WIKIPEDIA: WHAT IS CASTE ?

 

WIKIPEDIA: WHAT IS CASTE ?

Caste is a word derived from Portuguese, meaning “lineage.” The closest Indian terms are varna, meaning “color” or “class,” and jati, meaning “birth.” The former is the term generally used for the caste system. The latter term describes any group that has characteristics in common, but is also used to describe the Hindu castes. Caste is a form of social stratification characterized with the aid of endogamy, hereditary transmission of a way of life which often includes an occupation, repute in a hierarchy, customary social interaction, and exclusion.

Despite the fact that caste systems exist in numerous regions, its paradigmatic ethnographic instance is the division of Indian society into inflexible social companies, with roots in India's historic records and persisting until these days; it's miles once in a while used as an analogical

foundation for the observe of caste-like social divisions current outside India. In biology, the time period is carried out to position stratification in social animals like ants and termites, even though the analogy is imperfect as these also involve extraordinarily stratified reproduction.