Word: casteless
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...Sikh, a member of a casteless religion that combines elements of Hinduism and Islam but scorns both the caste system of the Hindus and the historic expansionism of the Muslims in favor of monotheism, unembarrassed materialism and, where necessary, militarism. Though the 15 million Sikhs represent only about 2% of India's polyglot population, their influence is considerable. They account for 15% of the nation's army and an almost equally high proportion of its civil servants. Their efficient farming in Punjab, India's richest state, has helped make the country virtually self-sufficient in food production...
Thus has Amritsar, in the northwestern state of Punjab, become the center of a bitter feud between Sikhs and Hindus. Distinguished by their traditional beards and turbans, the Sikhs follow their own casteless, monotheistic religion, and over the past 15 months those in the Punjab have mounted a determined drive for greater autonomy from New Delhi. The more the government of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi has resisted, the more savage the Sikh campaign has become. Last month six men hijacked a night bus at gunpoint, herded eleven Hindu men into a field and, with cold-blooded efficiency, shot...
...Conant's faith in an educational system reconstructed in conformity with the "three fundamentals of the Jeffersonian tradition"--freedom of mind, social mobility through education, and universal schooling--to achieve a casteless American society, "a society in which ideals of both personal liberty and social justice can be maintained" is a "good ideal" but of very doubtful practical application. A system of public education "resisting the distorting pressures of urbanized, industrial life" is "necessary." But it is not "sufficient...
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