Abbe J.A. Dubois or Jean-Antoine Dubois was a French Catholic missionary in India. He was unique missionary because he replied back to his church that there is no need of conversion in India. He was the one who refuted all European propogandas against India.
Here is what he said about Bharatiya Varna Vyavastha.
“MANY persons study so imperfectly the spirit and character of the different nations that inhabit the earth, and the influence of climate on their manners, customs, predilections, and usages, that they are astonished to fine how widely such nations differ from each other. Trammeled by the prejudices of their own surroundings, such persons think nothing well regulated that is not included in the polity and government GI their own country. They would like to see all nations of the earth placed on precisely the same footing as themselves. Everything which differs from their own customs they consider either uncivilized or ridiculous.
“If citizens are not kept within limits of duty and obedience by the system of Varna, their life calling, the whole country would fall into a state of hopeless anarchy, reckoned amongst the most uncivilized Nations of the world. The legislators (Sages who wrote Dharma-shashtras), whoever they may have been, were far too wise and too well acquainted with natural character of people. “
Now, although man’s nature is pretty much the same all the world over, it is subject to so many differentiation caused by soil, climate, food, religion, education, and other circumstances peculiar to different countries, that the system of civilization adopted by one people would plunge another into a state of barbarism and cause its complete downfall.
I have heard some persons, sensible enough in other respects, but imbued with all the prejudices that they have brought with them from Europe, pronounce what appears to me an altogether erroneous judgment in the matter of caste divisions amongst the Hindus. In their opinion, caste is not only useless to the body politic, it is also ridiculous, and even calculated to bring trouble and disorder on the people. For my part, having lived many years on friendly terms with the Hindus, I have been able to study their national life and character closely, and I have arrived at a quite opposite decision on this subject of caste. I believe caste division to be in many respects the chef – d’ ceuvre, the happiest effort, of Hindu legislation. I am, persuaded that it is simply and solely due to the distribu- tion of the people into castes that India did not lapse into a state of barbarism, and that she preserved and perfected the arts and sciences of civilization whilst most other nations of the earth remained in a state of barbarism.”
