THE ANNIHILATION OF CASTE
Prologue [How this speech came to be composed—and not delivered]
[1:]
On December 12, 1935, I received the following letter from Mr. Sant Ram, the
Secretary of the Jat-Pat-Todak Mandal:
My dear Doctor Saheb,
Many thanks
for your kind letter of the 5th December. I have released it for press without
your permission for which I beg your pardon, as I saw no harm in giving it
publicity. You are a great thinker, and it is my well-considered opinion that
none else has studied the problem of Caste so deeply as you have. I have always
benefited myself and our Mandal from your ideas. I have explained and preached
it in the Kranti many times and I have even lectured on it in many Conferences.
I am now very anxious to read the exposition of your new formula—"It is
not possible to break Caste without annihilating the religious notions on which
it, the Caste system, is founded." Please do explain it at length at your
earliest convenience, so that we may take up the idea and emphasise it from
press and platform. At present, it is not fully clear to me.
* * * * *
Our
Executive Committee persists in having you as our President for our Annual
Conference. We can change our dates to accommodate your convenience.
Independent Harijans of Punjab are very much desirous to meet you and discuss
with you their plans. So if you kindly accept our request and come to Lahore to
preside over the Conference it will serve double purpose. We will invite
Harijan leaders of all shades of opinion and you will get an opportunity of
giving your ideas to them.
The Mandal
has deputed our Assistant Secretary, Mr. Indra Singh, to meet you at Bombay in
Xmas and discuss with you the whole situation with a view to persuade you to
please accept our request.
* * * * *
[2:] The Jat-Pat-Todak Mandal I
was given to understand to be an organization of Caste Hindu Social Reformers,
with the one and only aim, namely, to eradicate the Caste System from amongst
the Hindus. As a rule, I do not like to take any part in a movement which is
carried on by the Caste Hindus. Their attitude towards social reform is so
different from mine that I have found it difficult to pull on with them.
Indeed, I find their company quite uncongenial to me on account of our
differences of opinion. Therefore when the Mandal first approached me, I
declined their invitation to preside. The Mandal, however, would not take a
refusal from me, and sent down one of its members to Bombay to press me to
accept the invitation. In the end I agreed to preside. The Annual Conference
was to be held at Lahore, the headquarters of the Mandal. The Conference was to
meet at Easter, but was subsequently postponed to the middle of May 1936.
[3:] The
Reception Committee of the Mandal has now cancelled the Conference. The notice
of cancellation came long after my Presidential address had been printed. The
copies of this address are now lying with me. As I did not get an opportunity
to deliver the address from the presidential chair, the public has not had an
opportunity to know my views on the problems created by the Caste System. To
let the public know them, and also to dispose of the printed copies which are
lying on my hand, I have decided to put the printed copies of the address in
the market. The accompanying pages contain the text of that address.
[4:] The public will be curious to know what led to the cancellation
of my appointment as the President of the Conference. At the start, a dispute
arose over the printing of the address. I desired that the address should be
printed in Bombay. The Mandal wished that it should be printed in Lahore, on
the grounds of economy. I did not agree, and insisted upon having it printed in
Bombay. Instead of their agreeing to my proposition, I received a letter signed
by several members of the Mandal, from which I give the following extract:
27-3-36
Revered Dr. Ji,
Your letter
of the 24th instant addressed to Sjt. Sant Ram has been shown to us. We were a
little disappointed to read it. Perhaps you are not fully aware of the
situation that has arisen here. Almost all the Hindus in the Punjab are against
your being invited to this province. The Jat-Pat-Todak Mandal has been
subjected to the bitterest criticism and has received censorious rebuke from
all quarters. All the Hindu leaders among whom being Bhai Parmanand, M.L.A.
(Ex-President, Hindu Maha Sabha), Mahatma Hans Raj, Dr. Gokal Chand Narang,
Minister for Local Self-Government, Raja Narendra Nath, M.L.C. etc., have
dissociated themselves from this step of the Mandal.
Despite all
this the runners of the Jat-Pat-Todak Mandal (the leading figure being Sjt.
Sant Ram) are determined to wade through thick and thin but would not give up
the idea of your presidentship. The Mandal has earned a bad name.
* * * * *
Under the
circumstances it becomes your duty to co-operate with the Mandal. On the one
hand, they are being put to so much trouble and hardship by the Hindus and if
on the other hand you too augment their difficulties it will be a most sad
coincidence of bad luck for them.
We hope you will think over the matter and do
what is good for us all.
* * * * *
[5:] This letter
puzzled me greatly. I could not understand why the Mandal should displease me,
for the sake of a few rupees, in the matter of printing the address. Secondly,
I could not believe that men like Sir Gokal Chand Narang had really resigned as
a protest against my selection as President, because I had received the
following letter from Sir Gokal Chand himself:
Lahore, 7-2-36
Dear Doctor Ambedkar,
I am glad to
learn from the workers of the Jat-Pat-Todak Mandal that you have agreed to
preside at their next anniversary to be held at Lahore during the Easter
holidays, it will give me much pleasure if you stay with me while you are at
Lahore. More when we meet.
Yours sincerely,
G. C. Narang
[6:] Whatever be the truth, I did
not yield to this pressure. But even when the Mandal found that I was insisting
upon having my address printed in Bombay, instead of agreeing to my proposal
the Mandal sent me a wire that they were sending Mr. Har Bhagwan to Bombay to
"talk over matters personally." Mr. Har Bhagwan came to Bombay on the
9th of April. When I met Mr. Har Bhagwan, I found that he had nothing to say
regarding the issue. Indeed he was so unconcerned regarding the printing of the
address—whether it should be printed in Bombay or in Lahore—that he did not
even mention it in the course of our conversation.
[7:] All that he was anxious for was to know the contents of the
address. I was then convinced that in getting the address printed in Lahore, the
main object of the Mandal was not to save money but to get at the contents of
the address. I gave him a copy. He did not feel very happy with some parts of
it. He returned to Lahore. From Lahore, he wrote to me the following letter:
Lahore
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April
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14, 1936
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My dear Doctor Sahib,
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Since
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my arrival
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from
Bombay,
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on
the 12th,
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I
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have
been indisposed
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owing
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to my
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having not
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slept
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continuously for 5 or
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6
nights, which were
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spent
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in the
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train.
Reaching
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here
I
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came
to know
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that you had come to
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Amritsar. I would
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have
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seen
you there if I
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were
well enough to go
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about.
