Caste is one of the most complicated and misunderstood concepts encountered when attempting to understand India and Hinduism. Yet caste and a so-called caste system have become the singular focus of how Indian and Hindu society and culture are seen by the West — and increasingly being focused on by activists within the diaspora.

Sources:

• German Indology, Aryanism, and Anti-Semitism, by Vishwa Adluri and Joydeep Bagchee
• The Indian Caste System and The British – Ethnographic Mapping and the Construction of the British Census in India, by Kevin Hobson
• The Brahmin, the Aryan, and the Powers of the Priestly Class: Puzzles in the Study of Indian Religion, by Marianne Keppens and Jakob De Roover
• Caste Confusion and Census Enumeration in Colonial India, 1871–1921 by Kevin Walby and Michael Haan
• Census in Colonial India and the Birth of Caste by Padmanabh Samarendra
• Ethnographic inquiry in colonial India: Herbert Risley, William Crooke, and the study of tribes and castes by C.J. Fuller
• ‘Untouchable’: What is in a Name?, by Simon Charsley
• Scheduled Castes vs. Caste Hindus: About a Colonial Distinction and Its Legal Impact, by Jakob de Roover

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If you think of Nazis, white supremacists, the Holocaust, a rabble of Fred Perry-wearing white dudes marching in Charlottesville, Virginia chanting “Jews will not replace us”, we don’t blame you. If your primary source of knowledge about India is your average  high school textbook or mass market travel guideyou might also conjure up images of a group of light-skinned Aryans invading India in the hoary past and subjugating the darker skinned people already living there, the invaders imposing their beliefs and culture. In this episode we explain to you the connection between those two sets of imagery and how both are hugely off the mark.

Related: That's So Hindu interview with Professor Lavanya Vemsani

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Hinduism is not just one thing. What should one know about Hinduism to be on solid ground when talking about it? How does Hinduism view itself?

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Want to learn all about Hinduism, the world's oldest and third-largest religion? Like actually understand what karma is? Or what dharma means? Do you want to know what the sacred texts of Hinduism are? Or, maybe, you just want to know why Hindu women wear a dot on their forehead? Or, perhaps, if all Hindus vegetarian? If so, then All About Hinduism is just what you’ve been waiting for. We’ll give you an overview of Hinduism as a lived and contemporary spiritual path. We’ll explore the history of how Hinduism has come to be what it is today: the third-largest and oldest religious tradition in the world. We’ll also clear up some of the misconceptions out there about Hinduism, as well as unflinchingly address some of the more contentious issues in Hinduism’s past and present. Hosted by Mat McDermott and brought to you by the Hindu American Foundation.

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Hinduism’s most basic ethical foundation — its guidelines, observances, and practices for living — are called yama and niyama. As most generally expressed, there are five of each. The yamas are often described as principles, while the niyamas are often called practices or observances. 

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The cycle of reincarnation — birth, death, and rebirth — is called s​amsara.​ It is the process through which individual divine consciousness or souls, for lack of better word, repeatedly take on a physical body through being born on Earth. Though these physical bodies die, each immortal soul continues to exist, until being reincarnated again and again, in a process of spiritual evolution and development.

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Every culture marks moments in human life in some way. We honor and recognize those points where our experience of and place in society moves, through a doorway, passing from one room, as it were, to the next. In doing so, in making that passage, we become changed. In Hinduism these rites of passage, these sacraments, are called samskāra​.

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Want to learn all about Hinduism, the world's oldest and third-largest religion? Like actually understand what karma is? Or what dharma means? Do you want to know what the sacred texts of Hinduism are? Or, maybe, you just want to know why Hindu women wear a dot on their forehead? Or, perhaps, if all Hindus vegetarian? If so, then All About Hinduism is just what you’ve been waiting for. We’ll give you an overview of Hinduism as a lived and contemporary spiritual path. We’ll explore the history of how Hinduism has come to be what it is today: the third-largest and oldest religious tradition in the world.

Missed the first series of episodes of All About Hinduism? Start here on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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One of the underlying themes in the first series of episodes of All About Hinduism is that this spiritual tradition is often misunderstood by those people outside of it. Some of this misunderstanding is basic exposure to Hinduism and Hindus. But sometimes, we Hindus ourselves are unwittingly to blame. If we want non-Hindus to better understand Hinduism and we want to ourselves better understand Hinduism, the way in which we talk about Hinduism needs to change.

Missed the first series of episodes of All About Hinduism? Start here on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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Worship is an old word, but one that doesn’t fully represent the ways in which Hindus honor the divine, whether in their homes or in temples.

Missed the first series of episodes of All About Hinduism? Start here on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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When you consider all the different parts of the Hindu Dharma Traditions, there is a holiday, festival, or commemoration of some sort for nearly every day of the year.

Missed the first series of episodes of All About Hinduism? Start here on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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All of the world’s religions have internal divisions, sometimes deep ones. Hinduism too has internal sub-divisions, though the differences between them are less contentious than in some other traditions, and are more a matter of preference in what forms of the Divine are the focus of veneration and contemplation.

Missed the first series of episodes of All About Hinduism? Start here on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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How do Hindus today actually think about and interact with the multitude of representations and aspects of Divinity? Are there really 2 million gods that are worshiped within the Hindu Dharma traditions? Is Hinduism polytheistic, monotheistic, pantheistic? Something else can you say that all the different parts of this collection of traditions are in agreement on this?

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In some religious traditions, the person who overseas services and rituals, advises members of the community on spiritual or social matters, knows the history of the tradition, studies scripture, or dedicates their life to full-time religious pursuit is the same person — or at least some of those functions all overlap. In Hinduism is generally doesn’t work like that.

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Global yoga is a multi-billion dollar a year fitness, health, and wellness industry, with all sorts of people from all walks of life and with a full range of spiritual inclinations, including plenty of people who discount anything spiritual taking part. Ultimately though, yoga is much more than all this. The physical practice is just one small part of yoga as it was passed down from teacher to students for millennia before Lululemon got involved.

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Complex and nuanced discussions about gender roles, stereotypes and expectations, the varieties of sexual attraction and social expectations — and the alphabet soup of identity categories that has emerged in recent years — is something that in the Hindu Dharma Traditions and in the societies out of which these traditions have emerged has occurred for centuries and centuries.

Missed the first series of episodes of All About Hinduism? Start here on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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If this collection of practices, teachings, philosophies, and methodologies for living, for spiritual exploration that we call Hinduism, that we call the Hindu Dharma Traditions, has real value in the world for people who may never fully embrace it or call themselves Hindu — and it certainly does, of that I am entirely convinced — then I think we must be careful to be as welcoming of people dipping their toes in the water as I was welcomed initially.

Missed the first series of episodes of All About Hinduism? Start here on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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