Talk:History of the Indian caste system

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[edit] Neutrality and POV, this article needs clean up

This article has numerous claims that have no citations and are very POV. It uses misleading language (for example it was using "europeans" coming to India instead of Indo aryan or Indo-european which would be more accurate as said in its sources). --Kathanar 20:11, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Debunk?

User:UtcurschThe line you inserted, claiming to debunk that the caste system came from the aryan arrival (from a 2007 article that the caste system originated much earlier than the aryans), I think bears a little more review for such a definite statement. Aside from the a header line by the author of the article, the rest of article makes no mention of how they know this.

They claim it started 8,000 years ago but then later goes on to say that the lower castes and tribals are more similar than the upper castes who are closer to central asians. If the lower castes and tribals are more similar (which makes sense as they were the original inhabitants) where did they get the idea they had started a caste system 8,000 years ago, wouldn't that have made just by sheer years a greater difference between the lower castes and tribals? The article actually talks more of how true the caste system is, with the upper castes being of Central Asian or "aryan" descent while the lower castes and tribals came from populations arriving continously starting 70,000 years ago.

I guess what I'm striving at is can such a blanket statment as "debunk" be used if no real proof is offered in the article and the article has potentially contradictory statments. In the article itself it says it needs more conclusive studies to be sure and more work needs to be done to clarify this information, so the author's and your statement that it debunks the aryan role in establishing the caste system is a little premature.

The article did make a more clear statement on the arrival of the aryans (3,500 years ago in India) and separation between them and the others castes. Utcursch, how do you feel about the article and if it definitely "debunks" the aryan role. User:Utcursch, please take this only as one of curiosity and academic discussion and nothing else, as we can discuss this politely and as gentlemen. I do like the article as it does summarize various studies done so far, though for some reason not mentioning Spencer Wells studies and efforts in the Genographic project. For others interested heres the article in question Caste System Have a good day all --Kathanar 13:07, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

I just came across this link on some other talk page on Wikipedia, and thought it should find a mention in the article. So, I just added one sentence, as the intro of the article in The Telegraph mentions. I have re-worded the content a bit; please feel free to edit it if you feel it requires any changes. utcursch | talk 16:19, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
Thank you user:Utcursch, your rewording did a good job of putting the reference more in context, no changes need to be made, have a good day.--Kathanar 17:29, 4 September 2007 (UTC)