Preference Utilitarianism and Caste Mind Set
INTRODUCTION
The word ‘Caste’ is originally derived from the Latin word Castus, which means chaste and pure. From ancient times the Indian society was divided into Jatis or small groups which are distinct from classes. Due to the complexity of Jatis, the Portuguese who came to India gave the name castas, referring to the pure/impure divide. Thus the word caste came into being in the Indian society.
The translation of the terms Varna and Jati into caste seems obscures the real difference between them. Varna refers to the social division believed to have been characteristic of the Indo-Iranian groups. In the earliest writings of these groups we cannot find any traces of caste system. When these people entered India they were divided into a number of tribes, each having its own chief. But there was no clear cut distribution of various functions in the community to distinct persons. Every householder performed more than one function and even priestly function was not considered hereditary during that period. In the later course of time society was divided into different classes due to the complexity prevailing.
The problem of caste system, which I think, is basically because the ‘upper class’ people created the moral laws of the society based on their sensitive faculty rather than creating them from the moral faculty. John Stuart Mill rightly says that. “our moral faculty … supplies us only with general principles of moral judgments; it is a branch of our reason, not of our sensitive faculty, and must be looked to for the abstract doctrines of morality, not for the perception of it in the concrete.” The higher class people used only their sensitive faculty to establish morals in the society. This had a bad impact on the people. When religion becomes a subjective factor, it loses its very essentials and more or less each person can form his own ‘religion’ in this realm. Therefore depending only on the sensitive faculty will surely pave way for unhappiness among
The word ‘Caste’ is originally derived from the Latin word Castus, which means chaste and pure. From ancient times the Indian society was divided into Jatis or small groups which are distinct from classes. Due to the complexity of Jatis, the Portuguese who came to India gave the name castas, referring to the pure/impure divide. Thus the word caste came into being in the Indian society.
The translation of the terms Varna and Jati into caste seems obscures the real difference between them. Varna refers to the social division believed to have been characteristic of the Indo-Iranian groups. In the earliest writings of these groups we cannot find any traces of caste system. When these people entered India they were divided into a number of tribes, each having its own chief. But there was no clear cut distribution of various functions in the community to distinct persons. Every householder performed more than one function and even priestly function was not considered hereditary during that period. In the later course of time society was divided into different classes due to the complexity prevailing.
The problem of caste system, which I think, is basically because the ‘upper class’ people created the moral laws of the society based on their sensitive faculty rather than creating them from the moral faculty. John Stuart Mill rightly says that. “our moral faculty … supplies us only with general principles of moral judgments; it is a branch of our reason, not of our sensitive faculty, and must be looked to for the abstract doctrines of morality, not for the perception of it in the concrete.” The higher class people used only their sensitive faculty to establish morals in the society. This had a bad impact on the people. When religion becomes a subjective factor, it loses its very essentials and more or less each person can form his own ‘religion’ in this realm. Therefore depending only on the sensitive faculty will surely pave way for unhappiness among
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