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3 - Three important facts or ideas you learned about the caste system.

2 - Two connections or questions you have about the caste system.

1 - One sentence explaining how caste still affects life in India today.

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India is the world’s largest democracy and second most populous country

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Introduction

The Indus Valley civilization, one of the world's oldest, flourished during the 3rd and 2nd millennia B.C. and extended into northwestern India. Aryan tribes from the northwest infiltrated the Indian subcontinent about 1500 B.C.; their merger with the earlier Dravidian inhabitants created the classical Indian culture. The Maurya Empire of the 4th and 3rd centuries B.C. - which reached its zenith under ASHOKA - united much of South Asia. The Golden Age ushered in by the Gupta dynasty (4th to 6th centuries A.D.) saw a flowering of Indian science, art, and culture. Islam spread across the subcontinent over a period of 700 years. In the 10th and 11th centuries, Turks and Afghans invaded India and established the Delhi Sultanate. In the early 16th century, the Emperor BABUR established the Mughal Dynasty, which ruled India for more than three centuries. European explorers began establishing footholds in India during the 16th century.

By the 19th century, Great Britain had become the dominant political power on the subcontinent and India was seen as the "Jewel in the Crown" of the British Empire. The British Indian Army played a vital role in both World Wars. Years of nonviolent resistance to British rule, led by Mohandas GANDHI and Jawaharlal NEHRU, eventually resulted in Indian independence in 1947. Large-scale communal violence took place before and after the subcontinent partition into two separate states - India and Pakistan. The neighboring countries have fought three wars since independence, the last of which was in 1971 and resulted in East Pakistan becoming the separate nation of Bangladesh. India's nuclear weapons tests in 1998 emboldened Pakistan to conduct its own tests that same year. In November 2008, terrorists originating from Pakistan conducted a series of coordinated attacks in Mumbai, India's financial capital. India's economic growth following the launch of economic reforms in 1991, a massive youthful population, and a strategic geographic location have contributed to India's emergence as a regional and global power. However, India still faces pressing problems such as environmental degradation, extensive poverty, and widespread corruption, and its restrictive business climate challenges economic growth expectations.

Visit the Definitions and Notes page to view a description of each topic.

Geography

slightly more than one-third the size of the US

agricultural land: 60.5% (2018 est.)

arable land: 52.8% (2018 est.)

permanent crops: 4.2% (2018 est.)

permanent pasture: 3.5% (2018 est.)

forest: 23.1% (2018 est.)

other: 16.4% (2018 est.)

salt water lake(s): Chilika Lake - 1,170 sq km

Brahmaputra (shared with China [s] and Bangladesh [m]) - 3,969 km; Indus (shared with China [s] and Pakistan [m]) - 3,610 km; Ganges river source (shared with Bangladesh [m]) - 2,704 km; Godavari - 1,465 km; Sutlej (shared with China [s] and Pakistan [m]) - 1,372 km; Yamuna - 1,370 km; Narmada - 1,289 km; Chenab river source (shared with Pakistan [m]) - 1,086 km; Ghaghara river mouth (shared with China [s] and Nepal) - 1,080 km
note - [s] after country name indicates river source; [m] after country name indicates river mouth

droughts; flash floods, as well as widespread and destructive flooding from monsoonal rains; severe thunderstorms; earthquakes

volcanism: Barren Island (354 m) in the Andaman Sea has been active in recent years

People and Society

विश्व फ़ैक्टबुक, आधारभूत जानकारी का एक अनिवार्य स्रोत (Hindi)

The World Factbook, the indispensable source for basic information.

improved: urban: 96.9% of population

rural: 94.7% of population

total: 95.5% of population

unimproved: urban: 3.1% of population

rural: 5.3% of population

total: 4.5% of population (2020 est.)

improved: urban: 98.6% of population

rural: 75.2% of population

total: 83.4% of population

unimproved: urban: 1.4% of population

rural: 24.8% of population

total: 16.6% of population (2020 est.)

Environment

agricultural land: 60.5% (2018 est.)

arable land: 52.8% (2018 est.)

permanent crops: 4.2% (2018 est.)

permanent pasture: 3.5% (2018 est.)

forest: 23.1% (2018 est.)

other: 16.4% (2018 est.)

salt water lake(s): Chilika Lake - 1,170 sq km

Brahmaputra (shared with China [s] and Bangladesh [m]) - 3,969 km; Indus (shared with China [s] and Pakistan [m]) - 3,610 km; Ganges river source (shared with Bangladesh [m]) - 2,704 km; Godavari - 1,465 km; Sutlej (shared with China [s] and Pakistan [m]) - 1,372 km; Yamuna - 1,370 km; Narmada - 1,289 km; Chenab river source (shared with Pakistan [m]) - 1,086 km; Ghaghara river mouth (shared with China [s] and Nepal) - 1,080 km
note - [s] after country name indicates river source; [m] after country name indicates river mouth

Government

description: bicameral Parliament or Sansad consists of:
Council of States or Rajya Sabha (245 seats; 233 members indirectly elected by state and territorial assemblies by proportional representation vote and 12 members appointed by the president; members serve 6-year terms with one-third of the membership renewed every 2 years at various dates)
House of the People or Lok Sabha (545 seats; 543 members directly elected in single-seat constituencies by simple majority vote and 2 appointed by the president; members serve 5-year terms)

elections: Council of States - last held by state and territorial assemblies at various dates in 2019 (in progress March through July 2022 to fill 70 expiry seats)

