The Untouchables - 7

...The Chandals were living a life like animals which is not very different from modern times. They were supposed to live outside the villages and that is where they are still living. The Brahmans were not supposed to touch them and still they do not. They were not allowed to wear good clothes and they are still not. They were not allowed to wear any ornament and they are still not. They were supposed to eat from broken vessels and they are still expected to do it. This is what makes Manusmriti an authentic source to study the social structure of ancient and current Hindu society. And this runs counter to the arguments of many people that the Manusmriti was never relevant...

The Untouchables -6

...According Manusmriti a Brahman should not eat from the vessels which are defiled or contaminated. Here the unclean is different from impure or contamination. The unclean can be cleaned but the impure has to be purified, it cannot be purified by merely a simple act of thorough cleaning. Further an impurity can be introduced by a simple touch of a super clean untouchable. According to Manusmriti a man can become impure due to births and deaths in his families. Further a Brahman is prohibited from taking food from Shudra. This can only be on account on impurities inherent in Shudra because of his impure origin. If the impurity does not spread by touch then here is no reason for a Brahman to not accept the food from any of the Shudra. From impure people comes the impure food which is unsuitable for superior and pure people. It is the fear of becoming impure which is indicated in Manusmriti and an obsession to maintain the purity of Brahmans. The people from whom a Brahman should not accept food are – a carpenter, a usurer, an outcaste, a tailor, a blacksmith, a stage player, a basket maker, a washer man and others. If he happens to take food from such persons then he has to purify himself. The method of purification is that he must fast for three days or must perform some other penance. The garlic, onion and mushroom are not to be eaten by a twice born because they are impure substances. This obsession with purity is overwhelming and not only that it made a living hell out of impure low caste people’s lives. If a twice born eats these things knowingly or deliberately then he has to be made an outcaste. If he does so unknowingly then he only has to purify himself. Therefore there are conditions under which a Brahman can become impure and has to purify himself. This continuous upholding of purity actually led to development of untouchability. There are notions of purity and impurity in Manusmriti along with spread of impurities through touch along with different methods of purifications. The method of purification for a Brahman who has seen impure things is sipping of water and chanting of sacred mantras. So merely seeing impure things can be a source of spread of impurities, touching them ought to be very serious.

A Shudra is not allowed touch the dead of Brahman. Such an act makes ineffective all the offerings made to the manes because they have been contaminated by the touch of Shudra. Thus a certain kind of untouchability exists in the case of Shudra also. In the same vein, the presence of Shudra is not required at the Shraadh ceremony because he may accidentally touch the Brahmanas invited for such an occasion. This will contaminate the Brahmanas and the offerings made to manes. Further the outcastes are impure so they cannot be offered the leftovers of offerings made to God. It seems that untouchability was a logical culmination of this assertion of power through this esteemed and almost divine system of purity and impurity.

Now we come to existence of untouchability in Manusmriti. Untouchability requires that the mere touch of a heathen man can contaminate a pure Varna man requiring his purification. Such a condition is found in case of Chandals who came to be known as scavengers in later times. According to Manusmriti if a Brahman has touched a Chandala then he can become pure by bathing. This makes Chandals a representative of untouchables in Manusmriti. The thing is to be noted that the purification requires not merely sprinkling of water but a full bath. Further, a Brahman should not stay with outcastes, Chandals etc., which again is a practice of untouchability. The Chandals and the outcastes were nearly similar to each other in terms of social treatment meted out to them. The Chandals were offered the remnants of food from a distance which means that going near them was prohibited for the fear of touching them and getting polluted. The food was to be placed at the ground from where they could pick it up. This means that Brahmanas were prohibited from touching Chandals at anytime. But the lawmakers were compassionate enough to throw food at the ground for them. To pick up the food the Chandals had to wait until it was no longer in the hands of twice born. It is also indicated that a pig, a dog and a Chandal must not look at a Brahman while he is eating. It makes Chandals equal to pigs and dog...

