How Caste Played a role in defeat of Hindus
Today I am going to analyse the causes of the defeat of the Hindu armies and the subjugation of Hindus for close to 900 years by the Muslims and later 200 years by the English. Is it not a surprise that at any time whether during Muslim or British rule the effective strength of the officials appointed to govern India was just about 100,000, yet they could keep almost 250 million ( population at that time) under duress?.What could be the reason ?
Before I write anything further it is important to understand one aspect of the caste system. This is based on the laws of Manu and divides the Hindus into caste as per profession. He created the lower and higher caste and though the Hindu scriptures at many places talk of equality of man yet at many places ( even the Gita) support the Varna system. Why even Gandhi's writings which are available all over the net bring out his strong support of the Varna theory.
Unfortunately this Varna theory contributed in great measure to the defeat of the Hindus. Hindu law laid down a specific warrior caste called the Kshatriyas. This class was second to Brahmin caste and were duty bound to bear arms and defend the nation. Unfortunately the lower castes , notably the Shudras were forbidden to bear arms on pain of death. What was the result? The result of this obnoxious division of society resulted in a large part of Hindu society being denied to bear arms or take part in military training. Thus in case the Kshatriyas were for any reason defeated there was no second line of defence and the invaders literally ran over the country as the Shudra could do nothing except watch. In other words there was no mass resistance against an invader.
This was one of the major reasons for defeat of Hindu armies. There were others like lack of mobility and tactics, yet the failure to galvanize an entire nation to fight was galling. In many battles we learn that there was never a national uprising against the invader as a large part of the Hindu population were forbidden to bear arms on pain of death. Despite repeated defeats, the Hindus never ever considered to impart military training to the lower castes. Even defeat was acceptable to equality of castes !
The defeat of the Hindus is a reminder of the dire effects of the caste system. One other historian has opined that as the Shudras were always exploited and treated badly, they were in fact glad that the higher caste composed Hindu army were defeated. The concept of one nation, one people was simply non existent.
It is about time the present leaders of the Hindu religion instead of being apologetic of the caste system condemned it and asked for its removal. Unfortunately with the government itself playing the caste card, this appears a pipe dream.
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