Gendering Caste Critical Analysis

In India in particular, the seed of differences in the minds of man lay scattered in different forms and nourished by the ideological and religious patterns of behaviour in the society. Discriminations are man-made and they get legitimised in a patriarchal society. Since time immemorial, the country has been witnessing caste, class and gender playing its cardinal role of creating rifts and causing conflicts and dilemmas within the socio-cultural structure and simultaneously paving a place of its own in the social and literary tenets as reflections. Chakravarti in Gendering Caste: Through a Feminist Lens opines:

Class, caste and gender are inextricably linked; they interact with and shape each other: the structure of marriage, sexuality and

It is therefore felt important to bring forth the substantive question of subservience of a certain group of society and the structures that make them stand out as the marginalised lot. This is why, in this research project, the inexplicable dominance of caste and class is taken up for an exploration and thereby attempted to understand the status quo of the marginalised in a more disciplined

From His two arms came the Rajanya (the Kshatriyas). From His two thighs came the Vaishyas. From His two feet came the Shudras (Dimri 212). Besides, in the Manava Dharmashastra too, the profession related to the quoted castes are fore grounded as – the Brahmins are created to attain as well as impart knowledge and adopt the kind nature of sacrifice; the Kshatriyas or the royal class are to safeguard their country and country men; the Vaishyas or the merchant class are meant to be engaged in trade, agriculture, animal husbandry while the Shudras or the serving class, the lowest among all are destined to serve all the other castes. It is therefore understood that an individual is to perform his lawful duties as per his position in the society which is based on the caste into which he is born. Thus, ones birth determines his caste and the caste determines his class. The Brahmins in Hindu society put emphasis on their superiority by reasoning their birth which according to the Hindu Shastras is the consequence of some good Karma done in the previous birth. Prohibition of the sacred thread ceremony and denial of various religious privileges to the men of lower caste clearly indicates and illustrates how deeply rooted the structure of caste in India is. In fact, caste affiliations in Brahminical patriarchies are so strongly entrenched that in order to maintain the internal purity, in