Support Update: In recent days, I have received $250 in support (Thank You!). I still need $3950 to finish the Race, and I am in desperate need of $1250 by April 1st to continue on after that date. If you are choosing to mail a check, please just send me an e-mail via button to the left, letting me know. Thank you!
Not infrequently on this journey, I have marveled at just how privileged we Americans truly are. Forget the mere conveniences of running water, electricity and well-paved roads. Today’s blog is in regard to socioeconomic mobility, which I, for one, tend to take for granted. If you work hard in school, or even at a menial job, you can climb ladders and make more money. We are taught that no matter what ‘class’ we are born into, we can be anything we want to be. While in Stone Village the other day, I had a conversation with our contact, John, about the Caste System in India and I learned that it is not the case here.
The Caste System is one of those things that I have read about and studied in the past, but which I still struggle to fully comprehend. The shortest explanation is to say that India is divided into several different ‘classes’ or castes. Where you are born, there you shall stay. For the people living in Stone Village, and really, everyone born into the lowest caste in India, dreaming of bigger and better things is futile. Accepting that the current generation is stuck where they are, I quickly looked to the children of the village, desperately trying to hope better for them. The next generation can always do things differently; they can be the revolutionaries. Over the next few minutes, John quashed my hope with his description of just how deeply castes are ingrained in Indian society.
The concept of the caste system is rooted in Hinduism. Because the Hindus believe in reincarnation, they believe that the life you are born into is indicative of how you lived your previous life. If you were a good person in your last life, you will be born to an upper caste family, and hence reap the rewards of that life in this one. If you were not a very good person, you would be born into a lower caste. And if you were something terrible in you last life, like a murderer, you would likely be afflicted with leprosy, making you an Untouchable (lower than the lowest caste), and according to society as a whole, getting what you deserve. This is why there is no mobility. You are getting what you deserve. It is also why most Indians won’t have anything to do with the lepers here. To them, instead of a murderer being put in jail for the rest of their lives, they are imprisoned by disease for an entire lifetime. They believe the lepers deserve to be cast out of society.
Now, in case you are thinking: Just move to a new area, where people don’t know you, and don’t know what caste you were born into, it isn’t that easy. Your last name denotes your caste. So, immediately upon meeting someone, just by learning that single piece of information, you know a whole host of things about that person.
In India, the government provides for education. In places like Stone Village though, the teachers rarely show up five days a week. Three or four seems to be the average. There is no emphasis on high achievement, no weight given to excelling in school to earn scholarships toward university. Even that is nearly pointless. Because the university system is still affected by the caste system, lower caste individuals go to lower caste universities. And when they graduate, they go out and get lower caste jobs.
Think: working your whole life, struggling to pull yourself out of poverty and despair, graduating at the top of your class from university, and the best, the very best job you can get is working at McDonald’s. Simply because of your last name. It doesn’t matter if you are a veritable genius. If you go to apply for a job above your caste, the moment the HR director sees your last name, she tosses your resume in the trash.
Standing in the middle of the street in Stone Village, listening to John describe these things to me, my eyes filled with tears. It just seems so incredibly hopeless, and my heart broke for the people here.
Finding hope in all of this is difficult. India is more than 85% Hindu and less than 5% Christian. The best scenario for eliminating the caste system is to eliminate the idea of past lives. Especially to eliminate the idea that those past lives influence your current life. As Christians, we know that accepting Christ wipes the slate clean for all we have done in our lifetime. Imagine how amazing and really fantastical that is to someone who believes they have been trying to reach nirvana for a millennium. Please be praying for the people of this country to turn away from their idols, find Christ, and abandon this notion of reincarnation, because that seems to be the only way things are going to change.
