A heavily divided society (caste, or varna or whatever) is ennervating. It wastes its energy on defining, maintaining and enforcing burdensome useless & stupid caste rules. It saps the energy of the very people it needs the most. And most of all, it breeds dissension and kills solidarity & commonality of thought which is the essence of a robust defence. When this society is defeated, it is easier to cart off many of them to the new religion.shiv wrote:There may be many reasons why invaders overran India
Among these are:
1) Insularity, cultural innocence and naivete of a highly evolved Hindu society when faced with an existential threat as eloquently described by Jwalamukhi on page 5 of this thread
2) Fractionation and specialization of duties to such an extent (possibly by the Varna system) that nobody other than warriors would fight, and when warriors were gone nobody else could
3) Significant sections of society who probably did not have the will or need to fight as the change of leadership made no difference to their status
The process has not stopped still. In our living memory, the untouchable cannot walk in the town and draw from the same well. He converts to Islam or Christianity, low and behold he can now walk freeliy. He is, as swamy Vivekananda says, not only one man out of your fold, he also one more man in the enemy fold.