All about India

Map of India

Today my Mother brought home some new bedside tables.

We had to unpack the old Indian chest that they had been using to put their books on so we could move it.

Inside we found lots of treasures that my parents brought home from India. They travelled there before I was born. There were lots of beautiful things and so my sister and I dressed up as Indian princesses.

We did designs on our hands. Indian ladies use henna but we didn't have any of that so we used a pen.

We were asking a lot of questions about India. My Dad decided to teach us some things about the way people live in that country. He read us some stories from this comic book about the life of the Buddha. We knew a lot of the stories from going to Buddhist scripture class at School.

In one of the stories it mentioned that someone was a Brahmin. We asked Dad what that was and he explained about the caste system. I thought it would be interesting to tell you about what we learned.

The Caste System
In India there are four groups, the Brahmins (Priests), the Kshatriyas (Soldiers), the Vaishyas (shopkeepers) and the Shudras (farmers and servants). Another group is under all of them called the untouchables who do all the most horrid jobs like cleaning the toilets and picking up dead animals. People from a lower caste are not allowed to visit people from a high caste. Untouchables can't even let their shadow touch a Brahmin. It is a very unfair system because if you are born in the low castes you have to do nasty work. Buddha did not like the caste system and it is not part of Buddhism.

Mahatma Gandhi tried to change the Caste system and stop people from being mean to the untouchables.