House of the People - last held April-May 2019 in 7 phases (next to be held in 2024)

election results: Council of States - percent of vote by party - NA; seats by party - BJP 97, INC 34, AITC 13, DMK 10, other 2, independent 2; composition - men 209, women 29, percent of women 13.8%

House of the People - percent of vote by party - BJP 55.8%, INC 9.6%, AITC 4.4%, YSRCP 4.4%, DMK 4.2%, SS 3.3%, JDU 2.9%, BJD 2.2%, BSP 1.8%, TRS 1.7%, LJP 1.1%, NCP 0.9%, SP 0.9%, other 21.2%, independent 0.7%; seats by party - BJP 303, INC 52, DMK 24, AITC 22, YSRCP 22, SS 18, JDU 16, BJD 12, BSP 10, TRS 9, LJP 6, NCP 5, SP 5, other 35, independent 4, vacant 2; composition - men 465, women 78, percent of women 14.3%; note - total Parliament percent of women 11.3%

note: in late September 2023, both the Council of States and the House of the People passed a bill that reserves one-third of the House seats for women; implementation could begin for the House election in 2029

Aam Aadmi Party or AAP [Arvind KEJRIWAL]
All India Trinamool Congress or AITC [Mamata BANERJEE]
Bahujan Samaj Party or BSP [MAYAWATI]
Bharatiya Janata Party or BJP [Jagat Prakash NADDA]
Biju Janata Dal or BJD [Naveen PATNAIK]
Communist Party of India-Marxist or CPI(M) [Sitaram YECHURY]
Dravida Munnetra Khazhagam [Muthuvel Karunanidhi STALIN]
Indian National Congress or INC [Mallikarjun KHARGE]
Nationalist Congress Party or NCP [Sharad PAWAR]
Rashtriya Janata Dal or RJD [Lalu Prasad YADAV]
Samajwadi Party or SP [Akhilesh YADAV]
Shiromani Akali Dal or SAD [Sukhbir Singh BADAL]
Shiv Sena or SS [Uddhav THACKERAY]
Telegana Rashtra Samithi or TRS [K. Chandrashekar RAO]
Telugu Desam Party or TDP [N. Chandrababu NAIDU]
YSR Congress or YSRCP or YCP [Y.S. Jaganmohan REDDY]

note: India has dozens of national and regional political parties

chief of mission: Ambassador Taranjit Singh SANDHU (since 6 February 2020)

chancery: 2107 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20008; Consular Wing located at 2536 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20008

telephone: [1] (202) 939-7000

FAX: [1] (202) 265-4351

email address and website:
minca.washington@mea.gov.in (community affairs)

https://www.indianembassyusa.gov.in/

consulate(s) general: Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, New York, San Francisco

total World Heritage Sites: 41 (33 cultural, 7 natural, 1 mixed)

selected World Heritage Site locales: Taj Mahal (c); Red Fort Complex (c); Ellora Caves (c); Hill Forts of Rajasthan (c); Sundarbans National Park (n); Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka (c); Champaner-Pavagadh Archaeological Park (c); Dholavira: A Harappan City (c); Jaipur (c); Mahabodhi Temple Complex at Bodh Gaya (c); Manas Wildlife Sanctuary (n); Nanda Devi and Valley of Flowers National Parks (n); Khangchendzonga National Park (m)

Economy

$9.279 trillion (2021 est.)
$8.538 trillion (2020 est.)
$9.14 trillion (2019 est.)

note: data are in 2017 dollars

comparison ranking: 3

$6,600 (2021 est.)
$6,100 (2020 est.)
$6,600 (2019 est.)

note: data are in 2017 dollars

comparison ranking: 160

46.52% of GDP (2018 est.)
47.58% of GDP (2017 est.)
47.63% of GDP (2016 est.)

note: data cover central government debt, and exclude debt instruments issued (or owned) by government entities other than the treasury; the data include treasury debt held by foreign entities; the data exclude debt issued by subnational entities, as well as intragovernmental debt; intragovernmental debt consists of treasury borrowings from surpluses in the social funds, such as for retirement, medical care, and unemployment; debt instruments for the social funds are not sold at public auctions

comparison ranking: 119

$555.388 billion (2019 est.)
$518.34 billion (2018 est.)

comparison ranking: 23

Indian rupees (INR) per US dollar -

Exchange rates:
73.918 (2021 est.)
74.1 (2020 est.)
70.42 (2019 est.)
68.389 (2018 est.)
65.122 (2017 est.)