The Untouchables -5

...When did the practice come into existence? We have purifier in Rig Veda but not impure people in it. The lawmakers are also not there in it. For this we have to turn to Manusmriti which relate to the period prior to entry of temples into Hindu society. Though the word untouchable (Aspryasya) is not found in Manusmriti, all the signs of untouchability are present it. Manusmriti is dated to a period around 200 BC. It is the period when Manusmriti was finalized but it is most probably related to very early period. There is absence of temples in Manusmriti and the code of conduct regarding temple entry by untouchables. This issue is sufficiently addressed in later smritis. The later dharma Shastras prescribe the purification if an untouchable enters a temple and a suitable freightening punishment is to be meted out to him.

These untouchables keep on entering anywhere they want! Is there not any dharma? They try to enter our temples! We are upper castes and have sacred temples. They cannot enter into them. See our God will be polluted. In the entire world, only we have the gods who could be polluted! The God who can be defiled! We have the most pure God. Even the gods have degree of purity. Nobody else has defilable gods. We have the best religion in the world.

A defilable God! A strange case indeed! There is no such thing as defilable God; the God who can be defiled by the simple presence of a poor human being simply cannot exist by definition. The gods are supposed to protect the weak. But it is not so in Hindu dharma, here they are supposed to protect the strong – the dharma when protected, protects. Manusmriti refers to period when idol worship and temples had not come into existence. There were no idols of great Trinity, Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh. And Vedas were considered to be three in number not four.

Manusmriti relates to time when Atharva was not considered a Veda. It was assigned the status of word of God in later times. The Shudras were not supposed to be engaged in agriculture in the times of Manusmriti but they were allowed to do so in the times of Kautilya’s Arthshastra. Further Kautilya’s Arthshastra speaks about Aryan Shudra on which Manusmriti is silent. Emergence of Aryan Shudra is a later development. Therefore Manusmriti is prior to Kautilya’s Arthshastra.

We can turn to Manusmriti to find the prevailing notions of impurities and purification. According to Manusmriti a twice-born man has to purify himself in order to carry out his religious duties.

For untouchability to exist in Manusmriti, it is necessary that the concepts of purity, impurity along with a method of purification for the contaminated must exist. The idea must exist that the pollution can spread by mere touch...

The Untouchables - 4

...The Brahman being most pure cannot eat impure things, so he cannot eat food given by a Shudra because the food coming from an impure person is bound to be impure. This directly affects the purity of lawmakers. Here is inherent notion that a mere touch of an impure person can make the food impure. So the impurity spreads by touch. The impurity of Shudras and untouchables cannot be removed by any known process of purification. The impurity of untouchables ranks below the impurity of Shudras on account of their unclean jobs. Actually they are the polluting pollutants, spreading pollution by their very presence. This pollution also spreads by touch like the polluting of food by the mere touch by a Shudra.

Another contributory factor to development of untouchability was the system of ostracization. The system of ostracization was put in place to keep in check the recalcitrant members of the society. It was a controlling device of the society without the presence of police. In it there are features of double or multiple power centers in the Hindu society. There was a king, there are scriptures, there were lawmakers who were spiritual and priestly heads and there was a system of ostracization.

The system of ostracization enabled the local caste Panchayats (or Sabhas) or village level caste councils to impose the fines on recalcitrant members of the caste or if required then to ostracize them. Their decisions were binding on all the member of any particular caste in the village. These Panchayats worked on the principle of dharma to conduct their proceedings.

The threat of ostracization was like a hanging sword on the head of any rebelling member. The ostracization meant disinheritance of one’s Varna, land, property and money. And it also meant stoppage of any social or economic transaction with such person. No one from any of the four Varnas could sit, walk, talk or associate with an outcaste in any manner. This put the outcaste in tattered economic conditions. His Varna was snatched from him. He could not marry anybody from his Varna. He could also not profess his Varna occupation. He could not own any land. He could not get protection from king. He could not perform Vedic rites. For all the practical purpose, he did not have any Varna; he became a landless Avarna. The same was the conditions of untouchables. Nobody was willing to sit with him and eat with him. And an atonement was required if somebody unknowingly set with him or did any other such thing. Thus touching him was not allowed since sitting with him was disallowed itself. This is a practice of untouchability. His conditions were equivalent to untouchables which forced him to join the last stratum and take up its jobs...

