    48

    wo

    nderful folks who came up with the system to begin with).  And the

    third caste housed the Iranian landholders and merchants (Vaisyas).

    Way down on the bottom of society, squirming like insects beneath the

    Iranian heel, were the original Indian natives, the occupied peoples.

    They became the loathed shudras and out-castes.  The defeated Indian

    shudras, were promptly put to work.  They were sent into the fields to

    raise the crops upon which the wealth of the Iranian nobles, priests and

    merchants would soon be based.

    The Iranian overlords were fair-skinned.  The natives who had

    been placed in a state of permanent humiliation were dark in hue.

    That complexion difference was embedded permanently in the name

    of the social structure.  You could tell a member of the contemptible

    Shudra class by his skin-tone.  So the newly-initiated hierarchical layers

    were called varna--castes--the Iranian word for color.97

    Under the Hindu system, the descendants of the Iranians were

    born with all the privileges that Hitler's Nazis would someday dream

    of.  Take, for example, the prerogatives of the Iranian priests, the

    Brahmans.  Anyone from a lower caste who jostled a Brahman on the

    street committed a sin.  If he bumped the Brahman with his arm, the

    arm was cut off.  If he touched the Brahman with his foot, the foot was

    surgically removed.  If he sat in a Brahman's chair, he had a ten-inch

    red  hot  rod  rammed  up  his  nether  parts.    If  he  complained  to  the

    Brahman about this treatment, he had the same smoking piece of metal

    shoved down his throat.98

    Anyone of lower class who sipped water from a pool at which a

    Brahman was contemplating a drink polluted it.  A Brahman could

    make whatever accusation he wanted against a creature of lower caste

    and the accused would be punished.  But the lower caste citizen could

    make no complaint against the Brahman.  Once a Brahman had

    married at least one woman of his own superior caste, he could go into

    the street during festivals, roam about searching for some nice-looking

    girl from the lower strata, marry her if it pleased him, and discard her

    when he tired of her charms.  But no man of lower social position could

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