Energy

2,314,738,000 metric tonnes of CO2 (2019 est.)

from coal and metallurgical coke: 1,574,331,000 metric tonnes of CO2 (2019 est.)

from petroleum and other liquids: 615.903 million metric tonnes of CO2 (2019 est.)

from consumed natural gas: 124.505 million metric tonnes of CO2 (2019 est.)

comparison ranking: total emissions 3

Communications

Transportation

Military and Security

Indian Armed Forces: Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard; Defense Security Corps

Ministry of Home Affairs: Central Armed Police Forces (includes Assam Rifles, Border Security Force, Central Industrial Security Force, Central Reserve Police Force, Indo-Tibetan Border Police, National Security Guards, Sashastra Seema Bal) (2023)

note 1: the Defense Security Corps provides security for Ministry of Defense sites

note 2: the Border Security Force (BSF) is responsible for the Indo-Pakistan and Indo-Bangladesh borders; the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB or Armed Border Force) guards the Indo-Nepal and Indo-Bhutan borders

note 3: the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) includes a Rapid Reaction Force (RAF) for riot control and the Commando Battalion for Resolute Action (COBRA) for counter-insurgency operations

note 4: the Assam Rifles are under the administrative control of the Ministry of Home Affairs, while operational control falls under the Ministry of Defense (specifically the Indian Army)

2% of GDP (2023 est.)
2.1% of GDP (2022 est.)
2.2% of GDP (2021 est.)
2.5% of GDP (2020 est.)
2.4% of GDP (2019 est.)

comparison ranking: 58

ages vary by service, but generally 16.5-27 years of age for voluntary military service for men and women; no conscription (2023)

note 1: in 2022, the Indian Government announced that it would begin recruiting 46,000 men aged 17.5-21 annually to serve on 4-year contracts under a process called the Agnipath scheme; at the end of their tenure, 25% would be retained for longer terms of service, while the remainder would be forced to leave the military, although some of those leaving would be eligible to serve in the Coast Guard, the Merchant Navy, civilian positions in the Ministry of Defense, and in the paramilitary forces of the Ministry of Home Affairs, such as the Central Armed Police Forces and Assam Rifles

note 2: as of 2023, women made up less than 1% of the Army, about 1% of the Air Force, and about 6% of the Navy

note 3: the Indian military accepts citizens of Nepal and Bhutan; descendants of refugees from Tibet who arrived before 1962 and have resided permanently in India; peoples of Indian origin from nations such as Burma, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Uganda, and Vietnam with the intention of permanently settling in India; eligible candidates from "friendly foreign nations" may apply to the Armed Forces Medical Services

note 4: the British began to recruit Nepalese citizens (Gurkhas) into the East India Company Army during the Anglo-Nepalese War (1814-1816), and the Gurkhas subsequently were brought into the British Indian Army; following the partition of India in 1947, an agreement between Nepal, India, and Great Britain allowed for the transfer of the 10 regiments from the British Indian Army to the separate British and Indian armies; six regiments of Gurkhas (aka Gorkhas in India) regiments went to the new Indian Army; a seventh regiment was later added

the Indian military is a large, experienced, professional, and well-equipped military that performs a variety of missions; it is primarily focused on China and Pakistan and territorial defense, while secondary missions include regional power projection, UN peacekeeping deployments, humanitarian operations, and support to internal security forces; it has fought in several significant conflicts and counterinsurgency operations since 1947 and regularly conducts large-scale exercises; the military may act internally under the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) of 1958, an act of the Indian Parliament that granted special powers to put down separatist movements in "disturbed areas"; the AFSPA, 1958 and a virtually identical law, the Armed Forces (Jammu & Kashmir) Special Powers Act, 1990, have been in force since 1958 in parts of northeast India, and since 1990 in Jammu & Kashmir

the Army is organized into 14 operational corps; the basic field formations under the corps are approximately 40 armored, artillery, infantry, mechanized, or mountain infantry divisions; there are also a number of independent airborne, armored, and artillery brigades, as well as special operations forces; in 2023, the Army announced that it was reorganizing its operational corps and divisions into division-sized "integrated battle groups," which the Army assessed would be more agile and flexible

the Navy is a blue water force that operates in seas stretching from the western Mediterranean to the Strait of Malacca and the western Pacific; it routinely conducts months-long deployments, exercises with other navies, and conducts a variety of missions such as counter-piracy, humanitarian, and naval diplomacy; its principal ships include two aircraft carriers, more than 50 destroyers, frigates, corvettes, and large patrol vessels, 16 attack submarines, and two nuclear-powered ballistic missile capable submarines; the Navy also has several combat aircraft and anti-submarine warfare helicopter squadrons, as well as a marine amphibious brigade and a marine commando force

the Air Force is one of the World's largest with more than 600 British-, French-, Russian/Soviet-, and domestically produced combat aircraft, plus nearly 500 combat helicopters; the tri-service Strategic Forces Command manages all of India's strategic missile forces

the short 1962 Sino-India War left in place one of the World's longest disputed international borders, resulting in occasional standoffs between Indian and Chinese security forces, including lethal clashes in 1975 and 2020; meanwhile, India and Pakistan have fought several conflicts since 1947, including the Indo-Pakistan War of 1965 and the Indo-Pakistan and Bangladesh War of Independence of 1971, as well as two clashes over the disputed region of Kashmir (the First Kashmir War of 1947 and the 1999 Kargil Conflict); a fragile cease-fire in Kashmir was reached in 2003, revised in 2018, and reaffirmed in 2021, although the Line of Control remains contested, and India has accused Pakistan of backing armed separatists and terrorist organizations in Jammu and Kashmir where Indian forces have conducted counterinsurgency operations since the 1980s; in addition, India and Pakistan have battled over the Siachen Glacier of Kashmir, which was seized by India in 1984 with Pakistan attempting to retake the area at least three times between 1985 and 1995; despite a cease-fire, both sides continue to maintain a permanent military presence there with outposts at altitudes above 20,000 feet (over 6,000 meters) where most casualties are due to extreme weather and the hazards of operating in the high mountain terrain of the world's highest conflict, including avalanches, exposure, and altitude sickness (2023)

