  Starting from a weak gauge principle we give a new and critical revision of
the argument leading to charge quantization on arbitrary spacetimes. The main
differences of our approach with respect to previous works appear on spacetimes
with non trivial torsion elements on its second integral cohomology group. We
show that in these spacetimes there can be topologically non-trivial
configurations of charged fields which do not imply charge quantization.
However, the existence of a non-exact electromagnetic field always implies the
quantization of charges. Another consequence of the theory for spacetimes with
torsion is the fact that it gives rise to two natural quantization units that
could be identified with the electric quantization unit (realized inside the
quarks) and with the electron charge. In this framework the color charge can
have a topological origin, with the number of colors being related to the order
of the torsion subgroup. Finally, we discuss the possibility that the
quantization of charge may be due to a weak non-exact component of the
electromagnetic field extended over cosmological scales.
