Unit 9 · Social Order in Asia

More than 3,000 years ago, poets in northern India composed hymns in the Sanskrit language. These hymns were collected in the Rig Veda, one of the oldest religious texts in the world. One hymn pictures society as the body of a great cosmic being. Different groups of people come from different parts of that body.

Later texts built on this picture. They named four varnas, or broad groups. Brahmins were priests and teachers. Kshatriyas were rulers and warriors. Vaishyas were traders and farmers. Shudras were laborers who served the other three. Each group was given its own duties, called dharma.

It helps to remember that varna was mostly an ideal written down by priests and scholars. It was a way of saying how society should be ordered. Real life was far messier. Kings sometimes came from families outside the warrior varna, and many people did work that did not match the old list.

Picture a village in India 200 years ago. One family makes clay pots. Another weaves cloth. Another washes clothes, and another works leather. Each family belongs to a group that has done this work for generations. Children are born into the group, and they usually marry inside it.

These birth groups are called jatis. The word comes from a root meaning birth. India had thousands of jatis, and they differed from region to region. A jati was often linked to a job, and it set rules about marriage, food and who could eat with whom. Some people ranked jatis as higher or lower in purity.

The Portuguese, who came to India around 1500, used their word casta, meaning breed or lineage. That word became caste in English. So when people say caste, they often mean jati. Varna was the broad four-part idea in the texts. Jati was the group a person actually lived in every day.

Some jobs were seen as polluting. These included sweeping streets, removing dead animals, tanning leather and handling the dead at cremation grounds. The communities who did this work were often placed outside the four varnas altogether. Other people treated them as untouchable.

Being treated as untouchable meant daily rules of separation. In many places these communities could not draw water from the village well. They could not enter many temples. Some had to live at the edge of the village. These rules were enforced by custom and by pressure from powerful groups, and they varied by region.

Today many people from these communities call themselves Dalit. The word means broken or crushed in Marathi and Sanskrit. Leaders chose it with pride, to name the harm done to them and their shared strength. The Indian government uses the term Scheduled Castes for these communities in its laws.

In the 1400s a poet named Ravidas lived in the city of Varanasi. He came from a leather-working community that others looked down on. Yet he sang songs of love for God that people still sing today. His message was simple: God is found by a loving heart, not by a high birth.

Ravidas was part of the bhakti movement. Bhakti means loving devotion. Across many centuries, bhakti saints wrote in everyday languages instead of Sanskrit. Many of them, including women and people from low-ranked jatis, taught that anyone could reach God. Their songs spread through villages and gave people dignity.

Hindu reformers kept this work going in modern times. In the 1800s and 1900s, groups such as the Arya Samaj argued against untouchability. Mohandas Gandhi called it a sin and campaigned to open temples to all. Hinduism is a very large and varied faith, and its followers have long debated caste among themselves.

In the 1500s Guru Nanak founded the Sikh faith in the Punjab region. He taught that all people are equal before one God. Sikhs set up the langar, a free community kitchen. Everyone sits on the floor together in rows and eats the same food, whatever their birth. Sikh temples still serve langar today.

Islam came to India through traders and rulers over many centuries. Islam teaches that all believers are equal before God, and people pray side by side in the mosque. Christianity also teaches equality before God. Over time, many people from low-ranked jatis became Muslims or Christians, partly hoping for more respect.

Yet customs are hard to change. Historians find that caste-like divisions often survived inside these communities too. Some families still married only within their old group. Some churches once had separate seating. So the teachings of these faiths opened a path, and their members have kept working to live up to them.

About 2,500 years ago, Siddhartha Gautama lived in northern India. He became known as the Buddha, which means awakened one. He welcomed people of every varna into his community of monks and nuns. He taught that a person becomes noble by good actions, not by birth.

Buddhism spread across Asia but became small in India itself over the centuries. Then, in 1956, B. R. Ambedkar held a large public ceremony in the city of Nagpur. He and a very large crowd of his followers, many of them Dalits, became Buddhists together. Ambedkar said he wanted a faith built on equality and reason.

Ambedkar’s step is sometimes called a conversion, a change from one religion to another. It was also a political act. It showed that Dalits could choose their own path. Many Indian Buddhists today trace their faith to that day in Nagpur, just weeks before Ambedkar died.

In 1927, in the town of Mahad, there was a public water tank. By law it was open to all. By custom, Dalits were kept away. Ambedkar led thousands of people to the tank, and they drank from it together. This protest is called the Mahad Satyagraha, a word meaning holding firmly to truth.

Some upper-caste residents answered with violence, and the struggle went to court. Ambedkar kept organizing. He started newspapers, founded schools and hostels, and formed political groups. He told his followers to get an education, to organize and to demand their rights.

