Q1.
Why should a complex society divide itself into such groups? Think about several possible factors why this happens.
Answer
Because once a society grows big and complex, no one person can do everything. Dividing the work into groups is the way large societies get their work done. Several factors push in that direction:
- Specialisation of skills. Metallurgy, weaving, pottery, building, accounting and healing each take years to learn. It is more efficient for one group to master a skill and supply everyone else than for every family to attempt all of them.
- Passing on knowledge. Before schools and printed books, a craft was learnt at home from a parent. So the skill and the family became attached to each other, generation after generation — which is exactly what the chapter says about jāti.
- The needs of a state. Governance, administration, defence, town-planning and rituals all need people who do only that job. A city cannot run on part-time officials.
- The food surplus makes it possible. Only when farmers grow more than they eat can other groups live without farming.
- Trade and exchange. Groups that make different things must trade with each other, which binds them together and makes the division stable.
- Identity and belonging. A group gives people customs, festivals, rules about marriage and food, and support in hard times — the sub-jātis of the chapter.
The other side, which the chapter is careful to state: in an ideal society all these groups would complement each other and work in harmony. But most of the time these divisions also lead to inequalities — some groups acquire more wealth, power or influence than others. Equality is an ideal human societies have often aspired to, and very few, if any, have ever achieved it.
Did you know? The chapter also notes that in the early period the system was flexible: a drought or natural calamity could push a whole community of farmers into a city and into new occupations, and some Brahmins turned to trade or even military activity. The rigidity came much later, especially under British rule.