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I have
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made over
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your
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address
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to Mr. Sant
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Ram
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for
translation and
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he has
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liked it
very much, but he is not sure whether it could be translated by him for
printing before the 25th. In any case, it woud have a wide publicity and we are
sure it would wake the Hindus up from their slumber.
The passage
I pointed out to you at Bombay has been read by some of our friends with a
little misgiving, and those of us who would like to see the Conference
terminate without any untoward incident would prefer that at least the word
"Veda" be left out for the time being. I leave this to your good
sense. I hope, however, in your concluding paragraphs you will make it clear
that the views expressed in the address are your own and that the
responsibility does not lie on the Mandal. I hope you will not mind this
statement of mine and would let us have 1,000 copies of the address, for which
we shall, of course, pay. To this effect I have sent you a telegram today. A
cheque of Rs. 100 is enclosed herewith which kindly acknowledge, and send us
your bills in due time.
I have
called a meeting of the Reception Committee and shall communicate their
decision to you immediately. In the meantime kindly accept my
heartfelt thanks for the kindness
shown to me and the great pains taken by you in the preparation of your
address. You have really put us under a heavy debt of gratitude.
Yours sincerely,
Har Bhagwan
P.S.— Kindly
send the copies of the address by passenger train as soon as it is printed, so
that copies may be sent to the Press for publication.
[8:] Accordingly I handed over my
manuscript to the printer with an order to print 1,000 copies. Eight days
later, I received another letter from Mr. Har Bhagwan which I reproduce below:
Lahore, 22-4-36
Dear Dr. Ambedkar,
We are in
receipt of your telegram and letter, for which kindly accept our thanks. In
accordance with your desire, we have again postponed our Conference, but feel
that it would have been much better to have it on the 25th and 26th, as the
weather is growing warmer and warmer every day in the Punjab. In the middle of
May it would be fairly hot, and the sittings in the day time would not be very
pleasant and comfortable. However, we shall try our best to do all we can to
make things as comfortable as possible, if it is held in the middle of May.
There is,
however, one thing that we have been compelled to bring to your kind attention.
You will remember that when I pointed out to you the misgivings entertained by
some of our people regarding your declaration on the subject of change of
religion, you told me that it was undoubtedly outside the scope of the Mandal
and that you had no intention to say anything from our platform in that
connection. At the same time when the manuscript of your address was handed to
me you assured me that that was the main portion of your address and that there
were only two or three concluding paragraphs that you wanted to add. On receipt
of the second instalment of your address we have been taken by surprise, as
that would make it so lengthy, that we are afraid, very few people would read
the whole of it. Besides that you have more than once stated in your address
that you had decided to walk out of the fold of the Hindus and that that was
your last address as a Hindu. You have also unnecessarily attacked the morality
and reasonableness of the Vedas and other religious books of the Hindus, and
have at length dwelt upon the technical side of Hindu religion, which has
absolutely no connection with the problem at issue, so much so that some of the
passages have become irrelevant and off the point. We would have been very
pleased if you had confined your address to that portion given to me, or if an
addition was necessary, it would have been limited to what you had written on
Brahminism etc. The last portion which deals with the complete annihilation of
Hindu religion and doubts the morality of the sacred books of the Hindus as
well as a hint about your intention to leave the Hindu fold does not seem to me
to be relevant.
I
would therefore most humbly request you on behalf of the people responsible for
the Conference to leave out the passages referred to above, and close the
address with what was given to me or add a few paragraphs on Brahminism. We
doubt the wisdom of making the address unnecessarily provocative and pinching.
There are several of us who subscribe to your feelings and would very much want
to be under your banner for remodelling of the Hindu religion. If you had
decided to get together persons of your cult I can assure you a large number
would have joined your army of reformers from the Punjab.
In fact, we
thought you would give us a lead in the destruction of the evil of caste
system, especially when you have studied the subject so thoroughly, and
strengthen our hands by bringing about a revolution and making yourself as a
nucleus in the gigantic effort, but declaration of the nature made by you when
repeated loses its power, and becomes a hackneyed term. Under the
circumstances, I would request you to consider the whole matter and make your
address more effective by saying that you would be glad to take a leading part
in the destruction of the caste system if the Hindus are willing to work in
right earnest toward that end, even if they had to forsake their kith and kin
and the religious notions. In case you do so, I am sanguine that you would find
a ready response from the Punjab in such an endeavour.
I shall be
grateful if you will help us at this juncture as we have already undergone much
expenditure and have been put to suspense, and let us know by the return of
post that you have condescended to limit your address as above. In case, you
still insist upon the printing of the address in toto, we very much regret it
would not be possible—rather advisable for us to hold the Conference, and would
prefer to postpone it sine die, although by doing so we shall be losing
the goodwill of the
people because of
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the
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repeated postponements. We should, however,
like
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to point out
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that
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you
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have
carved
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a niche
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in our hearts by writing such
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a wonderful treatise on the
caste
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system,
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which excels all other
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treatises so
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far
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written
and will
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prove to be a valuable heritage, so to
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say. We shall be ever
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indebted
to
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you for
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the pains taken by you in its
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preparation.
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Thanking you very much for your kindness and
with best wishes.
I am, yours sincerely,
Har Bhagwan
[9:]
To this letter I sent the following reply :
27th April 1936
Dear Mr. Har Bhagwan,
I am in
receipt of your letter of the 22nd April. I note with regret that the Reception
Commitiee of the Jat-Pat-Todak Mandal "would prefer to postpone the
Conference sine die" if I insisted upon printing the
address in toto. In reply I have to
inform you that I also would prefer to have the Conference cancelled—I do not
like to use vague terms—if the Mandal insisted upon having my address pruned to
suit its circumstances. You may not like my decision. But I cannot give up, for
the sake of the honour of presiding over the Conference, the liberty which
every President must have in the preparation of the address. I cannot give up,
for the sake of pleasing the Mandal, the duty which every President owes to the
Conference over which he presides, to give it a lead which he thinks right and
proper. The issue is one of principle, and I feel I must do nothing to
compromise it in any way.
