Caste in India: The Facts and the System c8.s3.27

c8.s3.27

Experience shows, on the contrary, how caste-prejudices hold apart people who should be united by the same occupation carried on in the same place.¹ We have seen what a variety of occupations may separate members of the same caste, and this not only in the lower classes, but even in the highest. Nowhere is the abandonment of the dominant profession sufficient in itself to cause exclusion. Occupations are graded according to the degree of respect which they inspire, but the degrees are fixed by conceptions of religious purity. All trades not involving pollution, or at least enhancement of impurity, are open to every caste. Nesfield himself states² that Brahmans may be found carrying on all trades ‘except those which would entail ceremonial pollution and consequent loss of caste’. If the most despised castes multiply themselves into new sections who look down upon the primitive stock, it is not because these adopt a different profession, but merely because they renounce a certain detail of their hereditary occupations which, according to current prejudice, entails pollution. Certain groups of sweepers are in this position.³