If you don’t write your story, someone else will tell it for you! These lines begin to bang my head as soon as I get into the deeper interpretations of this book on America’s ‘not so glorious’ history. Isabel Wilkerson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist puts - Race, Class, Caste, African Americans, Jews, Dalits, Blacks, Whites, and Browns- all the ingredients in one broiler to develop a thesis that may not be palatable to the global audience. Take it or leave. The author has an uncanny ability to theorise what she witnesses based on her observations, extensive research and articulation. She comes out with her ‘voice’ loud and clear. Thanks to America, where everyone’s dirty linen is openly washed, this book does it for American history this time.

Completing this book was a journey. I took several long breaks to allow myself time to digest and reflect on the content. The book was originally published in 2020. America is known to make things big. The audio version is readily available. A film adaptation ‘Origin’ based on the book came out in 2023. It is directed by Ava DuVernay. I found it easier to comprehend the book after watching the movie. Yet, I would refrain from calling this article a review. This isn't a review, but rather an attempt to highlight the book's main points.

This is a book that reframes the way one thinks about the world we live in. The focus of this book is primarily the United States, and she says she is trying to comprehend the country’s thought process by looking at other cultures that are wildly, totally different in so many ways- economy, history, demographics, etc. yet, somewhere it witnesses the same line of thought. 

The Main Proposition of the book

The main idea of Isabel Wilkerson's book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is that the United States, like India and Nazi Germany, has operated under a hidden caste system based on race. Wilkerson leaves no stone unturned to draw parallels between the Blacks’ and Whites’ "caste" systems in the U.S., Jati in India, and the superior class of Nazi Germany over inferior Jews. She argues that while race is a social construct based on physical characteristics, caste is a deeper, more rigid hierarchy that assigns social status and determines access to resources and opportunities. She contends that the American system is more accurately described as a caste system built upon the foundation of race.

Drawing threads from different social systems, she says that one thing common among these three nationalities is that one group is seen as superior and the other as inferior. Some people live in an illusion of their own entitlement while others are subordinates, trapped in the purgatory of someone else's definition of who they are and who they should be. The book is a collection of hundreds of stories (along with some personal anecdotes), with an underlying commonality of inequality and disrespect of one over other- the dominant castes over those seen as otherwise.   

‘Caste is essentially an artificial arbitrary graded ranking of human values in a society; it determines standing respect, the benefit of the doubt, access to resources or denial of access to resources assumptions, of competence and even the standards of beauty’ repeats the author at various places in the book and in her interviews.  “So, the past is essentially the infrastructure of our divisions,” she concludes. 

This emerged from colonial times in the United States with the arrival of both the colonists and then the enslaved people who were automatically assigned to the lowest caste. She discusses how the Nazis looked at the USA as their model for how they wanted to turn the Germans against the Jews; they were rooting over U.S. laws that existed at the time, particularly the Jim Crow laws. They considered the USA's approach as exemplary and therefore incorporated a lot of those rules for turning Germans against the Jews. 

In her book Isabel Wilkerson uses several metaphors to explain her point. The metaphor of America as an old house is central to her argument about the enduring nature of caste in America. Wilkerson compares America to an old house with a long history. This house has been built and added onto over centuries, with each generation leaving its mark. There were some crucial flaws present from the very beginning in the foundation of the house that were never addressed. Just as someone who buys an old house inherits its existing problems, Americans inherit the problems of the past, specifically the ingrained system of caste-based on race. Many serious problems in an old house are often hidden from view.

Similarly, the most damaging aspects of the caste system are often invisible or ignored; it worsens the problems over time. Likewise, ignoring the underlying issues of caste only perpetuates inequality and social harm.  Maintaining an old house requires constant vigilance and effort in the form of repairs and renovations. She insists that dismantling the caste system and building a more equitable society requires ongoing work and commitment from everyone.

Wilkerson's 8 Pillars of Caste

Based on her study of the three main caste systems of India, United States and Nazi Germany, she finds these eight characteristics that are common and play a major role in upholding caste systems all over the world. She lays each one of those characteristics out in detail.