I would not have entered into any controversy as regards the
propriety of the decision taken by the Reception Committee. But as you have
given certain reasons which appear to throw the blame on me, I am bound to
answer them. In the first place, I must dispel the notion that the views
contained in that part of the address to which objection has been taken by the
Committee have come to the Mandal as a surprise. Mr. Sant Ram, I am sure, will
bear me out when I say that in reply to one of his letters I had said that the
real method of breaking up the Caste System was not to bring about inter-caste
dinners and inter-caste marriages but to destroy the religious notions on which
Caste was founded, and that Mr. Sant Ram in return asked me to explain what he
said was a novel point of view. It was in response to this invitation from Mr.
Sant Ram that I thought I ought to elaborate in my address what I had stated in
a sentence in my letter to him. You cannot, therefore, say that the views
expressed are new. At any rate, they are not new to Mr. Sant Ram, who is the
moving spirit and the leading light of your Mandal. But I go further and say
that I wrote this part of my address not merely because I felt it desirable to
do so. I wrote it because I thought that it was absolutely necessary to
complete the argument. I am amazed to read that you characterize the portion of
the speech to which your Committee objects as "irrelevant and off the
point." You will allow me to say that I am a lawyer and I know the rules
of relevancy as well as any member of your Committee. I most emphatically
maintain that the portion objected to is not only most relevant but is also
important. It is in that part of the address that I have discussed the ways and
means of breaking up the Caste System. It may be that the conclusion I have
arrived at as to the best method of destroying Caste is startling and painful.
You are entitled to say that my analysis is wrong. But you cannot say that in
an address which deals with the problem of Caste it is not o pen to me to
discuss how Caste can be destroyed.
Your other complaint relates to the length of the address. I
have pleaded guilty to the charge in the address itself. But who is really
responsible for this? I fear you have come rather late on the scene. Otherwise
you would have known that originally I had planned to write a short address,
for my own convenience, as I had neither the time nor the energy to engage
myself in the preparation of an elaborate thesis. It was the Mandal which asked
me to deal with the subject exhaustively, and it was the Mandal which sent down
to me a list of questions relating to the Caste System and asked me to answer
them in the body of my address,
as
they were questions which were often raised in the controversy between the
Mandal and its opponents, and which the Mandal found difficult to answer
satisfactorily. It was in trying to meet the wishes of the Mandal in this
respect that the address has grown to the length to which it has. In view of what
I have said, I am sure you will agree that the fault respecting the length of
the address is not mine.
I did not expect that your Mandal would be so upset because I
have spoken of the destruction of Hindu Religion. I thought it was only fools
who were afraid of words. But lest there should be any misapprehension in the
minds of the people, I have taken great pains to explain what I mean by
religion and destruction of religion. I am sure that nobody, on reading my
address, could possibly misunderstand me. That your Mandal should have taken a
fright at mere words as "destruction of religion etc.,"
notwithstanding the explanation that accompanies .them, does not raise the
Mandal in my estimation. One cannot have any respect or regard for men who take
the position of the Reformer and then refuse even to see the logical
consequences of that position, let alone following them out in action.
You will agree that I have never accepted to be limited in any
way in the preparation of my address, and the question as to what the address
should or should not contain was never even discussed between myself and the
Mandal. I had always taken for granted that I was free to express in the
address such views as I held on the subject. Indeed, until you came to Bombay
on the 9th April, the Mandal did not know what sort of an address I was
preparing. It was when you came to Bombay that I voluntarily told you that I
had no desire to use your platform from which to advocate my views regarding
change of religion by the Depressed Classes. I think I have scrupulously kept
that promise in the preparation of the address. Beyond a passing reference of
an indirect character where I say that "I am sorry I will not be here. . .
etc." I have said nothing about the subject in my address. When I see you
object even to such a passing and so indirect a reference, I feel bound to ask,
did you think that in agreeing to preside over your Conference I would be
agreeing to suspend or to give up my views regarding change of faith by the
Depressed Classes? If you did think so, I must tell you that I am in no way
responsible for such a mistake on your part. If any of you had even hinted to
me that in exchange for the honour you were doing me by electing as President,
I was to abjure my faith in my programme of conversion, I would have told you
in quite plain terms that I cared more for my faith than for any honour from
you.
After your letter of the 14th, this letter of yours comes as a
surprize to me. I am sure that any one who reads them [both] will feel the
same. I cannot account for this sudden volte face on the part of the
Reception Committee. There is no difference in substance between the rough
draft which was before the Committee when you wrote your letter of the 14th,
and the final draft on which the decision of the Committee communicated to me
in your letter under reply was taken. You cannot point out a single new idea in
the final draft which is not contained in the earlier
draft.
The ideas are the same. The only difference is that they have been worked out
in greater detail in the final draft. If there was anything to object to in the
address, you could have said so on the 14th. But you did not. On the contrary,
you asked me to print off 1,000 copies, leaving me the liberty to accept or not
the verbal changes which you suggested. Accordingly I got 1,000 copies printed,
which are now lying with me. Eight days later you write to say that you object
to the address and that if it is not amended the Conference will be cancelled.
You ought to have known that there was no hope of any alteration being made in
the address. I told you when you were in Bombay that I would not alter a comma,
that I would not allow any censorship over my address, and that you would have
to accept the address as it came from me. I also told you that the
responsibility. for the views expressed in the address was entirely mine, and
if they were not liked by the Conference I would not mind at all if the
Conference passed a resolution condemning them. So anxious was I to relieve
your Mandal from having to assume responsibility for my views—and also with the
object of not getting myself entangled by too intimate an association with your
Conference—I suggested to you that I desired to have my address treated as a
sort of an inaugural address and not as a Presidential address, and that the
Mandal should find some one else to preside over the Conference and deal with
the resolutions. Nobody could have been better placed to take a decision on the
14th than your Committee. The Committee failed to do that, and in the meantime
cost of printing has been incurred which, I am sure, with a little more
firmness on the part of your Committee, could have been saved.
I feel sure
that the views expressed in my address have little to do with the decision of
your Committee. I have reason to believe that my presence at the Sikh Prachar
Conference held at Amritsar has had a good deal to do with the decision of the
Committee. Nothing else can satisfactorily explain the sudden volte face shown
by the Committee between the 14th and the 22nd April. I must not however
prolong this controversy, and must request you to announce immediately that the
Session of the Conference which was to meet under my Presidentship is
cancelled. All the grace [period] has by now run out, and I shall not consent
to preside, even if your Committee agreed to accept my address as it is, in
toto. I thank you for your appreciation of the pains I have taken in the
preparation of the address. I certainly have profited by the labour, [even] if
no one else does. My only regret is that I was put
to
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such
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hard labour at a time when my health was not
equal to the strain
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it
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has
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caused.
