Ancient Immigration Control System in Indus Valley
Today many countries like the United States have immigration policies and quota systems. Only educated people with a certain minimum qualification are allowed for immigration; obviously, no country would like to have illiterate people streaming into its borders. The immigrants should be conversant in a certain language - English in United States for example. Also, only a certain fixed number of immigrants are allowed per year. In some theocratic nations, bringing in idols of other faiths is prohibited. So, the extent and type of immigration is strictly regulated by a certain set of erudite policies that are formulated with a view to ensure that the socio-economic and cultural balance of the country accepting the immigrants is not disturbed.
Suppose for a minute that it is not possible to control immigration to the extent that it is being done today. The country's borders are hill terrained with a large number of immigrants streaming into your society in an uncontrolled manner. Large number of migrants speaking all sorts of languages descend on to your society - you might need to converse in an extra-ordinarily large number of languages in order to be able to function. Huge number of people of different races come and descend on to your society and construct temples and shrines of a large number of denominations to an extra-ordinarily large number of Gods - your own religion and god is lost in the mire. Illiterate people, not possessing a single valuable skill, come and swamp your society, expecting their needs to be taken care of. Can you imagine the chaos and utter confusion that would result from such an uncontrolled migration?
Such chaos and confusion formed part and parcel of one civilization for more than ten thousand years! That civilization is that of Indus Valley - comprising of present day India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal.
Ever since ice age peak ended about fifteen to twenty thousand years ago, deglaciaton started all across the planet, especially so on the Indian subcontinent. The mighty Himalayan mountain ranges on the north of India started disgorging enormous amounts of waters into the sea. Huge and gargantuan river systems started wetting and inundating the northern plains of India. While most of the rest of world was still covered with ice, places like Egypt, India, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia were the chosen places for civilization. India, especially, with its mighty river systems, was the chosen land for civilization - an immigrant's haven. Large number of immigrants migrated from all over the world onto the Indian subcontinent every now and then in droves.
And, there was no country of India then! There were only a large number of small small societies and kingdoms scattered all over. So they did not have any immigration policies and quota systems to control immigration. Each small society and kingdom had to deal with this menace of uncontrolled immigration in its own manner. Large number of tribes, many of them illiterate, with all sorts of languages, gods, customs and what not descended onto Indian subcontinent, threatening to destabilize the socio-economic and cultural balance of the natives. Some sort of a regulatory system was necessary in order to provide a semblance of sanity against on the onslaught of this unfettered immigration.
One of the main constraints of forming an efficient society is the language. One needs a common language across the society to function properly and efficiently. When a society faces a huge amount of migration from outside, with several races bringing in scores of languages by the day, a society needs to ensure that its language does not get destroyed by the deluge of outside languages that descend upon it. We cannot have a community with a hundred languages in operation and with many more to descend; it would result in complete chaos and would lead to a highly dysfunctional arrangement. So, when outsiders are incorporated into the society, it becomes mandatory to ensure that each and every intruder speaks the language of the existing society. In case of India, it was Sanskrit. So it becomes mandatory that all those who come in should forsake their own language and adapt to the common language of the community. They are free to speak their language inside their homes, but outside, they are strictly to speak the common language.
