Democracy vs Varnashrama
The Modern Rationalist|November 2016

Caste has been and still is a scourage and a curse on India, and will yet endanger the unity, peace, and independence of India and her peoples. But mere professions of this sentiment take one nowhere. Almost from the time of Lord Buddha, tirades have been delivered against caste, but caste itself was not destroyed because the fundamental basis for caste was not subjected to attack.

A.M Dharmalingam
Democracy vs Varnashrama

Great reformers and philosophers like Sankaracharya, Ramanujacharya, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Dayananda Saraswati and Gandhi never carried an assault against the fundamentals. In fact they lived all through in caste and died as high-castemen. If one or two of them realised the futility and iniquity of caste and declared for a casteless society at the close of their lives, they were murdered by caste fanatics.

Barhmanism which goes by the name of Hinduism is based on caste, priestcraft, untouchability, and karma. It knows nothing about justice, liberty, equality, and fraternity and is therefore the total enemy of democracy. There is no Hindu without a caste and no caste without a grade in the caste hierarchy. Politically and legally, all Indians may be equal today, but in the social and religious spheres, there is still none without caste, and inferiority and superiority complexes. As politics and religion are interwined, Hindu social polity cannot stand apart from politics. Society, said Rousseau, must be “studied in the individual and the individual in society; those who desire to treat politics and morals apart from one another will never understand either.” Gandhiji has also said that those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means. Western habits, heterodox manners, cropped heads, bare foreheads, threadless chests, changed diet, ignorance of Sanskrit, make the modern Hindu a cosmopolitan in outdoor life. At home, in the kitchen, in the prayer room, with women, and for material purposes, the same modern is all caste with rare exceptions. However, heterodoxy and rationalism are definite steps against Brahmanism and Varnashrama.

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