Sentences with phrase «hindu castes»

Thanks to the oppressiveness of the Hindu caste culture, the Christian converts from the depressed and low castes saw conversion as a liberation from caste oppression.

In this sense Ellaiyamman represents the divine power of the Dalits which is able and responsible for guarding them against the destructive, possessive and conquering gaze of the Hindu caste people.16

The traditional Hindu caste system was the most perfect form of ascribed ranking: An individual's place in the social hierarchy was fixed at birth and, at least in principle, remained immutable throughout his life (at any rate, in this life» the Hindu idea that social mobility could occur in future incarnations is, alas, beyond the scope of sociology).

The crop at that time was composed almost entirely of the lowest untouchable caste, the sweepers, who came unsolicited by the tens of thousands to receive baptism and the benefits of getting out of the Hindu caste system.

He was a Brahmin [member of the highest Hindu caste] who devoted his life to saving untouchables [the lowest caste] from the horrible job of cleaning dry latrines with their bare hands.

At least 2 lessons worth of resources on the Hindu Caste System, including group activity, snakes and ladders activity (moksha) and more!

Founded by Guru Nanak in the 15th century as a reaction against the Hindu caste system, its holy shrine is the spectacular Golden Temple.

The 100 % American «think for yourself» system from Diablo II got substituted with a rigid Hindu caste approach: if you're born a Barbarian, you'll always be like the other Barbarians and there's no way you can change it.

Not exact matches

Bremmer and Kupchan worry that in India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist rhetoric before elections next year «could give cover to radicalized elements of society that want to target Muslims and lower - caste Hindus.»

Yes, Hindu thinkers such as the first Hindu missionary to America Swami Vivekananda have argued against caste, and the Indian Constitution outlawed caste - based discrimination, but the caste system, both ancient and religious, will not be swatted away so easily by either reformers or legislators.

Not the fact that all my Hindu friends know precisely what caste they were born into.

Nor the fact that all my Hindu students know precisely which castes their parents will not allow them to marry into.

Most detractors argued that today's caste system has little actual basis in Hindu scripture.

Today a far more finely grained system of caste is used in the United States to persuade my Hindu students at not to marry below their station, and in India to justify so - called honor killings.

But the roots of caste can be traced back to a story in the most ancient Hindu scriptures, the Vedas, in which the various social classes are produced from the sacrifice of a primordial man — the priestly class from the mouth, the warrior class from the arms, the merchant class from the thighs, the laboring class from the feet (Rig Veda 90:10).

According to the Hindu gentleman I sparred with at the White House, caste is social rather than religious.

These diaspora Indians are mostly upper - caste and support powerful lobbying efforts among Western governments, not least, in the United States, under the auspices of the Hindu American Foundation and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America.

Caste was an ancient system of occupational class delineated in Hindu texts that over the years developed into a rigid social hierarchy.

Baker, Jr., who was very familiar with caste Hindu religious categories and queries during conversation, particularly recognised the distinct tribal theological concepts appearing in the Malayarayan questions which they asked.

But it came to be associated not only with religious but also with caste political overtones, and came into conflict with the anti-Brahmin movements of depressed castes who were organizing separately for separate political strength to bring about cultural and social change aimed at elevating their status in the body politic; it also made the conversion into other religious communities, of the depressed sections of Hinduism as well as of the Tribals partially Hinduised and moving more fully in that direction, to be seen as a weakening of the Hindu community and a strengthening of other religious communities as political entities.

Recently there was a Court judgment in Madras which granted the contention of a person who affirmed that he was a Christian by faith without change of community by conversion and therefore entitled to benefits ofthe scheduled castes of the Hindu community.

So it is argued that «caste is not just a Hindu phenomenon, that Hinduism is not a religion, and that both Gandhi and Dr. Ambedkar were victims of this false perception».

There is yet another aspect of the Paraiyars» godesses that further attests to this idea that the colony deity represents their distinctiveness and particularly in its resistance of the social, economic, and religious nexus of the caste people, which threatens to colonize their overall existence: the Paraiyars» goddesses remain single, unmarried, and unobliged to the Hindu Gods.

It does not merely represent a passive replication and acceptance of all that was passed on to the Paraiyars from the caste Hindu's interpretations of religion.

They were, and still are, coerced to survive mostly as landless agricultural laborers, wholly dependent on the good - will of the caste Hindu landlords.

Thus, the goddess of the Paraiyars, Mariyamman, is able to subdue all the major caste Hindu deities and annex segments of their powers.

However, this aspect can not be studied apart from another dimension that is intrinsic to the goddess Ellaiyamman: the process of weaving emancipatory mythographies.21 This process signifies the deliberate and artful manner by which the Paraiyars utilize their goddess to tell their own story through the mythological framework of the caste Hindu.

