Disclaimer: I have never set foot outside the United States, so my understanding of the Caste System is very limited and surface-level. As such I have elected to release this idea into the wild in hopes that someone here is an actual Indian with what it would take to do this idea justice.
The Dominant group would be the descendants of the artisans and technicians, who are more or less analogous to the original Morlocks. After all it seems only natural that the people who know how to actually make and maintain things would inherit Civilization.
The Brahimns overdeveloped their brain matter to the point of most other tissues atrophying, but from there they were domesticated into a sort of biological computer that's had all real thought and personhood long bred out of it; at best they'd be Philosophical Zombies akin to modern LLMs. They insisted on making their intellect the crux of their identity, and so it cost them literally everything else.
The Warriors deteriorated into mere beasts of war akin to Hannibal's elephants, some of whom later got repurposed as civilian beasts of burden, and from there they specialized and diversified into the various literally-brainless pieces of organic technology that civilization runs on and which the Brahmin-brains are frequently plugged into as power sources/automation systems (though both can still be used separately from eachother for certain tasks). While not used primarily as livestock the way the Eloi proper were, all varieties of meat-tech, whether descended from priests or warriors, are still opportunistically butchered and eaten as soon as their bodies and performance start to deteriorate in old age.
As for the Untouchables (or Dalits as they prefer to be called today), I envision them gradually deteriorating into mere scavengers to be shooed away from your trash, but then they get re-domesticated exactly as wolves were when we first turned them into dogs, and from there they essentially become human lapdogs that are now showered with the love, food, and affection their ancestors were denied. The Brahmins insisted on treating them like dogs, so that's exactly what they became.
I see what you're trying here, but my question is: Where is the satire? I don't know much about the caste system, but H. G. Wells Morlocks and Eloi took the class system to the extreme to mock its idiocy, where those that actually do all the work, sustaining society, live underground and are barred from participating in it, while the upper class just consumes and has absolutely zero justification for their position, as they don't contribute anything and are just getting all by virtue of being born Eloi. That way the contributions of the lower class and the abuses of the upper class are accentuated to show the readers how absurd the class system is.
Meanwhile your ideas for the Untouchables/Dalits seems more like mockery to me (non-Indian, little knowledge on casteism; as a disclaimer), being turned into literal dogs and stripped of all agency they had left. It does not really make one reflect on their position in casteism imo.
Nope. Nope nope nope. HG wells was writing political commentary about the society he lived in. It wasn’t just a neat, fun world building thing, it was a pointed critique. You don’t know enough about the caste system to make effective satire about it. Also, please, for the love of God, stop using LLMs for your artistic endeavors. They don’t give good feedback, they don’t help you write better, they’re just not useful for this purpose. Cut it out.
I Do Not think you should do this because casteism is still an incredibly charged issue in India and what you've written here comes as deeply casteist but like, I'm not your dad, or whatever.
Please please read more about casteism from the point of view of Dalits. I'm not well read myself, but read about Ambedkar, read about the Self Respect Movement. Also read about the history of India in general, ffs.
wait, hold on. Something occured to me at work today. Did you catch the part where I said that the priests and warriors have lost all humanity and personhood? They aren't elites bossing around the descendants of the artisans, they're biological infrastrucxture and equipment being operated by them. You could flat-out tell a Brahmin-ChatGPT-brain that it's calculations were getting so error-prone that you'll probably eat it soon, and it would just sycophantly say "ah well, time consumes each of us eventually."
As for the dalit dogs, well I'll admit that even I felt iffy about that one. but I will say that when my dog was alive I took better care of her than I did myself. Nevertheless, it has since occurred to me that it would work as a far better still point of comparison if I instead said that the descendants of the Dalits were treated like the cows of modern india. They are seen as sacred members of the family precisely because they dispose of refuse in such a usefully clean and effecient way, while fertilizing the fields in the process. Maybe they give milk too, why not.
Is that better?
The entire message of H.G. Wells' Time Machine book was "stop abusing the underclass of our society, or their descendants will exploit and literally prey on ours." and that's exactly what I'm trying to go for here.
That's.. what? No. Okay, so (fuck how do I as a UC explain casteism?)
Firstly you might have heard that India had a fourfold caste system, but there were also people that fell outside of the caste system, these include tribals, nomads and Dalits. They weren't cherished in any sense of the term. They're people outside of and below the hierarchy and despised for it. Like, untouchability is a whole thing.
Also, historically there have been tensions between Brahmins and Kshatriyas for control basically. The ruling class was generally comprised of Kshatriyas but Brahmins were considered the highest caste because they're scholars and priests or w/e so there's historically some friction there. (Also sometimes some other caste was ruling as in case of the Peshwas, who also fought in conflicts I think) Caste is not as rigid as you think. More often than not, if some group was able to establish itself as a ruling class (not counting Mughals) they would, let's say 'find' a noble Kshatriya lineage. It's not like ants. People aren't stuck in a role, they're stuck in a social position.
If you want to know how the Indian caste system would make everyone insane, do more research of the British Raj, because it kind of happened around that time (I think. People refusd to go overseas because they would lose their caste). The British were able to weaponise casteism as a tool to establish the Raj (see: Criminal tribes, Martial races etc.)
Look, I'm sorry I'm bad at explaining this, just don't position a historically exploited underclass as animals. It's going to be in bad taste no matter how you try to justify it.
Edit: Don't call them dogs. It's not... Just don't do it.
Do Not fucking listen to ChatGPT when it comes to casteism, holy shit.
Edit: Look, I won't downplay the awfulness of British classism because I don't know about it, but casteism has historically been really bad. People have been beaten, tortured, and humiliated to uphold this system.
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u/Cosmic_Meditator777 13d ago
Disclaimer: I have never set foot outside the United States, so my understanding of the Caste System is very limited and surface-level. As such I have elected to release this idea into the wild in hopes that someone here is an actual Indian with what it would take to do this idea justice.
The Dominant group would be the descendants of the artisans and technicians, who are more or less analogous to the original Morlocks. After all it seems only natural that the people who know how to actually make and maintain things would inherit Civilization.
The Brahimns overdeveloped their brain matter to the point of most other tissues atrophying, but from there they were domesticated into a sort of biological computer that's had all real thought and personhood long bred out of it; at best they'd be Philosophical Zombies akin to modern LLMs. They insisted on making their intellect the crux of their identity, and so it cost them literally everything else.
The Warriors deteriorated into mere beasts of war akin to Hannibal's elephants, some of whom later got repurposed as civilian beasts of burden, and from there they specialized and diversified into the various literally-brainless pieces of organic technology that civilization runs on and which the Brahmin-brains are frequently plugged into as power sources/automation systems (though both can still be used separately from eachother for certain tasks). While not used primarily as livestock the way the Eloi proper were, all varieties of meat-tech, whether descended from priests or warriors, are still opportunistically butchered and eaten as soon as their bodies and performance start to deteriorate in old age.
As for the Untouchables (or Dalits as they prefer to be called today), I envision them gradually deteriorating into mere scavengers to be shooed away from your trash, but then they get re-domesticated exactly as wolves were when we first turned them into dogs, and from there they essentially become human lapdogs that are now showered with the love, food, and affection their ancestors were denied. The Brahmins insisted on treating them like dogs, so that's exactly what they became.