this is 6-year-old Ruby Bridges being escorted by a group of federal agents to an all-white School in Louisiana will not force my people to integrate against their will that didn't want them to go to school with the ass kids out of school 200 people waiting at 8:30 in the morning to tell her they were going to kill her just 45 years before this event in Kerala South India a dth girl called punchi from the Pula Community was being escorted to a privilege Coston school by a man called aali that school was later burnt down by the privilege cast community in the area leaving us with this burnt bench as a memorial the privileged cast community did not want their children sharing the same spaces as the children of the marginalized for fear of ritual pollution I've accepted that this video might not be a very popular one it's probably going to be too long and too detailed for YouTube but I really want to do the topic Justice I've read at least 60 odd different Journal articles and a couple of books in preparation for this and you'll find all of them in the reference list attached feel free to dive deeper I'm going to talk about things I've learned about systems that dehumanize people from birth innocent people in service of a hierarchy that benefits only a few a system legitimized by men who claimed to hear the words of God who doubted the idea that some are more deserving of respect and basic human rights than others I must urge you to resist making any broad sweeping generalizations from this video especially if you might be a viewer who isn't already acquainted with Indian culture or history this essay was a right because in online spaces like this one the common person from India can be sandwiched between the racist narratives about our people from the West which are rooted in white supremacy and used against minorities in diaspora and on the other hand in India and on the rest of the subcontinent one needs to contend with generations of brahminical hegemony and cost based segregation both conservative World Views have a part to play in sustaining the current neoliberal capitalist situation there's a significant amount of misinformation around cast how it functions when it was created what it even is and who is responsible in the context of today's world racism against Indians is fairly common online so it's not uncommon to see the word cast used as some kind of racial CLE as well to justify vile racism against our people Indians in diaspora have to deal with harmful consequences of these misconceptions and Indians within India have to fight the slow eraser of the ability to even talk about this as part of the modern hindutva project of historical revisionism many right-wing intellectuals have tried to claim that cast was a um British invention or a colonial creation by the Portuguese and that life before they arrived was just fine glorious even these half truths allow the RSS Machinery to redirect attention away from real problems within society and onto some kind of external threat while trying to maintain a separate but unified Hindu voting block privileged cost groups have much to gain from erasing the discussion of cost from public spaces like in the case of the United States where many white folk who happen to be in privileged positions within Society deny that racism even exists in India today many privilege cost folk deny that cost based discrimination exists so I have stated in the past that the cast system is a western invention many of you have been skeptical and you have said that this is all something I pulled out of my hat it's not my point is this is a British creation the chatas have been the aristocrats the brahans have been the ones who uh preserved the country's knowledge the civilizations knowledge for thousands of years we we we respect people who are knowledgeable right people who are learned people who are scholarly we worship them that is because of our inbuilt reverance for knowledge it is it is built into our DNA and naturally the people who were the most learned for thousands of years were the people who passed it in on from generation to generation the the brah medras presidency is where cast was created I read this fantastic book called the cast of the Mind by Nicholas BS on this what we have basically said is at least the society and universities must start talking about it but that entire domain is occupied by post Colonial Marxist and Nan establishment you wanted a cast census you did not ask for a VNA census you didn't ask for a jati census there's a huge distinction in that book you'll see proof of the fact that cast comes from Casta which is the first Portuguese word why Portuguese word why Portuguese work this Uncle over here for instance is using colonialism or weaponizing it to justify erasing any discussion of cost discrimination within India this allows right-wing rifters from privileged cost groups to make everything a skill issue and they like to make the claim that dalits adasis and other marginalized groups simply haven't worked hard enough like they have which is why they're still marginalized this kind of rhetoric should be familiar some in the diaspora who might be born into a privilege cast Community outside India have to deal with a completely different social context in the US for instance they are forced to inherit the toxic dehumanization and racism against Indians and non-white people that may nudge one into finding value in appeasing systems of white supremacy like how Nikki Haley for instance who was born into a privileged cost Punjabi home attempted to completely change her identity to attain whiteness cost must be understood in terms of power structures and social hierarchies of control it uses narratives of biological essentialism as validation for things being the way they are conflict and struggle through oppression systemic bias and racism have always been a factor in the history of all Humanity where there is capital to be stolen hoarded and controlled you will find weaponized narratives of biological essentialism and no Race So culture is magically exempt from that many voices among the marginalized like Dr edar and web Duo have written about how race and cast interact with capital but their work often goes unnoticed in mainstream conversations about capitalism and marxis is thought edar and du boys had even exchanged letters talking about the similarities between cost in India and how race operated in America ambedkar wrote in his undelivered speech annihilation of cast That cast is not a division of labor it is a division of laborers he also quite prophetically pointed out that socialists would need to fight the monster of cast either before or after the revolution indicating that cast wouldn't just resolve itself if India got an independence or if economic conditions alone improved within a capitalist system du Bo wrote about the concept of cast education and how schools played a role in preserving cost Society a cost Society established during the colonial Plantation period du Bo's work black reconstruction is both a critique and an advancement of Marx's Eur neocentric and class-based theorizations to Bo differed from Marx's understanding of a progressive stage-based history Marx posited that capitalism comes after a slave-based economy but Duboce offers us the perspective of a racial capitalist system in which racial ideologies and social structures that arise from capitalism interact with each other slavery and capitalism were not independent or high archical to one another but rather Cooperative systems of power which were integral to the political and economic development of the United States in the US the capitalist system artificially fused an occupation slave work to as Duo put it black blood this binding between one's bloodline and an occupation is also present in the systems in India the obvious difference between the racial system in the US and the cost based systems within India is one of skin color in India skin color as a differentiator was introduced much later thanks to the white supremacist ideas brought in as early as the Greeks and all the way up to the British at the end it became the white British against the native as we will discuss in this video precolonial cast worked without the need for even skin color it had more to do with family lineage and occupation identified by surnames and geographical location of residence when skin color alone isn't an effective discriminatory tool we humans being the creative little baboons we are came up with jewelry clothing even hairstyles as cast markers to more easily discriminate even today dullet people have to endure violence just for supporting a specific kind of mustache for wearing sunglasses or even if they have the audacity to wear a turban because of constructed ideas of status associated with these superficial Traditions artificial values of Purity or competency were imposed upon marginalized lineages in order to justify having a permanent underclass of laborers in other words if you were born into the home of a brick layer then you must also fulfill your duty of being a brick layer just like your father was why because God said so right-wing regressive elements around the world have attempted to co-opt indigeny and when they can't co-opt it because it's too steep of a lie they've chosen to use vague sets of historical values to identify and appeal to an ingroup it's a common sight to see oppressive movements using the language of being under attack branding criticism as anti-christian or anti-American in the case of the US anti-semitic in the case of Israel anti-muslim in the case of the Pakistani state anti-hindu in the case of India but if you look just a bit closer they always represent the affluent community at the top of their respective hierarchies within the capitalist systems that they operate in in India the hindutva movement is predominantly a privilege cost movement seeking to preserve privileged cast values and capital in the case of Pakistan it's the same just under different religious guys the Pakistani state for instance is concerned not just with oppressing non-muslims but also other Muslims like the ahmadia community Afghan Muslims baluch the Quasar trans community and so on being Progressive in any society is an uphill battle because we're fighting against generations of oppressive unequal systems and traditions that have rooted themselves deep in our cultures that merely change their masks every few years it's remake after remake after remake conservative elements from All Nations have a repository a nay a a library even of racist tropes sexist talking points and other problematic learned social behaviors that they can just tap into from our Collective pasts want to mobilize the racists Target critical race Theory or now Dei want to mobilize the misogynists attack feminism or perpetuate stereotypes about welfare queens or whatever it is these guys are doing now mobilize the csts attack the idea of reservations and hide behind the guys of Merit while ignoring the generations upon generations of enslavement of your own people there's no simple way to understand cast without historical context so I will attempt to contextualize it with the history of an often overlooked but important part of the ancient world my state of Kerala the native home of black pepper and honestly I haven't seen anyone do an analysis of cast and anti-c cast movements from the perspective of Kerala on YouTube recently so there you go during the suum period between 300 BCE and 300 CE the landscape of South India was one dominated by the three kings the cholas the pandas the cheras and their Allied Chieftains it was a time where even the word Hindu was unheard of in the South it was a word that had been used far off in the north by the Persians to identify the people who lived beyond the sapta synu river in short they couldn't pronounce the word s in synu so you got Hindu anyway the people of the southern region historians refer to as tamilagam performed ancestor worship and venerated tribal gods that were Davidian and not Arian not Hindu for instance the worship of the indigenous goddess krai the goddess of war was common among The chera Chieftains of Kerala people wouldn't go to a temple either instead they would go to What's called a Cav or in English a sacred grove these Cav would be in forests where they could connect with ancestor spirits and deities a practice which continues to this day in the form of of ritual performances like theam the social structures found in these societies was feudalistic in nature with various territories controlled by rival Chieftains and allies a structure that could be found in many parts of the world at the time this was no Utopia let's be honest Kings be kinging Chiefs be chiefing I guess but it was a golden age of trade relative peace and coexistence this is why the suum period was known as the golden age of the South the ports of tundi