Brahmanism today- part 2

What I am rather selfishly interested in, is to answer the question of why the remnants of the earlier class divide based on caste still prevails when it is rather irrelevant today and perhaps even of a disadvantage to Brahmins.

1. Political reinterpretation of the meaning of each caste and hence power. Power has logically shifted to the lower castes. They are an easy target, once-exploited, uneducated, miserable, tightly-knit, are in large numbers and thus constitute an easy vote bank. People in power have (always) had selfish interests in such divisions. Notwithstanding the creamy layer, lower castes now are supposed to be enjoying or may have begun to enjoy privileges previously denied to them.

Quite understandably, the upper caste now thinks it is being unfairly denied rightful chance to power, riches. Contradictory to the ancient Brahmin identity, even the very Brahmins who talk about their identity with pride, want a fair chance to POWER and RICHES! ;)

2. The upper castes, henceforth generalised as Brahmins, have no motivating need or reason to give up their position of power or superiority. If being Brahmins symbolically means wearing the scared thread, different clothes, cooking a certain kind of food, speaking a different language, performing different rituals, they would rather keep that identity than to give it up, even if it makes them appear castiest in their society. Why would they make a choice that apparently might put them at a disadvantage.

But the symbols are so ancient, deep-rooted and powerful, that even in their irrelevance today, they can still wield some psychological advantage. Brahmins now like to reinterpret the notions of Brahmanism to mean among other things that they are scholarly, intellectual! That this quality is probably now in their genes!

Well, it is not just the Brahmins who believe in their superiority, the insecurity of the lower castes is now so deep, even they suspect that Brahmins maybe inherently intellectual and brilliant and hence have an unfair advantage even in the new social order!

The validity of this argument need not be discussed time and again. To put things into perspective, eugenics was a field that intended to divide the society into classes based on genetic superiority levels. Hitler embraced this field and believed the Aryans to be genetically superior and the Jews inferior, and wanted them eliminated along with other disabled and useless people in the society. The argument has been proved incorrect a number of times since. The subject remains controversial.

In the same way as Hitler, Brahmins can choose to believe that there are relatively fewer uneducated Brahmins and more scholarly Brahmins today than other castes, because of nature(genetics) or nurture(environment people were brought up in). The latter is more believable, the former is still a theory that has been dubiously claimed, but disproved plenty of times. It is still waiting to be conclusively proved, yet it is what pseudo-scientific Brahmins swear by.

3. The upper caste, with their new-found insecurity has another strong reason to bind themselves together with an identity to fight injustices done to them.

Understandably enough, Brahmins will go on playing out the game the way they best can. If they have an advantage in any way over other communities, even if only psychologically, they would only be too happy to play on that!

So why give up on the symbolisms of being a Brahmin!

In a world of changing power orders, Brahmins would stick by any identity/belief, and even encourage it, just to cling on to an excuse to claim superiority, however irrelevant the identity is today. Interestingly, I’ve noticed only the most insecure of the Brahmins vigourously display their belief and propagate it to the younger generation. The already powerful ones, wear their Brahmin identity more discreetly and display it only when needed. And all Brahmins, play to rules by convenience. There is no exception to that, because the very rules have already been rewritten to meet the needs of the changing times. And there IS no single rule to bind them all.

There are even Brahmins, who don’t play by symbols at all! They may drink, eat meat, live luxurious lives, phoo-phoo the ceremonies and laugh at their irrelevance, in various combinations.

There are some who go all the way, putting in effort to academically understand the original meaning of symbols and to redefine and find personal meaning in the rituals they perform.

Everyone has the right to choose what their symbols are, conveniences are and to choose to follow what they want to. I personally respect people of group 2 and 3 and even those of group 1 who wear their Brahmin identity with pride. I cannot respect pretentious hypocrites, especially when they pretend to be more moral than others when any child can see through that guise.

Another interesting observation I made in the context of foregoing wedding rituals in my recent conversations are that –men who didn’t want to observe wasteful rituals, who made their opinion clear and loud, would voice their opinion and they could get away with it their way in the end. They would even, in the short course of time, be projected to be very noble, different, brave and even intelligent(!) to have fought all the way to give up on these material ceremonies. Their parents begin to boast about their boy, as will his in-laws! But if a girl even merely voiced such an opinion and refuse participation, she would hurt a thousand people and also be labelled stubborn, difficult and a witch for life. Which is precisely the reason why such women simply choose to marry men with similar (non)beliefs because life is so much simpler that way. I have not heard of an instance where, the woman has not wanted a ceremony and the man has been agnostic and the woman has followed her belief.