Developing a Nietzschean Genealogical Critique of the Metaphysical and Moral Underpinnings of the Hindu Caste System

This chapter argues the following: that Nietzsche’s notion of “ressentiment” as developed in his On the Genealogy of Morals can in fact be used to critique the fundamental immorality, injustice and incommensurability of the Hindu justification for the caste system. The Christian priestly class is formed by a ‘divine calling’ that sets the priest apart from a normal life. They are witnesses to the life, death and resurrection of Christ, and hence a normal span of time that is simply is born, lives and dies without reference to continuous attestation of the divine transcendence is false and inauthentic. The sources of immorality and amorality, which interchange themselves at complex levels and in complex formations and relations, is what Ambedkar set out to analyse. Comparative analysis of the social exclusion and inequalities that stem from different world religions and their histories suggests that studying the modalities of exclusion, inequality and injustice.