Equality, Caste and Gender in Hinduism

Overview

Recall questions on Hindu grounds for equality and for hierarchy, caste discrimination, harijan and Dalit, legal change on caste, positions on women's status, Saivism, the pativrata ideal, brahmacarya, and changing gender roles.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What grounds does Hinduism supply for the equality of persons?

   Model answer

   The strongest is metaphysical: if the same atman is present in every being, then differences of status are differences of circumstance rather than of worth, and the Upanishadic teaching that one should see the self in all has been used exactly this way. The Gita speaks of the wise as regarding learned brahmin and outcaste alike. Bhakti literature repeatedly insists that devotion, not birth, qualifies a person before God. Modern reformers from Vivekananda to Gandhi built on all three.

2. 2

   What grounds have been offered for hierarchy?

   Model answer

   Varna theory itself, presenting the classes as functionally distinct with different duties and entitlements; the ritual logic of purity and pollution, which regulated who might cook for, eat with, marry or touch whom, and which bore most harshly on those whose traditional occupations involved death or waste; and karma, which explained birth into a particular station as the outworking of earlier action and so as deserved. Dharmashastra texts codified all of this in detail.

3. 3

   How has caste discrimination worked in practice?

   Model answer

   Chiefly through the regulation of contact and of marriage. Communities treated as untouchable were excluded from temples, wells, tea shops and shared eating, restricted in where they could live and what work they could do, and subjected to violence when they broke these rules. Temple-entry movements from the 1920s and 1930s made access a public campaign, and Gandhi's fasts and Kerala's temple-entry proclamation were milestones. Endogamy proved the most persistent element and remains widespread.

4. 4

   Why did the word harijan not stick?

   Model answer

   Gandhi took it from the poet-saint Narsinh Mehta and popularised it to give dignity, meaning children of God, and used it to place the wrong of untouchability at the centre of Hindu conscience. Those it described largely rejected it: the name was given rather than chosen, it framed them as objects of religious pity rather than as citizens with claims, and it kept the issue inside Hinduism when many wanted it treated as a matter of rights and power. Dalit, meaning broken or crushed, was adopted instead as a self-description asserting a shared political identity, and it is now the ordinary term.

5. 5

   What has changed legally and politically on caste in India?

   Model answer

   The Indian constitution, drafted under Ambedkar's chairmanship and adopted in 1950, abolished untouchability and prohibited caste discrimination, and reservations in education, employment and legislatures were introduced to redress historic exclusion. Later legislation created specific offences for atrocities against Scheduled Castes and Tribes. Dalit political parties and movements have gained real power in several states. Enforcement remains uneven, rural violence continues, and reservation policy is itself politically contested.

6. 6

   How far is Hinduism itself responsible for caste?

   Model answer

   Hindus answer this in several ways, and a good response presents the range. Ambedkarite and Dalit critics argue that the scriptural framework of varna, purity and karma generated the system, so reform inside Hinduism cannot work. Reformist Hindus reply that scripture is mixed, that the Gita and bhakti tradition undercut hereditary status, and that jati hierarchy is a social growth later given religious cover. Some argue caste is a South Asian social phenomenon found among Indian Muslims, Christians and Sikhs too, so it is not simply a Hindu doctrine. Traditionalist voices continue to defend varna as an ideal while condemning untouchability. No Hindu authority exists to settle the question, which is why it is argued rather than ruled on.

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