India's Hindu Caste System.................Very sad!

  

India’s caste system is based on a very rigid social stratification system. The system is used by society to rank categories of people in a hierarchy from birth. Although there are four main castes, there are hundreds of subcaste groups. The stratification system only benefits the wealthy Hindus as the lower caste are forced to do menial jobs and be enslaved to the upper caste. Every Hindu is ranked from high to low depending on the work performed.  India's segregation is cemented in 3,000 years of religion, not law.

In India everyone knows his/her cast and there is no escape. No matter how well one does in life, they are still considered an untouchable, unclean, and less human. It is a life of humiliation. One man said that he believed that the caste system was God’s will. He went on to say that he felt the untouchables were the result of karma and the result of their unspeakable acts in their previous life. Furthermore, it was stated that Brahmin caste was the creator of the system.

The only crime of these people was being born into the wrong caste. As one lady stated in the video, “It is impossible to change.” For the untouchables, it is an oppressed life of humiliation. The poverty is overwhelming as most live on less than one dollar per day. They are the grave diggers, toilet cleaners, discarders of human and animal waste, and slave workers on the lands of the rich. Caste is a form of social imprisonment. On one occasion the untouchables asked for fair daily wages. That simply meant that they desired to be paid one dollars worth of rice per day. For that request, the farm owners went into their village, went into every hut and killed everyone they found….including women and children. At night, the women were raped and abused by the upper caste men as this was another way of exhibiting their higher authority.

Being born in the lower caste is a life sentence of being considered the lowest of the low. Two hundred million of India’s one billion people are outcast so low that others will not even drink from the same well. It is believed that whatever the untouchables touch becomes unclean. Their shoes have to be removed in the presence of the upper caste, they cannot worship inside the Hindu temple, eat in public restaurants, and even have to fall to the ground and beg forgiveness if an upper caste feels they have been wronged.

I do not believe that the world agrees with or condones the caste system; however, it is connected to a religious belief, therefore, it is tolerated. Times are changing in India; although, in the video it was said that it was impossible to change. It started with a few women learning to shoot a gun for protection. In addition, they gathered at the public well and began using it even without their husband’s support. However, after four days of the wives not cooking for their husbands, the men started to give support to their wives. In this village, the upper class decided not to wage a battle over their clean water source any longer and continued to allow the women to retrieve water from the public well.

Although social stratification, especially in the Hindu religion, is taken to an extreme, it might actually be necessary to maintain balance. Through social inequality, societies are able to fill all positions of life with the most qualified. Not everyone can be on the same level. Otherwise, the world as we know it would fall flat because for every need, there must be someone to fulfill it.

I watched a second video on the Dalit untouchables and it showed them coming to know Jesus in a very personal and relatable way. Many are searching for something outside the Hindu religion and are being taught the Gospel. Furthermore, they are being told that God desires to touch those known as the untouchables. When they hear that Jesus died as a Dalit, outside the city and rejected by His own people, it is the message that touches the heart of a people who have experienced so much of the same rejection. I am praying for their liberation through the love of Jesus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhUwKXIQ5kM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1l-x7708zY