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Yours sincerely,
B. R. Ambedkar
[10:] This correspondence will
disclose the reasons which have led to the cancellation by the Mandal of my
appointment as President, and the reader will be in a position to lay the blame
where it ought properly to belong. This is I believe the first time when the
appointment of a President is cancelled by the Reception Committee because it
does not approve of the views of the President. But whether that is so or not,
this is certainly the first time in my life to have been invited to preside
over a Conference of Caste Hindus. I am sorry that it has ended in a tragedy.
But what can anyone expect from a
relationship so tragic as the relationship
between the reforming sect of Caste Hindus and the self-respecting sect of
Untouchables, where the former have no desire to alienate their orthodox
fellows, and the latter have no alternative but to insist upon reform being
carried out?
B.
R. AMBEDKAR
Rajgriha,
Dadar, Bombay 14
15th
May 1936
Preface to the Second Edition [1937]
[1:] The speech prepared by me for the Jat-Pat-Todak Mandal of Lahore
has had an astonishingly warm reception from the Hindu public for whom
it was primarily intended. The English edition of one thousand five hundred
copies was exhausted within two months of its publication. It is has been
translated into Gujarati and Tamil. It is being translated into Marathi,
Hindi, Punjabi and Malayalam. The demand for the English text still continues
unabated. To satisfy this demand it has become necessary to issue a Second
Edition. Considerations of history and effectiveness of appeal have led me to
retain the original form of the essay—namely, the speech form—although I was
asked to recast it in the form of a direct narrative.
[2:] To this edition I have added two appendices. I have collected in
Appendix I the two articles written by Mr. Gandhi by way of review of my speech
in the Harijan, and his letter to Mr. Sant Ram, a member of the
Jat-Pat-Todak Mandal.
[3:] In Appendix II, I have printed my views in reply to the articles
of Mr. Gandhi collected in Appendix I. Besides Mr. Gandhi, many others have
adversely criticised my views as expressed in my speech. But I have felt that
in taking notice of such adverse comments, I should limit myself to Mr. Gandhi.
This I have done not because what he has said is so weighty as to deserve a
reply, but because to many a Hindu he is an oracle, so great that when
he opens his lips it is expected that the argument must close and no dog must
bark.
[4:] But the world owes much to
rebels who would dare to argue in the face of the pontiff and insist that he is
not infallible. I do not care about the credit which every progressive society
must give to its rebels. I shall be satisfied if I make the Hindus realize
that they are the sick men of India, and that their sickness is causing danger
to the health and happiness of other Indians.
B.
R. AMBEDKAR
Preface to the Third Edition [1944]
[1:] The Second Edition of this Essay appeared in 1937, and was
exhausted within a very short period. A new edition has been in demand for a
long time. It was my intention to recast the essay so as to incorporate into it
another essay of mine called "Castes in India, their Origin and their
Mechanism," which appeared in the issue of the Indian Antiquary Journal
for May 1917. But as I could not find time, and as there is very little
prospect of my being able to do so, and as the demand for it from the public is
very insistent, I am content to let this be a mere reprint of the Second
Edition.
[2:] I am glad to find that this essay has become so popular, and I
hope that it will serve the purpose for which it was intended.
B.
R. AMBEDKAR 22, Prithwiraj Road New Delhi
1st
December 1944
1 [Introduction—why I am an unlikely President for this Conference]
[1:]
Friends,
I am really sorry for the members of the Jat-Pat-Todak Mandal
who have so very kindly invited me to preside over this Conference. I am sure
they will be asked many questions for having selected me as the President. The
Mandal will be asked to explain as to why it has imported a man from Bombay
to preside over a function which is held in Lahore. I believe the Mandal
could easily have found someone better qualified than myself to preside on the
occasion. I have criticised the Hindus. I have questioned the authority
of the Mahatma whom they revere. They hate me. To them I am a snake in
their garden. The Mandal will no doubt be asked by the politically-minded
Hindus to explain why it has called me to fill this place of honour. It is an
act of great daring. I shall not be surprized if some political Hindus regard
it as an insult. This selection of me certainly cannot please the ordinary
religiously-minded Hindus.
[2:] The Mandal may be asked to explain why it has disobeyed the
Shastric injunction in selecting the President. According to the Shastras,
the Brahmin is appointed to be the Guru for the three Varnas,
, is
a direction of the Shastras. The Mandal therefore knows from whom a Hindu
should take his lessons and from whom he should not. The Shastras do not permit
a Hindu to accept anyone as his Guru merely because he is well-versed. This is
made very clear by Ramdas, a Brahmin saint from Maharashtra, who
is alleged to have inspired Shivaji to establish a Hindu Raj. In
his Dasbodh, a socio-politico-religious treatise in Marathi verse,
Ramdas asks, addressing the Hindus, can we accept an Antyaja to
be our Guru because he is a Pandit (i.e. learned)? He gives an answer in
the negative.
[3:] What replies to give to
these questions is a matter which I must leave to the Mandal. The Mandal knows
best the reasons which led it to travel to Bombay to select a president,
to fix upon a man so repugnant to the Hindus, and to descend so low in the
scale as to select an Antyaja—an untouchable— to address an
audience of the Savarnas. As for myself, you will allow me to say that I
have accepted the invitation much against my will, and also against the will of
many of my fellow untouchables. I know that the Hindus are sick of me. I
know that I am not a persona grata [=someone welcome] with them. Knowing
all this, I have deliberately kept myself away from them. I have no desire to
inflict myself upon them. I have been giving expression to my views from my own
platform. This has already caused a great deal of heart-burning and irritation.
[4:] I have no desire to ascend the platform of the Hindus, to
do within their sight what I have been doing within their hearing. If I am here
it is because of your choice and not because of my wish. Yours is a cause of
social reform. That cause has always made an appeal to me, and it is because of
this that I felt I ought not to refuse an opportunity of helping the
cause—especially when you think that I can help it. Whether what I am going to
say today will help you in any way to solve the problem you are grappling with,
is for you to judge. All I hope to do is to place before you my views on the
problem.
2 [Why social reform is necessary for political reform]
[1:] The path of social reform, like the path to heaven (at any rate,
in India), is strewn with many difficulties. Social reform in India has few
friends and many critics. The critics fall into two distinct classes. One class
consists of political reformers, and the other of the Socialists.
