Download or read book BRAHMINS INDIA CASTE SYSTEM written by Veena Samra and published by . This book was released on 2023-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Maybe you learned what the caste system is in world history class in school. Maybe you thought it was a historical system that was left in the past a long time ago. But, unlike other societal divisions we've seen throughout history - this one still dictates much of life in India today. Including where you can live, what job you can hold, and even what water you can drink. But let me rewind. The caste system is deeply rooted in the Hinduism belief in karma and reincarnation. Dating back more than 3,000 years, the caste system divides Hindus into four main categories - Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and the Shudras based on who they were in their past life, their karma, and what family line they come from. Many believe that the system originated from Brahma, the Hindu God of creation, believing that the Brahmins represent the eyes and mind of Brahma and are therefore often teachers and priests, the Kshatriyas represent his arms and are often warriors, the Vaishyas represent his legs and are often farmers or merchants, and the Shudras represent his feet and are often laborers. GRAB YOUR COPY TODAY BY SCROLLING UP AND CLICKING BUY NOW TO GET YOUR COPY NOW IN ONE CLICK

Download or read book The Way Things Were written by Aatish Taseer and published by Dylan Fazel. This book was released on 2016 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Skanda's father Toby dies, estranged from Skanda's mother and from the India he once loved, it falls to Skanda to return his body to his birthplace. This is a journey that takes him halfway around the world and deep within three generations of his family, whose fractures, frailties and toxic legacies he has always sought to elude. Both an intimate portrait of a marriage and its aftershocks, and a panoramic vision of India's half-century - in which a rapacious new energy supplants an ineffectual elite - 'The way things were' is an epic novel about the pressures of history upon the present moment. It is also a meditation on the stories we tell and the stories we forget; their tenderness and violence in forging bonds and in breaking them apart. Set in modern Delhi and at flashpoints from the past four decades, fusing private and political, classical and contemporary to thrilling effect, this book confirms Aatish Taseer as one of the most arresting voices of his generation.

Download or read book Caste Matters written by Suraj Yengde and published by India Viking. This book was released on 2019 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this explosive book, Suraj Yengde, a first-generation Dalit scholar educated across continents, challenges deep-seated beliefs about caste and unpacks its many layers. He describes his gut-wrenching experiences of growing up in a Dalit basti, the multiple humiliations suffered by Dalits on a daily basis, and their incredible resilience enabled by love and humour. As he brings to light the immovable glass ceiling that exists for Dalits even in politics, bureaucracy and judiciary, Yengde provides an unflinchingly honest account of divisions within the Dalit community itself-from their internal caste divisions to the conduct of elite Dalits and their tokenized forms of modern-day untouchability-all operating under the inescapable influences of Brahminical doctrines. This path-breaking book reveals how caste crushes human creativity and is disturbingly similar to other forms of oppression, such as race, class and gender. At once a reflection on inequality and a call to arms, Caste Matters argues that until Dalits lay claim to power and Brahmins join hands against Brahminism to effect real transformation, caste will continue to matter.

Download or read book Vicissitudes of the Goddess written by Sree Padma and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-09-17 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a detailed history of Hindu goddess traditions with a special focus on the local goddesses of Andhra Pradesh, past and present. The antiquity and the evolution of these goddess traditions are illustrated and documented with the help of archaeological reports, literary sources, inscriptions and art. Tracing the symbols and images of goddess into the brahmanical (Saiva and Vaisnava), Buddhist, and Jaina religious traditions, the book argues effectively how and with what motivations goddesses and their symbolizations were appropriated and transformed. The book also examines the evolution of popular Hindu goddesses such as Durga and Kali, discussing their tribal and agricultural backgrounds. It also deals extensively with how and in what circumstances women are deified and shows how these deified women cults share characteristics with the village goddesses.

Download or read book Aryans Jews Brahmins written by Dorothy M. Figueira and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Aryans, Jews, Brahmins, Dorothy M. Figueira provides a fascinating account of the construction of the Aryan myth and its uses in both India and Europe from the Enlightenment to the twentieth century. The myth concerns a race that inhabits a utopian past and gives rise first to Brahmin Indian culture and then to European culture. In India, notions of the Aryan were used to develop a national identity under colonialism, one that allowed Indian elites to identify with their British rulers. It also allowed non-elites to set up a counter identity critical of their position in the caste system. In Europe, the Aryan myth provided certain thinkers with an origin story that could compete with the Biblical one and could be used to diminish the importance of the West's Jewish heritage. European racial hygienists made much of the myth of a pure Aryan race, and the Nazis later looked at India as a cautionary tale of what could happen if a nation did not remain "pure." As Figueira demonstrates, the history of the Aryan myth is also a history of reading, interpretation, and imaginative construction. Initially, the ideology of the Aryan was imposed upon absent or false texts. Over time, it involved strategies of constructing, evoking, or distorting the canon. Each construction of racial identity was concerned with key issues of reading: canonicity, textual accessibility, interpretive strategies of reading, and ideal readers. The book's cross-cultural investigation demonstrates how identities can be and are created from texts and illuminates an engrossing, often disturbing history that arose from these creations.