Space

has one of the world's largest space programs; designs, builds, launches, operates, and tracks the full spectrum of satellites, including communications, navigation, remote sensing (RS), and scientific/technology; designs, builds, and launches rockets, space/satellite launch vehicles (SLVs), and lunar/interplanetary probes; launches satellites for foreign partners; developing human space flight capabilities with Russian assistance; researching and developing additional space-related technologies and capabilities; has space-related agreements with more than 50 countries, including China, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, and the US, as well as the European Space Agency; participates in international space projects such as the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) radio telescope; has a government-owned company under the administrative control of DOS; NewSpace India Limited (NSIL) is the commercial arm of the ISRO with the responsibility of researching and developing space-related technologies and promoting India's growing space industry (2023)

note: further details about the key activities, programs, and milestones of the country's space program, as well as government spending estimates on the space sector, appear in Appendix S

Terrorism

Terrorist group(s): Harakat ul-Mujahidin; Harakat ul-Jihad-i-Islami; Hizbul Mujahideen; Indian Mujahedeen; Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham - India; Jaish-e-Mohammed;Lashkar-e Tayyiba; al-Qa'ida; al-Qa'ida in the Indian Subcontinent; Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)/Qods Force

note: details about the history, aims, leadership, organization, areas of operation, tactics, targets, weapons, size, and sources of support of the group(s) appear(s) in Appendix-T

Transnational Issues

India-China: since China and India launched a security and foreign policy dialogue in 2005, consolidated discussions related to the dispute over most of their rugged, militarized boundary, regional nuclear proliferation, Indian claims that China transferred missiles to Pakistan, and other matters continue; Kashmir remains the site of the world's largest and most militarized territorial dispute with portions under the de facto administration of China (Aksai Chin), India (Jammu and Kashmir), and Pakistan (Azad Kashmir and Northern Areas)

India-Pakistan: India and Pakistan resumed bilateral dialogue in February 2011 after a two-year hiatus, have maintained the 2003 cease-fire in Kashmir, and continue to have disputes over water sharing of the Indus River and its tributaries; UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan has maintained a small group of peacekeepers since 1949; India does not recognize Pakistan's ceding historic Kashmir lands to China in 1964; to defuse tensions and prepare for discussions on a maritime boundary, India and Pakistan seek technical resolution of the disputed boundary in Sir Creek estuary at the mouth of the Rann of Kutch in the Arabian Sea; Pakistani maps continue to show its Junagadh claim in Indian Gujarat State

India-Bangladesh: Prime Minister SINGH's September 2011 visit to Bangladesh resulted in the signing of a Protocol to the 1974 Land Boundary Agreement between India and Bangladesh, which had called for the settlement of longstanding boundary disputes over un-demarcated areas and the exchange of territorial enclaves, but which had never been implemented; Bangladesh referred its maritime boundary claims with Burma and India to the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea

India-Nepal: the Joint Border Committee with Nepal continues to examine contested boundary sections, including the 400 sq km dispute over the source of the Kalapani River; India maintains a strict border regime to keep out Maoist insurgents and control illegal cross-border activities from Nepal

India is a source, transit, and destination for illicit narcotics and precursor chemicals; drug abuse in India growing, facilitated by illicit narcotics and the availability of over-the-counter medicines; commonly abused substances in India include heroin, cannabis, and cocaine, with growing use of pharmaceutical drugs in recent years including tramadol, opioids, and MDMA (ecstasy) analogues; largest producer of generic drugs in the world which is also used to produce illicit synthetic drugs such as pharmaceutical opioids, methamphetamine, heroin, MDMA, and ketamine

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The Indus Valley civilization, one of the world's oldest, flourished during the 3rd and 2nd millennia B.C. and extended into northwestern India. Aryan tribes from the northwest infiltrated the Indian subcontinent about 1500 B.C.; their merger with the earlier Dravidian inhabitants created the classical Indian culture.

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Caste is technically illegal in India, but social divisions still exist.

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In an amateur video, four frightened men, stripped to the waist and tethered to a truck, are publicly flogged on a busy street in broad daylight.

Their assailants accused the four men of killing a cow - a sacred animal in India. Calling themselves protectors of the cow, they filmed themselves beating the foursome with iron rods and wooden sticks on July 11 - then posted their video on social media.

The attack in the Indian state of Gujarat, the home base of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, ignited widespread revulsion - and even rumblings of a rebellion against India's Hindu caste system.

For millennia, caste has been the organizing principle of society in India. Determined by birth, caste draws distinctions between communities, determining one's profession, level of education and potential marriage partner. Privileges are reserved for the upper castes and denied the lower ones. The lowliest in this pecking order are the Dalits, once called "untouchables" as they are consigned by the Hindu hierarchy to the dirtiest occupations. It's a sizable community of some 200 million people. The word Dalit comes from a Hindi word meaning "oppressed, suppressed, downtrodden."

