The caste system is present in Hinduism

The argument

Proponents of this position argue that the question can be settled by chronology. The Indian caste system, on their account, can be traced back over 2,500 years, long before the British arrived in India, which places its origin well outside any period of colonial administration. Whatever the British may later have recorded, codified or made use of, supporters hold that they cannot have invented an institution that had already been in place in parts of the country for over two millennia. The textual evidence carries most of the weight in this argument. Caste is mentioned in the Rigveda, one of the founding texts of multiple Indian religions, and proponents note that it is visible in texts dating as far back as 1700 BC. What matters for the case is the kind of source this is: not an administrative register or a traveller's report, but scripture, in which caste appears as part of an account of how creation itself is ordered. The text describes the division of Purusha into four castes "for the protection of the whole creation", with the Brahmins created from the mouth while the Sudras were born from the feet. A hierarchy expressed in that idiom, ranked by the part of a cosmic body from which each group is said to issue and justified as protective of the whole creation, is on this view a religious structure of indigenous origin rather than a category imposed from outside. Supporters of the position therefore treat caste as a uniquely Indian phenomenon. The argument does not require denying that British rule later engaged with caste or turned it to its own purposes; it requires only that the categories existed, and were already sacred, before the colonisers encountered them. Since caste is present in the founding texts of Hinduism, proponents conclude, its invention cannot be attributed to British colonial powers.

Premises

Counter-arguments

There is evidence to suggest that the addition of the caste system in the Rigveda was made retroactively only after the scriptures were translated into English. The caste system that was present in the “Hindu” religion before the colonial era was likely a variant of “Brahmanism”, rather than a fully-fledged social hierarchy.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The texts were amended when the documents were translated into English.