Download or read book Annihilation of Caste written by B.R. Ambedkar and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2014-10-07 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “What the Communist Manifesto is to the capitalist world, Annihilation of Caste is to India.” —Anand Teltumbde, author of The Persistence of Caste The classic work of Indian Dalit politics, reframed with an extensive introduction by Arundathi Roy B.R. Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste is one of the most important, yet neglected, works of political writing from India. Written in 1936, it is an audacious denunciation of Hinduism and its caste system. Ambedkar – a figure like W.E.B. Du Bois – offers a scholarly critique of Hindu scriptures, scriptures that sanction a rigidly hierarchical and iniquitous social system. The world’s best-known Hindu, Mahatma Gandhi, responded publicly to the provocation. The hatchet was never buried. Arundhati Roy introduces this extensively annotated edition of Annihilation of Caste in “The Doctor and the Saint,” examining the persistence of caste in modern India, and how the conflict between Ambedkar and Gandhi continues to resonate. Roy takes us to the beginning of Gandhi’s political career in South Africa, where his views on race, caste and imperialism were shaped. She tracks Ambedkar’s emergence as a major political figure in the national movement, and shows how his scholarship and intelligence illuminated a political struggle beset by sectarianism and obscurantism. Roy breathes new life into Ambedkar’s anti-caste utopia, and says that without a Dalit revolution, India will continue to be hobbled by systemic inequality.

Download or read book The Republic of India written by Alan Gledhill and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Religion Science and Empire written by Peter Gottschalk and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2013 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peter Gottschalk offers a compelling study of how, through the British implementation of scientific taxonomy in the subcontinent, Britons and Indians identified an inherent divide between mutually antagonistic religious communities. England's ascent to power coincided with the rise of empirical science as an authoritative way of knowing not only the natural world, but the human one as well. The British scientific passion for classification, combined with the Christian impulse to differentiate people according to religion, led to a designation of Indians as either Hindu or Muslim according to rigidly defined criteria that paralleled classification in botanical and zoological taxonomies. Through an historical and ethnographic study of the north Indian village of Chainpur, Gottschalk shows that the Britons' presumed categories did not necessarily reflect the Indians' concepts of their own identities, though many Indians came to embrace this scientism and gradually accepted the categories the British instituted through projects like the Census of India, the Archaeological Survey of India, and the India Museum. Today's propogators of Hindu-Muslim violence often cite scientistic formulations of difference that descend directly from the categories introduced by imperial Britain. Religion, Science, and Empire will be a valuable resource to anyone interested in the colonial and postcolonial history of religion in India.

Download or read book Caste written by Isabel Wilkerson and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2023-02-14 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • “An instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions—now with a new Afterword by the author. #1 NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR: Time ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, O: The Oprah Magazine, NPR, Bloomberg, The Christian Science Monitor, New York Post, The New York Public Library, Fortune, Smithsonian Magazine, Marie Claire, Slate, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews Winner of the Carl Sandberg Literary Award • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • National Book Award Longlist • National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist • Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalist • PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Finalist • PEN/Jean Stein Book Award Longlist • Kirkus Prize Finalist “As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.” In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched, and beautifully written narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings. Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their outcasting of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity. Original and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.

Download or read book Crossing the Lines of Caste written by Adheesh A. Sathaye and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Crossing the Lines of Caste offers a cultural-historical analysis of the legends of Visvamitra, a sage who is said to have used his ascetic power to change his caste and become a Brahmin. It reveals how and why mythological culture has played an active role in the construction of Brahmin social power for more than three thousand years.

Download or read book The Caste of Merit written by Ajantha Subramanian and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-12-03 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the language of “merit” makes caste privilege invisible in contemporary India. Just as Americans least disadvantaged by racism are most likely to endorse their country as post‐racial, Indians who have benefited from their upper-caste affiliation rush to declare their country post‐caste. In The Caste of Merit, Ajantha Subramanian challenges this comfortable assumption by illuminating the controversial relationships among technical education, caste formation, and economic stratification in modern India. Through in-depth study of the elite Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs)—widely seen as symbols of national promise—she reveals the continued workings of upper-caste privilege within the most modern institutions. Caste has not disappeared in India but instead acquired a disturbing invisibility—at least when it comes to the privileged. Only the lower castes invoke their affiliation in the political arena, to claim resources from the state. The upper castes discard such claims as backward, embarrassing, and unfair to those who have earned their position through hard work and talent. Focusing on a long history of debates surrounding access to engineering education, Subramanian argues that such defenses of merit are themselves expressions of caste privilege. The case of the IITs shows how this ideal of meritocracy serves the reproduction of inequality, ensuring that social stratification remains endemic to contemporary democracies.

