Journal #12

For class this week I looked up articles about social stratification in India. Even though when we think of social stratification we tend to think of "India", I still learned a lot that I did not know about social stratification in India (and of course some things that were not that surprising).
The caste system is generally identified with Hinduism and is not supposed to allow caste-based discrimination. Unfortunately, even though the caste system has changed quite a bit from what it originally was, there are still many instances of discrimination and violence that occurs between different castes. In the readings it stated that the superior economic and political power of the upper castes is what keeps the lower castes suppressed, not necessarily the viewpoint that one is a higher caste and therefore has more rights.
Historically there were 5 castes:

Brahman-Priests
Kshatriya-rulers/warriors
Vaishya-merchants
Shudra-artisans
Harijans-the "outside"

In this caste system the most influential caste were the Kshatriya. However, in recent years the caste system has undergone changes. Now the government has documented castes and subcastes in order to implement "reservation" (help those who need it). These castes include:

Scheduled Castes
Scheduled Tribes
Other Backward classes

I am not sure to what extent people identify themselves with this "new" caste system; however, there has been problems with what people view as "reverse discrimination".

Although there are still problems due to the caste system in India, they have still come a long way. One of the biggest political improvements was in 1997 when President Narayanan became the first low caste president. He was able to gain a higher education and move through the education system to become president of his country even though he was originally from a lower caste. Today the current president is a woman, Pratibha Patil. I think that both of these instances are very big improvements in the past several years. Especially when you take into consideration that segregation used to be so severe that people of different castes could not even share the same drinking area (similar to racial segregation in the US). Even though there is still much room for improvement, the majority of the articles indicate that India is heading in the right direction.