[2:] It was at one time recognized that without
social efficiency, no permanent progress in the other fields of activity was
possible; that owing to mischief wrought by evil customs, Hindu Society
was not in a state of efficiency; and that ceaseless efforts must be made to
eradicate these evils. It was due to the recognition of this fact that the
birth of the National Congress was accompanied by the foundation of the
Social Conference. While the Congress was concerned with defining
the weak points in the political organisation of the country, the Social
Conference was engaged in removing the weak points in the social organisation
of the Hindu Society. For some time the Congress and the Conference worked as
two wings of one common activity, and they held their annual sessions in the
same pandal.
[3:] But soon the two wings
developed into two parties, a 'political reform party' and a 'social reform
party', between whom there raged a fierce controversy. The 'political reform
party' supported the National Congress, and the 'social reform party'
supported the Social Conference. The two bodies thus became two hostile
camps. The point at issue was whether social reform should precede political
reform. For a decade the forces were evenly balanced, and the battle was fought
without victory to either side.
[4:] It was, however, evident that the fortunes of the Social
Conference were ebbing fast. The gentlemen who presided over the sessions
of the Social Conference lamented that the majority of the educated Hindus
were for political advancement and indifferent to social reform; and that while
the number of those who attended the Congress was very large, and the number
who did not attend but who sympathized with it was even larger, the number of
those who attended the Social Conference was very much smaller.
[5:] This indifference, this thinning of its ranks, was soon followed
by active hostility from the politicians. Under the leadership of the late Mr.
Tilak, the courtesy with which the Congress allowed the Social
Conference the use of its pandal was withdrawn, and the spirit of
enmity went to such a pitch that when the Social Conference desired to erect
its own pandal, a threat to burn the pandal was held out by its
opponents. Thus in the course of time the party in favour of political reform
won, and the Social Conference vanished and was forgotten.
[6:] The speech delivered by Mr. W. C. Bonnerji in 1892 at Allahabad,
as President of the eighth session of the Congress, sounds like a funeral
oration on the death of the Social Conference, and is so typical of the
Congress attitude that I venture to quote from it the following extract. Mr.
Bonnerji said:
"I for
one have no patience with those who say we shall not be fit for political
reform until we reform our social system. I fail to see any connection between
the two. . .Are we not fit (for political reform) because our widows remain
unmarried and our girls are given in marriage earlier than in other countries?
because our wives and daughters do not drive about with us visiting our
friends? because we do not send our daughters to Oxford and Cambridge?"
(Cheers [from the audience])
[7:] I have stated the case for political reform as put by Mr.
Bonnerji. There were many who were happy that the victory went to the Congress.
But those who believe in the importance of social reform may ask, is an
argument such as that of Mr. Bonnerji final? Does it prove that the victory
went to those who were in the right? Does it prove conclusively that social
reform has no bearing on political reform? It will help us to understand the
matter if I state the other side of the case. I will draw upon the treatment of
the untouchables for my facts.
[8:] Under the rule of the Peshwas in the Maratha
country, the untouchable was not allowed to use the public streets if a Hindu
was coming along, lest he should pollute the Hindu by his shadow. The
untouchable was required to have a black thread either on his wrist or around
his neck, as a sign or a mark to prevent the Hindus from getting
themselves polluted by his touch by mistake. In Poona, the capital of the
Peshwa, the untouchable was required to carry, strung from his waist, a broom
to sweep away from behind himself the dust he trod on, lest a Hindu walking on
the same dust should be polluted. In Poona, the untouchable was required
to carry an earthen pot hung around his neck wherever he went—for holding his
spit, lest his spit falling on the earth should pollute a Hindu who might
unknowingly happen to tread on it.
[9:]
Let me take more recent facts. The tyranny practised by the Hindus upon
the Balais, an untouchable community in Central India, will serve
my purpose. You will find a report of this in the Times of India of 4th
January 1928. The correspondent of the Times of India reported that high-caste
Hindus—viz., Kalotas, Rajputs and Brahmins, including the Patels
and Patwaris of the villages of Kanaria, Bicholi-Hafsi, Bicholi-Mardana,
and about 15 other villages in the Indore district (of the Indore
State)—informed the Balais of their respective villages that if they wished
to live among them, they must conform to the following rules:
1.
Balais must not wear gold-lace-bordered pugrees.
2.
They must not wear dhotis with coloured or
fancy borders.
3. They must convey intimation [=information] of the death of any Hindu
to relatives of the deceased—no matter how far away these relatives may be
living.
4.
In all Hindu marriages, Balais must play music
before the processions and during the marriage.
5.
Balai women must not wear gold or silver
ornaments; they must not wear fancy gowns or jackets.
6.
Balai women must attend all cases of confinement
[= childbirth] of Hindu women.
7. Balais must render services without demanding remuneration, and must
accept whatever a Hindu is pleased to give.
8.
If the Balais do not agree to abide by these
terms, they must clear out of the villages.
[10:] The Balais refused to comply; and the Hindu element
proceeded against them. Balais were not allowed to get water from the village
wells; they were not allowed to let go their cattle to graze. Balais were
prohibited from passing through land owned by a Hindu, so that if the field of
a Balai was surrounded by fields owned by Hindus, the Balai could have no
access to his own field. The Hindus also let their cattle graze down the fields
of Balais. The Balais submitted petitions to the Darbar[= Court of Indore]
against these persecutions; but as they could get no timely relief, and the
oppression continued, hundreds of Balais with their wives and children were
obliged to abandon their homes—in which their ancestors had lived for
generations—and to migrate to adjoining States: that is, to villages in Dhar,
Dewas, Bagli, Bhopal, Gwalior and other States.
What happened to them in their new homes may for the present be left out of our
consideration.
[11:] The incident at Kavitha in Gujarat happened only last
year. The Hindus of Kavitha ordered the untouchables not to
insist upon sending their children to the common village school maintained by
Government. What sufferings the untouchables of Kavitha had to undergo, for
daring to exercise a civic right against the wishes of the Hindus, is too well
known to need detailed description. Another instance occurred in the village of
Zanu, in the Ahmedabad district of Gujarat. In November 1935 some
untouchable women of well-to-do families started fetching water in metal pots.
The Hindus looked upon the use of metal pots by untouchables as an
affront to their dignity, and assaulted the untouchable women for their
impudence.