One pillar of caste as Isabelle describes is Divine Will and The Laws of Nature. This means that caste is based on a godly order and that social stratification is considered something beyond human control as it is considered divinely ordained or part of natural law. Hindu cosmology holds the caste system as an aspect of the birth of Brahma, the supreme god; the Judeo-Christian tradition has a contrasting story about the creation of the world's different races.

The second is Heritability- how one's bloodline determines one's ranking. The third pillar is endogamy and the control of marriage and mating. It includes the act of restricting marriage to only people within your caste. Laws are passed that restrict marriage and reproduction along caste lines. This is something Hitler admired about the American model which made it illegal for Whites and Blacks to get married.

Another pillar is the idea of purity versus pollution. The dominant castes are considered pure and have a fear of being polluted by people in the subordinate caste. The fifth pillar, as per Wilkerson, is an occupational hierarchy. Where the best jobs go to the members of the top caste. For example, in America, after the Civil War black people could only perform domestic or farm work, setting their place in the caste. This maintains the caste because then the people on the low end of the divide aren't in the roles where they can make laws change policy access resources it preserves and maintains the divide.

The sixth pillar is the dehumanisation of the entire group; this allows the group in power to attack terrible things on others- murder, enslavement, torture, concentration camps, slave auctions, labour camps, starvation, punishment for doing nothing. The use of terror and violence to enforce the caste system is considered another pillar. Wilkerson includes inherent superiority vs inherent inferiority as the eighth pillar. 

She writes that in Africa people identify with ethnicity, not colour. Colour becomes an identity when you come to America. This book about the history of slavery in the US unflinchingly exposes systemic mistreatment. Wilkerson powerfully demonstrates the treatment of Black Americans by store clerks, teachers at schools and colleges, doctor, and the police. She also talks about decades-long denial of proper access to mortgages, loans and quality education. There were separate Bibles- a Black Bible and a separate White Bible to swear to tell the truth in court. The very word of ‘God’ could not be touched by all hands. This history must be confronted honestly, without whitewashing, she appeals.

It does reach India. As the author says that the Black people of America are treated somewhat like the untouchables of India, she has added an interesting episode. When in 1959 the American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Junior visited India, a high school principal introduced the leader by calling him a fellow untouchable from the United States of America!

Coming back to the very first line of this write up- If you don’t write your story, someone else will tell it for you! The way the author knits her story around the Indian caste system might sound preposterous to many. DuVernay’s film spans across continents and generations. She uses graphic visuals. The gory details of the depiction of Dalits working in gutters of India might be quite upsetting for some.

Can Indian Varna or caste system be justified as systemic racism as the history of Nazi Germany or American racism? Obviously not. The traditional system of Varna practiced in India was very different. It indicated one’s occupation and gradually emerged as people gained mastery over a skill to belong to a certain caste over generations. India is a diverse country where people from all sorts of backgrounds weave the social fabric. Moreover, the Indian caste system is a colonial construct and not an inherent property of society. We can have a pool of words quoting Manu and other historical examples to prove that caste was changeable.

However, that is not the point. As a foreign journalist, the author wrote what she saw and comprehended in her research, travels, and in her real-life encounters with people.  Her ability to theorise has an appeal and her book gained a lot of popularity. The author has made a niche for herself because she has a new way of telling the old story. Then she got the branding for her work. America’s consumerist culture is ever hungry for new stories, especially if they find it titillating in more than one sense!

Instead of defending our position, we need writers, historians, and storytellers who tell ‘our side of the story’ to the world and could explain how intelligent the Indian varna system was, in a big way, as America does, in the time to come. 

It is a new lens to look at the history of America through the lens of the caste system and compare the caste systems around the world. So much content has been packed in this 400-page long book with 31 chapters, an epilogue and an extended bibliography. Although ideas are repeated and too many stories of injustice to Blacks have been included. One may find Wilkerson's thesis ridiculous as contemporary America is organised more as a hierarchy of competence where competence is roughly determined by free market forces and by meritocracy to some extent. Hierarchy is a natural progression of society. It is natural to have divisions- the base of the division may be anything from skills to class, to mindset. 

The book has real-life stories that make you uncomfortable. Wilkerson looks at the system from every angle. In the end, she appeals to all to inculcate empathy and compassion for the ‘others’ of society, recognising that the price of privilege is the moral duty to act when one sees another person treated unfairly.

Image source: Penguin Random House