.  .  .   that all men are created equal  .  .  .

I studied Indian culture for five years and wrote my first master’s thesis on caste based economics. Five years wasn’t enough time to scratch the surface of the complexity of the subject, so anything I say here is a tweet when an encyclopedia is needed.

During the time of my studies, the 60s and 70s, academics were calling black-white relations here at home an American caste system. To see how the differences outweigh the similarities, let’s look as some of the characteristics of caste (jati) in India:

• Jati groups are exclusive. You can’t join them and you can’t leave them.
• Jati groups are arranged in a hierarchy.
• You enter your group at birth and exit it at death. An individual cannot move from one group to another.
• Upper groups are pure, lower groups are polluted (ritually, don’t look for germ theory in a millennia old culture)

You can see that the first two characteristics fit pre-Civil Rights America. The third fits America except for passing, which was seen as an aberration. We will never know how much it was a norm.

The last characteristic is hugely different between the two cultures, but not absent in America. When I was young, I was told, “If you are ever in a swimming pool and a n—– gets in, get out immediately because they all have V.D..” I didn’t believe it, even then, but you can see how the idea that they are dirty and shouldn’t be touched would reinforce the idea of segregation.

Dirty Jew would have fit well into the two race system of Nazi Germany, as well.

Nevertheless, the caste system in India is overwhelmingly complex. Once you get past the surface, similarities to race are swamped in a myriad of differences. Caste is a bad metaphor for the American situation.

*****

I want to share one caste-race sidelight. There was a massive immigration of Indian workers from the Calcutta and Madras areas to Trinidad, ironically to replace recently freed black slaves who refused to go back the the cane fields as paid workers. When the immigrants were removed from local scrutiny in India, everybody passed for a higher jati; at least that was the belief of the immigrants after they arrived in Trinidad. It was while studying this phenomenon I came across the folk caution:   Beware of the black Brahmin and the pale Chamar.

Two points: When the control from above was removed, hierarchy collapsed. And, even though the racial component of caste is highly attenuated, light-is-good and dark-is-bad still retains a toehold in the conversation.

*****

And now we have come full circle. I began this series of posts by explaining why a white science fiction and fantasy author has an interest in race. Now we return to my novels, which is the original reason for this website. In Serial, the fragment Voices in the Walls is still underway, portraying a young white southerner’s struggle against his own racism. Elsewhere, I am working on the fourth novel in the Menhir series, tentatively titled Mud, which tells the story of a young outcaste fighting to escape his lowly status in the fantasy city of Renth.

Everything that ever happens to a writer is grist for the mill.

I’ll leave you with a riddle:

Question: How many painters does it take to make a masterpiece?
Answer: Two. One to paint, and one to tell him when to quit.

These last five weeks of posts won’t constitute a masterpiece, but it is time to quit. Except for this:  next week I will post here the opening of the novel Mud.