'Hindus are proud of what the Dharmashastras symbolise, but they don't want to do any work to preserve it!,' Sanskrit scholar Donald Davis tells Kanika Dutta.
'We kept importing educational models from outside that had no connection to our cultural and intellectual strengths.'
The relative ranking of castes can vary across regions and localities and depends on a number of factors including control over land, wealth, and political power. Castes have often tried to 'upgrade' themselves (a process sociologists refer to as Sanskritization), and sometimes get 'downgraded'. A revealing excerpt from Upinder Singh's Ancient India: Culture Of Contradictions.
Maybe the new methods of measuring GDP helped us get an accurate picture.