mui arik Kai and maram were busy with graan Assyrian Babylonian trade plyy the Elder of Rome referred to the port of muiri in Kerala as the first Emporium of India in his work titled Natural History while all this was happening somewhere up in the north in ancient up and West Bengal in the old maian Empire Brahman priests began to codify generations of puritanical social norms of control into written law Brahman priests who claim to be in communion with Brahma or God penned the manusmriti or the laws of Manu which would become very important in a couple hundred years in the context of Kerala the 2 Century BC also saw an influx of Buddhist communities and Jane trading guilds into Kerala historians suggest that this coincided with the rule of Emperor Asoka of the morian Empire who had converted to Buddhism at the time if you aren't familiar with Indian religions besides the modern day Hinduism here's a very brief introduction to jism and Buddhism they were ancient religions that developed independently of each other but around the same time and they shared a lot of similarities both religions were formed in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent and became very popular around the 5ifth century BCE and both of them were created as a direct opposition to brahmanism they rejected the vdas and did not believe in the idea of a Creator God Buddhists viewed kma as an amorphous spiritual concept but Jane Prest believed that Karma constituted actual physical particles that could not be seen by the human eye that's just a very brief intro for those may not be familiar I'd suggest looking into them in your own time if you're interested perhaps starting with let's talk religions videos in a book written by an anonymous Greek Trader perus of the arrian sea there are at least 200 Pages worth of details about trade relations between ancient Indian kingdoms and places like Yemen Oman Rome abisinia otherwise known as Ethiopia today Jewish and early Christian Traders visited kerala's po of mui settled in the coasts and traded with the chera chieftain being one of the largest main sources of black pepper at the time besides cinnamon other spices muslin coconut fiber and so on they were moving some product archaeological evidence suggested that there were a few Brahman households on Shera Chieftain lands but we don't have any evidence from the time of L grants being given to priests by the chieftain which which is usually an indication of how influential a Brahman Community would have been at any given time instead there's much more evidence to suggest that the indigenous Chieftains of Kerala favored ancestor worship forms of animism and Buddhism many Jane and Buddhist monasteries were erected during this time historians and archaeologists agree that Buddhism was one of the most important forms of worship after ancestor worship the 6th Century CE marked the beginning of trade with the Islamic world and the tong dynasty in China which replaced the dying trade from the Roman Empire at the time in my town of Fort kuchi for instance the fishing communi still use the Chinese fishing nets on a daily basis for their livelihood something that you don't see in any other part of India and I need to emphasize this point for the Hindu nationalists watching right now the first mosque in India was built in Kerala in 629 CE no evidence of interreligious violence no evidence of force conversions just peaceful trade I know some of you islamophobes are probably cringing by now but deal with it Muslim Christian and Jewish communities had established themselves as prominent communities along the coast and they coexisted peacefully with tribal Chieftain from the 6th to 8th centuries the chera chieftain saw a decline in prominence becoming vassels to to neighboring pandas rashr kuta and chika dynasties at this point we need to take a peek at what was happening in those dynasties to get a glimpse into what the Kerala people were about to experience the chalaka dynasty at this time had already transitioned into having a segregated rigid Society based on the brahmanical chatura system the for Verna system a religious hierarchical system of control that that would be imposed upon the jais which you can understand as lineage or ethnic communities jais is what we're really talking about when we even flippantly use the word cast because that's what really represents the groups of humans who are then slaughtered into this four tier Verna system this was done in order to dictate land rights marriage personal laws and ritual status it is essentially a failed cynical system employed by the ruling casts for the purpose of social dominance you will notice that I'm using the term brahminical here specifically because again this was a system conceived of written about and propagated by brahmans male Brahman priests specifically who held high stations in the courts of Kings let's spend some time talking about these definitions here because the lack of understanding around the words jati and Verna is also used by hindutva fascists in propaganda videos in the west and at home to divert from the word cast I will tell you what that context is and that context is that there is a whole new version of Marxism called critical race Theory popularly called wokeism dalits were invited to Harvard and uh encouraged to combine forces with the African-Americans and Muslims and others who felt that they are oppressed and to create a what's known as critical cast Theory which says that the cast gits of India are the blacks workism started with a very innocent idea that asking blacks to wake up woke he woken up it's a grand social structure that that the Indian civilization produced which actually resulted in the diversity that we see in society today we see right we uh we see different languages different FS different culture different ways of dressing different ways of worship and that's the real diversity India can is the only civilization that can say that we' produced diversity so there is cast abuse no doubt but we cannot I we cannot locate it on viic Origin we my problem is not fighting cast abuse at all my problem is fighting vas and Hinduism as the cause of we don't have cast we have VNA and Jai it explains that these are actually ways of preserving diversity it's not against diversity it is for diversity because rather than a homogenous Society a society where different people have different talents and they all work together in one social ecosystem is a healthier Society so it explains the original purpose of having Verna as a very natural thing let's come back to that common talking point that cost was a European construction Hindu nationalists like to claim that cost has to be some kind of European construction because cost comes from the word Costa in Portuguese they go on to say that what India had was a more natural healthy system of jati and Verna which they like to claim as the native system of India a native way to diversify Society Brahman hindutva ideologues like Rajiv Malhotra specific Al unknown for this tactic where he attempts to divert your attention by using these Sanskrit words in order to appeal to the still prevalent orientalist views around the East that you still see in the US it is merely an attempt to Rebrand and whiteash the oppressive hierarchical system that is chatura it is an attempt to subvert The Narrative by co-opting terms of social justice like diversity and inclusion crafty guy so let's take a closer look at Verna Verna directly translates to the word color now we'd be quick to equate that to mean color of skin however this originally did not mean color of skin it's actually something even worse Verna refers to the color of a person's gunas or in English essential or inherent qualities the brahminical belief is that you are born into a certain Verna based on a combination of your gunas and Karma Karma as you may know refers to the idea that your actions in this life add up in a karmic tally which will determine the equality of your next birth I.E birth into another Verna in the next life now what's interesting about these ideas is unlike abrahamic faiths where you have a book to point to as your religious text there is no one book in brahminism pranal Concepts were transmitted through oral traditions and only written down over time Time by different people they were formed to suit the specific needs of each ruling class or family and any given time so they often took on the subjective realities of the various authors who wrote them this vague situation leads to a lot of hand waving about the age of many of these texts for instance the word VNA itself is surprisingly absent from ancient Vic texts like the rig Veda for instance which is one of the oldest written works that we have dated are around 1,500 BCE 1,500 hey what is this guy saying he's born yesterday or what rvea 50,000 billion million years old who are you Indian historian RS Sharma even points out that there is no evidence of food or marriage restrictions in the rveda in ancient Vic communities historians and linguists also suggest that there is one verse out of a thousand hymns in the 10th Mandela of the purta that uses a Sanskrit inconsistent with the time instead the pushta uses a Sanskrit that is Medieval so a thousand years younger what is this controversial passage this purusas as per the purta of the 10th mandala the body of the Creator purish which translates to man in English is divided into the mouth the arms the thighs and the feet in English this passage says when they divided purusha how many portions did they make what do they call his mouth his arms what do they call his thighs and feet the Brahman was his mouth of both his arms was the rajanya maid didn't have the word chhatria yet his thighs became visha from his feet the sudra was produced this is the only time in the rigveda where these body parts are mentioned even alluding to any kind of cast system this is also where we get these four Verna rankings the Manos smti which was written around the 3rd or 2nd Century BCE as I mentioned before also uses these terms in its laws positing and solidifying the hierarchical structure we have an interesting account of the social structure in ancient utar Pradesh for instance through the words of maganis a Greek writer and an envo from aracosia in present day Afghanistan who stayed in Chandra Gupta Mora's court at the end of the 3rd Century BCE after the saluci modan war according to ragi conal's analysis of Megan's work Inda we get one of the earliest descriptors of social Society in utar Pradesh through the lens of an outsider meani is noted seven casts instead of four even in this seven tiered system the philos phos opers were at the top they were the only ones called upon to carry out rituals and sacrifices and would also be the only ones to qualify for privileges like tax exemptions as incentives for Good Counsel to the king he also noted that people could not change their casts in Moran Society historians suggest that the general structure that meganes observed was quite consistent with many different structures around the world but we must also keep in mind that megasthenes was a Greek supremacist from the Greek Imperial core of the time and the Greeks held a supremacist belief that the subcontinent was actually Greek territory because according to their mythology um India was conquered by dianis apparently did I do something to deserve this man because I thought that we were getting on just fine better than fine but this he also wrote about how people in India only only had culture or any kind of structure at all because the ancient Greeks were the ones who civilized them this becomes a recurring theme it should also be noted that meani stayed in the court of Emperor Chandra Gupta Maia and saw Society Through The Eyes of corellia or chanaka who was one of the most famous Brahman Priests of the time coming back to the four veras the story of the Mahabharata is the first instance in writing where we see further discussion of the concept of gunas or essential qualities there is an attribution of color to each Verna the Guna of brahans was seen as white signifying Purity chrias were coded as red signifying power greed and pride vishas were quoted as yellow since they were seen as having a combination of brahminical and chhatria attributes these three veras at the top are known as dja or twice born the concept of being twice born was not in the original vas not in the rig vaa instead it comes from the much more recent Manus only those who were considered dja or twice born were considered pure enough to study the vdas at points of time they were also considered the only ones pure enough to even get educated the fourth Verna the sudra was quoted as having a black Guna the color black denote in locations of low light dark corners and a void of spiritual Purity in the Indian context again this wasn't really talking about skin color it