What we really know about caste? The separation of humanity into different group of people? Based on what then? Race? Occupation? Income level? The dominance hierarchy? If we talk about caste, we will refer to Indian caste system where is a form of social stratification based on several factor including heredity, ritual and much more and actually taboo to be discuss in my country (multiracial country) since it will lead to chaos, but is it? When I studied Indian philosophy and human early civilization lead me to realize the illusion these modern indian did with caste system founded in the first place.
Caste or I could say the separation of human group into several roles of occupations exist is every human civilization in this world including early Christian medieval period, or even Malacca sultanate. Before humanity settled in agrarian culture, prehistoric humanity lives in nomad and hunting for living until we reach to certain period of time and skills where they settled down in suitable place such as near to the river as per early civilization in Indus valley, Nile river and more. They established themselves and build communities and cooperate each other to survive. Here where humanity could specializing their skills and contribute toward community and the result humanity design a rules, a law and order, and system of man occupation to keep peace and to ensure survival of humanity.
Based on Indus Valley civilization, the man occupation divides into $ categories — Brahman, Ksyhatria, Vaisya and Sudra. Each one of them play a role or symbol in human’s self which later mostly got lost and deluded with symbols as we deluded ourselves on money with wealth. If we look into Christian medieval period, the similar categories of man occupation exist: Priest/Bishop, King/Nobles, Commoner and Serf. Similar goes to malacca sultanate: Ulama’, Raja dan Bangsawan, Petani/Pedagang/Rakyat and Hamba. What all the occupations symbolically represent from the human self and why we f*&king need it in human civilization.
To increase humanity survivality, the best way is to conserve our energy and specializes in something which later could help humanity and that lead to entrusting with multiple occupation.It is same way for man to build a company. At first, we with partner could do everything but soon the demand arises, you will later start to employ more staff to increase the efficiency in company. Thus, these 4 main roles represent about:
Brahman — The intellectual, thinker, the one who specializes in his time to think solution for humanity daily lives. In modern societies, it came with many names: scientist, philosopher, priest, ulama, scholar. Now we could observe the result of specializing of human’s mind to think lead to our era of technology.
Kyshatria — The protector, the leader, the one who specializes to lead people and provide the feeling of safety and security. Their jobs to protect community activities from any harm and danger.
Vaisya — The farmer, the craftsman, the one who specializes certain skill crucial to humanity lives such as providing stock and crop, clothes, steel armor, weapon and much more. In modern societies, we came up with much complexity specialist roles such as architects, doctor, engineer, programmer, developer and much more.
Sudra — the worker, the labour, the one who follow the order. Mostly employed in each above roles to facilitate their specialization by taking care their daily task which irrelevant with their roles.
Nevertheless, all 4 roles exist in our self and the moment you return to who you really are you no longer the same person as most people perceived.
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