[Lillie_Steins]

@prasadji.
You never learn, do you? It will be wise to restrict your comments on the issues only in future. By the way gandhi was a baniya, and he was proud of his caste; he supported varnasrama.

This was the response in another forum:

"I think one needs to analyse the facts differently.

1. Why are they all Banias? or Vaishyas?

Simple, they are the business caste and have the family capital and the skills for it since times immemorial. They have had networks all over India.

They may come from Rajasthan and Gujarat (that is their mool sthana only is Marwar and vicinity) but they are settled all over India and in all the business capitals and have been so, in all times in history.

This has been the positive side of the varna vyavasthaa or the so called caste system, that it preserved
not only the family stock/capital in trade, it also helped the education of the trade through the connections.

Thousands of othe professions and skills were done the same way from Vedic chanting to medicine to archery and so on. Not that one varna did not cross over to other professions and created specialisations. It happened too, as the doing the family skill was the norm not a compulsion. So a Parashuram became a warrior, a Drona also an archer and a Vishwamitra became a sage.

IT was not a simple strand but a complex web. Hope this clairifies or does it further confuse?
svasti,
bharat gupt