differentiated between different tribes based on occupations and geographical locations and not phenotypical traits the use of phenotypical traits came with the Greeks while Brahman priests would write about how and why certain occupations must be discriminated against to avoid spiritual pollution in order to keep the oppressed in their place to generate wealth for the temple Centric systems in which they existed the Greek Travelers in India on the other hand would hyperfocus on phenotypical traits they write about the adasia communities as subhuman with black skin and oversized genitalia there was this grotesque exoticization of the other in the ancient European world the lineages of Jadis refer to as shudra were assigned the task of being servants born into servitude in order to carry out medial tasks for the rest of society the children of shudra parents were locked into their assigned Verna and it was assumed that their role in life was to serve those considered more holy than they were in hopes of being born into a privileged cast in the next life verse 9 passage 334 and 335 from the Manti say for the sudra the highest Duty conducive to his best welfare is to attend upon such brahmana householders as are learned in the vas and famous if he is pure attendant upon his superiors of gentle speech free from pride and always dependent upon the brahmana he attains a higher cast [Music] [Music] for for now that's Bleak already so imagine the situation for those considered outside that Verna system entire lineages or jais who existed outside the Verna system were considered too polluting to even touch in the case of Kerala they were considered so polluting that they could not even be seen they were bned from using main Ro because there was a chance that a Brahman might need to use it to walk to the temple a chance that a Brahman might have to gaze upon their bodies VNA is not the same as class but as Dr ambedkar puts it it can be understood as an artificially enclosed class under which thousands of different jatis or lineages are slaughtered class and cast are different but very interconnected Concepts ignoring cast as an important intersection and only talking about class is like ignoring the intersection of whiteness in America when talking about class without a historical understanding or even an acceptance of intentional systems of Oppression that set back some communities While catapulting others to immense wealth and power economic reforms alone will not truly erase inequalities hello this is Rahul from Mumbai this man he doesn't know what he's talking about yeah he's full propaganda only left left Marxist propaganda only but how did the concepts of Verna untouchability and Purity based on occupations even come about historians suggest that during the Vic age between 1750 BCE and 500 BCE the Verna system was still in its embryonic phase and not yet rigid however as societies shifted from past talism to agriculture paranoia and fear around the control of Newfound territories and the resources that came with them became the new problems for those in power to contend with Conquest hunting and settling also brought about new diseases diseases like leprosy for instance was much more common in the ancient world and Incredibly terrifying with no answer in sight to cure diseases like leprosy with medicines proposed by renowned Scholars and Priests the ancient world likened the mysterious illness to a form of punishment for the actions of a human being in a previous life or due to some dishonest action in the current one this was how the Primal paranoia of keeping oneself clean and pure came about the fear of becoming polluted or corrupted by another human being is reflect Ed in every ancient culture we know and is not unique to Hinduism in ancient Jerusalem as well people did not really know what to make of a disease like leprosy attributing it to a curse or a punishment for slander we know today that 95% of the world is immune to leprosy but in the void of understanding we tend to reach for the supernatural even now in the Torah and the Old Testament Leviticus 13-1 14: 45 5 and 46 say the lepos person who has the disease shall wear tone clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out unclean unclean 46 says he shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease he is unclean he shall live alone his dwelling shall be outside the camp the word Jai can be understood as lineage or bloodline and Society stratified over time kingdoms would assign different work to different Jadis under the Verna system every lineage had its specific use and Jadis who were engaged in occupations like hunting leather work Butchery and dealing with corpses would have been more exposed to dealing with diseases transmitted through bacteria and viruses the ruling classes were shielded from the labor and toil of the marginalized but might have noticed that certain diseases may have seemed more prominent or widespread among the working classes and certain occupations who they already would have found gross because rich people be rich people that combined with the growing paranoia around ritual Purity and how impure elements might impact one's death and rebirth might have led priests to create these stratified systems to counter ailments and curses that befell Society every religion had some form of ritual cleansing or ritual to appease the gods this might surprise some of you but ancient brahmanical texts list out five creatures fit for sacrificial Slaughter man horse cow sheep and goat now is a good time to bring awareness to any eurocentric orientalist lens you might have on at these historical facts unfortunately it is still common to see people unironically use practices by ancient Orthodox communities to justify slavery and colonialism by Europeans in the present day Global South as we will discuss in further detail later the British had no interest in bettering Indian Society or civilizing it as the delusion of The White Man's Burden might suggest because the goal of the East India Company was to to use India like a mine for resources like I mentioned before this was not unique to this part of the world at the time sacrifice was prevalent among Germanic Greek Roman Celtic and other European populations as well an example of this being the Greek ritual of pharmacos in which a disabled person criminal slave or anyone deemed Outcast by Society was thrown off a cliff or burned alive in major cities like Athens to prevent disasters a more recent example of ritual Slaughter in the western world would be the witch trials in colonial Massachusetts and Europe which Western chauvinists tend to leave out when talking about the need to civilize cultures of the global South remember no cultureal religion is a monolith furthermore the reason why many current day Hindus don't even know about these ancient Vic sacrifices or might be offended and shocked about them is because the same sacrifices were denounced by prominent voices within their communities themselves and other Indians not by some mythical European Savior for instance the later versions of the satabata brahmana themselves denounced the once popular ashva ritual the slaughter of horses other texts saw a replacement of animal parts with uh plants ghee and so on and those revisions and rebuttal to older practices were also written by other brahmans and not Christian saviors from Europe and sometime in the fifth century BCE Buddhism was founded as a direct response to the early brahmanical sacrifices of the Vic age and the early VNA system that had formed in North India it was only later in the Hindu epic the Mahabharata after Buddhism had become the popular religion that brahmanical writers spoke about not slaughtering cows the this is something that Hindu nationalists prefer to avoid talking about today or deny but that's because I think fascists don't like to read the pahen priests who were seen as pure leaders of ritual and closer to heaven and godhood than any other had concentrated the power of meaning over Generations however the reality was they were just the same as anybody else with the same flaws there was no difference between a Brahman and a hunter just as the hunter might jealously go his favorite knife so did the Brahman guard his power over society and meaning in a paranoid world of disease death and uncertainty fueled by Wars over resources people were pushed to stay within the margins drawn around them otherwise those in power felt like they'd lose control and everything would collapse the marginalized must stay marginalized so that Society may continue to function or such was the reason therefore it is Advan vantageous for such an immoral cruel Society if some people did not marry outside their communities and if literacy and the ability to read and write were guarded as with patriarchal systems in all our histories that necessitate the control of purity of blood and possession of land and generational wealth women from all casts were subject to marginalization this is the material and historical background that one must keep in mind when looking a text like the manusmriti the text was a compilation of codes of law said to have been written by a king called Manu they were originally taught from Brahman teacher to Brahman student via oral tradition the word SMY literally meaning what is heard it was one of the many legal texts of the Dharma shastras in her critical analysis of the Manti satarupa sarar mentions that there are massive inconsistencies like how in earlier verses 3.55 to 3.62 seem to glorify the role of women but the later verses of 9.3 to 9 9.17 do the exact opposite those latest sections today read like an inel code of law it is stated in these later sections that all women regardless of who they were born to were sudra as part of the lowest ranking Verna no wonder Dr ambedkar burnt it we have to keep this in mind when Cur Hindu nationalist like Rajiv Malhotra spread misinformation to whitewash how the VNA system entangles the jais of the land instead of sympathizing with the struggles that come about as a result of this hierarchical system many like him in positions of privilege condemn any critical discussion about Verna and played off as some kind of anti-hindu conspiracy now that we have a better understanding of jati and VNA let's go back to 8th Century Kerala ch traders who were familiar with the region north of ancient Kerala noted a widespread segregation of society based on the chatura system this contrasts with what many Chinese traders of the time observed in Kerala earlier in Kerala travelers from ancient Greece Arabia and China often wrote about the diversity of the land and even the existence of fair skinned Jane communities from the north darker skinned into Natives and even inter marriages between all these communities the second coming of chera dominance in the region came with the ascendency of the kulashekara cheras a line of chera Kings descended from kongunad vear the vea communities shared marriage ties with Empires like the Chola and were and are a prosperous landowning cast in South India the new chairas established mahodayapuram in modern day kungur as their new capital with them they brought from the north the new Cult of vites and lots of Brahman priests during this time period from the 8th to the 11th century CE historians and archaeologists note a significant increase in Brahman only settlements also known as agah harams hundreds of families would live in segregated Villages where only brahmins could walk in or around the these settlements were usually set up along Arab lands and rivers perfect for the activity of rice farming this period would Mark a beginning of the rapid sanskritization and Brahman isation of the people of Kerala the rise of Temple Centric religious culture under brahmanism in the decan kingdoms of ancient karnadaka had now spread to Kerala and popularized among the ruling classes the 8th Century saw the birth and life of of adish shankara who was an incredibly influential nud Brahman who co-opted the ideas of Buddhism to create his own ad vedanta essentially an orthodox School of brahmanism in fact the influences of Buddhism were so obvious that other brahans from Tamil Nadu later criticized ADI shankara for being a crypto Buddhist ad vedanta is a non-dualistic school of brahmanism that proposed the supremacy of the vdas including more recent works like the manusmriti he believed that Brahman the Creator God not to be confused with Brahman was everywhere in everything it proposed that humans were also Brahman adish shankara would travel far and wide debating Buddhist and Jane scholars in order to argue his case for the brahmanical worldview debates were incredibly popular in all parts of anci in India and it's very easy to find accounts of Kingdoms who prided themselves on debate culture but as we know from even today's debate culture on the internet they're not always constructive it's