namaste Isavasya.
01. In the olden days, it was the responsibility of the King to ensure that everyone conformed to his varNa. The Dharma ShAstras and other texts gave the authority to the King to punish those who swerved out of their varNa and cast them into the avarNa group, for a certain period or even permanently. If such a system existed today, brahmins would definitely follow their varNa with vigour and dedication.
02. In the society of our olden days, brahmins were supported for their living by the other varNas, so they had no necessity or reason to worry about the three basic necessities of life--food, clothes and shelter--and devote their entire time to the varNa dharma. Even some fifty or sixty years back, some brahmin families in villages subsisted on unja-vritti--getting alms of rice for cooking. And today, most of the brahmin families in villages whose breadwinners are temple priests, live in poverty, with no scope to give their children competitive worldly education.
03. Since a person's guNa-karma decides the birth which in turn decides the varNa, even in the olden days, some of the brAhmaNas practised the occupations of other varNas and excelled in them: Sage drONAchArya is a classic example, and there were many other examples detailed in my post
http://www.hindudharmaforums.com/sho...32&postcount=6 . This shows that although the King had the responsibility to regulate varNa dharma, he also had the discretion to recognize and promote deserving cases, based on their skills and social acceptability.
04. Again in the olden days, all the three varNas--brAhmaNas, kShatriyas and vyshyas--were initiated as dvijas by the upanayanam ceremony and sent to the gurukulam for studying the Vedas (although it was mostly brahmins who chanted the Vedas in rituals). The shUdras were exempted because Vedic Sanskrit was not their mother tongue and they had no time for such endeavours.
In the totally changed circumstances today,
• How many people from the kShatriya and vyshya varNa wear the holy thread they are eligible to, and are willing to take up the study of Vedas?
• Although politicians would make the world believe that the shUdras are not allowed to study the Vedas, how many of the shUdras have the real inclination and preference towards it, when even the brahmins whose occupation it is, struggle to make both ends meet in their daily life?
• The objective of the politicians is to destroy Hindu Dharma, not just the varNa. Since they can't give logical reasoning for abolition of varNa and caste, which system is in fact a guardian of Hindu Dharma, they declare themselves as atheists and secularists to the public and attack Hinduism.
Had it not been for Gandhiji, India would have been a Hindu nation, and would have preserved the time-honoured varNa and caste system which has distinctions with explicit strictures against discrimination. Such distinction with utmost discrimination does exist in all forms of hierarchical systems in public and private life of the modern society, and this is because of the human guNa-karma and ego.
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