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The Gita ‘As It Is’ - A Travesty of Caste

By Murthy, BS

Book Id: WPLBN0100303748
Format Type: PDF (eBook)
File Size: 523.80 KB
Reproduction Date: 7/30/2021

Title:	The Gita ‘As It Is’ - A Travesty of Caste
Author:	Murthy, BS
Volume:
Language:	English
Subject:	Bhagvad Gita, Gita, Indian philosophy, Hindu philosophy, Non Fiction, Indian society, Dalits, Social rights, Human rights, Human dignity, Caste oppression, Harijans, Scheduled Castes, Hindu social order, , Religion, Hindu scriptures, Social suppression, Social discrimination, Sociology, Indic studies, Caste studies, Social studies, Interpolations in Bhagvad Gita , About the impossibility of the Gita's caste advocacy
Collections:	Hinduism Today, Authors Community
Historic Publication Date:	2021
Publisher:	Self Imprint

Member Page:	BS Murthy
Citation APA MLA Chicago Murthy, B. (2021). The Gita ‘As It Is’ - A Travesty of Caste. Retrieved from http://www.gutenberg.us/

Description
It can be said that the Gita as it is unmistakably propounds the caste system and unambiguously details the caste characteristics that is besides the earmarked social occupations / obligations of its members. Hence, one should ponder - would have Krishna chosen to reduce Shudras, his own people, literarily that is as Krishna himself was a Shudra, as menials even as Jehovah, having enabled the Jews to come out of slavery, made them his Chosen People!

Summary
It is a safe bet to say that while most might have heard about Bhagavad-Gita, hardly any would have read it (much less apprised it as can be seen here) though it contains no more than seven-hundred verses that is not counting the unnumbered opening one in its thirteenth chapter! Not only that, this, possibly, over-two-millennia-old classic could be the only epic in the world that is admired without application of mind and debunked with understandable misunderstanding as it, as it is, sanctions the inimical caste divisions in the Hindu polity as opposed to the Torah, the Bible, and the Quran that seek to inculcate unity amongst the respective communities.

Excerpt
The sore point to those at the rough-end-of-the-caste-stick in the ‘in vogue’ Gita (short description of the Bhagavad-Gita) is God Krishna’s alleged owning the creation of the very discriminatory caste system thus: chātur-varṇyaṁ mayā sruṣhṭaṁ guṇa-karma-vibhāgaśhaḥ tasya kartāram api māṁ viddhyakartāram avyayam (Ch 4 v 13) Well, the plain reading of this Sanskrit sloka indicates that based on the (human) qualities and (mundane) activates he had created the four varnas (castes), and although he was the creator of this system, he remains a non-doer and unchangeable. However, Gita’s modern-day protagonists, mostly hailing from its pampered castes, seeking to cover up this embarrassing reality aver that the envisaged caste system is based not on one’s station of birth but on the state of his human evolution etc. Granted, but if indeed it is their conviction that caste only symbolizes an evolutionary human state then they should have been at the forefront in fighting against the birth oriented caste system. Besides, why there is no advocacy whatsoever on their part that the much evolved Shudras that abound in the intellectual arena of the day should be absorbed into the Brahmin social fold? Moreover, have not many of the twice-born, who by their unbecoming conduct, having become Shudras (as per their interpretation) are fit to be shunted out of the Brahmanical arena, but is there any move in that direction? So their lip service to the Gita-hurt Hindus while exposing their hypocritical whitewash of the birth-centric caste system confirms that the said sloka means what it means that is in spite of their nonsectarian spin to it.