2
"Casta" is an Iberian word meaning lineage. It is documented in Spanish since 1417. It is the root of the English word caste. It was historically used as a racial and social identifier where colonial Spanish & Portugese societies had a hierarchical race-based "caste system".
3
Originating from the Spanish concept of purity of blood called "Limpieza de sangre", during Christian conflict with Islam, Casta was used in Christian Spain to demarcate those of Jewish or Muslim heritage who were usually convicted by the Spanish inquisition for heresy.
4
Only the “Old Christians” who had “Limpieza de sangre” or purity of blood, had high social status. So it was Christian religious extremism during the Inquisition with its ideas of racial superiority and purity of blood that created the original Sistema de Casta or Caste System.
5
In the 1500s, the Spanish solidified the ideas of purity of blood & Casta as directly associated to skin color and percentage of “white blood” in a person. Anyone with a lineage even inked to a dark skinned ancestor was tainted by a "stain" due to that connection.
6
Emphasizing “cleanliness of blood" & purity of white blood allowed Spain & Portugal to maintain a system of racial discrimination in their colonies. So when the Portuguese landed in India in 1497, they immediately labelled the vastly different Hindu Varna system as “Caste”
7
In 1502, Vasco De Gama is said to have asked an Indian man his caste, to which he is supposed to have answered “Nair Bramane” This is not possible as Nairs were Kshatriyas or Shudras. Such instances prove the Portuguese accounts about Hindu caste were mostly fictional.
8
Duarte Barbosa was the first Portugese author in India to use “Casta” (1515) . He did not apply the word “casta” to identify every social group in India. He used it to refer to groups that combined endogamy & occupation as was common in Portuguese medieval corporations
9
Barbosa identified Indian social groups with the phrase “ley de gente” (type of people). He used “alvo, branco, quase branco, baço, & preto” (niveous, white, almost white, dim and black) in a hierarchy starting with “alvo” (whitest) at top, & “preto” (darkest) at the bottom.
10
Barbosa linked “civilizational” behavior like “courtesy”, “hygiene”, and “food habits” of Indian people to their skin color. His description of “whiter” Indians as more civilized than “black” is the origin of when race linked caste was falsely attributed to Hindus.
11
Barbosa also categorized Indians by civility & color, but he used the word “Casta” because he could only think in terms of the Portuguese concept of “purity of blood” to describe how Indians avoided intermarriage between certain communities to preserve genetic health.
13
By 1921, Indo Portuguese Catholic priest Sebastião Dalgado in Glossário Luso-Asiático, equated the Sanskrit word “varna” to caste to purposely portray Hindus as racist with the excuse that the Rig Veda described the fictional Aryan Invasion as a war among white & dark races.
14
Dalgado’s work was based on distorted racial theories of the false Aryan Invasion Theory. He simply assigned Varna as color to make it mean the bigoted European concept of racial purity based on skin color, declaring caste as the main Indian method of social categorization
15
In reality, it was Europeans who practiced caste as a social institution, linking race to social status in their colonies. Black Africans & dark indigenous people were discriminated as inferior races who were uncivilized, immoral & unintelligent due to lack of pure white blood
16
In Spain, this racist emphasis on purity of white blood went so far, it meant ineligibility for office, priesthood, or emigration to foreign territories. Having to produce genealogical records to prove one's pure ancestry resulted in a full blown market for fake genealogies.
17
By the 1600s, anyone with ancestral connections to black Africans or indigenous people was classified as a ”stain" by Spaniards. Any hint of black ancestry was a stain as shown in 18th c. paintings of racial hierarchy, known as Casta paintings illustrating the “Caste System"
