India has achieved significant economic growth, yet conservative practices persist, including strong respect for parental authority, arranged marriage within caste, and ultra-low female employment.
Religions/religious systems provide necessary comforts to adherents. What is often missed is that these systems provide differing comforts to males than they do to females. And that these comforts prioritize male needs.
To females, religion provides, at its most essential level, something close to solace. And to males, it provides a "place" within a male-dominated, and desired, hierarchy. Anything beyond those two differing comforts is proved extraneous in all diasporas.
As a person moves further away from a religious epicenter, each person—male and female— takes what provides the most comfort and begins discarding other part of that ideology. Misogyny and caste are *both* borne of a male desire to have everything ranked within their preferred hierarchy. Women do not dare, for example, to aspire to be the Roman Catholic pope. They are left with a bit of solace for their all-around low status within that system.
Females are left to take whatever comfort and consolation they can from all these ideologies. In return, females perform almost all the sustaining tasks of those religions. Because without these services, females are not even allowed a bit of solace.
When females are no longer satisfied with mere consolation for a misogynistic, male-centered system, the religious system/culture will weaken and fail.
Although the behavior of the diaspora of any ideology is interesting, it is even more important to see what remains in the diaspora. Although marginally better for most females, the diaspora of all religions reveal the truth of religions: they serve to provide males what they want and need and females are left with occasional scraps of comfort for which many hours of service are required. This is true in Western and Eastern ideologies.
Religions are the patriarchy's greatest deceptive cons. Slowly and unevenly, this is being revealed to females. Even those who cannot admit it out loud, or to strangers, pollsters, their own families. But more of us have seen through the patriarchal veil. We are just silent most of the time. We sacrifice the promised "solace" and we see just what religion has really done to us.
Interesting survey. But is there any Is there any data on how diverse the Indian diaspora is? Are there actually a considerable number of people from lower castes? It's easy for upper-caste individuals to claim they don't believe in caste, but is that what they actually practice?
I'm not sure how to find this data, but based on my strong feeling and personal experience, India is not creating enough opportunities for people from lower castes to become economically capable of going abroad.
Example from personal experience:
I’ve worked in Copenhagen and the UK for Indian companies. In both places, on my floor—which typically comprised about 100 people—I couldn’t find a single person from a lower caste background. The upper-caste colleagues were often quite casteist. They would try to identify someone's caste based on their surname or eating habits and treat them accordingly. In both the UK and Copenhagen, all the senior managers were upper caste, and some asked me about my caste as early as the second conversation—essentially during introductions.
I believe, once people from lower castes do manage to go abroad, it becomes comparatively easier (than in India) to break caste barriers.
But are we creating enough opportunities within India?
Your map on regional acceptance of wife-beating seems to be a counterexample to your earlier article on north/south gender equality. I’m curious if you have any explanation why?
### The Transient Nature of Caste and the Persistence of Ideology
The absence of caste-based systems among Indian immigrants outside of India suggests that caste is not an ideological construct deeply ingrained in the Indian psyche. Rather, it appears to be a social structure that many Indians view as an outdated and cringe-worthy relic of the past, one that they hope will fade away with time.
In contrast, the ideological commitment of Muslims to their beliefs is markedly different. Muslims tend to carry their ideology with them, regardless of where they go, reflecting a deeper and more persistent adherence to their faith and cultural practices. This distinction highlights the transient nature of caste as a social construct, as opposed to the enduring and pervasive nature of religious ideology.
People are both more alike and perhaps more different than we superficially suppose.
Are you suggesting that Muslim South Asians are fundamentally different from Hindu South Asians? In that, when they emigrate the former hold close to their religious values whereas the latter let them go.
Given the effects of caste have been identified 'written' in the the genome (I recall words to this effect from David Reich) could this also be expressed in the phenotype? It could be that both Muslim and Hindu South Asians who together inhabited north India for 10's of generations posses characteristics "deeply ingrained in the Indian psyche" that are simply expressed differently.
Gender seclusion in India was practiced before & has existed in theory since the codification of the Dharmashastras, atleast among Bramhins.
