what is caste system in India answer in 300 words SAMP ANSWER WILL REPOTED
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The caste system in India is the paradigmatic ethnographic example of caste. It has origins in ancient India, and was transformed by various ruling elites in medieval, early-modern, and modern India, especially the Mughal Empire and the British Raj. It is today the basis of educational and job reservations in India.The caste system consists of two different concepts, varna and jati, which may be regarded as different levels of analysis of this system. Vaidyanathan argues that the caste system existed at the village level to serve the needs of its people, however, the method in which the 1881 census was carried out in India by the British Raj institutionalized the caste system on a much larger national scale.
The caste system as it exists today, is thought[by whom?] to be the result of developments during the collapse of the Mughal era and the rise of the British colonial regime in India. The collapse of the Mughal era saw the rise of powerful men who associated themselves with kings, priests and ascetics, affirming the regal and martial form of the caste ideal, and it also reshaped many apparently casteless social groups into differentiated caste communities.The British Raj furthered this development, making rigid caste organisation a central mechanism of administration. Between 1860 and 1920, the British segregated Indians by caste, granting administrative jobs and senior appointments only to Christians and people belonging to certain caste. Social unrest during the 1920s led to a change in this policy.From then on, the colonial administration began a policy of divisive as well as positive discrimination by reserving a certain percentage of government jobs for the lower castes. In 1948, negative discrimination on the basis of caste was banned by law and further enshrined in the Indian constitution, however the system continues to be practiced in India with devastating social effects.
Caste-based differences have also been practised in other regions and religions in the Indian subcontinent like Nepalese Buddhism,[13] Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism.[14][15][16] It has been challenged by many reformist Hindu movements,[17] Islam, Sikhism, Christianity,[14] and also by present-day Indian Buddhism.[18] Each religion in India also continues to have a hierarchy based on castes, thus Dalits exist among Hindus, Christians as well as Sikhs, wherein all manual scavengers and pig herders in most villages in Punjab are Dalit Sikhs.[19]
New developments took place after India achieved independence, when the policy of caste-based reservation of jobs was formalised with lists of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Since 1950, the country has enacted many laws and social initiatives to protect and improve the socioeconomic conditions of its lower caste population. These caste classifications for college admission quotas, job reservations and other affirmative action initiatives, according to the Supreme Court of India, are based on heredity and are not changeable. Discrimination against lower castes is illegal in India under Article 15 of its constitution, and a few departments in the government of India tracks violence against Dalits nationwide.
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