Archakatvam, paurohityam
Varņa is now almost wholly back to being a ritual/metaphysical entity that comes to play in wholly private/familial/intra-communal settings (private: sandhyāvandana, familial: upanayana/vivāha, intra-communal: Yajņas, vedapārāyaņam, etc). It involves essentially zero interaction with anyone from a different Varņa.
The huge exception are Āgamika temples & a much smaller exception is paurohityam performed for those outside Brāhmaņa-varņa. These are public-facing roles & the former is the most vulnerable.
Source: TW
It remains lineage-dependent with respect to almost all Vaidika & some Paurāṇika/Āgamika rituals. This is hardly material in its impact on others, if at all. Let it be & increase adhikāra for deserving ones in areas outside this realm, where there is much work to do.
ArSheyatvam
In case you don’t get what I mean by ritual-metaphysical, it’s literally these things:
- Brāhmaņa needs to do upanayana by 8 and takes up the sāvitrī mantra in gāyatrī chandas which has 8 syllables per foot of the verse, because 8 is gāyatrī & Brāhmaņa is associated with the Brahma (veda) & Brahmavarcas (spiritual brilliance that comes from Veda) & Gāyatrī is associated with these.
- Since a Brahmana embodies Ārșeya heritage, he should pay off his debts to Rși ancestors by studying Veda.
- He should marry a girl hailing from another Ārșeya gotra as a recognition of the bond between the Rșis who worked together to create the path of the Veda.
I didn’t refer to V2/3 as I’m mainly interested in addressing V1s who are unable to read the room.
For V2, change number to 11 & metre to triSTup; and mutatis mutandis for V3.
विस्तारः (द्रष्टुं नोद्यम्)
Reference to Manusmṛti, where for Kṣatriya-s, a different mantra is used for initiation into vaidikam.
As a corollary, Pāraskaragṛhyasūtra says that all the three dvija Varṇa-s may be initiated by Brahmagāyatrī.
That’s pretty much it, with a few more points along similar lines.
v4 relevance
Religious praxis as filtered through Varņa is also irrelevant for most non-V1s today. Nobody is doing something because they are a V4 or V5. They are doing it because they belong to a specific community that has its own body of practices; in other words, Kuladharma.
There was an attempt to create a religious praxis for V4s: pākayajñas, slightly modified pañcamahāyajñas, dāna, etc. But it hardly ever took off.
One can either revive this old version or come up with a substitute that involves Naivedya, modified pañcamahāyajñas & Dāna or better still, promote the Sampradāyas which have a proper praxis for many if not all H. A diluted version of the aforesaid substitute, combined with temple worship, is the staple for most H, be it V1s or non-V1s.
General Labor organization
Varņa is now a few solemn rituals plus the occasional, nice, warm & fuzzy family functions. No point trying to revive anything else.
Varņa as an inter-communal, organizing principle that creates relations between different Varņas in the context of labour—Yes, this is pretty much dead. And this was a peripheral aspect of Varņa.
विश्वास-टिप्पनी
There’s a lingering emotional attachment to the ancestral occupation - esp. strong in v1s; but visible in v2s and v3s. So, to that extant “labor organizing” principle persists
we do have
- v1 religious obsession is of critical value to H
- so, 2 fold varNa labor division remains critical (rather than 4 fold)
Commentary risk
Those who frame Varņa in terms of anything besides its core ritual, metaphysical significance (its application in vaidika/āgamika rituals as well as endogamy have their basis in this ritual-metaphysical significance alone) are inviting trouble for even this rather limited application of Varņa.
While you may have a place to hide after making your comments, the poor priests who are trying to make a humble living in this small, obscure ritual space (as Āgamika temple priests or as Vaidika purohitas) are the ones who will end up paying the price on the ground for your not-so-well-thought-out reflection.
One must develop a basic intuition for distinguishing between what is peripheral & what is absolutely core.
You try to amass the knowledge you can & pass what you can to those who deserve it (can be anyone, depending on what exactly you are passing). Those who are sane & calm will appreciate what you have. Those who hate you—don’t bother redeeming them. Ignore and move on.
Instead, standing on the shoulders of those who could not see the coming of today (really, the coming of the last 60-70 years) & making loud proclamations about how Śāstras are applicable to the modern economy & job landscape—no, you are doing nobody a favor & you are particularly doing those vulnerable arcakas & purohitas a disfavor, when they are minding their own business.
Attack vector
I do think that it is “violent” to attempt to tear away the Ārṣeya lineage component from the definition of Brāhmaṇyam, which is what most of the “Guṇakarmavarṇavādī-s” are focused on. They don’t care much about the other 3 Varṇas.
Of course, it is an entirely different problem that janmavarṇavādī-s, who are unhappy with where their Jāti is placed, all hope to get into Kṣatriya varṇa, not Brāhmaṇa (which is politically useless).
Marriage
I believe it’s safe to make a case for Varṇa passing down via the father alone in circumstances, where the men are steeped in tradition & can preserve it. Where both men & women are weak in tradition, endogamy actually helps & retains the possibility of atavisms.