India
Growth: The Untold Story –Caste As Social Capital Prof R.
Vaidyanathan October 18, 2012 · by Vaidya
Sociologists
underline that a nation could be maintained successfully only when people are
able to live with each other as groups… The amount of networking and contract
enforcement mechanism available with caste institutions are not fully
appreciated… It is also assumed that caste is a rigid hierarchical system which
is oppressive… The metropolitan elite and rootless experts have concluded that
caste is bad. They have made it into a “four letter” word and so every Indian
is expected to feel guilty whenever caste is mentioned and talked about. In
international forums caste is used as a stick to beat anything connected to
Indian religions, customs, and culture. In other words slowly caste has been
made to be for Indians what is “holocaust” for Germans and Austrians.
We
have an uncanny ability to self-abuse ourselves in a masochistic way. But more
tragic is our enthusiasm to convert all our strengths to weaknesses since some
white men started abusing Indians for having caste system. We fail to recognize
that it is a valuable social capital, which provide cushion for individuals and
families in dealing with society at large, and more particularly the State. The
Anglo-Saxon model of atomizing every individual to a single element in a
right-based system and forcing him to have a direct link with the State has
produced disastrous effects in the west wherein families have been destroyed
and communities have been forgotten. Every person is standing alone in a sense
stark naked with only rights as his imaginary clothes to deal directly with the
State. The State also does not have the benefit of concentric circles of
cushions to deal with individuals. The State has taken over the role of father
and mother as well as spouse in terms of social security, old age homes and
rights of children to sue and divorce parents!
Caste
has been made a curse by the intellectuals based on the half-baked knowledge
and acceptance of the Euro Centric model of individual, which is right based
rather than duty, based system. Hence one way to overcome it is to have reservations
since the euro centric model suggests that. If you decide to carry the cross or
burden which others impose then you begin to impose the solution provided by
them. In a sense the debate does not distinguish between caste discrimination
and caste as a social capital. The cry to abolish caste is to “Semitise” or
“homogenize” Indian society which has been attempted by many “reformers” but
has not been successful.
Caste
has played an important role in the consolidation of business and
entrepreneurship in India particularly
in the last fifty or so years. The economic development has taken place in the
“India Uninc” or the partnership/proprietorship activities financed by domestic
savings and facilitated by clusters and caste/community networks. Actually
caste has been a major social capital in our growth process and it has not been
adequately recognized. This paper explores the economic growth constituents and
catalytic components. It also identifies the role of caste in the growth
process among the emerging entrepreneurial groups.
Sebastian
Velassery at velassery48@hotmail.com Department
of philosophy PanjabUniversity, Chandigarh-160 014 India. Mob:
09041108458/ 09988253035.
The
term identity refers to such features of people as their race,
ethnicity, nationality, gender, religion and sexuality. Labels
of identity like men, Americans, Indians, Catholics, Buddhists, and
so on generate ideas about people who fit the label. These ideas shape the ways
people conceive themselves and their projects. More often than not, people
conceive the idea of a ‘good life’ also by reference to the available labels of
identification. Every collective identity is said to have certain
genus of structures: First, it requires the availability of terms in public
discourse that are used to pick out the bearers of identity. Normative
content of a group of people as well as their particular identities with a particular
label is determined by its bearers.
Identity is
an abstract concept that has a metaphysical import. Its referent cannot be
pointed at and said to be this or that. To identify is to delineate or isolate
the features which mark out from others and hence of a conflict. Thus to talk
of identity is to talk of a conflictual relation, which forms the
basis of the underlying philosophical problem of identity. When we say
that identity implies a conflictual relation, what is meant is that
issues which are related to identity must begin from recognizing and
appreciating identity both in nature and society as conflictual.
During
the past many centuries, Indian understanding of identity is shaped
and supported by caste identity. This systematic evil was vigorously
supported and often vitiated by the stratified social system with an absolute
impossibility of crossing one’s caste. It is legitimized and enacted by a
theological, social and cultural ontology by the crude and selfish
interpretations of the doctrines like Karma, Svadharma, Advaita and Yoga. What
is central to the idea is that even today, caste has not lost its ontological
status; it also points to the implication that that caste is the basis of
solidarities and collective identities.
Defined
from the aspect of being, caste may be regarded as the historically and
culturally located categorization of human persons involving certain visual
determinants such as colour, ascribed social stigma, stark poverty, ancestry,
outside perception, habits and practices etc. In fact, caste considerations got
its metaphysical validity and efficacy through the medium of human cognition,
which has been considered as anvikshiki or philosophy in India .
Philosophically considered, they are the explicit manifestation of two kinds of
ontologies that this tradition and culture has brought forth; the first one may
be called as the ontology of permanence and the second may be called the
ontology of impermanence. Thus, there are two conceptions of reality in this
culture and the philosophies and world-view in this tradition may be
categorized in terms of these two categories of ontologies.
The
Caste System of India ---
An Aurobindonian Perspective INSTITUTE
FOR INTEGRAL YOGA PSYCHOLOGY :: Publications > DOWNLOADS DR. SOUMITRA BASU
The
four‑fold personality featuring Wisdom, Strength, Harmony and Service
integrated around the Soul‑force is such a new synthesis made from the same
seed ideas that produced the Caturvarna. This would be more acceptable to the
Indian psyche to whom the Vedas, Upanishads and Gita continue to be living
spirit.
Such
a new synthetic vision of personality has another dimension. The reaction to
conventionalism in the West took the form of materialism, secularism and
mechanical organisation in the age of Individualism. Sri Aurobindo had opined
that the Indian reaction might differ from that of the West and take the form
of subjectivism and practical spirituality.30 An acceptance of
Sri Aurobindo's synthesis of a perfected personality type constructed from the
seed-ideas that evolved the Caturvarna while rejecting the worn‑out caste
system would itself be a classical Indian reaction to the age of
conventionalism. As such an attempt will have to integrate Wisdom, Strength,
Harmony and Service around a Beyond‑Ego principle, it will be mandatory
for the Time‑Spirit to press the Human Cycle to move towards a spiritual age en
route an era of subjectivism. FIRST PUBLISHED : SRI AUROBINDO MANDIR ANNUAL No.
54,1995, Sri Aurobindo Pathmandir, Calcutta-73. 10:18 PM 12:07 PM
The caste system
in India has
been a subject of much controversy. It was supposed to be an identification of
man's inbuilt inclinations and ...
Tweets
5m Armchairpandit @armchairpandit The American
"Protestant ethics and spirit of Capitalism" is closest to Hindu
"Grahastha Ashram". Hindus are natural Republicans.
No comments:
Post a Comment