Source: TW
Although intrinsically related, Jaati and Varna can be considered separate for the purpose of grasping the concepts. Even historically, Varna was not always discernible for there is no empirical laboratory test to determine the same. When the British started categorising Hindu communities into castes, they frequently ran into people who knew their jaati but didn’t even know what to make of the term ‘Varna’. That does not mean that Varna is expendable but quite simply that it does not lend itself to reductionist hot takes by politicians. Varna can therefore be treated as a theoretical idea for the purpose of analysis.
Jaati is the community you’re born into. It is a biological reality and every jaati has a cultural history of its own. In pre-modern India, jaati gave you a purposeful identity and more than anything else determined the outcomes in your life. Today it is not the case because your occupation is no longer a function of your birth.
Does that imply that jaati must be annihilated as Ambedkar declared? What would be the consequences, intended and unintended, of undertaking a mammoth social engineering experiment of this kind? Have the good folks at RSS conducted any academic exercise to make calculated guesses as to what the annihilation of caste would mean for Hindu society 50 years down the line? My view is that it would lead to a totalitarian society governed by a techno surveillance state where individual liberty would no longer make any sense. We are already headed that way and I feel bad for the coming generations.
Even among my well read friends, I find a huge lacuna in the understanding of caste and I suppose it is on account of not having any experience of living in a healthy joint family, much less a wider functional community. The natural consequence of this loss of social capital is an atomised society, where old age homes, kids’ day care centers, divorces, mental illness, plummeting TFR and other such maladies are the norm. The destruction of jaati inevitably leads to the destruction of family and the destruction of family opens the door for tyranny that can be experienced but not identified, for individuals born in such societies have no experience of real nurture, and without the protective embrace of nurture via culture, nature is terrifying. Hence the long-standing conflict of the Abrahamics with nature. But let’s leave that for another day.
If the RSS wants to end caste consciousness, let them first declare their plan of action for ending caste-based reservations - the most potent factor that keeps caste relevant for the Hindu masses, of course without the sacrifices required of them as part of their Jaati Dharma. Over the years, I have come to appreciate the centrality of Jaati and Varna in the Hindu scheme of things. Anyone who says that we must leave these “obsolete ideas” behind simply does not know what he is talking about or is a bad faith actor. In the case of RSS, I believe it is the latter.