more entertainment and Blood Sport than anything although this new line of VAV chera Kings left inscriptions explicitly calling for religious tolerance it doesn't seem to have been enough to keep the Buddhist Traditions alive it might have been indicative of tensions that had been brewing between the the Buddhists and the brahmanical fold the Buddhists who had intertwined themselves with the tribal culture of Kerala posed the problem for the brahmanical ad vanta bti movement in order for various Chieftains and kings of the time to achieve a higher status they saw that attaining the approval of the Priestly class of brahmans was the way to go many ancient temples that are considered as Hindu today used to be Buddhist viharas and Jane temples archaeologists regularly fish out broken statues of the Buddha from lakes and ponds in some cases statues had been carved into lingams or other structures and worshiped as Yaki or a type of forest Spirit according to the nudi Brahman the land of Kera was a land of snakes and demons referring to the indigenous gods and people as beneath them and subhuman therefore in Kerala everyone who wasn't a Brahman was considered shudra and touchable all impure according to brahmanism they even viewed the existing sharah chieftans as impure and Untouchable as well and not through chhatria which was very different from the case of North India all the inhabitants were considered an Arian an AAR so how did the nambur Brahman Community exert their influence over the land over a population they believed to be so polluting and disgusting allow me to introduce you to the hanara ceremony this was a Vic ritual that allowed a king to upgrade their Verna status in exchange for their weight in gold the namri brahans would order for the construction of a gold statue of a bell or a bull inside of which the king or Chieftain would be required to sit after the ritual was complete the king would emerge from the construct and become chhatria or twice bornn actually sumon then chhatria the the Sanskrit term for chhatria adjacent not really chhatria since their lineage technically was outside the VNA system still after this ritual some of these Kings would then be able to be in the same room as the Brahman priests and have a meal with them they still could not touch physically but they could be the same groom this is why only a fraction of the ner population at the time were considered samand and chhatria linked to the Bloodlines of chiefs and Kings the kirad N population meaning ground n in Malayalam and IL were examples of privilege cast ner populations who benefited from Hanan Garba rituals and colluding with brahminical landlords the zamarin of Calicut shared a similar status to the kiril N the rest of the N communities would share a similar status to landless tenants who had a slightly higher social position as the arav this table illustrates some of the traditional occupations of these ners and you can see here how class operates within cost as well this is why I can't help but cringe when people online try to monolith eyesee ners and other communities into a homogeneous group who are all equally guilty of some kind of cost based atrocity or violence it's simply not true and unfortunately also a an indication of our lack of attention to Nuance as a the community and shows how hypocritical we can be in jumping to simplify someone else's identity and invalidating their work based on the community they may have been born into with no decision of their own the now dominant nud Brahman Community dictated social norms Sanskrit the language of the vas was only taught to the brahans and even within the Brahman families only the eldest Brahman son was allowed to learn certain Sanskrit chants since the new chair had bought into the supremacy of the brahmans they forfeit their lands to the temples the lands of the people were also forfeit and Kerala became what is known as the deas swam meaning God's land the vast swads of cultivable lands for Patty now belonged to the rahen temples the chera Kings allowed for the Assembly of Temple committees which function like agrarian corporations managed by a council of urar of nud Brahman priests however these corporations also enjoyed political autonomy and could take part in local Administration these committees also acted as accountants and were in charge of Temple Revenue they served as an agency for more efficient extraction of surplus from the population it also contributed to the extension of Agriculture to tribal lands and the consolidation of landlord domination the temples also belong to the nud brahans and the common person was not allowed to enter them even though they were built by marginalized people from this Union of Corporations masquerading as religious entities political power and land was concentrated in the hands of a sliver of the population and 100 years of war due to the expansionist strategies of the Chola Empire and one rajar Raja Chola just made everything worse Chola armies would Annex parts of Kerala like palakad and tandur this this period saw the influx of tamul brahmins as well from the Chola Empire in multiple waves throughout the centuries the Tamil brahans set up their own Temple Centric systems and agah harams and did not cooperate with the nud brahans despite the numerous setbacks and defeats that The chera Chieftains suffered at the hands of the Chola Invaders the cholas were ultimately enabled to hold hegemonic power over Kerala the last chera king ramavarma kulashekara transformed large squads of his army into suicide squads in a desperate last ditched attempt to remove the cholas from Kerala the cholas under kulango Chola were defeated and forced to withdraw to the South which marked the end of Chola occupation in Kerala the cheras were severely weakened during this phase and vassals like prominent n Chieftains saw an opportunity and RAM Varma abdicated the throne essentially marking the end of the cheras this only further strengthened the control of the nud Brahman Patriarchs as many chiefs and warriors who had died during the suicide War had given over their lands to the temples the cholas heavily taxed their occupied territories to keep the war machine going and to avoid taxation many Chieftain had given over their lands to Temples because temples did not need to pay taxes over the centuries as Society stratified even further under this nudi system of control the land went from being known as daas swam to Brahma swam the land of the brahans and what if the common person what happened to you if you weren't a king or a Chieftain an alliance was formed between the Brahman oligarchs and the local Chieftain the ones who had been newly converted I mean purified and upgraded in cast status against the tenants and surfs whom they controlled and exploited they were considered Untouchable unseeable and landless slaves from birth the distinctive duty of the shudra is to serve the Brahman everything else that he does is fruitless for him chapter 12 of the brahmanical text G Dharma sutras states that if Audra listens intentionally to the vther his ears shall be filled with molten tin or lack if he recites the vther his tongue shall be cut out if he remembers them his body shall be split in Twain if Audra mentions the name and cast of Any twice born men with scorn a burning iron nail 10 in Long shall be thrust into his mouth sociologist prma kurin wrote in her paper on ethnogenesis and colonialism that this oranization also entailed in the gradual stripping away of Rights of women as we' mentioned before when talking about the Manti all women regardless of their birth were considered shudra within the old systems of Kerala and since the common person was not allowed to hear or read the vas the temples would arrange performances while coopting local Traditions like Kuda a form of Storytelling through dance these performances became a way for nud brahans to use a familiar Trope in order to propagate their own versions of the oral Traditions to the marginalized communities and through these performances dravidian gods were slowly but surely coop Ed into Vic ones for instance the origin of the land of Kerala itself began to take on a brahmanical form early on in oral traditions and this is what eventually culminated in the 17th century work of Kerala this gave the ruling classes a um foundational myth a religious story that justified them being at the top as the rightful owners of the land while they kept the tenants and surfs divided in the late Main On's paper thus was born the tale of parasurama the sixth Avatar of the viic Arian God Vishnu in this tale Vishnu in the form of parshurama goes on a killing spree punishing numerous generations of chhatria Warriors and Kings all for insulting his father tired and remorseful for his excessive violence he sought the advice of Brahman sages they advised him to fling his bloody axe into the sea and where his axe fell arose a narrow strip of land that we now call Kerala however when the land came up it was filled with poison snakes and demons referring to the snake worship of the nyers another Legend most likely propagated by privileged cast ners speaks of Nars having taken off their sacred threads to hide in the lands of Kerala to avoid parama killing them for being chhatria this is most likely an attempt to call to a chhatria past which you tend to see all over South India the myth claims indigeny for the brahans parama then settled the brahans on the land it was his gift to the brahans in atonement The Story Goes that the brahans then developed it and then all the other costs followed from everywhere else this myth claims indigeny for the brahans to justify the right to the land while dehumanizing people who already existed as snakes and demons sound familiar it's also interesting that a similar myth around an older chera King already existed where the king throws a spear into the sea to call upon his Capital they couldn't have just appropriated that too now could they writer AJ Shaker wrote on the transformation of the tradition of onam M or mahabali was known in subaltern mths as a benevolent King who exemplified egalitarian values the brahmanical story that erased the tales and deeds of mahabali claimed that the god Vishnu had to appear once more in the form of the dwarf V one of the many avatars of Vishnu in the story V is known to have turned mahabali's generosity against him vhana asked mahabali to give him three steps of land mahabali agreed happy to fulfill the request but at that moment V pulls a fast one and grows in size The Story Goes that he became so large that his footstep covered the entire Earth the Second Step covered the entire sky and since there was no place left for his third step mahabali being the generous King that he was offered up his own head to be stepped on upon stepping on his head mahabali was banished to the Nether world the symbolism within this myth about the superiority of the Arian Brahman Vina over the so-called assura Demon King mahabali should not be lost on you it certainly wasn't lost on Amit sha and other B JP fascists people resisted in ways they could the dravidian art form of theum which Indians outside Kerala might mistake for a Hindu ritual was born from dravidian ancestor worship theam signifies rage directly at the cost system there's a reason why the performers are all from marginalized costs like the pulan vanan malan ban and mavan communities theam is a form of remembering the human being beings martyred through cast based violence and it doesn't even restrict itself to telling the stories only of those imaginized costs it also tells the stories of privileged cost people who transgressed against their community's own rules and pay dearly for it whether by ostracization or death in a theum ritual a performer would allow themselves to be possessed by the spirit of the martyred ancestor who would be deified and given a Godlike status this Godlike status would give the performer a brief moment in which they would transcend the cost hierarchy and see themselves as above the privileged costs theam is an overtly political art form and pten is arguably the most political of them all in po poten directly challenges adish shankara the Brahman aara of AD Putin walks the main road while carrying a child on his waist and a pot of tody on his head until he runs into the Brahman acharia to avoid distance pollution adish shankara asked ptin to get off the main road so he can walk by in the story potin retorts by asking why he should do such a thing he goes on a rageful rank against the cast system and questions the hypocrisy of AD vedanta's non-dualistic idea itself as I mentioned before shankra proposed that Brahma or God existed in everyone and not as a separate entity somewhere far off in the skies God was man and man was God however when adish shankara said man he meant just Brahman it was like equality only for brahans in the T put and says