History Of Caste

[dhu]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->If practical or performative learning dominates Asian cultures then the number of social stereotypes there will be significantly less when compared to the western culture. Where they do exist (‘Rajputs are brave’; ‘Sikhs are a martial race’, ‘Bengalis are effeminate’, etc ), there <b>historical research will show that most such social stereotypes have been introduced during colonization.</b> In other words, unlike the West, Asian cultures have less of a need to work with social stereotypes because they teach action-heuristics through stories and not through disguised descriptions of the world. There will be a significantly <i>greater stock of stories instead of social stereotypes </i>in the Asian culture, whereas the op-posite will be the case for the western culture.
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More often then not, Asians ‘justify’ their actions not by deducing some specific action from a universal premise but through citing stories. Such stories do not ‘justify’ but, instead, provide a ‘model’ for the said action. These ‘models’ or stories lend intelligibility to the actions but do not justify them. The notion that only ideas (or claims about the world) can justify human actions is a typical cultural characteristic of the West; almost totally absent is the notion that some actions could justify some other actions. The Asian notion of ‘tradition’ preserves and extends the latter suggestion.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->