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The Caste system does not demarcate racial division. The Caste system is a social division of people of the same race." [333] Various sociologists, anthropologists and historians have rejected the racial origins and racial emphasis of caste and consider the idea to be one that has purely political and economic undertones. Beteille writes that ...
A subject of much scholarship by sociologists and anthropologists, the Hindu caste system is sometimes used as an analogical basis for the study of caste-like social divisions existing outside Hinduism and India. In colonial Spanish America, mixed-race castas were a category within the Hispanic sector but the social order was otherwise fluid.
This quadruple division is a form of social stratification, quite different from the more nuanced system of Jātis, which correspond to the European term "caste". [8] The varna system is discussed in Hindu texts, and understood as idealised human callings. [9] [10] The concept is generally traced to the Purusha Sukta verse of the Rig Veda.
The caste system and caste identity is entrenched and reinforced. [226] [228] The few gurdwaras that accept inter-caste marriages do so reluctantly. Gurdwaras may insist on the presence of Singh and Kaur in the names of the bridegroom and bride, or deny them access to gurdwara-based religious services and community centres. [229]
The “rigidity of caste structure” is an important reason for the proliferation of godmen, said K. Kalyani, an assistant professor of Sociology at Azim Premji University, Bangalore.
The caste system has traditionally had significant influence over people's access to power. The privileged upper caste groups benefit more by gaining substantially more economic and political power, while the lower caste groups have limited access to those powers. The caste system distributes to different castes different economic strengths.
These caste groups retained their identity even after conversion to Islam or Christianity. Each of the caste groups was thus the unit within which cultural and perhaps genetic evolution occurred, at least for the last 1500 years when the system was fully crystallized and probably much longer.
But the movement for change is not a struggle to end caste; it is to use caste as an instrument for social change. Caste is not disappearing, nor is "casteism" - the political use of caste — for what is emerging in India is a social and political system which institutionalizes and transforms but does not abolish caste. [39]