Assuming there was a real Buddha, at all, neither Buddha nor Guru Nanak have anything to say about jati, although they may have something to say about discriminating against this person or that person. Buddhists in the middle period, following around 100 CE as a rule belonged to the elite, and by the time of the invasion of Sindh had become an ossified elitist order, leaving them with no structure to survive the Arab onslaught. Ambedkar and Kosambi’s lit survey (neither counts as history) all but agree with this. To some extent the Jains in S.India still retained some structure within their communities, while the Hindu mainstream of course as now, had the most possible diversity of tradtions and practices, that have survived to this day. Some Islamic invaders -cohorts of Bin Qasim – were horrified and even terrified of the Tantriks, Nagas, and the many militant and nihilistic communities. While the Buddhist elite playing the role of absolutists and doctrinaire adherents tried unsuccessfully to wean the masses away from popular ritual, and even the extreme the sects, the masses soon grew tired of the hectoring and simply turned away from Buddhist orthodoxy. Which is why the only form of popular Buddhism that survives today is the Theravada tradition which is almost indistinguishable from Hinduism. Only in SL during the last 200 years or so, the Buddhist clergy has tried to stamp out external customs, and introduce an artificially pure but “exciting form” of Buddhist practice. But for a v.v.long time Hinduism and Buddhism have gotten along uneventfully in SL. Even at the height of the anti-Tamil pograms of the 70s and 80s, Hindu practice has gone on uninterrupted.

Now for the Vedas, Divya is right. The job of the vaidik Brahman is to memorise certain sections of the Vedas with unerring accuracy. The sections have been allotted an unknown number of millennia ago, so these days when some families discontinue a Vaidik tradition, a part of the Vedic corpus also dies out. The Vedas are not at the beginning of Hindu tradition, as the puranas and the Vedas themselves speak of kings who supported the compilation of the Vedas. As for what they mean, few Vaidiks can tell you, if at all, as that is not their job. It is the job of rishis, yogis, and people like you and me to read up and try to interpret the Vedas. The last word hasn’t been said on them, despite the 100s of layers of commentaries written on the Vedas since the dawn of hostory to this day. We may never ever know what they mean or what they imply. Dr.Sarada Rajeev of the Univ.of Rochester – physicist – offers a general interest course at Canisisu College, Buffalo, NY, on Vedas, early Indian mathematical tradition and the history of Kerala every year. According to Dr. Rajeev the Veda memorisation process has some nifty error correction built into it.

…learn the [verses]…from left to right, but also in reverse order…memorise each verse by taking a syllable from the middle, then one to the left, then one to the right and so on.

A Vedic verse recited by a Namboothiri corresponds perfectly with that by Pandit from Kashmir, although both of them lead very different lifestyles.

That is just another example of why the brahmins are complete frauds. All that pretentious futile emphasis on physical purity while their minds remain filthy with greed, pride, lust, hate, superstition and ignorance.

And what are the results of this brahminical fixation on ritual purity? The hindu culture is widely seen as the dirtiest, least hygienic of all cultures. Hindu temples in India are easily the filthiest and shabbiest places of worship anywhere. The brahmins bathe in the incredibly filthy Ganges, with rotting human carcasses floating by, and think they are purified by it. And on and on.

Either agree to agree without hostility, or the thread gets shut down.

YESS! Take your thesaurus. Strike her down with it. Use your aggressive feelings Prema! Let the hate flow through you!

I personally am intersted in caste because I think it is a fabulous alternative to state-sponsored rules of conduct. With caste you can have any type of behavior without making it illegal, yet providing people who do not want that type of behavior their own place too. For example there were several legitimate forms of prostitution in ancient India. This way prostitutes too had a place in society and did not have to be considered lowly

What a morally bankrupt person. She actually thinks it is “fabulous” that her fellow brahmins have for centuries exploited innocent little girls by making them sing, dance and prostitute themselves in their temples, as devadasis, to the enrichment of their priestly pimps. What the hell does prostitution have to do with religion and spirituality? This perversion is just another example of “brahmins” (who the hell made these lowlifes a “high” caste?) hijacking sanatana dharma for their own selfish ends.

As we all know ladies and gentlemen, if you can’t actually argue your point or understand why people disagree with you, the optimal solution is to just need to pile more adjectives into your invective.

The sinister truth of the matter is that Christian ideas (every one is equal in the eyes of God) have secularized themselves (equal rights, etc.) so that liberals and conservatives, orthodox and heterodox, all of humanity in fact, worships at the same altar. Except for the hindoos. These pagans blatantly nurture their differences.

What’s really sinister is that there are still numerous stupid, ignorant, immoral and backward hindus like you who continue to stubbornly and shamelessly defend a corrupt, inhumane, unjust, wicked social system whose filthy, ugly, enervating consequences all can see. It is your ignorance that makes you conclude that secularism is of christian origin. Egalitarianism, freedom of religion, freedom of speech etc arose in the West during the Enlightenment Era which was an intellectual movement that championed pagan Reason over Biblical Revelation. Most of the famous Enlightenment philosophers and kings were extremely critical of christianity and that includes the American Founding Fathers. Read Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason for a good example of the anti-christian sentiments of the enlightenment secularists.

There are innumerable merits to caste. God forbid anyone ever mention any of them. For caste is evil, only evil and nothing but evil. How come no-one objects to the tyranny of this monolithic viewpoint?

Anyone with a brain and a heart, from Buddha to Guru Nanak to innumerable other saints and sages, can see that brahminism/casteism is an unmitigated evil. Your claim that the great merit of casteism is that it provides a social safety net is proof of your ignorance and stupidity. Does India look like a place with an effective safety net? Quite the opposite: it is by far the most inhumane, least compassionate culture on the face of the earth. To visitors from christian, muslim, buddhist, secular nations, India looks like a godforsaken hellhole populated for the most part by the most callous of human beings who refuse to lift a finger to alleviate the incredible hunger, filth, poverty and suffering that surrounds them. The greedy, selfish orthodox brahmin demands all the charity of hindus; he preaches that the sufferings of the masses of hindus are their karma so they do not deserve charity or compassion. This is not true religion or spirituality, this is pure demonic evil.

AV – it’s always going to be parents and the like who set the moral standard so one does not have much of a choice. This is the human condition and a natural constraint on our development, and may even be a good thing. The word “choice” also has a lot of theological baggage, by the way. I was thinking more along the lines of indifference to other lifestyles without demonizing them or being required to embrace or even tolerate them. I find this to be lacking in western civilization. We are forced either to criminalize or to tolerate (or say that we do). This is the best that secularism has given us. The fringes can never flourish. I find that in India there were (are) many more varieties of life styles. They may not be exactly flourishing, but at least they are free to be as weird or different as they want.

Jyotsna, I know next to nothing about indian politics or the various spiritual reform movements so cannot confirm any of the history, but thank you for the intersting read.