[12:] A most recent event is reported from the village of Chakwara in Jaipur
State. It seems from the reports that have appeared in the newspapers that
an untouchable of Chakwara who had returned from a pilgrimage had
arranged to give a dinner to his fellow untouchables of the village, as
an act of religious piety. The host desired to treat the guests to a sumptuous
meal, and the items served included ghee (butter) also. But while the assembly
of untouchables was engaged in partaking of the food, the Hindus
in their hundreds, armed with lathis, rushed to the scene, despoiled the
food, and belaboured the untouchables—who left the food they had been served
with and ran away for their lives. And why was this murderous assault committed
on defenceless untouchables? The reason given is that the untouchable host was
impudent enough to serve ghee, and his untouchable guests were foolish enough
to taste it. Ghee is undoubtedly a luxury for the rich. But no one would think
that consumption of ghee was a mark of high social status. The Hindus of
Chakwara thought otherwise, and in righteous indignation avenged themselves for
the wrong done to them by the untouchables, who insulted them by treating ghee
as an item of their food—which they ought to have known could not be theirs,
consistently with the dignity of the Hindus. This means that an untouchable
must not use ghee, even if he can afford to buy it, since it is an act of
arrogance towards the Hindus. This happened on or about the 1st of April 1936!
[13:] Having stated the facts, let me now state the case for social
reform. In doing this, I will follow Mr. Bonnerji as nearly as I can,
and ask the political-minded Hindus, "Are you fit for political power even
though you do not allow a large
class
of your own countrymen like the untouchables to use public schools? Are
you fit for political power even though you do not allow them the use of public
wells? Are you fit for political power even though you do not allow them the
use of public streets? Are you fit for political power even though you do not
allow them to wear what apparel or ornaments they like? Are you fit for
political power even though you do not allow them to eat any food they
like?" I can ask a string of such questions. But these will suffice.
[14:] I wonder what would have been the reply of Mr. Bonnerji. I am
sure no sensible man will have the courage to give an affirmative answer. Every
Congressman who repeats the dogma of Mill that one country is not fit to
rule another country, must admit that one class is not fit to rule another
class. How is it then that the 'social reform party' lost the battle? To
understand this correctly it is necessary to take note of the kind of social
reform which the reformers were agitating for. In this connection it is
necessary to make a distinction between social reform in the sense of the
reform of the Hindu family, and social reform in the sense of the
reorganization and reconstruction of the Hindu Society. The former has a
relation to widow remarriage, child marriage, etc., while the latter relates to
the abolition of the Caste System.
[15:] The Social Conference
was a body which mainly concerned itself with the reform of the high-caste Hindu
family. It consisted mostly of enlightened high-caste Hindus who did not
feel the necessity for agitating for the abolition of Caste, or had not the
courage to agitate for it. They felt quite naturally a greater urge to remove
such evils as enforced widowhood, child marriages, etc.—evils which prevailed
among them and which were personally felt by them. They did not stand up for
the reform of the Hindu Society. The battle that was fought centered round the
question of the reform of the family. It did not relate to social reform in the
sense of the break-up of the Caste System. It [=the break-up of the
Caste System] was never put in issue by the reformers. That is the reason why
the Social Reform Party lost.
[16:] I am aware that this argument cannot alter the fact that
political reform did in fact gain precedence over social reform. But the
argument has this much value (if not more): it explains why social reformers
lost the battle. It also helps us to understand how limited was the victory
which the 'political reform party' obtained over the 'social reform party', and
to understand that the view that social reform need not precede political
reform is a view which may stand only when by social reform is meant the reform
of the family. That political reform cannot with impunity take precedence over
social reform in the sense of the reconstruction of society, is a thesis which
I am sure cannot be controverted.
[17:] That the makers
of political constitutions must take account of social forces is a fact which
is recognized by no less a person than Ferdinand Lassalle, the friend
and co-worker of Karl Marx. In addressing a Prussian audience in 1862,
Lassalle said:
The
constitutional questions are in the first instance not questions of right but
questions of might. The actual constitution of a country has its
existence only in the actual condition of force which exists in the country:
hence political constitutions have value and permanence only when they
accurately express those conditions of forces which exist in practice within a
society.
[18:] But it is not necessary to go to Prussia. There is evidence at
home. What is the significance of the Communal Award, with its
allocation of political power in defined proportions to diverse classes and
communities? In my view, its significance lies in this: that political constitution
must take note of social organisation. It shows that the politicians who denied
that the social problem in India had any bearing on the political problem were
forced to reckon with the social problem in devising the Constitution. The
Communal Award is, so to say, the nemesis following upon the indifference to
and neglect of social reform. It is a victory for the Social Reform Party which
shows that, though defeated, they were in the right in insisting upon the
importance of social reform. Many, I know, will not accept this finding. The
view is current— and it is pleasant to believe in it—that the Communal Award is
unnatural and that it is the result of an unholy alliance between the
minorities and the bureaucracy. I do not wish to rely on the Communal Award as
a piece of evidence to support my contention, if it is said that it is not good
evidence.
[19:] Let us turn to Ireland. What does the history of Irish Home Rule
show? It is well-known that in the course of the negotiations between the
representatives of Ulster and Southern Ireland, Mr. Redmond, the representative
of Southern
Ireland, in order to bring Ulster into a Home
Rule Constitution common to the whole of Ireland, said to the
representatives of Ulster: "Ask any political safeguards you like and you
shall have them." What was the reply that Ulstermen gave? Their reply was,
"Damn your safeguards, we don't want to be ruled by you on any
terms." People who blame the minorities in India ought to consider what
would have happened to the political aspirations of the majority, if the
minorities had taken the attitude which Ulster took. Judged by the attitude of
Ulster to Irish Home Rule, is it nothing that the minorities agreed to be ruled
by the majority (which has not shown much sense of statesmanship), provided
some safeguards were devised for them? But this is only incidental. The main
question is, why did Ulster take this attitude? The only answer I can give is
that there was a social problem between Ulster and Southern Ireland: the
problem between Catholics and Protestants, which is essentially a problem of
Caste. That Home Rule in Ireland would be Rome Rule was the way in which the
Ulstermen had framed their answer. But that is only another way of stating that
it was the social problem of Caste between the Catholics and Protestants which
prevented the solution of the political problem. This evidence again is sure to
be challenged. It will be urged that here too the hand of the Imperialist was
at work.