The four beating victims are Dalits.

One of them, Vashram Sarvaiya, curls up in his hospital bed and describes how he and the other three were brutalized while they performed a job no non-Dalit would do: Disposing of dead cows. Sarvaiya insists they harmed no living cow.

"We didn't kill the cow, we just removed the skin. It's our ancestral job. Our forefathers did it," he explains.

Authorities had determined that a lion killed the cow. But the vigilantes insisted the men had slaughtered the animal, and while beating them chanted: "Dig four graves."

In Gujarat, the video went viral, kindling a smoldering sense of injustice. Dalits are denied access to temples, public wells, even barbershops. Heena Zen, a young educated Dalit woman, even testified to continued "untouchability," the practice that forbids physical contact with another caste and that was outlawed 60 years ago.

Zen says that in her rural village in Gujarat: "When we go to buy milk, they won't even take the money from our hands, we must put it down, and then they pick it up. They don't let us in their homes, we can't sit with them, we can't eat with them."

In the area near the assault, men who skin cows for a living are now on strike, and families across Gujarat are re-evaluating their centuries-old occupation. Dilip Chavda's family has skinned cows for generations. He's not repulsed by the grisly work of cleaning carcasses.

Rather he's indignant that men like him "were beaten for doing their job." He says he's inspired to find a different line of work. He and his cousin, 20-year-old Pragnesh, represent a restless new generation that bristles at being treated as outcasts.

Pragnesh says: "We'll break this caste system where Dalits do all the dirty work. Let the owners of these dead cows clean the carcasses themselves. We're determined that our young generation moves ahead."

It's not the first time Dalits have asserted the right to be treated as equal citizens. Pragnesh invokes the name of B.R. Ambedkar, a prominent politician and Dalit reformer, who called for the abolition of caste a half a century ago. The fact that Gujarat is transforming anger into action is what's different in 2016.

With traditional skinners refusing to work, the disposal of cows risks a sanitation crisis in some areas. In the central Gujarati town of Limbdi, carcasses are being tossed untreated into open pits in the garbage dump. The stench is unbearable.

"It's the first time that Dalits aren't disposing of our dead animals," says Hasmukh Sheth, a trustee with a 150-year-old animal shelter where cow carcasseshave piled up. "They did it all by hand and needed no supervision. The municipality has no experience," he says.

Sheth adds that cow skinning is a billion dollar business, as everything on the cow - its hide, meat, even bones - is sold and consumed. The agents that buythe raw materials from the skinning Dalit families are typically from the higher castes.

Key sanitation jobs, like unclogging sewer drains and cleaning human excrement off the streets, also fall to Dalits. Dalit rights activist Jignesh Mevani argues that this occupational discrimination is ultimately holding India back.

"So we want to become a leading economic power but we want to continue with such obnoxious practices. Caste should be thrown into the dustbin of history. It is nothing more than the existence of feudalism," he says.

Mevani organized a rally and a march across the state in solidarity with the striking Dalits, starting on August 5 and ending on the 15th. At the opening rally, the small crowd assembled under the battle cry "Azadi" or "Freedom." "Freedom from caste-ism, freedom from social division, freedom from untouchability," they chanted.

Dalits are overwhelmingly poor and landless. One demand from the protesters: small parcels of property for community members in the name of equality.

At 78, Arjun Gohil is a Dalit who has lived through India's entire independence history. At the rally, the retired schoolteacher danced, exalting in a moment that he says is an "awakening" for a caste-free society.

Prime Minister Modi acknowledged this simmering revolt, telling the nation in his Independence Day address last Monday: "Economic progress alone does not make a strong nation, social justice is necessary."

Referencing the dispute regarding Dalits, Modi said: "Every citizen should fight against the differences in the society on the basis of caste and prevalent class differences."

But that's not yet happening in India. Jignesh Mevani reported trouble as marchers made their way to the town of Una, the site of the beating. Along the route, he says some members of higher castes hurled insults, while others assailed the marchers with sticks.

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The Caste Formerly Known As 'Untouchables' Demands A New Role In India

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The public beating of four men from the bottom rung of India's social hierarchy has led to calls for an end to the caste system.

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Watch this brief documentary about India's independence and partition.

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The Triumph and Tragedy of Indian Independence | Podcast | Overheard at National Geographic

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Before we understand caste today, we need to understand what it is and where it came from.

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India's caste system is among the world's oldest forms of surviving social stratification. The BBC explains its complexities.

The system which divides Hindus into rigid hierarchical groups based on their karma (work) and dharma (the Hindi word for religion, but here it means duty) is generally accepted to be more than 3,000 years old.

How did caste come about?

Manusmriti, widely regarded to be the most important and authoritative book on Hindu law and dating back to at least 1,000 years before Christ was born, "acknowledges and justifies the caste system as the basis of order and regularity of society".

The caste system divides Hindus into four main categories - Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and the Shudras. Many believe that the groups originated from Brahma, the Hindu God of creation.

At the top of the hierarchy were the Brahmins who were mainly teachers and intellectuals and are believed to have come from Brahma's head. Then came the Kshatriyas, or the warriors and rulers, supposedly from his arms. The third slot went to the Vaishyas, or the traders, who were created from his thighs. At the bottom of the heap were the Shudras, who came from Brahma's feet and did all the menial jobs.