you smear the sandal paste we are bathed in dirt you wear chains of gold we wear the chain of fish haven't you crossed the river in which the canoe I rode the banana grown in our dumpyard is the offering to your God the basil grown in our dumpyard is the Garland of your God still why do you argue over cast when you are wounded is it not blood that gushes out when I too am wounded is it not blood in the story in performance adish shankara eventually realizes his mistake and apologizes he prostrates himself and seeks forgiveness however the reality is that the event that this St portrays most likely ended with the killing of the dth character that's why it's a theam the hundreds of theam sprinkled throughout the landscape of Kerala are Regional and are not performed outside their region because someone of that region was martyred through cost based violence theum became a means for dullet to express a form of agency and to reject a system which no one asked for later on when Marxism would become a popular ideology for the aava community theum would go on to be a Mainstay fixture in communist rallies and agitation against the landlord casts in a seemingly paradoxical Union of communist and religious forces which honestly allows for its own set of counterrevolutionary situations but we'll touch on that another time and as history tends to repeat itself theams are now being slowly brahin IED by the RSS for in in the example of paland an ARA Mar deity who has been sanskritized into Vishnu morti another Avatar of Vishnu who devoured the demon hyak shapu essentially erasing the martyr's past and rather tragically in the modern sanskritized version of the poent the dth poten disappears and is replaced by Shiva why because our inherent castism cannot accept that a Brahman achara would bow to a dth this is how it works in the land tenure system of the nud brahans they established a bondage system in which families would be attached to packets of land in order to ensure a permanency of Labor even though the brahans own the land through divine right they could not physically supervise the farmers and the tenants because of untouchability law so they were absent landlords instead Mar casts like the ners who were also previously considered chud and Untouchable were settled on the Arab lands owned by the temples in order to play middle manager and supervisor they oppressed the tenant and surf casts on behalf of the Brahman the brahmins control naer communities by exploiting the naer cultural tradition of matrilineal property transfer it was a system where n lands could only be transferred through the matriarch of the family the Brahman establish lished a system of false marriages called sandam a system in which the younger sons of the Brahman families would marry ner women in order to keep hold of the property what's tragic was any children that they would have would have to be treated as Untouchable by the Brahman father the father was not obligated to be involved in the rearing of the child at all the N woman was also entitled to refuse or even end the relationship but but over time the other men and women in the ner households would come to look down upon this as a social taboo and any refusal to accept a somea marriage would be seen as the family taking a hit to their social status it was also not uncommon for younger Brahman children to be outcast from their communities and deemed impure by their own families the oldest sons of the nud Brahman communities though they were the only ones allowed to marry a namri Brahman woman and they were the only ones also allowed to learn certain Sanskrit shlokas and perform certain rituals this unique highly restrictive system allowed families to concentrate ritual and material wealth and power even more so than probably any other place in India nurri brahans of pure birth not just any nud Brahman also were exempt from paying taxes how did the Muslims and Christians of this era operate if one were to look at the situation in India today which is honestly seen through a very North Indian lens you might make the assumption that there was tension between the Hindus Muslims and Christians however that wasn't the case earlier on Hindus as a homogeneous group just didn't exist yet and in the case of Kerala Christians and Muslims were considered to be outside the Verna system but since there was no traditional via cost or Merchant cast affluent Christians and Muslims filled that Gap their material wealth and Status at the time was beneficial for the brahmans to co-opt into their system Sonia Thomas of the Syrian Christian Community has written a great desertation on the Syrian Christian histories check it out if you're interested the early Christian communities known as the naanis were part of the Eastern Church they developed an interesting relationship with the nudi Brahman community over time the nazarani communities were and still are a highly endogamous Community they barely marry outside their communities being a merchant Community outside the Verna system who already owned land before the brahmanical hamoni got there they were allowed to continue to operate on the condition that they accepted brahmanical hamoni so nazaran became known as purifiers purifiers of what you might ask purifiers of the polluting aspects of marginalized costs for instance oil is an integral part of Temple culture in Kerala however according to Old Manu the lawgiver pressing of oil was considered a base occupation a highly polluting one yeah he the guy really seemed to pull out of his ass the cost engaged with pressing oil at the time was the vanan community and certain ner cost as well and as per the Norms of medieval Kerala oil pressing was considered impure but the cityan Christian priest touch was considered to be a purifier causing the pollution to be null and void over time this symbiotic relationship with the Brahman community and this upliftment and status because of their closeness to them would also get the nazaran to start practicing untouchability the community had established an equal status to that of privileged cost loning ners they were warded lands by the nudies and even traded lands with them and these lands would have permanent Adian families or slave families attached to them in a cast stratified Society communities tend to want to identify with those in power we haven't changed much and we see this even today in which some affluent families of minority communities in the US for instance struggle with trying to attain whiteness when they exist within the white supremacist hierarchy Nam mudri Brahman men would also marry syak Christian women and have a similar arrangement to what they had with the ner community in order to control the land those who stepped out of line by marrying someone outside their cast tended to face social consequences this is very very different from other Christian groups in Kerala like the Latin Catholic communities or the Protestant communities that arose from Portuguese and then later British missionary work those Christian groups tend to be the most exogamous in all of Kerala with marriage patterns not being as restrictive case in point and just like those myths that claim to be chhatria from the N Community popular Legends began to circulate among the syak Christians claiming that their ancestors were actually numbur brahmans also who were converted by the Apostle Thomas himself this allowed the elite within the community to claim a higher status via being associated with nud brahans which doesn't really make sense because the nazarani Christians had already established themselves before brahic hegemony was even a thing as for the Muslim Community who had established themselves from the 6th Century onwards between the 6th and the 15th centuries religious violence was non-existent because again they fit into the brownle system at the time there are numerous papers and historical research that document this but I will be using a very recent one from 2022 by shaana and jod money for a bulk of the section Calicut in Northern Kerala was an incredible trading Hub serviced mainly by Arab ships many Arab traders had lived in k for centuries and settled down initially with the support of local Chieftains and later with the support of nudi brahans to the privileged costs the seafaring skill of the Arabs was seen as useful as the belief among the nurri brahmans at the time was that the sea was a resting place for the Gods and must not be disturbed with them traveling on it according to the ancient Brahman priest bodana who wrote the bodana sutras a Brahman would lose his cast for traveling Over the Sea because of this the nurri brahans again formed a symbiotic relationship with the early Muslim Traders when they were affluent they were even patrons of mosques built at the time the samud of Calicut or or as the Portuguese and Dutch called them the zamarin of Calicut was a local Chieftain whose own ancestors had gone through the Hanan Garba ceremony in order to achieve a chhatria adjacent status the zamarin would handle Coastal trade and was very successful indigenous Fisher folk who were not Muslim but considered outside the cost system and not Hindu either would seek employment on the docks to escape the slavery and force labor they would have to endure from the Brahman landlords they'd become Sailors and many would convert to Islam and become part of the storied marar Merchants who dominated sea trade at the time privileged cast groups did not see any issue with conversion at the time because again there was no electoral politics and they did not have the need to keep a homogeneous Hindu voting block today the RSS promotes these fascist ideas of a Hindu genocide a narrative that mirrors the white genocide mths pedal by American white supremacists and Evangelical Christians privileged costs at the time were most more interested in one's bloodline and Purity than one's religion I have to say that because RSS shakers in K today are working really hard to try and cover up this um symbiotic relationship between the Hindus and Muslims in the past because Kerala today still doesn't have the vitriolic violence between Hindus and Muslims that you might see in other states the Inconvenient Truth that the Hindu fascists want to hide is that life for the marginalized under brahmanical patriarchy was brutal by law I mean if you could be killed for merely walking on a main road then why not take your chances as a ship right where you can actually earn some money being a sailor sounds pretty fun we even have medieval ballads called mapart which sing of prominent Muslims seeing no difference between the Arava and the ner costs and it wasn't just marginalized costs who saw the benefit of SE trading and becoming a marer excommunicated ners and nud brahans would also seek work from Muslim Traders and many of those privileged cast members would also convert to Islam the mapa Muslims unlike pretty much I guess anywhere else in the world also followed a matrilineal property sharing system a matrilineal tradition of wealth transfer like the ner communities the matriarch of the household would handle finances and that would pass on to the next matriarch economics forced the brahmans to accept the Muslim Community into their system this all changed however once the Portuguese set foot on Kera looking for the storied lost Christians I'll keep this section A little bit brief so I can Circle back to Muslims the Portuguese found the Lost Christians in the nazran but they didn't like what they found the Portuguese attempted to forcefully convert the syak Christians to come under the Roman Catholic pope however the Syrian Christians did not want to leave the Eastern Church of Assyria which triggered an inquis position the Portuguese were especially brutal and during their time they set up training posts all along the coast of Kerala and began directly competing with the Muslim Community in typical Colonial fashion they even began to resort to violence in order to more efficiently monopolized trade in the region the mapa Muslim Community was ethnically cleansed and driven Inland this cut off entire communities from their traditional source of wealth and trade this Exodus of mapa Muslims at the hands of the Portuguese is barely covered the Arab traders packed up and left and the now landless Muslims were forced to move Inland and rebuild according to prar Kuran the formation of Mao Muslims that we know today as a distinct ethnic Community really began after this ethnic cleansing they had to face the struggle of reestablishing themselves in a brutal cast hierarchy where your social status and lineage literally decided if you lived or died most of the community had to shift from being Merchants to being landless laborers for privilege cost landlords and it wasn't just the privilege cast rulers of the area that took advantage of the situation the 1750s to the 1790s saw multiple invasions by the