Re: Hinduism and caste...
If the pissing match is all done......
I am no authority. These are my personal views. Please read only if you are interested in the sociological aspects of casteism
Any society, at any point of time has divisions - read some of the letters to the editors of major Pakistani newspapers, for example, and you will find people blaming the army and the bureacracy, the mullahs and the greedy traders/ industrialists for most of the 'evils of the Pak society'. In a sense, this also indicates the various groups in the society - the priestly ones, the 'rulers', the traders and the rest. Casteism's origins are the same.
While in the modern day things have changed a lot - more in the developed societies than in the third world - with little opportunities to move out of the villages, a son typically took after the trade of the father. While the existence of various groups above is unavoidable, there is no automatic 'hereditary' factor in the modern day. But that was the realistic path centuries ago - in all societies. Think of the trade guilds in Europe as late as the 15-17th centuries. We don't know for sure that castes in the initial stages were hereditary. While in practice it is extremely likely to have been hereditary, some texts also stay that one's caste was defined by what he actually did.
The various castes in a village lived AND interacted with each other because most requirements were met from within the village - from each of the trade guilds. A farmer needs a potter and a cobbler and vice-versa. Untouchability was a later phenomenon when certain professions were seen to be less important or more 'impure' than others. Toilet cleaners, for example, did not exist in a situation where toilets simply did not exist.
With similar lifestyles, people married within their castes
Manu, quoted earlier, was simply one who codified the then existing practices. He was not a god or messenger.
While the now obnoxious practices are mentioned, seldom does one talk about what manu mentions about the duties of various groups of people. I haven't read it, but this is what I have heard.
A brahmin, for example (I choose this because he is supposed to have got the best end of everything), could do only six things - beg for alms and give away alms; learn and teach; seek advise and provide advise. A brahmin was not supposed to hold property; he was to seek alms just sufficient to fill half his stomach; he could not even hoard alms for the next meal. And worse, if another alms-seeker were to beg him before he had partaken of his meal, he was supposed to give it away and go hungry.
Similarly, different duties were mentioned for different castes. Sometimes, the fact that manu prescribes different punishments for different castes is highlighted. We all know that there is Law and then there is Justice. Most of us would agree that the law should be the same for everybody. But intutively, we consider the same punishment for a man stealing to feed his family as for another who does it for say, boozing or to show off as something that is blatantly unfair.
Now consider the punishment for a brahmin who steals. The king was supposed to let the brahmin go free. This could be considered extremely discriminatory. But one interpretation is this: if a brahmin who was supposed to follow the 6 things above was forced to steal, it was an extremely negative comment on the king himself - that he has let his society to such a pass that a brahmin could not even get alms to feed half his stomach and had to steal.