[20:] But my resources are not
exhausted. I will give evidence from the History of Rome. Here no one can say
that any evil genius was at work. Anyone who has studied the History of Rome
will know that the Republican Constitution of Rome bore marks having
strong resemblance to the Communal Award. When the kingship in Rome was
abolished, the kingly power (or the Imperium) was divided between the Consuls
and the Pontifex Maximus. In the Consuls was vested the secular authority of
the King, while the latter took over the religious authority of the King. This
Republican Constitution had provided that of the two Consuls, one was to be
Patrician and the other Plebian. The same Constitution had also provided that
of the Priests under the Pontifex Maximus, half were to be Plebians and the
other half Patricians. Why is it that the Republican Constitution of Rome had
these provisions—which, as I said, resemble so strongly the provisions of the
Communal Award? The only answer one can get is that the Constitution of
Republican Rome had to take account of the social division between the
Patricians and the Plebians, who formed two distinct castes. To sum up, let
political reformers turn in any direction they like: they will find that in the
making of a constitution, they cannot ignore the problem arising out of the
prevailing social order.
[21:] The illustrations which I have taken in support of the
proposition that social and religious problems have a bearing on political
constitutions seem to be too particular. Perhaps they are. But it should not be
supposed that the bearing of the one on the other is limited. On the other
hand, one can say that generally speaking, History bears out the proposition
that political revolutions have always been preceded by social and religious
revolutions. The religious Reformation started by Luther was the precursor of
the political emancipation of the European people. In England, Puritanism led
to the establishment of political liberty. Puritanism founded the new world. It
was Puritanism that won the war of American Independence, and Puritanism was a
religious movement.
[22:] The same is true of the Muslim Empire. Before the Arabs
became a political power, they had undergone a thorough religious revolution
started by the Prophet Mohammad. Even Indian History supports the same
conclusion. The political revolution led by Chandragupta was preceded by
the religious and social revolution of Buddha. The political revolution
led by Shivaji was preceded by the religious and social reform brought
about by the saints of Maharashtra. The political revolution of
the Sikhs was preceded by the religious and social revolution led by
Guru Nanak. It is unnecessary to add more illustrations. These will suffice
to show that the emancipation of the mind and the soul is a necessary
preliminary for the political expansion of the people.
3 [Why social reform is necessary for economic reform]
[1:] Let me now turn to the Socialists. Can the Socialists ignore the
problem arising out of the social order? The Socialists of India, following
their fellows in Europe, are seeking to apply the economic interpretation of
history to the facts of India. They propound that man is an economic creature,
that his activities and aspirations are bound by economic facts, that property
is the only source of power. They therefore preach that political and social
reforms are but gigantic illusions, and that economic reform by equalization of
property must have precedence over every other kind of reform. One may take
issue
with every one of these premises—on which rests the Socialists' case for
economic reform as having priority over every other kind of reform. One may
contend that the economic motive is not the only motive by which man is
actuated [=motivated]. That economic power is the only kind of power, no
student of human society can accept.
[2:] That the social status of an individual by itself often becomes a
source of power and authority, is made clear by the sway which the Mahatmas
have held over the common man. Why do millionaires in India obey penniless Sadhus
and Fakirs? Why do millions of paupers in India sell their trifling
trinkets which constitute their only wealth, and go to Benares and
Mecca? That religion is the source of power is illustrated by the history
of India, where the priest holds a sway over the common man often
greater than that of the magistrate, and where everything, even such things as
strikes and elections, so easily takes a religious turn and can so easily be
given a religious twist.
[3:] Take the case of the Plebians of Rome, as a further illustration
of the power of religion over man. It throws great light on this point. The
Plebians had fought for a share in the supreme executive under the Roman
Republic, and had secured the appointment of a Plebian Consul elected by a
separate electorate constituted by the Commitia Centuriata, which was an
assembly of Plebians. They wanted a Consul of their own because they felt that
the Patrician Consuls used to discriminate against the Plebians in carrying on
the administration. They had apparently obtained a great gain, because under
the Republican Constitution of Rome one Consul had the power of vetoing an act
of the other Consul.
[4:] But did they in fact gain anything? The answer to this question
must be in the negative. The Plebians never could get a Plebian Consul who
could be said to be a strong man, and who could act independently of the
Patrician Consul. In the ordinary course of things the Plebians should have got
a strong Plebian Consul, in view of the fact that his election was to be by a
separate electorate of Plebians. The question is, why did they fail in getting
a strong Plebian to officiate as their Consul?
[5:] The answer to this question reveals the dominion which religion
exercises over the minds of men. It was an accepted creed of the whole Roman populus
[=people] that no official could enter upon the duties of his office unless the
Oracle of Delphi declared that he was acceptable to the Goddess. The priests
who were in charge of the temple of the Goddess of Delphi were all Patricians.
Whenever therefore the Plebians elected a Consul who was known to be a strong
party man and opposed to the Patricians—or "communal," to use the
term that is current in India—the Oracle invariably declared that he was not
acceptable to the Goddess. This is how the Plebians were cheated out of their
rights.
[6:] But what is worthy of note is that the Plebians permitted
themselves to be thus cheated because they too, like the Patricians, held
firmly the belief that the approval of the Goddess was a condition precedent to
the taking charge by an official of his duties, and that election by the people
was not enough. If the Plebians had contended that election was enough and that
the approval by the Goddess was not necessary, they would have derived the
fullest benefit from the political right which they had obtained. But they did
not. They agreed to elect another, less suitable to themselves but more
suitable to the Goddess—which in fact meant more amenable to the Patricians.
Rather than give up religion, the Plebians give up the material gain for which
they had fought so hard. Does this not show that religion can be a source of
power as great as money, if not greater?
[7:] The fallacy of the Socialists lies in supposing that because in
the present stage of European Society property as a source of power is
predominant, that the same is true of India, or that the same was true of
Europe in the past. Religion, social status, and property are all sources of
power and authority, which one man has, to control the liberty of another. One
is predominant at one stage; the other is predominant at another stage. That is
the only difference. If liberty is the ideal, if liberty means the destruction
of the dominion which one man holds over another, then obviously it cannot be
insisted upon that economic reform must be the one kind of reform worthy of
pursuit. If the source of power and dominion is, at any given time or in any
given society, social and religious, then social reform and religious reform
must be accepted as the necessary sort of reform.