The next most important thing is religion. After thousands of years of religious development taking the religion to quite an advanced form, a civilized society cannot have tribal deities in dozens and scores swamping their temples, with the idols of those tribal gods sitting alongside their own gods. If the incoming religions are not more than handful, it is fine; But, in the case of hundreds of them coming in, one can understand the problem that this would bring. That would simply not be acceptable and would even be repulsive to any civilized society. The civilized society would then enforce strict religious laws to safeguard its own religion. The incoming people who would be accepted into the society would have to give up their religion and their customs outside the gates and would have to adapt to the religion of the society they were entering. Would this always be possible? Maybe not always be. The tribal, who would start slapping his/her cheeks and murmuring sweet nothings when he/she sees figures like triangles, cannot be made to forget his/her deity as soon as he/she comes in. It would be too difficult to implement such a task. Moreover, the society itself might consist of a couple of competing sects, and it would not be easy to decide as to which incoming tribal should join which sect. The best way to enforce sanity from the religious perspective would be to have a separate sub-community that would have the exclusive right to religious practices at the places of worship. That sub-community, from generation to generation, would be responsible for taking care of the conduct of religious rituals and other related practices. So, as long as the ritualistic practices are saved from being tampered with, it does not matter who worships whom. For example, a tribal might take a small seal out of his pocket and worship it at his home. As long as he is not allowed to install an idol of that tribal deity at a formal public worship place, he can continue to worship whoever he wants. Since the rights over religious practices are given over to a certain priestly community, and as long as that community does not entertain common worship places for new tribal deities, the religion is saved.
We save language, we save religion. What else is required? Well, law and order has to be maintained? And just as we have in today's business organizations, some code of conduct, and some customs and traditions need to be maintained; there needs to be a code of conduct that does not change as more and more outsiders get incorporated into the society. And to maintain all of these, a ruling class is required.
So, we see that we have come up with the requirement of having two classes: a priestly class and a ruling class. And the most important requirement is that this class of people should not be tinkered with; otherwise, the purpose of incorporating the classes is lost. For example, if some new intruder coming from outside with a different language is made part of the ruling class, he then might want to change the language of the society, and this would destroy the very purpose of having such a class. So, we need to have a fixed set of people who act as ruling class or priestly class, and whose position is not to be tinkered with. Only a descendant of a priest becomes a priest, and only the son of a ruler becomes a ruler or an administrator.
With two classes in tow, and with a few rules and regulations in place, we then come to the issue that is at the core of all of this discussion. How to distribute the incoming migrators? Well, create two more classes-one class for incoming people who are to some extent civilized, and another class for those who are uncivilized. Civilized intruders who come in are allowed to occupy themselves with various trade and agricultural activities that contribute to the wealth of the society. And uncivilized people who come in are taken in as a servant class of people. All the rules are strictly enforced. All newcomers into society have to learn the language of the society; they are not supposed to start any public places of worship of their own but are supposed to get their religious activities performed by the priestly class, and have to abide by other rules of the society. A society can only take in a certain limited number of people - for example, most countries today allow only a fixed number of immigrants per year. So, excess number of migrators, especially the uncivilized people, are left out as untouchables. These untouchables are not allowed inside the boundary walls of community, contact and interaction with them is prohibited.
This is how the much defamed and vilified Indian four-caste system, along with untouchability, originated. Members of the priestly class are called Brahmins; those of the ruling class are called Kshatriyas; those of the trading class are called Vaishyas; and those of the servant class are called Sudras.
As per Indian scriptures, India was made up of four castes - Kshatriyas, Brahmins, Vaishyas, and Sudras. Add the class of untouchables to this. Normally, any class system is frowned upon by liberal minded people as it bestows certain undue advantages for some people over others. Since this class system is mentioned in important scriptures of Indian religion, the ills of Indian class and caste system are normally attributed to Indian religion. Indian religion is attributed with certain amount of characteristic bestiality that gave rise this sort of class system, where the arrangement of the society favored certain upper castes over the lower castes. However, I think that the real significance of this Indian four-class caste system along with untouchability has never been understood by historians.
The Indian four-class caste system has arisen out of the need to control thousands and thousands of years of migration onto the Indian subcontinent! India has been an immigrant's haven ever since the snow fed rivers started wetting the Indian lands. It has ceased to be so only in the last couple of millennia. Since most of the scriptures that talk about this four-class caste system, including Vedas, are Sanskrit based, it means that Indian language of Sanskrit and Indian scriptures of Vedas are extremely ancient, and are a byproduct of ice age fluctuations. The history of the civilized man can be traced back to the ice age peak.
