PS: I realize that much has happened to indian society since the birth of Gandhi, so perhaps I should rephrase my question into: Did the word caste refer to a family clan at the time when Gandhi was young?
Heh. You'd be surprised at how little has changed since the birth of Gandhi, regarding caste anyway. The caste system has been around atleast a couple of millenia. There have been attempts to reform the society (to get rid of the caste system basically) for atleast a couple of hundred years now. While it is true that there is *some* change, there is still a ways to go, and it ain't goin away anytime soon.
Anyway, to answer your question, your caste is a superset of your family. If you're born into a family that belongs to a particular caste, you 'belong to that caste'.
Not a valid analogy. The act of putting up a webserver, say, is an implicit invitation to all and sundry to talk to your server thru port 80. I guess thats purely a convention though - if networks had adopted the convention that only friends&family are allowed to check out what your webserver has to offer from the start, that might've been the only acceptable thing to do. But thats not how the internet came to exist, me thinks
Check out http://www.superstringtheory.com/
They give you and option to choose whether you are [basic/advanced], and the material they present is pretty good.
Slashdot Mirror
PS: I realize that much has happened to indian society since the birth of Gandhi, so perhaps I should rephrase my question into: Did the word caste refer to a family clan at the time when Gandhi was young? Heh. You'd be surprised at how little has changed since the birth of Gandhi, regarding caste anyway. The caste system has been around atleast a couple of millenia. There have been attempts to reform the society (to get rid of the caste system basically) for atleast a couple of hundred years now. While it is true that there is *some* change, there is still a ways to go, and it ain't goin away anytime soon. Anyway, to answer your question, your caste is a superset of your family. If you're born into a family that belongs to a particular caste, you 'belong to that caste'.
Not a valid analogy. The act of putting up a webserver, say, is an implicit invitation to all and sundry to talk to your server thru port 80. I guess thats purely a convention though - if networks had adopted the convention that only friends&family are allowed to check out what your webserver has to offer from the start, that might've been the only acceptable thing to do. But thats not how the internet came to exist, me thinks
Check out http://www.superstringtheory.com/ They give you and option to choose whether you are [basic/advanced], and the material they present is pretty good.