India's Caste System History Research Paper (Research Paper Sample)

Robert Njeru
Professor Kimenju
English 201
31 March 2019
India’s Caste System
The basic structural feature of Hindu society is the caste. According to Mehta, the Indo-Europeans interacted with the Indians leading to the emergence of the caste system (100). It has been the central code of social structure in India. According to Sana, the caste system began losing position with the spread of modern societies, modern technology, production and distribution making caste observances impossible in many situations (3). However, caste system is still alive and governs the social organization of Indians.
The term caste derives from the Portuguese word casta meaning something ‘’pure’’. The Portuguese applied the word to describe the social classifications that they saw among the inhabitants of the subcontinent; later the word was passed into the English language (Sana, 3). The caste system is a pyramid of endogamous groups that individuals enter only by birth that is, the level of the group into which a person was born (Olcott 648).
The caste system in India is called jati. There are more than 3000 jatis in India. The term jati appears in almost all Indian languages. Each jati has some unique job, but not everyone in the jati performs it. Thus there are barbers who do not shave, carpenters who do not build, and Brahmins who do not act as priests (Arshia, 2018). Each caste needs another one to survive. The fundamental of the caste system model is conjoint dependency (Johnson D, & Johnson J, 2013)