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Varna
Jati is the term for the many thousands of subcastes, or castes within castes, that make up Indian society.
Jati Quotes in Caste
The Caste quotes below are all either spoken by Jati or refer to Jati. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Pillar Number Five
Quotes
When a house is being built, the single most important piece of the framework is the first wood beam hammered into place to anchor the foundation. That piece is called the mudsill, the sill plate that runs along the base of a house and bears the weight of the entire structure above it. The studs and subfloors, the ceilings and windows, the doors and roofing, all the components that make it a house, are built on top of the mudsill. In a caste system, the mudsill is the bottom caste that everything else rests upon.
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Jati Term Timeline in Caste
The timeline below shows where the term Jati appears in Caste. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter Seven: Through the Fog of Delhi to the Parallels in India and America
...caste system is different from the American one in that there are many subcastes, or jatis. Surnames rather than physical features tell others about a person’s caste—though a person’s accent or...
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