Caste

Caste (Portuguese, casta, ‘breed kind’). Term which indicates the unique hierarchical structure of S. Asian society, which, although originating from Hindu belief, has permeated all religions and communities of the subcontinent, having as its bases and sanctions religious as well as secular tenets. In modern India, the more common word for caste is the indigenous term jāti (Skt., jāta, ‘race’).

The castes (and sub-castes), numbering many thousands, fit into the divinely originated varna framework, though their origin is later and usually based on secular criteria relating to occupation and area of origin.

Criteria of caste maintenance such as pollution, hereditary occupation, and commensality are necessarily gradually disappearing in public places in urban, industrialized India, but in the countryside (where c.80 per cent of the populace still lives), and in home life, such beliefs and the discriminatory practices related to them still prevail.

Caste has long been the target of reforming groups, both within Hinduism and from the outside. Gurū Nānak and successive Sikh Gurūs declared caste irrelevant to salvation. However, intercaste marriage has always been rare among Sikhs, and at least at that level, caste is far from being eradicated among Sikhs: see BĀLMĪKĪ; BHĀṬṚĀ; JAṬ; KABĪR; KHATRĪ; MAZHABĪ; MISL; RĀMDĀSĪ; RĀMGAṚHĪĀ; RAVI DĀS; RAVIDĀSĪ.