The caste system is a ‘unifying factor’ of Indian society, which the Mughals couldn’t understand and the British saw as a roadblock to their invasion of the country, the latest issue of the RSS-affiliated weekly has said in an editorial.
The defence of the caste system comes in the wake of a political row after BJP leader Anurag Thakur allegedly asked to know the caste of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in the Parliament during the recently- concluded Budget Session.
“The caste system was a chain that kept various classes of India together after classifying them according to their profession and tradition. Following the industrial revolution, the capitalists saw the caste system as the guard of India,” the weekly’s editor Hitesh Shankar said in the editorial.
Shankar argued that the caste system was always the target of invaders. “The Mughals targeted it with the power of the sword and the missionaries under the guise of service and reform. In the form of caste, the Indian society understood one simple thing – betraying one’s caste was betrayal of the nation. The missionaries understood this unifying equation of India better than the Mughals: If India and its self-respect is to be broken, then first break the unifying factor of the caste system by calling it a constraint or chain,” Shankar wrote.
The editorial argued that this understanding of the caste system by the missionaries was adopted by the British for their “divide and rule” policy.
Shankar argued it was because of the skills passed from generation to generation in a caste group that Indian artisans, such as Bengal’s weavers, were so good that Manchester’s mills could not produce such fine quality products.
“Apart from destroying India’s industries, invaders focused on conversion to alter India’s identity. When caste groups did not buckle, they were humiliated. These were the people who forced a proud community to carry human faeces on their heads. There is no record of such tradition in India before that,” the editorial said.
