Manusmriti codified differential interest rates that institutionalized perpetual debt servitude

Evidence

The Arthashastra (circa 350 BCE) says usury is the Vaishya’s right. The Manusmriti (circa 150 CE) goes further and suggests a sliding scale of interest rates: 2 per cent per month for Brahmins, 3 per cent for Kshatriyas, 4 per cent for Vaishyas and 5 per cent for Shudras. On an annual basis, the Brahmin was to pay 24 per cent interest and the Shudra and Dalit, 60 per cent. … If they cannot pay in cash, they have to pay what is known as ‘bodily interest’, which means they are expected to toil for the moneylender from generation to generation to repay impossible debts. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 60

Categorization

• DEFINE: ‘Bodily interest’ — generational debt servitude — is a key mechanism by which caste hierarchy is economically enforced.
• DEEPTHINKING: The legal-codified interest rate gradient (2% Brahmin to 5% Shudra, per month, compounding to 60% annual for the lowest castes) is a dense mechanism showing how law itself engineered caste economic subjugation — worth sitting with as a design of structural debt capture.
• XREF: connects to: Dispersing debt across the planet compounded rather than minimized risk — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 182; Perpetual debt serves to escape the burden of freedom — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New…, 30