stackexchange: Why does Skanda Purana say to cut off the tongue of a low-caste person who reads the Vedas?
valmiki was a hunter, visvamitra was a xatriya (king). However exceptions do not make or break the rule.
In modern age what is the punishment for someone practicing medicine without a medicine degree and a license?
What is the punishment for someone practising law without passing the bar exam and getting a license?
They will face prison.
So someone who will study and chant vedas, his training began when he is a child. He will go through an initiation process and then his training starts which not only involves, memorization, pronounciatioin etc., but also a strict diet, strict daily routine of when he will up, how will he bathe, what should he eat, what will he wear, there are more restrictions and abstinence prescribed to this trainee than any modern day professions.
A shudra aka laborer start their family trade from a very young age too which would restrict them to follow any of the dietory prescriptions of a vedic student like strict vegetarian diet, getting up early in the morning, take cold bath in the river everyday, not to touch or consume tamasic food (alcohol, intoxicants, meat etc.,). Now a shudra whose livelihood is leather, fish, meat or makeing/selling alcohol, you cant expect him to follow all these restrictions, his life is already hard.
I would like to think this as a discount of burden on shudras via reverse psychology. Let me give you an example. In olden days menstruating women were forbidden to be inside the house or enter the kitchen or touch anything inside the house. It was 5 days a month. This was a clever way of giving 5 days a month holiday to the women of the house who works all day, taking care of the house and family members. If you ask everyone to give her 5 holidays a month during her painful days, most wouldnt follow, but if you make it part of the culture or religion or attach faith to it, then it is automatically enforced.
Once again Vedic chanting was forbidden for untrained ( in this case shudras) but not reading.
ex: shankaracharya and chandala story.
As per vedas, shudras are compared to the legs of the purusha aka brahman. All 3 varnas (brahmin, xatriya, vysa) touch their head to the legs/feet of the deity, so it is not demeaning. Why legs? It is to indicate that the entire weight of the society is on shudras and it is they who carry the society (body) forward. How fair it is to expect them to also study vedas, study of vedas is a life long process, which starts at a very young age, as a child. So, If shudras were also made to study vedas, that society would be slow and moves no where. Imagine the entire blue collar, manufacturing and labor class in every country is expected to have a PHD in philosophy and religion apart from doing their work. Such a society will be inefficient and least developed. There will be more thinkers and no doers.
This is also why the accountability, punishment are inversly proportional to the weight of the sociey a varna carries.
shudra carries the most weight. hence is punishment is the least. brahmin, even though guides other varnas, he carries the least burden, hence highest level of punishment and accountability. Legs carry the most weight of the body, head carries almost no weight of the body (unless you have too much of long matted hair).
If I am a shudra who doe shard labor everyday, may be doing leather work and metal work, I will be more than glad If I am not asked or expected to know any scriptures, in fact I would enjoy a ban on me, just a like a village kid who loves grazing his sheep or his cattle but hates to go to school. Who hasnt enjoyed suspension in school, it is like unwanted holiday.
Let us not forget that fact that all our amazing temples with astrological significance, symmitry, geometry which isnt even possible today to be made by machines; was all the work of shudras.
In modern day you can compare this to those who go to trade school (blue collar jobs training), medical degree, engineering as shudras; those who study theoretical physica, string theory, psychology, quantum physics as brahmins.
If I am a plumber and I had to plumbing and If I am expected to know quantum physics to do my plumbing job, then I will be pissed. So as a shudra in olden days, as a farmer or a carpenter who breaks his back all day, I will be glad that not only no one expects me to chant vedas but have banned me from chanting it. We have british records stating that rhinoplasty was performed on a soldier by a shudra in india during mughal british conflict. During those days, cutting off nose was seen as a great dishonor. That is also why you see many of hindu status are missing their nose in temples during mughal invasion.