Is Jāti Decided by Birth or Profession?

I am sharing a story of how I witnessed the opposition of an inter-caste marriage of a dear friend of mine. She would cry over the phone narrating her story to me everyday saying that her parents are not ready to accept this boy who is not a Brahmin by birth and whom she is in love with from the past five years!

I would be fuming inside being unable to do anything much, but only trying to console her in the best way I could and not let her lose hopes. It went to such an extent that the parents said they would commit suicide if she married him. Now what a difficult situation for my friend to take a decision. It ultimately ended up with her having to leave him with such a heavy heart that she will never forget in her life. 

A few months later, she was married to a Brahmin boy suggested by her parents. The truth was that she still had the fresh scars of the wound from her past relationship. Definitely a wound so deep will take years to heal! After her marriage, she would not call me often like how she would before. I too thought that I need to give her space as she has embarked on this new phase of her life and I did not call her often either. Months passed by but I did not get a phone call from her. Conversations and messages on the phone would be very brief.

Six months later, to my surprise on one rainy evening, I found her alone in a restaurant. With a face as gloomy as the cloudy skies outside, she was seated in a dark corner in the restaurant. I enquired her of her life. She narrated a shocking story. She said that she has been married to a drug addict and has applied for a divorce. I asked her if she told her parents about this, to which she expressed poetically....

"They said he will do his daily Sandhavandam,

 He pops in drugs three times a day!

They said he will do Rudrabhishekam 

but he smokes and drinks everyday!

They said he will love me unconditionally

but he spends more time with his cigars and wine!"

They said he will be loyal to me,

and he is spends most of his time on dating websites!

They did marry me to a Brahmin 

only by birth and in no way by conduct!

They did marry me to a Brahmin 

separating me from a good human, with just Jāti as the base decided by birth!

I heard her weep and comforted her in the best possible way I could, telling her that she will soon be free from this torture and can restart a new phase of her life.

The irony is that we see people perform many rituals trying to please God, but in their minds there still exists the impurity that stops them from realizing the true nature of oneself. You try hard to please the Lord with Abhishekam and mantras while in your heart you have not cleared the dirt of discrimination! Why this duality? God is beyond our opinions, beyond the rituals. God comes to you whether you are a Brahmin, a Shudra or a Dalit. God does not see your caste but your mind, that is free of filth and a heart that is pure. This dual perception of ours that I am right, you are wrong and the by products of these only takes us away from reality. We feel that Jāti is a way of preserving tradition. But, honestly Jāti is only dividing us, if birth is the only way of determining it! 

India has always been hailed as the treasure of knowledge and spiritual wealth. Though we ultimately aim at realizing the truth, many fail to realize the walls that we have put in between ourselves. How necessary is the so called 'Caste system' that is wrongly decided based on birth and what is its significance?  I too have pondered a lot about this and at times have ended up being frustrated, as it in a way brings in a component of 'Ego' and the barrier that I am different and you are different.

Deciding the Jāti of a person by one's birth was introduced by the British in order to divide the country and make it easier for them to conquer and rule. Dr. Kausthub Desikachar threw some light on this and it was a very enlightening discussion on how Jāti has been misunderstood by our people. Jāti is needed to run the society but should not be determined by one's birth.  

The Bhagavad Gita states that Jāti is decided by one's work and qualities. This is very clearly stated by Sri Krishna 

cāturvarṇyaṃ mayā sṛṣṭaṃ guṇakarmavibhāgaśaḥ  - 4.13

In every aspect of life, be it in the caste discriminations that we see around us or the opposition of inter caste marriages that we see, all these are dividing us further, if birth is what solely determines these!