But it is with conversion that the «false concept of majority and minority emerged making Hinduism a religion and caste a Hindu phenomenon».

It is this particularity and distinctiveness of the colony goddess Ellaiyamman that reveals the Paraiyars» resistance to the expansionist and overpowering nature of caste Hindu hegemonic forces.

His main argument is as follows: «The word Hindu which had essentially geographic and cultural meaning began to acquire religious connotations» and communal overtones when missionary religious began converting the untouchables and lower castes of Hindu society with promise of their liberation from caste indignities.

In any case, says Kanth, conversion did not bring liberation to the converted people from caste, because caste is not just a Hindu phenomenon but an Indian reality and is practiced by all religions in India.

Another definitive element of the legend of Ellaiyamman must be emphasized at this juncture: this Dalit goddess has the head of the Paraiyar and the body of a caste Hindu woman.

I had asked a well known Hindu from a very high caste to chair the event.

The uur, which is the caste Hindu's conception of the village, «is not so much a discrete entity with fixed coordinates as a fluid sign with fluid thresholds.»

However, as others champion his victory, India's Christian minority — the majority of whom are Dalits themselves — know that a Hindu nationalist politician from the Dalit caste is still a Hindu nationalist politician.

Many Pakistani Christians are descendants of the low caste Chuhras, a Hindu group which moved to Pakistan after the 1947 partition, according to a Human Rights Watch report.

among the Paraiyar there is a forging of subjectivity by wedding together some ingredients that can be retained as signs of Dalit particularity with some components that can be skillfully appropriated as signs of human universality from the larger caste Hindu worldview.

Untouchables, now called Harijans, have traditionally occupied the lowest place in the caste system of Hindu India; they were called untouchable because they were considered to be outside the confines of caste.

Aware that the party couldn't achieve a parliamentary majority without low - caste votes, its leaders were at pains throughout their anti-Muslim campaigns to present Hindu nationalism to low - caste Hindus as an egalitarian ideology.

Although there is a clear separation between the first three castes, which are ritually pure and socioeconomically dominant (referred to as the twice - born), and the fourth laboring caste, which is ritually suspect and socioeconomically dominated (referred to as the once - born), together they form the Hindu human community.

In their day to day life the Christians differed very little from the higher castes of the Hindu society.

Such was their impurity that traditionally they were banned from Hindu temples; in parts of South India even the sight of an Untouchable was sufficient to pollute a member of a higher caste.

Because of their deliberate marginalization from the caste Hindu village and Hindu sociocultural and religious world, Dalits, whether Christian or not, share in a togetherness that is both imposed on them by the dominant caste Hindu worldview and constructed by them in solidarity over against all forces that continuously seek to demean and disrupt their communal life.

In a recent reconstructive essay on Hinduism, Sudhanshu Ranade suggests a connection between the not - so - noble function of «the political branch of Hinduism» in Vedic times, and «the trap the BJP is leading us into today».9 This involves the task of consolidating a hierarchically - ordered socio - political structure for Hindu society reflecting true religious Dhanna and controlling these classes / castes in order «to keep people in their place [so as] to keep them from getting above themselves».10 Perhaps this is the reason that nationalism, in its Orientalist form, is so pervasive in contemporary India.

The result of the honourable place given by the rajas to the Christians, and of their assimilation in social custom to their Hindu neighbours, was that they were accepted as a caste, and often thought of their community in this way.

From another perspective the Indian Christian convert has been described «as deracinated, and as an outcaste, no longer recognizable as a functioning member of his or her former community... in terms of the loss of caste and the pronouncement of civil death by Hindu law.»

But the Indian Christians had already been living for centuries in a positive encounter with the high caste Hindus and had developed a theological vision of Hindu religion which was more positive and liberal.

It is because Christianity became a caste that it could offer no challenge to the Hindu mind, which would have otherwise tried to steal its thunder by first trying to understand its principles and then incorporate them into itself.

This will involve a consideration of the prevalent caste ideology and the growing impact of Hindu revaunchist groups which consider the Christian enterprise as a threat to Indian national unity and integrity.

Bishop Azariah of Dornakal, in theologically justifying the rejection of the reserved minority communal electorate offered by Britain to the Christian community in India, spoke of how the acceptance of it would be «a direct blow to the nature of the church of Christ» at two points — one, it would force the church to function «like a religious sect, a community which seeks self - protection for the sake of its own loaves and fishes» which would prevent the fruitful exercise of the calling of the church to permeate the entire society across boundaries of caste, class, language and race, a calling which can be fulfilled only through its members living alongside fellow - Indians sharing in public life with a concern for Christian principles in it; and two, it would put the church's evangelistic programme in a bad light as «a direct move to transfer so many thousands of voters from the Hindu group to the Indian Christian group» (recorded by John Webster, Dalit Christians - A History).