Key Takeaways
- Religious texts can be used to reinforce preconceived notions of caste.
- Your parents’ caste can define your caste.
- Who you fall in love with may subvert the caste system.
- A caste system will call for bloodlines to be ‘pure’
- Your career may sometimes be defined by your caste
- The caste system seeks to dehumanize entire groups of people because that is easier than dehumanizing an individual.
- Violence and punishment are likely to be used in a caste system.
- Those seeking to maintain a caste system will use the sometimes comforting idea of fixed characteristics to achieve their goals.
Going Forward
These are actions suggested by the author to begin to integrate these ideas into our daily lives. They are offered for personal reflection and action.
- Interrogate your sacred texts or core beliefs and reframe them if you believe they may excuse the caste system.
- Reject the idea that you may be stuck in a particular stratum of society due to who your parents are and what they look like.
- Reject imaginary notions of bloodline ‘purity’ or race-mixing.
- Avoid making assumptions about groups of people and look instead at individuals.
- Be wary of everyone who uses violence to achieve their ends. Never excuse it.
- Do not assume that your lot in life is fixed no matter how comforting the notion might be.