Download or read book Beef Brahmins and Broken Men written by B. R. Ambedkar and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of twentieth-century India’s great polymaths, statesmen, and militant philosophers of equality, B. R. Ambedkar spent his life battling Untouchability and instigating the end of the caste system. In his 1948 book The Untouchables, he sought to trace the origin of the Dalit caste. Beef, Brahmins, and Broken Men is an annotated selection from this work, just as relevant now, when the oppression of and discrimination against Dalits remains pervasive. Ambedkar offers a deductive, and at times a speculative, history to propose a genealogy of Untouchability. He contends that modern-day Dalits are descendants of those Buddhists who were fenced out of caste society and rendered Untouchable by a resurgent Brahminism since the fourth century BCE. The Brahmins, whose Vedic cult originally involved the sacrifice of cows, adapted Buddhist ahimsa and vegetarianism to stigmatize outcaste Buddhists who were consumers of beef. The outcastes were soon relegated to the lowliest of occupations and prohibited from participation in civic life. To unearth this lost history, Ambedkar undertakes a forensic examination of a wide range of Brahminic literature. Heavily annotated with an emphasis on putting Ambedkar and recent scholarship into conversation, Beef, Brahmins, and Broken Men assumes urgency as India witnesses unprecedented violence against Dalits and Muslims in the name of cow protection.

Download or read book Eight Faces of Revenge written by Vibha S. Chauhan and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-11-26 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interesting, informative, exploratory, the book attempts to interrogate the emotion of revenge. Combining academic discourses with popular representations, it moves across cultures and countries like India, Germany, USA, Africa and Brazil.

Download or read book Being Brahmin Being Modern written by Ramesh Bairy and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-01-11 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is clearly an academic and political obsession with the ‘idea’ of the Brahmin. There is also, simultaneously, a near-complete absence of engagement with the Brahmin as an embodied person or community. This book addresses this intriguing paradox by making available a sociological description of the Brahmins in today’s Karnataka. It pursues three distinct, yet enmeshed, registers of inquiry – the persona of the ‘Brahmin’ embodied in the agency of the individual Brahmin; the organised complexes of action such as the caste association and the public culture of print; and finally, taking off from a longer (yet, modern and contemporary) history of non-Brahminical othering of the Brahmin. It argues that we tend to understand the contemporaneity of caste almost exclusively within the twin registers of legitimation–contestation and dominance–resistance. While these facets continue to be salient, there is also a need to push out into hitherto neglected dimensions of caste. The book focuses attention on the many lives of modern caste — its secularisation, the subject positions that it offers, the equivocations by which persons and communities become ‘subjects’ of caste, their differential investments in the caste-self.

Download or read book Who is a Brahmin written by Gilles Chuyen and published by Manohar Publishers and Distributors. This book was released on 2004 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brahmin Identity Is Not An Absolute Notion And This Book Aims At Understanding This Dialogue Between Identity And Otherness, Creating Phenomena Of Differentiation. It Questions The Notion In Todays Context Through The Contextualization Of Discourses Emerging From Contemporary Middle Class Brahmins Settled In Delhi, Agra And Chennai. The Study Falls Within The Framework Of An Analysis Of The Cultural Context Of Politics.

Download or read book The Sexual Life of English written by Shefali Chandra and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-02 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chandra explores how English became an Indian language during the colonial period of 1850-1930. Using archival and literary sources, she focuses on elite language education for girls and women.

Download or read book Tamil Brahmans written by C. J. Fuller and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-10-03 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Tamil Brahmans were a traditional, mainly rural, high-caste elite who have been transformed into a modern, urban, middle-class community since the late nineteenth century. Many Tamil Brahmans today are in professional and managerial occupations, such as engineering and information technology; most of them live in Chennai and other Tamilnadu towns, but others have migrated to the rest of India and overseas. This book, which is mainly based on the authors ethnographic research, describes and analyses this transformation. It is also a study of how and why the Tamil Brahmans privileged status within a hierarchical society has been perpetuated in the face of both a strong anti-Brahman movement in Tamilnadu, and a series of wider social, cultural, economic, political, and ideological changes that might have been expected to undermine their position completely. The major topics discussed include Brahman rural society, urban migration and urban ways of life, education and employment, the position of women, and religion and culture. The Tamil Brahmans class position, including the internal division into the upper- and lower-middle classes, and the process of class reproduction, are examined closely to analyze the congruence between Tamil Brahmanhood and middle classness, which as comparison with other Brahman and non-Brahman groups shows is highly unusual in contemporary India."