Casta

CASTA. — From Latin castus in the sense of "(pure) breed"; a term adopted in the 15th century by the Portuguese colonizers of Malabar and corresponding to the Sanskrit varna "color" and játi "breed". It refers to that particular form of social coexistence peculiar to India, which is distinguished by these three characteristics: 1) hereditary specialization, from father to son, of profession and trade; 2) rigorous prohibition of contacts, especially marriage and commensality, with individuals of other castes; 3) respect for the Brahmanic hierarchy as the regulator and supreme avenger of the laws of caste. If one of these elements is lacking, there is no caste in the proper sense.

The four fundamental castes of India: Brahmins (priests), Kshatriyas (warriors), Vaishyas (merchants), Shudras (peasants) still constitute the social framework of the country. But from their intermingling various subcastes (jātayas) have been formed, whose descent has greater value if the father belongs to a higher caste, and is instead despised if the woman belongs to it.

Already in the 17th century official documents entitled jativi veka "distinction of the subcastes" (India Off. codd. 1638, 1639, partially translated by R. Nobile, v. bibl.), listed 60 subcastes. But from then to the present day the number has greatly increased; nor has the leveling action of the English government, though unifying many aspects of social life (roads, commerce, access to public offices), succeeded in suppressing the fundamental framework of Indian social life which Brahmanic tradition says issued from the limbs of Brahma, thereby consecrating the scheme. For the differentiation between groups and subgroups, with the consequent prohibition of marriage and commensality with people of non-related groups, continually reasserts itself, determined by various causes: emigration, which makes emigrants strangers to the groups of those who remained; belonging to different religious sects; the accession to Hinduism of semi-barbarous marginal races that end up constituting a new caste of their own. The origin of the caste system is explained by the fact that the Aryans, of the white and blond race, invaders of an India populated by races of color, although they adapted to marrying women of the conquered, did not consent to give their daughters to men of color; indeed they degraded the fruits of this union. Thus a rigorous endogamy was established within the higher castes; and it is perhaps this endogamous rule, which restricts for girls the possibility of marriage, that explains the prohibition of the second marriage of widows and the concern to marry girls at a tender age.

The caste has assured in India, among people whom the climate makes easily indolent, the continuity of labor; it has preserved the physiognomy of the country despite the various Asian and European dominations that succeeded one another in the country; it has guaranteed the legitimacy of the social order by placing it under the aegis of a divine origin, inasmuch as the four castes are said to issue from the limbs of the god Brahma; it has legitimized and still legitimizes the inevitable changes due to social development by submitting them to the judgment of the Brahmins, depositaries of religious tradition. Now the castes have been abolished; and it is a good thing and a conquest, because from the standpoint of Christian brotherhood they constituted a grave harm both for conversions and for the converts.

In a broader but improper sense, since the three elements recalled at the beginning are not present, caste is sometimes used in the sense of "social class". Only in this sense must the information of Herodotus (II, 164) on the division of the Egyptian people into seven classes (priests, warriors, cowherds, etc.) be understood; a simple specialization of trades that is found in the corporations of the Romans and in the medieval guilds or corporations.

Nicola Turchi