The Untouchables - 3

...The degrading is also evident from degrading of onion and garlic from eatable to non-eatable category. Same is the case with beef eating. In Rig Vedic times, it enjoyed the place of pride in the food. However with passage of time it was degraded to non-eatable category. Its consumption by any of the four Varna came to be punishable by ostracization.

A further degradation in jobs category gave birth to fifth category which later came to be known as Antyajas or untouchables. This group was not known in later Vedic times but came into existence by the time of Manusmriti. These people dealt with butchering, dead bodies, skinning, garbage cleaning etc. These groups were butchers, skinners and scavengers etc. The butcher deal in selling the meat; the skinners or Chamars dispose the dead bodies of animals; the scavenges or Bhangis clean the city and village streets and dispose excreta. The jobs of Chamars (tanning the animal skins) and Bhangis (disposing human excreta) smell very badly and are really unclean. No one can stand in that environment for a long time. These jobs are really despicable jobs. Then we have a group of jobs which are shunned by people. In addition, since the jobs degrade the man to their level, the people engaged in such jobs are degraded and also shunned. And people go through a purification process after they come into contact with them. So a category was born called untouchables. Generally these people were force to live at the southern end of a village or a city. To maintain the purity of village, city and people belonging to higher Varnas, they were not allowed to stay within the city. It is noticeable that mainly those people were classified as untouchables whose services were not directly needed by the lawmakers, the Brahmanas.

Though untouchability cannot be traced back to Rig Veda, the existence of a purifier is very prominent in it. This purifier is water.

A purifying process, after a contact with an untouchable or his shadow, generally involves taking a bath, sprinkling sacred water on body and inanimate things and chanting Vedic mantras.

Another contributory factor for development of untouchability was to maintain the purity of pious Brahmanas, the lawmaker, who were constantly in touch with the sacred scriptures. If they got impurified then they were not eligible to chant or read the Vedas. So to make themselves eligible to chant and read Vedas and to remain equal to other pure Brahmans they had to purify themselves. If they did not purify themselves then their status within the Brahman community went down. So it was necessary for them to purify themselves every time they became contaminated by touch of a very impure person. One way out of this frequent purification was to direct these people to not to come in touch with them. So these very impure people became untouchables. The society was stretching itself at both the ends...

The Untouchables - 2

...There are some people who argue that untouchability is not a part of Hindu religion, if it is so then one must be reminded that neither Varna nor Santana dharma were part of Rig Vedic society. And even before that there was no Rig Veda itself. Hindu dharma was born with Varna dharma in later Vedic times and with its emphasis on purity of human beings it gave birth to dharmic practice of untouchability. A great dharmic tradition emerged to keep the society purer by keeping the polluted people outside the society.

When one tries to understand untouchability one has to understand the notion of purity and notion of pollution as separate from hygiene and cleanliness. Additionally one has to consider the notion of degrading jobs as separate from inferior jobs. One more thing has to be taken into account is the provision of ostracization to keep the recalcitrant elements in check.

The notion of purity itself comes from the divinity itself. The need to purify oneself comes straight from Rig Veda where water is considered as great purifier. All the religious things and activities are sacred in nature which is a level above pure. The source of purity in Hindu society is in the sacredness of Vedas. The Word of God has to be pure and sacred. The Vedas are the most sacred elements of Hindu religion. Even the temples and idol of gods are of later origin. The temples are manmade but not the Vedas. To handle the sacred and most pure Vedas one has to be pure. Impure people cannot handle Vedas. And in addition those who are preserving Vedas also have to be pure indeed the purest of them all. The presence of notion of purity is not sufficient for untouchability to exist; the notion of pollution and a process of purification is also required.

