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Re: Intercaste marriage, A Query

From the Bhakti List Archives

R. Skrintha • September 4, 1997 


Dear Bhagavathas,

Please excuse me if my unenlightenend opinion hurts anyone!

On Thu, 4 Sep 1997, swathy prabhu wrote:

> 	When I was going through the first chapter of Bhagavad Gita, amidst
> other things, verse 41 caught my attention quite strongly. To quote
> Arjuna,
> 	'With the preponderance of vice, Krsna, the women of the family become
> corrupt and with the corruption of women, O descendant of Vrsni there
> ensues an intermixture of castes' ..I 41
> 	'Admixture of blood damns the destoyers of the race as well as the race
> itself, Deprived of the offerings of rice and water the manes of their
> race also fall.' ..42

 Referring to my earlier post (sent just a few moments ago) on the topic 
of "sarvadharmAn.." vs. "karmaNyeva..", i believe we must interpret Bhagawad
Geetha as the supreme timeless Truth expressed in a language style that 
nonetheless takes into consideration the mores of *those* times as well as 
Arjuna's despondency. It was Sri Krishna's purpose not to promote social 
equality (no doubt a noble endeavor in its own right, perhaps) or 
address some such social issue but to get to the ultimate truth without 
jolting the already desperate Arjuna! 

 Note that only in the modern times have the Mahaans, with an 
appreciation of the spirit of these times, bothered to address social, 
etc issues, if so far as they have! 
  
> 	Shocked by the seriousness of the consequences I started searching the
> entire text for any other references about intercaste marriage. I could
> not spot it. IT is quite likely that I could have missed.
> 	Does Sri Vaishnavism speak anything about this either prohibiting or
> complimenting. Can someone throw light on this. I hope this is not a
> deviation from the main theme of this mailing list. If so kindly excuse
> me.

  I tend to think these social issues are really not too important these 
days, tho one cannot undermine their relevance at all  in the past 
millenia! But, anyway, it may be difficult to give a rigorous answer 
since hardly anyone practices kuladharma-s (as a profession) these days, we 
are all either  engineers, scientists, software-guys, MBA's, etc by 
_profession_, not rtwiks,  warriors, traders, many of us living abroad,  
etc.. :-) Since in that case  the very definition of the caste-system has 
not been borne out in  practise, i wonder if it is that meaningful to 
attach importance to a corollary thereof???!!!! Applying the doctrine of 
rebirth, the unmanifest baddha jeeva is no longer so strongly conditoned 
or guided to assume a particular birth-station since the carefully preserved 
social/professional distinctions of the earlier times designed to afford an 
optimal expression of the latencies in the jeeva are apparently leveling off. 

  Please, Bhagavatas, forgive me if you feel that i have gone overboard 
in these explanations. If i have hurt any of yr feelings, please let me know!

Hari Om
srikanth