The great semiotics of our times, Umberto Eco, wrote an important paper in Italian in 1996 titled ‘How Culture Colors the Way We See’. This paper examines how the culture creates the colors we see. he establishes that the colors we perceive are conditioned by the culture in which we live. The important take away from this paper is that the unit is the product of the system. In the relativity of meaning, the meaning of something is established by the negation of something.

The caste is inherently nothing. It is a linguistic system of labeling and cataloging based on the interest of a group of people that is developed into a system of gradation. If we decode the caste code, the caste system loses its power to control the minds of the people. On the contrary, if we try to create “meaning” out of this codified system, we get the reinforced system of codes.

There is no way in the Hindu culture to think beyond caste. Every epic, every mythology, every philosophical writing, and every dimension of Hinduism is geared toward reinforcing the codes of caste, directly or indirectly. The violence of the Brahminical culture (misleadingly called Hinduism) is severe and kills the people generations after generations.

The defenders of the “Brahminical Hinduism” picks up one element out of the systemic codes and try to qualify it has humanistic, but as Eco has showed the unit acquires meaning in relation to the system in which it is placed. It is true about Brahminism: it is the system of operation that must be destroyed.

The apologists of “Brahminic Hinduism” like Gandhi were completely wrong and hence hypocrites who lauded individual elements in isolation of the overall system that is basically at the fault. Breaking the system is not an easy task. In the coded system like the caste system, the codes of social interaction must be changed, but the social interaction is based on “designated words” which imply that someone is pure and someone is impure and hence changing the entire coding system is essential.

A new culture, a new system of ethics, and altogether a new grammar of social relations is needed to destroy the caste system.

Author – Mangesh Dahiwale

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