myuran Kingdom from the north led by the Muslim kings hayar Ali and later by his son tipu Sultan one of the main objectives of myour was to take control of traven CO's vastly influential trading ports and as you would have figured out they weren't the only ones eyeing that region because after the Portuguese had conquered and controlled it the Dutch took it off their hands and then the myour Kings and then the British the myour Kings saw a unique opportunity in the disenfranchised mapa Muslims who stood at odds with the local landlords and Kings the myo occupation used their power and influence to deepen The Divide between the Mela Muslims and the local non-muslim populations just as the British would go on to do later and just like how the BJP and RSS are doing today the Common Thread between them all of course is power and control divide and conquer as the myo kingdoms conquered parts of Kerala they would appoint local mapa people who they trusted as the new landlords in order to govern the areas on behalf of myour this new landlord class began to organize a themselves with the tungal as their leaders the tungal were essentially a subgroup of Muslims adjacent with the SIDS of the north and in Pakistan who beli themselves to be the direct descendants of the prophet and they saw themselves adjacent in Social Status to brahans it was during this time that the mapa Muslim Community began to adopt certain styles of dress and take on systems of Muslim populations from North India leaving behind in indigenous Traditions like matrinal property share and so on the Invaders from myau had flipped the balance of power and turned the social structures on their heads in the areas but when the British arrived on the scene the British Allied themselves with the privilege cast traditional land owners and worked with the families to take back the land the British like other Colonial Powers did not really care much for the social harmony or progression of the Native population and had already been implementing zamindari systems across India in their territories and just like that the lands in Northern Kerala switch hands back to the Brahman landlords so you ran away yes sir Mr hitov your police force is inefficient they are cowards sir I beg to submit no submissions I will request his Excellency the governor to send the Army to crush these Muslim Fanatics under British rule the taxation against the Muslim peasants was much higher and this led to several Mass uprisings against the landlord system and the colonial state the most serious of which was the Mela rebellion of 1921 which lasted for more than 6 months and took the lives of 10,000 people these rebellions were brutally suppressed by the British Mr Thomas don't you know that Ali musar is a holy priest of the Muslim Community of then why have you sent a military force to arrest him sir it's because I what you've done is a great mistake Mr Thomas and you are responsible for the consequences but sir now there is not even a single police Constable to maintain Law and Order in that place people are wild looting killing raping and even forceable conversions are reported sir is it then it will create a communal Riot between Hindus and Muslims which we want and it's our government policy divide and Rule now is a good time to reiterate that this kind of brain rot was not uniquely something that was found on the Indian subcontinent the concept of systemic discrimination based on imaginary ideas of inherited Purity and status is littered all over our histories in Japan for instance most people are familiar with the concept of the Samurai thanks to Hollywood's glorification of it but the reality was they were part of Japan's own brutal feudal car system which had solidified under the Tokugawa administ ministration between 16003 and 1867 Japanese Society had already been divided into the romen or the good people and the senmen or the lowly people and this was also based on lineage and occupation Japanese cultural hegemony had come about from a combination of shindu ism and Buddhism combined with military dictatorship life was truly miserable for the masses the Tokugawa Administration qualified forecasts based on a graded scale of status and ideas on their production on the top was the emperor followed by the Dao and the feudal Lords followed by the Samurai and then the nofu or Farmers jaru or skilled Artisans and the shonin or merchants and Below these four casts were the outcasts like the hinin which literally translates to not human the ETA which translate to Great filth and finally the burakumin the Untouchable group in Japan who were considered the most impure these groups of people outside that Japanese system of four casts were considered legally not human under Japanese feudal law groups like The hinen were artificially created by grouping together descendants of other Hine criminals Breakers of social taboos and survivors of suicide and the worst part of it all was all of their children would also be hinen and considered Untouchable they would inherit the status of their parents and it would n their entire lineages to generations of humiliation like the case of untouchability in India it was hereditary and just like many other cost-based societies around the world a marginalized life was also worth less in the legal system according to Japanese law of the time the life of seven aters was equal to that of one human being so the human could not be tried for murder even if they were to kill six aters and just like the system in Kerala marginalized people had to identify their cost through clothing and performativity they typically engaged in occupations also considered impure like hunting leather working and dealing with corpses Butchery in 1871 the ma government issued an emancipation edict which finally seemed to recognize the outcasts as human legally however just like any anti-discrimination law passed anywhere in the world it didn't stop the Discrimination the new keki system of citizenship registry detailed your entire family history and occupations this was also seen in Rwanda when it was under Colonial occupation where it was easy for hutus and tosis to identify someone else's background what what do you think bigots are going to do with that information the new title given to Japan's Untouchables was Shin Hyman meaning new commoners how was that not a dead giveaway furthermore any employer or marriage Seeker would be able to view which geographical location you lived in or came from which is exactly how people in India try to find out what your cost is Indians are very used to questions like where is your family from what do they do what is your last name which street are you from all these questions are used to guess at One's cost status so the askar can decide on whether or not to treat you with respect or scorn this is the kind of lunacy one must employ when you don't have the benefit of skin tone to discriminate with it took until 2016 for Japan to even Implement a law against bakman discrimination for perspective untouchability in India was outlawed in 1950 and it hasn't solved it the biblical justification for the European slave tra as well employed a type of hereditary status a hereditary form of discrimination some of you may be familiar with the story in the Book of Genesis Noah cursed the children of his son Ham into Eternal slavery for looking upon his drunken naked body now the story never really mentioned skin color but that didn't stop European colonialists from using it to justify their anti-blackness speaking of which when the British took over Kerala the cost system underwent major changes between 1850 and 1947 this was an unintended side effect as the British transformed the landscape of India and Kerala to fit their plans of capital extraction they were incentivized to create an educated class of Clerks to oversee operations and keep the colonial Machinery going and British Protestant missionaries also began to set up schools and for the first time in generations for many Bloodlines this opened up the prospect of education for many costs who had been previously banned from it prominent members of communities like the Arava and the Pula who were the largest of the formerly Untouchable groups now had access to some form of Education the Brahman and ners as well were depra of their traditional role of supervisor and land owner and many brahminical features of cast like the sandam marriages were abolished in favor of the idea of a nuclear family a Victorian concept and land ownership switched over to individuals rather than the joint family besides those who were active participants in the colonial Machinery there were also many among the British missionaries who sympathized with the plight of The Untouchables in Kerala whatever the intentions were the rapid social changes in the 19th century gave the marginalized people of Kerala the wedge they needed to challenge the pre-existing brahmanical hegemony the British needed to decide on how and whom to tax in India and what kind of laws they should be implementing within Society but instead of actually trying to understand the complex dynamics of the country and the generational effects of cost spas segreg ation and apide they chose the path of dividing the country based on religious identities instead because it would be much more efficient the Muslims and the Christians had a holy text that the British could use to devise laws around however the other groups within India did not have a single religious text they had vastly different food habits different languages cultures ways of dressing even Gods so the colonial government chose to group them altogether under a racial term they used to designate natives who were not Muslim as Hindu so now vast swads of people were grouped under religion and they didn't even realize it originally this grouping included James siks and Buddhists as well and the text they used to artificially group everyone together were that of the brahmanical dhas shastras remember these texts were compiled by brahans written by brahans and for a very long period of History could only be read by Brahman so why did the British do this anyway there are many answers to this besides what I mentioned before being ease but it's worth remembering also that in the 18th and 19th centuries colonial projects around the world were obsessed with race 1859 was the year Charles Darwin dropped his book The Origin of Species this is what Mark Brown of the University of Melbourne wrote in 2001 in his paper on the construction of native criminality in India he wrote that the idea of evolution itself provided the heuristic key that race Theory had to that point been lacking suddenly the Practical significance of race had become apparent if humankind had evolved in a process of progressively more successful adaptations race could explain the progress of civilization and thus of forms of social organization political consciousness and government different races with their deferring levels of civilization and social organization now could be understood to fall on a scientifically grounded Continuum of human development in short Eugenics from the perspective of colonial Britain Darwin's theory of evolution had opened up the whole world as a laboratory for the examination of human Origins but more importantly to the British power an insight into the justification of Britain's actions and their own rise through history rather than focusing on the ethnologies and hierarchies back home in Britain the colonies became the focal point where the inferior races could be found for scientific research in 1866 the governor of Bengal George Campell had this to say at a meeting of the Asiatic Society of Bengal it is now evident that as this country in a far greater degree than any other in the world offers an unlimited field for ethnological observation and inquiry and presents an Infinity of varieties of almost every one of the great divisions of the human race so also there is no lack of able and qualified men to reap this abundant Harvest you know that system of using your fingerprint as identification this is where it was developed it was first used by the British Administration in Bengal in the 19th century so William Hershel the chief magistrate of Huli District in yiur first used it for contract signatures and later for the criminal justice system if you've watched my video on the ertia of trans people in colonial India you're familiar with the criminal tribes act an act which deemed entire cast groups criminal from birth to the British India was essentially a mine for resources a place that London could leech off of to fuel its own industrialization they didn't care for social reform because they weren't planning a settler Colony like Israel they just wanted our resources so who could manage local Affairs and help British officials understand the landscape why the people whom the British were already