The notion of pollution comes from the notion of degrading jobs as separate from inferior jobs. The degrading jobs are the inferior jobs which degrade the persons engaged in them. The impure jobs make their performers impure. Then the children of such people get the impurity in inheritance. The notion of degrading jobs came into existence with the introduction of agriculture in Vedic society. The agriculture was known the occupation of defeated people. The Aryans, mixed or unmixed, were the ultimate winners in the struggle between native societies and Vedic societies for the political supremacy in upper north India. It created a mixed society of winners and losers, the superiors and inferiors, the higher and lower, the pure and degraded. The agriculture being the occupation of defeated people was degrading in nature. The impure nature of agriculture is evident in the impure origin of Vaisyas in Purusha sukta of Rig Veda. The Vaisyas were born from thighs which is an impure origin being below the naval. The impure people doing impure jobs were assigned the impure origin. Thus agriculture was a degrading job and this notion developed further with the spread of Vedic culture. Many more jobs were to be classified as degrading or impure. When the main activity was declared impure then how could the minor activities be left behind? They also had to follow the course. Thus all the activities involving manual labor became impure. And some were downgraded to still lower level of untouchable or polluting. Over a period of time even the Vaisya level activities of agriculture and cattle rearing in Vedic times were degrade to Shudra level. The pure Brahmans cannot take food from the impure Shudras. The impurity of Shudra is evident from their impure origin of being born from feet and lacking eligibility for thread ceremony...

The Untouchables -1

...The practice of untouchability is an integral part of Hindu society. Most importantly it asserts the divine purity and superiority of upper castes. A very big portion of Hindu society belongs to the category of untouchables. These are the people whose touch or their shadow’s touch is enough to pollute a man of higher strata requiring a purification process which includes usually taking bath and other atonement activities. Additionally it may also entail gross invectives used against these people and if desired then a corporal punishment. It all depends on the mood of upper castes but punishment is imminent. The mildest form is the reprimand. The severity may also depend on mood of upper caste and it may include dishonoring untouchable women and killing of males. It seems that the untouchables are always living under a low intensity hidden one-sided war, which raises its cruel face whenever it wants. It is similar to a war because dishonoring the women and killing of the males are the characteristics of a war. This war is waged by the landed castes on behalf of the lawmakers and dharma. Deeply entrenched in religious and social system they kill and oppress the poor untouchables for not doing their biddings.

These people, the untouchables, do not belong to any of the four Varnas though they have the jati system similar to the four Varnas. When the practice of untouchability came into existence, the Vedas had already been finalized and Purusha sukta of Rig Veda had become final word on the origin of Varnas, the Word from the mouth of the God himself, indeed. To add these people to Varna system required addition of one more Varna to Vedic society. However the number of Varnas had already been restricted to four. The creation of fifth Varna required alternation to Vedas and especially of Rig Veda which no mortal was allowed to do so. How could a mere mortal change the Word of God? But a fifth group had come in existence because of downgrading of certain occupations like butchering, skinning and scavenging to the lower unclean level by the pious and pure lawmakers – as a measure of infinite compassion of lawmakers. Further additions to this group were made through practice of ostracization. The ostracized and disinherited people were straightforwardly downgraded to the fifth stratum. Ostracization meant disinheritance of Varna and of ancestral property. This fifth group consisted of people from upper castes who were made outcastes and the Shudras whose occupation was downgraded keeping in view the increasing purity of the Sanatana dharma. All of them had to take the unclean jobs to sustain themselves. These jobs were not done by twice born or Shudras. The fifth stratum people were considered different form Shudras and given the lowest status in the society. This group of occupations and people related to it had to be given a name. So these people were given the name the Antayaj meaning the group that was born after all the other groups (Varnas) in the Vedic society or the last-born. They were assigned origin more impure than that of Shudras and hence the lowest status in the society. These people were allowed to live at the fringes of villages or out of it; which meant that they were consigned to live at the periphery of the society itself. They were more impure than Shudras because Varnas were born in a purity wise sequence. The purest were born earlier than all the others. And the rest followed in the order of purity. Those who were later in the sequence were relatively less pure or relatively more impure...