The main castes were further divided into about 3,000 castes and 25,000 sub-castes, each based on their specific occupation.

Outside of this Hindu caste system were the achhoots - the Dalits or the untouchables.

How does caste work?

For centuries, caste has dictated almost every aspect of Hindu religious and social life, with each group occupying a specific place in this complex hierarchy.

Rural communities have long been arranged on the basis of castes - the upper and lower castes almost always lived in segregated colonies, the water wells were not shared, Brahmins would not accept food or drink from the Shudras, and one could marry only within one's caste.

The system bestowed many privileges on the upper castes while sanctioning repression of the lower castes by privileged groups.

Often criticised for being unjust and regressive, it remained virtually unchanged for centuries, trapping people into fixed social orders from which it was impossible to escape.

Despite the obstacles, however, some Dalits and other low-caste Indians, such as BR Ambedkar who authored the Indian constitution, and KR Narayanan who became the nation's first Dalit president, have risen to hold prestigious positions in the country.

Historians, though, say that until the 18th Century, the formal distinctions of caste were of limited importance to Indians, social identities were much more flexible and people could move easily from one caste to another.

New research shows that hard boundaries were set by British colonial rulers who made caste India's defining social feature when they used censuses to simplify the system, primarily to create a single society with a common law that could be easily governed.

Is the system legal?

Independent India's constitution banned discrimination on the basis of caste, and, in an attempt to correct historical injustices and provide a level playing field to the traditionally disadvantaged, the authorities announced quotas in government jobs and educational institutions for scheduled castes and tribes, the lowest in the caste hierarchy, in 1950.

In 1989, quotas were extended to include a grouping called the OBCs (Other Backward Classes) which fall between the traditional upper castes and the lowest.

In recent decades, with the spread of secular education and growing urbanisation, the influence of caste has somewhat declined, especially in cities where different castes live side-by-side and inter-caste marriages are becoming more common.

In certain southern states and in the northern state of Bihar, many people began using just one name after social reform movements. Despite the changes though, caste identities remain strong, and last names are almost always indications of what caste a person belongs to.

What about job quotas?

In recent years, there have been demands from several communities to be recognised as OBCs - in 2016 there were violent protests by the Jat community in Haryana and the Patel community led huge protests in Gujarat in 2015 demanding access to caste quotas.

Both are prosperous and politically dominant communities, but they support their demand for caste quotas by saying large numbers in their communities are poor and suffering.

Some say the caste system would have disappeared by now if the fires were not regularly fanned by politicians.

At elections, many caste groups still vote as a block and are wooed by politicians looking for electoral gains.

As a result, what was originally meant to be a temporary affirmative action plan to improve the lot of the unprivileged groups has now become a vote-grabbing exercise for many politicians.

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India's complex caste system is among the world's oldest forms of surviving social stratification.

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How the caste system may operate in modern India

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How casteism operates in Modern India | Beena Pallical | TEDxSurat

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Explore oral histories of people who were present during Partition in India in 1947.

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The National Endowment for the Humanities

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By 1947, about half of South Asia was ruled by the British Crown as "British India," surrounded by more than 500 indigenous and autonomous kingdoms, many of which maintained a protectorate agreement with the British Empire. As the British departed in the summer of 1947, unable to financially sustain their colonies following the war, the South Asian kingdoms were consolidated with British Indian territories, sometimes by military force, to form two new countries: the Republic of India and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Sir Cyril Radcliffe, a British barrister, was commissioned to divide the regions of Punjab and Bengal, based on religious majorities: Muslim-dominant areas went to Pakistan and Sikh/Hindu-dominant areas went to India. Unable to quell the independence movement and growing sectarian violence, the British accelerated the transfer of power to less than six months, leading to a complete breakdown in society. The sudden transition from an imperial colony to a democracy led to mass violence as locals vying for power sought to "cleanse" their newly acquired constituencies, supported by far-right religious groups whose agendas were eerily similar to early twentieth-century nationalists in Europe. Gangs of young men eyed an opportunity for economic gain during the chaos, participating in organized looting and using religion as an excuse to target vulnerable, newly minted "minority" groups whose ancestral lands were now on the wrong side of a border.

Partition led to an unprecedented mass migration and refugee crisis. Despite the scale of the upheaval and continued repercussions of Partition, it was a forgotten history six decades later in 2010 when we began our work of building the 1947 Partition Archive, a crowdsourced oral history repository that preserves more than 10,300 survivor interviews from around the world. I was motivated to bridge the gap between official histories and the folk histories we heard in our families. My own grandparents' story of migration from Lahore to Amritsar (and then Delhi) seemed unfair and unnecessary. They, and millions of others, were uprooted from their homelands because of miscalculated decisions by a few leaders. "The only solace we had was that we were in this together," one interviewee recalled.

The oral histories are challenging commonly held perceptions of Partition history and our global memory of colonialism in surprising ways. The stories reveal how the transition of power in 1947 was haphazard on multiple levels. One witness from Larkana in the Sindh Province remembered, "A British officer who was summoned to leave his post quickly picked out my father and handed over his prestigious civil services position."