in contact with Kings royalty priests the privileged casts the Nigerian postcolonial scholar and pan-africanist Chin weu gives us the best explanation of this phenomenon in his book decolonizing The African mind chin Wu uses the characters from Shakespeare's play The Tempest Prospero a wizard and the ousted Duke of Milan takes on the role of the European colonizer and his two servants Ariel and calaban represent the two types of native identities that arise from colonialism caban is represented as less than human always seeking to rebel and struggle for Freedom he is forced into subjugation and Prospero takes it upon himself to civilize him Ariel on the other hand is seen as the good native a magical character willing to serve Prospero in exchange for freedom and prosperity in the future he is willing to oppress calaban on behalf of Prospero the experience of colonialism is never an equal one the British saw no issue with the cost system because it neatly tied in to their understanding of race science centered around white supremacy this picture of aaala should tell you all you need to know about what the British thought about the marginalized people of India punka were ceiling fans that were manually operated by a marginalized cast person in order to keep British officers cool as they slept or took a nap the British lived up to the white supremacist Traditions rooted in Greek culture a culture they claimed Heritage to by viewing human beings who didn't look like them as living property and they saw the privilege cast Hindus and the privileged cost Muslims being at the top as just a simple form of evolution they saw it as the natural progress of society this is why they would view the privileged costs as the good and valuable native who fit the role of middle manager to help in the project of capital extraction the British and the privileged cost of the time viewed the marginalized as subhuman the British solidified the goup of cost even further because it was convenient for them let me take a quick sidebar here the underlying reason for partition of India and Pakistan for instance was because of the squabbles of the privileged cost Muslims and privileged cost Hindus the reality was most of India's Muslims at the time did not want partition and if you look at the Muslim population today in India they are severely underrepresented in government in managerial positions and even education this cast intersection combined with the hateful Muslim rhetoric and a lack of access to education leaves India's Muslims in a very precarious situation as one of the most marginalized communities in India today clearly the British viewed the new Hindu block Through The Eyes of Brahman advisers this was reflected in the implementation of laws like the Hindu Widow remarriage act the British didn't care to understand that there were actually massive cultural distinctions between the new Hindu population between brah households and non- Brahman ones Widow remarriage was common among marginalized cast communities however in brahminical communities where the law was the monos smti Widow remarriage was forbidden because remember the reason why women were forbidden from remarrying in privileged cast communities was in order to control their bodies and maintain cast Purity controlling cost Purity meant controlling the family wealth this wasn't the case amongst the marginalized and this is clear to see in the compromises that the British made in order to appease the Orthodox elements within the privileged Cass societies they agreed that women should have the right to remarry on the condition that she give up any property under her name around the same time Europeans who had been studying Sanskrit texts discovered a link between Sanskrit and other European languages this led to the theory that Europeans in privileged cast Indians shared common ancestors whom they called Arians the colonial government was happy to use this new term as a tool claiming that hey look we're related so me dominating you is not so bad we're just trying to help this is why some privileged cast supremacists tend to believe that they're European or want to be European or idolize European fascists some reformers among the privileged cast did not even want to be called Hindu instead they wanted to be called called Aras in order to distance themselves from the other Hindus because status and brain rot are two PS and a part I say all this to simplify my point but don't forget that popular fronts made up of privileged cost and marginalized cost people Alik LED our anti-colonial struggle against the British and their collaborators so remember to not monize all privilege cast people as inherently evil or some idiotic thing like that that's simply counterproductive and be wary of anyone who tells you to do that because chances are they might be pedling some other form of ethnolinguistic nationalism this is just how power worked when the objective was to control capital a common objective of affluent prish cost communities and the colonialists of the time until the British implemented the cost censes in its various territories no one really understood just how unequal Indian Society was the British chose to push cast talk into the background and focus on the binary religious one which is why we still talk of India as a Hindu Muslim binary any talk about cost today gets people yelling at you about trying to divide the Hindus as if Hindus were homogeneous unthinking monolith it's no different really than how zionists hide behind Judaism and Jewish people and try to conflate anti-zionism with anti-Semitism fascist ideology are quick to devour its own children and shift seemingly puritanical goals if it meant furthering their genocidal ideas the cast senses of the 1900s had raised the social awareness of the masses and privileged cast groups realized that majority of the country were made up of bahujan or OBC and dth communities and if they didn't quickly Co-op them as Hindu as well they would quickly become a political minority 36 was the year when when edar published the annihilation of cast when he it was I think in 1935 that he first called on the Untouchable population which was about 44 million people at that time to to give up Hinduism and to embrace any other religion this at that moment came as a terribly dangerous sign to what were the Hindu reformers and I'll explain why you know until the turn of the century there there wasn't such a thing such an idea as Hindu people who today are called Hindus or who call themselves Hindus never did call themselves Hindus they only refer to themselves as their cast you know they would say I'm a Brahman I'm a jadav I'm a guar and earlier on during The mugul Reign millions of Untouchables had converted to Islam later to Christianity and later to Sikhism to ex to escape the scourge of cast and nobody had a problem with that but at the turn of the century suddenly the politics of Empire began to turn into the politics of the nation state and suddenly you know it was not enough to just ride your horse or your elephant into Delhi and take the throne and and declare yourself the emperor so with the nation state came the politics of representation so many religions 3,000 languages all of this was kind of now being synthetically homogenized into a nation state who has the right to say I represent everybody you know who represents the big farmers who represents the labor who represents the SS who can say who represents whom and at this point suddenly the idea that 44 million people under the accounting head of Hindu might just move over onto another side side created a tremendous anxiety and this was when these uh privileged cast Hindu reform organizations suddenly came into being you know uh the Arya samage the Brahma samage the ramak Krishna Mission and they started proing amongst Untouchables and they started speaking against untouchability but not against cast so because the whole thing was to bring these this huge population into the Hindu fold but to keep them somehow to keep them in the servant SP the British had unknowingly set off a chain of events and anti- cast movement sprung up all around the country in Kerala the Renaissance had begun in the following section I'm going to discuss a part of the anti-as movements in Kerala and talk about social reformers who spent their lives struggling to uplift their fellow human beings they are barely mentioned outside the state of Kerala let alone the world when it comes to conversations around cast social reformers like aali of the Pula Community SRI Nuru of the ARA Community po yanan of the par Christian Community and so on kickstarted a new era of social reform freedom of Education freedom of movement freedom to enter temples the right to wear clothing and jewelry that were outside the rules of what K Society had given them the abolition of Purity Norms around food intering intercast and Interfaith marriages aali was born into the castan Society of 19th century Kerala and considered a subhuman slave from birth from an early age he questioned the humiliating practices observed by the privilege to keep people in their place the Pula were barred from public roads schools places of government temples and so on and aali led a militant agitation that spit in the face of K Society K Society wanted theth men and women to only wear the Corum basically just a loin cloth women were forced to wear iron earrings and stone necklaces to signify their social standing clothing and other cast identifiers were used to signify car status within Society so Aang's clothing itself was a form of protest he woe a traditionally formal attire that was usually worn by privilege cast ners and also made a statement by wearing white a color that signified cast Purity one fine morning in 1893 aali bought a pair of healthy bulock he wore a white turban and with his head held high he drove through public roads a direct challenge against brahmanical norms for centuries this basic right to use public roads had held communities back economically and developmentally it alienated communities like the bullia from engaging with the economy to add to that this form of travel was usually reserved for royalty and privilege casts as a symbol of status and power transgression of these Norms was usually met with death and privileged cast landlords tried to kill aali for this transgression they attacked him in a Scot but he survived this would trigger chain of events that led to riots violent riots between the dullet of the poar community and the landed ner aristocracy even today all across India you can still see instances of similar situations like the case of this dth grw being assaulted for daring to ride a horse to his wedding by 1900 despite heavy opposition from the privileged cost the meliz had won the right to walk on public roads legally in 1904 aali even started a school for the Pula Community after the government had agreed to give financial aid to it however most of the puler families could not afford to send their kids to school yet because in many cases they would need all family members to participate on the fields in order to earn enough to put food on the table and in 1909 aali led the first farmer struggle in Kerala and it was launched in the name of being allowed to send their children to Public School following this the government had to legalize education for all however they had to keep it Hush Hush for a while because the privileged cast communities did not want their children going to school with the marginalized out of fear of pollution so as a response aali organized the farmers to not work on the fields of the landlords in spite of their poverty and already being on the brink they continued the strike for more than a year and at last the landlords were for to concede in 1915 ayyankali walked punami a Pula girl to an all upper clast Public School the girl attended class alongside the privileged class Children of the neighborhood but as a response a mob of the privilege cost parents burnt the school down fortunately this couldn't stop what had been set in motion reformers in Kerala like aali knew that education was necessary if they were to attain a more egalitarian society the reason why Kerala boasts one of the highest literacy rates in the country today is because of this Legacy of fighting for the basic right to education another important dth activist who many outside Kola are not aware of was poel yanan he was a poet who was born a slave in 1879 slaves were exchanged as package deals when trading land they were given away as gifts and Dari and were even used to to pay off debts and since a common practice in medieval Kerala was to give lands to brahmanical Temples those gifts of land also included attached slaves po Yan and's family were Pera Christian slaves attached to the land of a Syrian Christian family of the Maroma church johanan was expected to carry out daily work on the landlord's