College of Design, Architecture, Art, and PlanningThe caste system in India consists of the Brahmin caste of intellectual and spiritual leaders, the Kshatriyas cast of military and political leaders, the Vaishyas caste of merchants and. At its root, it was a system referred to in Hindu scriptures that aimed to classify people based on their nature, aptitude and conduct, and put them to work in. This was IndiaвЂ™s system of social hierarchy. What is the Indian caste system Untouchable Woman of Bombay (Mumbai) according to the Indian caste system in 1942.

Abuses against members of Indias lowest caste, the Dalits, who also are known as untouchables. Meanwhile, each group possesses hundreds of castes and subcastes.India Caste System Subject of Subcommittee Hearing. The system consists of four main categories including Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and the Shudras. India adopted the caste system over 3,000 years ago.

College of Engineering and Applied ScienceThe caste system that was established in India forced many people who belong to the lower castes into poverty.There are approximately 180 million to 220 million people who are considered to be in the lowest caste in India (Ninian, 2008).This occurs in the country of India, a society of 1.3 billion people, where approximately 200 million people, or 16%, are Dalit, inherently disadvantaged because of a social and economic stratification of IndiaвЂ™s caste system.Imagine then the delight of University of Cincinnati faculty member Shailaja Paik when she, an Indian Dalit, the lowest caste in IndiaвЂ™s social hierarchy, received notice in January 2020 that she had been awarded the Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellowship, administered by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) which enables the UC professor to pursue her research and writing at one of 13 participating institutes or libraries. Such variations there, as elsewhere, are a product of natural selection in tropical and semitropical environments, of genetic drift among small populations, and of historical migrations and contact India has a huge population encompassing many obvious physical variations, from light skins to some of the darkest in the world and a wide variety of hair textures and facial features.

Still, she worked her way through the discrimination, with grit, determination and hard work from the very bottom to the top, where she says: вЂњDalits look up to me as a role model, an exemplar.вЂќHer first book, ' Dalit WomenвЂ™s Education in Modern India: Double Discrimination' (Routledge 2014), explored the challenges Dalit women faced in seeking formal secular education in 20th century India вЂ” navigating not only hierarchies of caste and class, but routine gender-based discrimination that limited their access to formal education. Paik joined UC in 2010, teaches classes on South Asian history, society, culture and politics.Her role in academia, however, seems impossible to some, she says, because вЂњto be born Dalit is to be born into a caste system that sanctions Dalits as impure, polluted or 'Untouchables.вЂ™ вЂќ Historically, even the shadow of Dalits, she says, was deemed to be polluting by the larger society and dominant castes did not allow Dalits access to knowledge or any form of learning. Both fellowships are unique resources that advance significant humanistic study and both will allow Paik to continue her studies on Dalits in India.вЂњI try to fight against all sorts of discrimination and inhumane treatment through my research and academic activism,вЂќ says Paik, an associate professor in the UC College of Arts and SciencesвЂ™ history department and an affiliate faculty member in WomenвЂ™s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies as well as Asian Studies. Paik will pursue the Stanford fellowship at Stanford University, California, in 2020-21, followed by the ACLS fellowship in 2022-23 at the National Humanities Center, in Durham, North Carolina. The ACLS fellowship is one of only ten awarded, and the Stanford fellowship is one of only ten awarded for applicants outside the university.

Some would be baffled that she indeed received fellowships for research and consistently ask her how she did it.It was during this time that Paik became interested in research. Sometimes some upper castes mocked her Dalit background. Although she rarely faced overt caste discrimination in the cosmopolitan cities of Pune and Mumbai, вЂњThe sword of caste was always hanging,вЂќ she said, as well as the stressful moments about the discrimination it might entail. In order to help support the family, she would instead travel to the nearby city of Mumbai to work as a college lecturer, giving up her dreams of a career as a civil servant.Life was slightly better in the city. A few years before Paik finished her bachelorвЂ™s, the family moved to the periphery of the slums, but the death of her father changed her trajectory. Ambedkar, a renowned social revolutionary and scholar who campaigned for better treatment of Dalits, as inspiration for her work.Paik is a shining example of the inclusive excellence initiative outlined in the university's strategic direction, Next Lives Here.Despite growing up in this environment of overt and covert discrimination, Paik secured a junior research fellowship at the Savitribai Phule Pune University in 1996, where she excelled, earning both bachelorвЂ™s and masterвЂ™s degrees in history, with the intent of becoming a top-level bureaucrat in the Indian Administrative Service.

The fight for justice continues!вЂќFeatured image at top: UC faculty member Shailaja Paik stands on McMicken Commons on campus. I want to thank my friends, mentors, advisors and colleagues from a range of castes, races and genders who have participated in my long journey. And UC have provided me immense opportunities and resources to emerge as a reputed international scholar.

Indian Caste System