappeared, either by the Vedas as officials or simply by the Muslim king and his men.
In an era of Muslim rule like the Mughals, the priesthood of the Brahmins was also getting lower and lower.
After the British colonized India, the caste system gradually began to weaken.
For example, the famous Mahatma Gandhi, although some people think that he is a Brahmin class, in fact he is nothing more than a Veda.
Naturally, although of the Vedic class, his father, Karam Chand Gandhi, was the prime minister of the native state at the time and held a very high status.
Even so, they are still the Vedic class, discriminated against by the higher castes.
The so-called Gandhi means food merchant in Hindi.
Today,the caste system in India has been rather diluted.
Many of India's leaders in history are, by caste, unacceptable.
Former Prime Minister rajiv Gandhi of India, his mother, Lady Gandhi, was a Brahmin, but his father, Feroz, was a Persian Zoroastrian.
According to Hindu tradition, Rajiv Gandhi was supposed to be a Dalit, yet he became Prime Minister of India.
Today's Indian Prime Minister Modi, also a Vedic family.
And his gujarat state did not have a shudra, and the Vedas were the lowest caste. However, Modi can also serve as prime minister.
Today, caste is so diluted in India that its complete demise is impossible.
Sasha has traveled to dozens of countries around the world, and not one country does not exist without discrimination. In ancient times, every country had a discriminatory system.
In China, for example, the four-class system of the Yuan Dynasty was actually no different from the caste system. The highest class was the Mongols, the second class were the Mongol officials Semu, the third class was the northern Han who had been conquered earlier and had little resistance, and the fourth class was the southern Han who resisted to the end.
Fortunately, the Mongols were driven back to the desert by the Han Chinese in 100 years, and if they were allowed to continue to govern for thousands of years, I am afraid that this system would also be deeply rooted in the hearts of the people and become a deep-rooted caste like India.
In India, caste can also be directly understood as "skin color". The Shudras and Dalits are mainly indigenous Dravidians, with darker skin tones and at a glance.
In contrast, the Vedas, the Kshatriyas, and the Brahmins had a paler complexion.
In particular, Brahmins intermarried strictly within the clan, and in ancient times even men rarely married women of the lower castes, and their skin color was fairer.
Some Brahmin girls in India are even whiter than European whites in terms of skin color.
Most of the natives Sasha saw on the streets of India had darker skin, much darker than our Chinese.
Especially women, the skin is much darker than a few well-maintained Chinese sisters around me.
However, the few Indian girls I see in some big shopping malls have very white skin, no less than European Spanish and Portuguese.
The local Indian brother told me that they were all Brahmins with a very white complexion.
Due to the real problem of the Kshatriya and the Vedas, that is, there are fewer women in the clan, and men will also intermarry downwards, although the skin color is relatively dark, it is also easy to distinguish.
Because skin color can distinguish castes, there is still caste discrimination in India today.
It is just that there is no legal basis, public opinion is also against caste, and discrimination only remains in people's hearts.
In fact, the most terrible thing in the world is the human heart.
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