estate like hering cattle or working on the Patty Fields lucky for him the people who owned him were not against the idea of him getting educated so he was educated in a school meant for Pera in order to teach them how to read the Bible johanan took the opportunity studied the Bible and even became a teacher he composed Many religious songs yet despite his growth within the MAA church he could not Escape his cast identity and his birth as a slave within the community so he left and joined the reformist brother in Mission he would bounce from church to church after that seeing that cost-based discrimination was seemingly inescapable under the still existing brahmanical hegemony so he set out to form his own religious movement he noted that the Bible did not teach about the histories of his own people or the workings of cast and could not relate he formed the praka raka deas SAA the prds in 1909 to fight slavery some local sects of the Siran Christian Community found out about their meetings and deemed Johan and the Antichrist and would attack him but this didn't stop his lifelong struggle for emancipation now let's come to a man who aali himself called Guru 1856 saw the birth of an AA boy named nanu the AA people like other marginalized communities were not allowed to enter temples and also were not allowed to worship viic deities like Shiva from a young age nanu would question this control over education and the inaccessibility of worship the state of life around around him deeply Disturbed him and he decided to become a Wandering aesthetic leaving behind his role as a teacher in his community he would seek knowledge from sages who also desired a change in the dark Society he would become a prolific writer and over time people read his works and listened to his poetry people were offered a glimpse into what was possible he would gain immense popularity and be called s Nar Guru or the Kerala Buddha his change of name from the more Common Era name nanu to a more sanskritized one was intentional and just like aali he broke the Norms of clothing by dressing like a sage Nar Guru was also aware that cast was performative as well and seeing how his predecessors like Aya vunder were imprisoned and tortured for speaking out against cast Norms he chose to operate on the thin line that was acceptable to The Establishment in order to turn the Norms on its head and take back meaning he became so influential that he was essentially able to appropriate Vic religion itself in Kerala in 1888 Nar Guru took a rough Hune Stone from a river and installed it as a Shiva for his people to worship naturally privileged cost people came out to confront him about breaking this cost Norm traditionally only Brahman priests could consecrate an idol Nar Guru responded saying that it was an aers shiver this satirical approach that poked fun at the ridiculous state of cost in Kerala became the man's Hallmark he would then go on to consecrate many more Idols across Kerala in protest he would meet and dine with young reformers like aali which also broke cost Norms between the Arava and the Pula because they were also supposed to practice untouchability against each other he was openly critical of the founder of AD vedanta Shankar aara he advocated for intercast and interreligious marriage even facilitating the wedding of a German Christian woman to an ARA man his actions and agitations gained Mass followers and shook the very Foundation of brahmanical haimon in Kerala but Nar Guru and his associates like TK madavan sod and aapan Kumar and Ashan and Swami Ananda Tian knew that in order to get these changes to stick and have true lasting Revolution the people must all be educated ated and leave behind superstitions so narana Guru shifted from building temples to building schools they began to install mirrors in places of worship in order to remind the downon that they were worthy of respect as they were narana Guru agitated even against theum rituals that involved forms of animal sacrifice and encouraged the Embrace of rationality and scientific thinking his movement did not even turn away privilege cost people who wanted to join in it was the 20th Cent the bolik Revolution was underway in Russia and causing waves in India musolini had made himself dictator of fascist Italy and India's anti-colonial struggle was gaining steam an 11-year-old buget Singh had just walked the blood soaked grounds of the Jalan wabag Massacre the Arava community at this time were in a unique position to impact the social fabric of Kerala they were considered Untouchable but were the largest voting Block in keral 50% of the Arava today are Hindu while the remaining are split between Muslims and Christians their material realities were better than that of Thea and the pulia which allowed them to have an earlier access to education so when the British needed bodies to fill roles the ARA could compete with privilege cast Naas and brahans it was this AA block that fueled the antias intelligencia and they were the early adopters of marxist thought in the state as well with workers movement springing up from the popular chir Factory industry following the lead of anti-as reformers like Nar Guru era activists in collaboration with theth and Progressive privilege cast groups would hold literary events intercast dining and bring together labor unions conferences and more the popularity of secular ideas to resist the conservative brahmanism attracted privileged cost followers as well because that is the inevitable outcome of an unsustainable injust system like cast that divorces individuality and expression from humans and turns them into a pawn to serve for the protection and maintenance of capital Swami Ananda Tian is an example of this being born a Brahman but being one of Sri Nar guru's closest followers another example was Swami Dharma formerly known as pamaran Manon he was born into a n family but he wrote the influential book that many Progressive Indians refer to today the history of Hindu imperialism an ARA follower of Nar Guru TK madavan conceived of one of the most important antios movements of the century the vikum SATA which lasted more than 600 days it was a nonviolent agitation that brought together revolutionary figures from all parts of the country under the banner of the untouchability abolition Committee in order to agitate itate against the ctist practice of banning free movement around vikum Temple for marginalized costs it brought together reformist ners like K caban George Joseph of the Syrian Christian Community in Alliance with Pula leaders like amadi Dean AA reformists and early Communists like K iapen and members of Congress like EV ramaswami niker or perar who was still a member of Congress at the time this United movement against cast which also included prominent members of privilege cast communities like the nud brahans the ners and even the vear community from Tamil Nadu against the CEST elements within their own communities was unprecedented thousands of people came together to agitate the seik aali community led by La laal Singh and kpal Singh arrived just 2 weeks after the satyagraha was announced they set up lungers to cook and serve chapati Dal and halwa fun fact that's how carala git chapatis the traven police made arrest after arrest in collaboration with kasas counter protesters gandi eventually visited and played mediator between the parties he was also honestly a huge party pooper asking George Joseph and the Syrian Christians who were agitating against untouchability and showing solidarity to keep out of Hindu Affairs it reminds you that the so-called leaders of India at the time didn't really have an idea about about the social politics and fabric of Kerala he also asked the seik lungers to close shop and leave however he did negotiate a settlement in which the marginalized would be able to access three of the four roads around the temples it would take another 10 years of agitation for people to be able to enter the temples sood and iapen a radical social reformer from my district of arum and the brainchild of the Mishra banam the intercast dining movement took narana guru's slogan even further J Mad Man in English no cast no religion and no God for Mankind through his magazine titled sodan he wrote poems like curing cast and the Book of Buddha his writings strucked the heart of social issues in Kerala he was a cultural critic who predated the Italian Marxist Antonio grami so hodan aapan was the one who introduced the word comrade to the Malay lingo he used the malal word Sagal or brothers to mean comrade he was the first intellectual and reformer in Kerala to openly criticize Gandhi and his form of nationalism in the poem Gandhi sesam he openly criticized his conservative Outlook he also embraced navayana Buddhism a political form of Buddhism reinterpreted by ambedkar in the poem Jad bardam or cast India he predicted the rise of ambedkarite movements and and its impact on Indian Society democracy and politics he wrote about the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia an event that greatly resonated with the masses of Kerala who still could not own any land this Renaissance was in no way easy all the social reformers had to face castism within their own communities so hod and iapen for instance was called pulley and iapen for dining with members of the Pula Community regularly over time even Narayan Guru distanced himself from the inclusive party that was started in his name the sndp because he realized that political parties based on cast identity were detrimental in ultimately achieving equality a cast based party just like a race Bas party tended to evolve into ethn nationalism because they tended to become exclusive the question of cast Still Remains one that hasn't been adequately answered by any political party in India and the struggle continues so let's summarize the jati Verna system popularly known today as cast is a brahmanical system of Temple Centric Resource Management that used religious texts and the word of God as justification to keep certain lineages in a Perpetual state of Oppression it has a lot in common with capitalism like how it reproduces and perpetuates itself across Generations in the form of generational wealth and family status by implementing the system entire lineages or jatis are victims of generational stigma while a small minority at the top enjoy positive stereotypes just for being born just for having a certain family name cast is not just about class and material wealth though it is about dignity and self-respect the mere existence of cast today makes it possible for a child to inherit a harmful and discriminatory social status without their consent it alienates human beings from each other and creates segregation in other words even if you do become successful monetarily you're still discriminated against because the underlying assumption is that you didn't really earn it however the negative stigmas are not associated with successful entrepreneurs from privileged Cass background like actors or business people who are given the privilege of being titled self-made hardworking or more deserving even though they might be beneficiaries of generations of cost privilege and wealth and all this is maintained by controlling women's bodies by avoiding intercast marriage through violence and social ostracization in his essays Dr ambedkar spoke about how brahminism does not really need brahmins to perpetuate it we all have elements of brahminism within ourselves and we need to be aware of those things and oppose it consciously it might be a convenient path to point the finger and random people of privilege cost backgrounds today but as you may have gathered through this video that doesn't change the fact that cism is also perpetrated by marginalized cast backgrounds if we are to see true change in progress we need to shed these ideas of biological essentialism we need to stop monolith ising and homogenizing each other because that is what keeps cast alive when prominent sections within Society deny that cast even exists so is a factor in the first place how can we annihilate CP when we can't even agree on what it is how it operates and how it looks in society I hope this video helped you understand this complex issue just a little bit more followers of the channel will know that I take quite a bit of time with my videos I really don't want to put out misinformation in a world where misinformation feels like the norm but I do wish I could get these out even quicker as I read research edit everything by myself at the moment while juggling the rest of my life so if you could share this video that would be amazing don't forget to like And subscribe to nudge this monster of an algorithm as well thank you for watching and special thanks to my patrons DS goam will Taran and ragava for anyone interested in supporting the channel via patreon you'll find a link below see you next time