Other stories poignantly capture the psychological scars of Partition: Ali Shan, now a happy grandfather who enjoys spending his Sundays leading hikes in the San Francisco Bay Area, was orphaned in 1947. He watched a mob murder his family and became the sole survivor of the attack. He lived in refugee camps all alone as an eight-year-old boy and described his emotional journey of overcoming trauma by forgiving his family's murderers. When he shared his story with our volunteers, it was the first time he had told it, as the memory was too difficult for him to recall for family and friends.

When we began this work in 2010, the last generation of Partition witnesses were aging, and time was running out to capture their memories. We devised a crowdsourcing protocol to collaborate with the public in documenting oral histories. New digital tools, such as emerging cloud-computing technologies and social media features, enabled fast and frugal documentation from across the globe. We began posting unedited images of elders being interviewed in villages and towns across the world, inspiring thousands to join us. The process accelerated with the proliferation of smartphones with video capacity.

By 2016, the 1947 Partition Archive Facebook page had ballooned to one million followers, who were interacting with our oral history posts more than ten million times a year. Today, more than 7,000 individuals have trained at our free online oral history workshops held biweekly since 2012. They have gone on to help preserve more than 10,000 oral histories of Partition witnesses. Makers of several films, including blockbuster Bollywood numbers such as Bharat and Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, as well as the BBC documentary My Family, Partition and Me, have consulted the 1947 Partition Archive's public content and oral history collections. Exhibits such as "Stories in the Metro," held in Delhi's popular Mandi House Metro station for two years, introduced memories of Partition witnesses to more than half a million riders per day. Meanwhile, exhibits such as "Refugees of the British Empire," supported by California Humanities and held at the archive's Berkeley location, exposed the local public to this tragic chapter in world history. An ongoing collaboration with Stanford University Libraries will make the collection accessible to scholars via online streaming.

At "Refugees of the British Empire," audiences were introduced to the lesser-known South Asian battlefields of World War II through an unforgettable story: California resident and triple refugee Hardeep Singh, as he is called for privacy, narrated his family's great escape on foot when Rangoon (Burma, British India) was bombed by the Japanese Army in December 1941. Singh's family walked for more than a month through thick jungles in long lines formed by thousands of families on the same journey. "I was just a child, but I remember details vividly. . . . Many perished along the way," he noted in Punjabi. Singh's family members, like the others, were considered foreigners in Rangoon, hailing from the western reaches of British India. They traveled nearly 2,000 miles to safety in their ancestral village in West Punjab. However, it wasn't long before unrest reached their doorstep again in 1947. They were driven out by violent mobs and had to flee with only a moment's notice. Once again, they joined long caravans of people walking, making their way east to the regions that would become India. They walked for more than a month. Similar caravans traveled in the opposite direction. As for Singh, following another episode of sectarian violence in Punjab in 1984, he fled with his family, finding refuge in the United States.

"It can happen here also," Singh noted at the end of his interview, referring to the possibility of communal violence, leaving us to ponder lessons the world hasn't yet learned from the 1947 Partition. Selective memories of the 1947 trauma overshadow memories of peaceful and uneventful coexistence before Partition. Oral histories give equal weight and context to both kinds of memories, providing an opportunity for critical reflections that challenge popular assumptions at the core of modern social conflicts. The archive is one way to reconcile the gap between folk histories and official histories, so that we may truly heal our historical wounds.

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The Story of the 1947 Partition as Told by the People Who Were There

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The history books I read in high school spoke about Mahatma Gandhi's peaceful marches as a means to independence in South Asia, but never mentioned the bloodletting and the unprecedented refugee crisis caused by the retreat of an empire bankrupted by World War II.

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British colonial rule solidified and reshaped caste divisions. Why?

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A Google search for basic information on India's caste system lists many sites that, with varying degrees of emphasis, outline three popular tropes on the phenomenon.

First, the caste system is a four-fold categorical hierarchy of the Hindu religion - with Brahmins (priests/teachers) on top, followed, in order, by Kshatriyas (rulers/warriors), Vaishyas (farmers/traders/merchants), and Shudras (labourers). In addition, there is a fifth group of "Outcastes" (people who do unclean work and are outside the four-fold system).

Second, this system is ordained by Hinduism's sacred texts (notably the supposed source of Hindu law, the Manusmriti), it is thousands of years old, and it governed all key aspects of life, including marriage, occupation and location.

Third, caste-based discrimination is illegal now and there are policies instead for caste-based affirmative action (or positive discrimination).

These ideas, even seen in a BBC explainer, represent the conventional wisdom. The problem is that the conventional wisdom has not been updated with critical scholarly findings.

The first two statements may as well have been written 200 years ago, at the beginning of the 19th Century, which is when these "facts" about Indian society were being made up by the British colonial authorities.

In a new book, The Truth About Us: The Politics of Information from Manu to Modi, I show how the social categories of religion and caste as they are perceived in modern-day India were developed during the British colonial rule, at a time when information was scarce and the coloniser's power over information was absolute.

This was done initially in the early 19th Century by elevating selected and convenient Brahman-Sanskrit texts like the Manusmriti to canonical status; the supposed origin of caste in the Rig Veda (most ancient religious text) was most likely added retroactively, after it was translated to English decades later.

These categories were institutionalised in the mid to late 19th Century through the census. These were acts of convenience and simplification.

