The Touchables, whether they are vegetarians or flesh-eaters, are united in their objection to eat cow's flesh. As against them stand the Untouchables, who eat cow's flesh without compunction and as a matter of course and habit.
Every Hindu knows that astrologers try to fix the caste of every boy or girl as soon as he or she is born. That is the real caste - the individuality, and Jyotisha (astrology) recognises that. And we can only rise by giving it full sway again. This variety does not mean inequality, nor any special privilege.
I don't even know whether I am a savarna or not, I am a Kayasth, so I am not Brahmin or Kshatriya or Vaishya or Shudra.
I am from a very vague caste. I don't belong to any of the four. I am kayastha. They are well read, largely clerks so they get treated respectfully.
I cannot become a Chowkidar because I am Brahmin. Brahmins can't be Chowkidars. It's a fact.
I am Chhatriya.
I actually did a quick survey of how caste plays out in contemporary India. The idea that democracy and development have in some ways eroded caste turned out not to be the case, that it has in fact been entrenched and modernised.
I had grown up in a privileged, upper-caste Hindu community; and because my father worked for a Catholic hospital, we lived in a prosperous Christian neighborhood.
I was an Indian with zero sense of caste till I was 20. That's an unusual privilege but it came out of the fact that I was a middle-class Bengali.