Ambedkar and Gandhi both opposed untouchability, but they disagreed on how to end it. In 1932 they argued over separate elections for Dalits. Gandhi feared this would split Hindus. They reached a deal called the Poona Pact, which reserved seats for Dalits instead. Historians still debate which approach did more good.

India won independence from Britain in 1947. The new country needed a constitution, a set of highest laws that says how the government works and what rights people have. An assembly of elected members debated it for almost three years. Ambedkar chaired the Drafting Committee, which wrote and revised the text.

The Constitution came into force on January 26, 1950. Indians celebrate that day as Republic Day. It promises every citizen equality before the law. It forbids unfair treatment because of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth. Article 17 says that untouchability is abolished and that practicing it in any form is forbidden.

To abolish something is to end it by law. Ambedkar knew a law alone could not change every heart overnight. Still, it changed the rules. Now a Dalit who was turned away from a well or a shop could go to the police and the courts. The state was on the side of equality.

Imagine two students who both want to become engineers. One comes from a family of teachers with books at home. The other is the first in her family to finish school, from a community long kept out of classrooms. India’s Constitution asked: how do we give the second student a fair chance?

One answer is reservations. A share of seats in public colleges, government jobs and elected bodies is set aside for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Scheduled Tribes are Indigenous communities, often called Adivasis. In the 1990s reservations were also extended to many groups called Other Backward Classes.

Supporters say reservations have helped millions of families enter colleges, offices and parliament for the first time. Critics say seats should go by merit or by family income, not by group, and that the better-off in each group gain most. Courts have set limits, and the debate continues.

In 1997 K. R. Narayanan became President of India. He was born into a Dalit family in Kerala, in a thatched hut. He was the first Dalit to hold the country’s highest office. His life shows how much can change within one lifetime.

In big cities, people of different jatis ride the same trains, study together and work side by side. Many young people choose their own partners. Yet surveys find most marriages in India still happen inside the same caste. Laws such as a 1989 act punish attacks on Dalits and Adivasis, because such attacks still happen.

Indians disagree about the way forward. Some want caste counted in every census so help can be aimed well. Others fear counting keeps caste alive. Some say rising incomes will end it; others say only laws and movements will. Caste is a question inside India, never a verdict on Hindus or any faith.

Confucius was a teacher who lived in China about 2,500 years ago. He taught that society works best when people know their roles and act with respect. Rulers should be wise and caring. Children should honor parents. Later thinkers who followed his ideas are called Confucians.

Confucian writers described four kinds of people. At the top were scholars, educated men who served in government. Next came farmers, who grew the food everyone needed. Then artisans, who made tools and goods. Last came merchants, who bought and sold. Many writers called merchants less useful because they did not produce things themselves.

This ranking was an ideal, not a set of castes. People were not locked in by birth. In real life, many merchants grew very rich. Some married their children into scholar families or bought land. The ranking still mattered, because it told people what kind of life earned honor.

Imagine a young man in a small, bare cell, one of thousands in a long row. He has brought food, ink, brushes and a blanket. For days he will write essays on ancient books he has memorized since boyhood. Guards patrol outside. If he passes, his whole family’s life may change.

This was the civil-service examination. A civil service is the group of officials who run a government. China began using written exams to choose officials about 1,400 years ago. The system grew much larger under the Song dynasty, about a thousand years ago. Tests covered the Confucian classics, poetry and questions of government.

The exams came in levels, from local to provincial to a final exam in the capital. The top degree was called jinshi. Only a tiny share of candidates passed the highest levels. The system lasted until the Qing government ended it in 1905, as China sought modern schools.

In principle, most men could sit for the exams, whatever their family’s rank. A farmer’s son who studied hard might become a high official. Stories of such success were told and retold. Supporters of the system praised it as a way to reward talent instead of noble birth.

In practice, preparing took many years of study. A family needed money to hire tutors and to spare a son from farm work. So most successful candidates came from families that already had land or learning. Some villages and family groups pooled money to support one bright boy, hoping his success would lift them all.

The exams also shaped who held power in local life. Men who passed even the lower levels joined the gentry, a respected class of educated landowners. Women could not take the exams at all. Historians still debate how much the system truly allowed social mobility, meaning movement up or down in rank.

For more than a hundred years before 1600, Japan was torn by wars between local lords. Then three strong leaders united the country. The last of them, Tokugawa Ieyasu, won a great battle at Sekigahara in 1600. In 1603 he took the title shogun, the top military ruler.

Japan still had an emperor in Kyoto, honored as the country’s ancient ruler. But the shogun held real power from his city of Edo. The Tokugawa family kept that power for about 265 years. This time is called the Tokugawa or Edo period. It was a long age of peace inside Japan.