The colonisers established the acceptable list of indigenous religions in India - Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism - and their boundaries and laws through "reading" what they claimed were India's definitive texts.

What is now widely accepted as Hinduism was, in fact, an ideology (or, more accurately, a theory or fantasy) that is better called "Brahmanism", that existed largely in textual (but not real) form and enunciated the interests of a small, Sanskrit-educated social group.

There is little doubt that the religion categories in India could have been defined very differently by reinterpreting those same or other texts.

The so-called four-fold hierarchy was also derived from the same Brahman texts. This system of categorisation was also textual or theoretical; it existed only in scrolls and had no relationship with the reality on the ground.

This became embarrassingly obvious from the first censuses in the late 1860s. The plan then was to fit all of the "Hindu" population into these four categories. But the bewildering variety of responses on caste identity from the population became impossible to fit neatly into colonial or Brahman theory.

WR Cornish, who supervised census operations in the Madras Presidency in 1871, wrote that "... regarding the origin of caste we can place no reliance upon the statements made in the Hindu sacred writings. Whether there was ever a period in which the Hindus were composed of four classes is exceedingly doubtful".

Similarly, CF Magrath, leader and author of a monograph on the 1871 Bihar census, wrote, "that the now meaningless division into the four castes alleged to have been made by Manu should be put aside".

Anthropologist Susan Bayly writes that "until well into the colonial period, much of the subcontinent was still populated by people for whom the formal distinctions of caste were of only limited importance, even in parts of the so-called Hindu heartland... The institutions and beliefs which are now often described as the elements of traditional caste were only just taking shape as recently as the early 18th Century".

In fact, it is doubtful that caste had much significance or virulence in society before the British made it India's defining social feature.

Astonishing diversity

The pre-colonial written record in royal court documents and traveller accounts studied by professional historians and philologists like Nicholas Dirks, GS Ghurye, Richard Eaton, David Shulman and Cynthia Talbot show little or no mention of caste.

Social identities were constantly malleable. "Slaves" and "menials" and "merchants" became kings; farmers became soldiers, and soldiers became farmers; one's social identity could be changed as easily as moving from one village to another; there is little evidence of systematic and widespread caste oppression or mass conversion to Islam as a result of it.

All the available evidence calls for a fundamental re-imagination of social identity in pre-colonial India.

The picture that one should see is of astonishing diversity. What the colonisers did through their reading of the "sacred" texts and the institution of the census was to try to frame all of that diversity through alien categorical systems of religion, race, caste and tribe. The census was used to simplify - categorise and define - what was barely understood by the colonisers using a convenient ideology and absurd (and shifting) methodology.

The colonisers invented or constructed Indian social identities using categories of convenience during a period that covered roughly the 19th Century.

This was done to serve the British Indian government's own interests - primarily to create a single society with a common law that could be easily governed.

A very large, complex and regionally diverse system of faiths and social identities was simplified to a degree that probably has no parallel in world history, entirely new categories and hierarchies were created, incompatible or mismatched parts were stuffed together, new boundaries were created, and flexible boundaries hardened.

The resulting categorical system became rigid during the next century and quarter, as the made-up categories came to be associated with real rights. Religion-based electorates in British India and caste-based reservations in independent India made amorphous categories concrete. There came to be real and material consequences of belonging to one category (like Jain or Scheduled Caste) instead of another. Categorisation, as it turned out in India, was destiny.

The vast scholarship of the last few decades allows us to make a strong case that the British colonisers wrote the first and defining draft of Indian history.

So deeply inscribed is this draft in the public imagination that it is now accepted as the truth. It is imperative that we begin to question these imagined truths.

Sanjoy Chakravorty is professor in the College of Liberal Arts at Temple University, Philadelphia

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Viewpoint: How the British reshaped India's caste system

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A Google search for basic information on India's caste system lists many sites that, with varying degrees of emphasis, outline three popular tropes on the phenomenon. First, the caste system is a four-fold categorical hierarchy of the Hindu religion - with Brahmins (priests/teachers) on top, followed, in order, by Kshatriyas (rulers/warriors), Vaishyas (farmers/traders/merchants), and Shudras (labourers).

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What do you see and wonder about 3 of the images within this article?

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In pictures: The many lives of India’s Dalits

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India’s 200 million Dalits find themselves among the nation’s most marginalised citizens.

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Explore the process of Partition through digital museum exhibits of the British and Indian armies.

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The birth of India and Pakistan as independent states in 1947 was a key moment in the history of Britain's Empire and its army. But the process of partition was attended by mass migration and ethnic violence that has left a bitter legacy to this day.

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The birth of India and Pakistan as independent states in 1947 was a key moment in the history of Britain's Empire and its army. But the process of partition was attended by mass migration and ethnic violence that has left a bitter legacy to this day.

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(4:24 - 9:30) The caste system originated over 2,000 years ago with the Hindu varna system.

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Josh Wilson - "Dream Small" (Lyric Video)

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Read about India's economic development

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Get the latest World Bank data, research and development indicators for India. Access economy facts, statistics, project information, development research from World Bank experts and breaking news.

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Infographic on how the British spilt India.

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75 years after Partition: These maps show how the British split India

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The hastily drawn border, known as the Radcliffe Line, attempted to carve out two nations along religious lines—but sparked violence instead.