The varna system is about as ‘unequal’ as any social system can possibly be, yet where one ranks within it has less to do with how many material goods one can pile up or lay claim to than with one’s relation to certain (polluting) substances – physical dirt and waste, but also bodily matter linked to birth, death and menstruation – and the people who handle them. All this creates serious problems for any contemporary scholar seeking to apply Gini coefficients or any other property-based measure of ‘inequality’ to the society in question.
