I have no right to a real opinion, due to the fact that I’m quite ignorant about Hinduism, but -— if this temple group believes it proper to recognize distinctions of caste and sex, should a government really be able to butt in and say “you can’t practice your faith anymore”?
Outbreaks of caste violence in India are never far away. India also has a massive number of communists, including in the government, that have no problem using force. There’s more here than meets the eye.
I have the same knee-jerk response, but I’m not a Hindu and I’m not an Indian, so I’ve got to concede that I don’t understand what’s going on here.
I was reading an article about a situation in India a few weeks ago and it hit me. We’re talking about a very old country with 1.2 BILLION people. They’ve got regions that are fully westernized and regions that are stuck in the brutal dark ages and everything in between.
I’m going to have to let Indians deal with India, but I appreciate your way of thinking.
Most countries have realized government is the real religion, and all other religion is subordinate.
The caste system sorts people into permanent poverty and lack of basic rights or high social standing based only on the position of the family they were born into. There is no “moving up” in society. Hopefully, this will end it, but it will take time. The best thing to happen to India was foreign firms building factories there, and promoting employees into management irrespective of caste. It’s helping to break the system.
“I have no right to a real opinion, due to the fact that I’m quite ignorant about Hinduism, but -— if this temple group believes it proper to recognize distinctions of caste and sex, should a government really be able to butt in and say “you can’t practice your faith anymore”?”
The peculiar nature of caste discrimination & the need to break it means that the Indian constitution & the Courts have taken a much more harder line on matters pertaining to Hinduism. So much so that civil laws for Hindus (India allows for separate laws under the civil code -governing marriage & inheritance etc) is pretty much the same as secular laws elsewhere whereas the Christians & especially the Muslims, are governed by religious code to a point where Hindu women have more rights under the “Hindu” laws that Muslim women have under the “Sharia”- (civil not criminal) or the Christian women have under the “Christian” laws. The courts are far more reluctant to interfere in the laws of the minorities than in those of the majority. Christian women (occasionally also Muslim women) have filed cases against parts of their religion based codes essentially arguing that their rights as Indian citizens protected by the constitution should override any religion derived law and asking for the same rights that Hindu women have. Both the Christian and muslim clergy are seen as the main blockers in these matters, resisting change.