The shoguns kept peace partly through strict order. Regional lords, called daimyo, had to spend every other year in Edo. Their families stayed there as a guarantee. This rule, called alternate attendance, kept lords loyal and busy. It also cost them great sums on travel.

The Tokugawa borrowed the old Chinese list of four kinds of people. But in Japan, the top rank was not scholars. It was the samurai, the warrior class. Samurai made up a small share of the people, often estimated at about 6 percent. Below them came farmers, then artisans, then merchants.

In the long peace, few samurai ever fought a battle. Many worked as officials, clerks and teachers for their lords. They were paid a yearly stipend in rice. They had special rights, such as wearing two swords and having family names. A person was born into samurai rank and usually could not leave it.

Below the four ranks were outcast groups, whose jobs, such as leather work, were seen as unclean. They faced harsh separation. Their descendants, known as Burakumin, later organized to fight discrimination, starting in the 1920s. The four-rank order was never a full picture of Japanese life, but it set the rules.

Peace brought roads, markets and cities. Edo grew into one of the largest cities in the world, with many hundreds of thousands of people. Scholars’ estimates for the 1700s run from about 700,000 to a million. Osaka became a great center of rice trading. Merchants handled that rice, lent money and ran large shops. The Mitsui family opened a famous cloth store in Edo in 1673.

Samurai stipends were fixed in rice, but prices and costs kept changing. Many samurai families borrowed from merchants to keep up with their duties. Lords borrowed too. A merchant could hold more wealth than a samurai while still ranking below him.

The government tried sumptuary laws, rules limiting what each rank could wear or spend. Merchants were told not to wear silk in public, for example. Many found quiet ways around these rules. City culture, with kabuki theater and colorful woodblock prints, grew from merchant money and tastes.

In 1853 American warships under Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into Edo Bay. They demanded that Japan open its ports to trade. The shogun’s government gave in. Many Japanese feared their country would be taken over by Western powers, as parts of China had been.

Young samurai from southwestern domains, such as Satsuma and Choshu, turned against the shogun. In 1868 they took power in the name of the young Emperor Meiji. This event is called the Meiji Restoration. Restoration means bringing back; they said they were bringing back the emperor’s rule.

The new leaders moved fast to modernize, to build railways, factories, schools and a modern army and navy. They sent students abroad to learn Western science and law. The capital moved to Edo, renamed Tokyo, meaning eastern capital.

The Meiji leaders were mostly samurai themselves. Yet they decided their own class had to go. In 1871 they abolished the lords’ domains and made them prefectures run by Tokyo. They declared the four ranks legally equal and ended the separate status of outcast groups, at least on paper.

In 1873 a new law called for conscription, drafting young men of every class into a national army. Farmers’ sons now carried rifles, a job once reserved for samurai. In 1876 samurai lost their stipends, turned into government bonds, and were banned from wearing swords in public.

Some samurai rebelled. In 1877 Saigo Takamori led the Satsuma Rebellion, the last great samurai uprising. The new army of commoners defeated it. Former samurai found new work as officers, teachers, officials and business owners. Some fell into poverty. A new ranking of nobles and commoners replaced the old one.

The Joseon dynasty ruled Korea from 1392 until the early 1900s. Like China, Joseon honored Confucian learning and chose officials through exams called gwageo. The families who held office and land were called yangban. The name means two groups, for the civil and military officials who stood on two sides of the king.

Below the yangban were several groups. Chungin were skilled specialists, such as interpreters and doctors. Most people were commoners who farmed. At the bottom were the cheonmin, the lowborn, including many enslaved people and some workers in low-ranked jobs. Birth mattered a great deal in Joseon.

Joseon also shows that rank could be questioned from the top. King Sejong’s scholars created Hangul, a simple Korean alphabet, in the 1440s so that ordinary people could read. In 1894 the Gabo Reforms officially ended class distinctions and slavery in Korea.

In a Joseon town, you could often tell a yangban man at a glance. He might wear a tall black hat made of horsehair and a flowing white robe. He would not carry heavy loads himself. In Tokugawa Japan, a samurai’s two swords and hairstyle showed his rank. Clothing was a public badge.

Speech showed rank too. Korean and Japanese both have honorifics, special word forms that show respect to someone of higher rank or age. A commoner spoke to a yangban or samurai with humble words. People bowed lower to those above them. These habits of respect remain part of both languages today, though now they mostly follow age and role.

Rank shaped homes, marriages and even where people could live. Yet people pushed back. Merchants bought fine goods quietly. Farmers sometimes protested unfair taxes in large groups. Rank was powerful, but people were never simply their rank.