48
wo
nderful folks who came up with the system to begin with). And the
third caste housed the Iranian landholders and merchants (Vaisyas).
Way down on the bottom of society, squirming like insects beneath the
Iranian heel, were the original Indian natives, the occupied peoples.
They became the loathed shudras and out-castes. The defeated Indian
shudras, were promptly put to work. They were sent into the fields to
raise the crops upon which the wealth of the Iranian nobles, priests and
merchants would soon be based.
The Iranian overlords were fair-skinned. The natives who had
been placed in a state of permanent humiliation were dark in hue.
That complexion difference was embedded permanently in the name
of the social structure. You could tell a member of the contemptible
Shudra class by his skin-tone. So the newly-initiated hierarchical layers
were called varna--castes--the Iranian word for color.97
Under the Hindu system, the descendants of the Iranians were
born with all the privileges that Hitler's Nazis would someday dream
of. Take, for example, the prerogatives of the Iranian priests, the
Brahmans. Anyone from a lower caste who jostled a Brahman on the
street committed a sin. If he bumped the Brahman with his arm, the
arm was cut off. If he touched the Brahman with his foot, the foot was
surgically removed. If he sat in a Brahman's chair, he had a ten-inch
red hot rod rammed up his nether parts. If he complained to the
Brahman about this treatment, he had the same smoking piece of metal
shoved down his throat.98
Anyone of lower class who sipped water from a pool at which a
Brahman was contemplating a drink polluted it. A Brahman could
make whatever accusation he wanted against a creature of lower caste
and the accused would be punished. But the lower caste citizen could
make no complaint against the Brahman. Once a Brahman had
married at least one woman of his own superior caste, he could go into
the street during festivals, roam about searching for some nice-looking
girl from the lower strata, marry her if it pleased him, and discard her
when he tired of her charms. But no man of lower social position could
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