While it’s harder to say the same for ruling & professional classes because these were limited to their respected castes only in theory & often not in practice, it was still a common practice before 800 CE in both North & South India
Religions/religious systems provide necessary comforts to adherents. What is often missed is that these systems provide differing comforts to males than they do to females. And that these comforts prioritize male needs.
To females, religion provides, at its most essential level, something close to solace. And to males, it provides a "place" within a male-dominated, and desired, hierarchy. Anything beyond those two differing comforts is proved extraneous in all diasporas.
As a person moves further away from a religious epicenter, each person—male and female— takes what provides the most comfort and begins discarding other part of that ideology. Misogyny and caste are *both* borne of a male desire to have everything ranked within their preferred hierarchy. Women do not dare, for example, to aspire to be the Roman Catholic pope. They are left with a bit of solace for their all-around low status within that system.
Females are left to take whatever comfort and consolation they can from all these ideologies. In return, females perform almost all the sustaining tasks of those religions. Because without these services, females are not even allowed a bit of solace.
When females are no longer satisfied with mere consolation for a misogynistic, male-centered system, the religious system/culture will weaken and fail.
Although the behavior of the diaspora of any ideology is interesting, it is even more important to see what remains in the diaspora. Although marginally better for most females, the diaspora of all religions reveal the truth of religions: they serve to provide males what they want and need and females are left with occasional scraps of comfort for which many hours of service are required. This is true in Western and Eastern ideologies.
Religions are the patriarchy's greatest deceptive cons. Slowly and unevenly, this is being revealed to females. Even those who cannot admit it out loud, or to strangers, pollsters, their own families. But more of us have seen through the patriarchal veil. We are just silent most of the time. We sacrifice the promised "solace" and we see just what religion has really done to us.
Well said!
Interesting survey. But is there any Is there any data on how diverse the Indian diaspora is? Are there actually a considerable number of people from lower castes? It's easy for upper-caste individuals to claim they don't believe in caste, but is that what they actually practice?
I'm not sure how to find this data, but based on my strong feeling and personal experience, India is not creating enough opportunities for people from lower castes to become economically capable of going abroad.
Example from personal experience:
I’ve worked in Copenhagen and the UK for Indian companies. In both places, on my floor—which typically comprised about 100 people—I couldn’t find a single person from a lower caste background. The upper-caste colleagues were often quite casteist. They would try to identify someone's caste based on their surname or eating habits and treat them accordingly. In both the UK and Copenhagen, all the senior managers were upper caste, and some asked me about my caste as early as the second conversation—essentially during introductions.
I believe, once people from lower castes do manage to go abroad, it becomes comparatively easier (than in India) to break caste barriers.
But are we creating enough opportunities within India?
Your map on regional acceptance of wife-beating seems to be a counterexample to your earlier article on north/south gender equality. I’m curious if you have any explanation why?
### The Transient Nature of Caste and the Persistence of Ideology
The absence of caste-based systems among Indian immigrants outside of India suggests that caste is not an ideological construct deeply ingrained in the Indian psyche. Rather, it appears to be a social structure that many Indians view as an outdated and cringe-worthy relic of the past, one that they hope will fade away with time.
In contrast, the ideological commitment of Muslims to their beliefs is markedly different. Muslims tend to carry their ideology with them, regardless of where they go, reflecting a deeper and more persistent adherence to their faith and cultural practices. This distinction highlights the transient nature of caste as a social construct, as opposed to the enduring and pervasive nature of religious ideology.
People are both more alike and perhaps more different than we superficially suppose.
Are you suggesting that Muslim South Asians are fundamentally different from Hindu South Asians? In that, when they emigrate the former hold close to their religious values whereas the latter let them go.
Given the effects of caste have been identified 'written' in the the genome (I recall words to this effect from David Reich) could this also be expressed in the phenotype? It could be that both Muslim and Hindu South Asians who together inhabited north India for 10's of generations posses characteristics "deeply ingrained in the Indian psyche" that are simply expressed differently.
Gender seclusion in India was practiced before & has existed in theory since the codification of the Dharmashastras, atleast among Bramhins.
While it’s harder to say the same for ruling & professional classes because these were limited to their respected castes only in theory & often not in practice, it was still a common practice before 800 CE in both North & South India
What can be said is that change of ruling classes & influx of new communities imported newer forms of seclusion