[8:] One can thus attack the
doctrine of the Economic Interpretation of History adopted by the Socialists of
India. But I recognize that the economic interpretation of history is not
necessary for the validity of the Socialist contention that equalization of
property is the only real reform and that it must precede everything else.
However, what I would like to ask the Socialists is this: Can you have economic
reform without first bringing about a reform of the social order? The
Socialists of India do not seem to have
considered this question. I do not wish to do them an injustice. I give below a
quotation from a letter which a prominent Socialist wrote a few days ago to a
friend of mine, in which he said, "I do not believe that we can build up a
free society in India so long as there is a trace of this ill-treatment and
suppression of one class by another. Believing as I do in a socialist ideal,
inevitably I believe in perfect equality in the treatment of various classes
and groups. I think that Socialism offers the only true remedy for this as well
as other problems."
[9:] Now the question
that I would like to ask is: Is it enough for a Socialist to say, "I
believe in perfect equality in the treatment of the various classes?" To say
that such a belief is enough is to disclose a complete lack of understanding of
what is involved in Socialism. If Socialism is a practical programme and is not
merely an ideal, distant and far off, the question for a Socialist is not
whether he believes in equality. The question for him is whether he minds one
class ill-treating and suppressing another class as a matter of system, as a
matter of principle—and thus allowing tyranny and oppression to continue to
divide one class from another.
[10:] Let me analyse the factors that are involved in the realization
of Socialism, in order to explain fully my point. Now it is obvious that the
economic reform contemplated by the Socialists cannot come about unless there
is a revolution resulting in the seizure of power. That seizure of power must
be by a proletariat. The first question I ask is: Will the proletariat of India
combine to bring about this revolution? What will move men to such an action?
It seems to me that, other things being equal, the only thing that will move
one man to take such an action is the feeling that other men with whom he is
acting are actuated by a feeling of equality and fraternity and—above all—of
justice. Men will not join in a revolution for the equalization of property
unless they know that after the revolution is achieved they will be treated
equally, and that there will be no discrimination of caste and creed.
[11:] The assurance of a Socialist leading the revolution that he does
not believe in Caste, I am sure will not suffice. The assurance must be the
assurance proceeding from a much deeper foundation—namely, the mental attitude
of the compatriots towards one another in their spirit of personal equality and
fraternity. Can it be said that the proletariat of India, poor as it is,
recognises no distinctions except that of the rich and the poor? Can it be said
that the poor in India recognize no such distinctions of caste or creed, high
or low? If the fact is that they do, what unity of front can be expected from
such a proletariat in its action against the rich? How can there be a
revolution if the proletariat cannot present a united front?
[12:] Suppose for the sake of
argument that by some freak of fortune a revolution does take place and the
Socialists come into power; will they not have to deal with the problems
created by the particular social order prevalent in India? I can't see how a
Socialist State in India can function for a second without having to grapple
with the problems created by the prejudices which make Indian people observe
the distinctions of high and low, clean and unclean. If Socialists are not to
be content with the mouthing of fine phrases, if the Socialists wish to make
Socialism a definite reality, then they must recognize that the problem of
social reform is fundamental, and that for them there is no escape from it.
[13:] That the social order prevalent in India is a matter which a
Socialist must deal with; that unless he does so he cannot achieve his
revolution; and that if he does achieve it as a result of good fortune, he will
have to grapple with the social order if he wishes to realize his ideal—is a
proposition which in my opinion is incontrovertible. He will be compelled to
take account of Caste after the revolution, if he does not take account of it
before the revolution. This is only another way of saying that, turn in any
direction you like, Caste is the monster that crosses your path. You cannot
have political reform, you cannot have economic reform, unless you kill this
monster.
4
[Caste is not just a division of labour, it is a division of labourers]
[1:] It is a pity that Caste even
today has its defenders. The defences are many. It is defended on the ground
that the Caste System is but another name for division of labour;
and if division of labour is a necessary feature of every civilized society,
then it is argued that there is nothing wrong in the Caste System. Now the
first thing that is to be urged against this view is that the Caste System is
not merely a division of labour. It is also a division of labourers.
Civilized society
undoubtedly
needs division of labour. But in no civilized society is division of labour
accompanied by this unnatural division of labourers into watertight compartments.
The Caste System is not merely a division of labourers which is quite different
from division of labour—it is a hierarchy in which the divisions of labourers
are graded one above the other. In no other country is the division of labour
accompanied by this gradation of labourers.
[2:] There is also a third point of criticism against this view of the
Caste System. This division of labour is not spontaneous, it is not
based on natural aptitudes. Social and individual efficiency requires us to
develop the capacity of an individual to the point of competency to choose and
to make his own career. This principle is violated in the Caste System, in so
far as it involves an attempt to appoint tasks to individuals in
advance—selected not on the basis of trained original capacities, but on that
of the social status of the parents.
[3:] Looked at from another point of view, this stratification of
occupations which is the result of the Caste System is positively
pernicious. Industry is never static. It undergoes rapid and abrupt changes.
With such changes, an individual must be free to change his occupation. Without
such freedom to adjust himself to changing circumstances, it would be
impossible for him to gain his livelihood. Now the Caste System will not allow Hindus
to take to occupations where they are wanted, if they do not belong to them by
heredity. If a Hindu is seen to starve rather than take to new occupations not
assigned to his Caste, the reason is to be found in the Caste System. By not permitting
readjustment of occupations, Caste becomes a direct cause of much of the
unemployment we see in the country.
[4:] As a form of division of labour, the Caste system suffers
from another serious defect. The division of labour brought about by the Caste
System is not a division based on choice. Individual sentiment, individual
preference, has no place in it. It is based on the dogma of predestination.
Considerations of social efficiency would compel us to recognize that the
greatest evil in the industrial system is not so much poverty and the suffering
that it involves, as the fact that so many persons have callings
[=occupations]which make no appeal to those who are engaged in them. Such
callings constantly provoke one to aversion, ill will, and the desire to evade.
[5:] There are many occupations in India which, on account of the fact
that they are regarded as degraded by the Hindus, provoke those who are engaged
in them to aversion. There is a constant desire to evade and escape from such
occupations, which arises solely because of the blighting effect which they
produce upon those who follow them, owing to the slight and stigma cast upon
them by the Hindu religion. What efficiency can there be in a system
under which neither men's hearts nor their minds are in their work? As an
economic organization Caste is therefore a harmful institution, inasmuch as it
involves the subordination of man's natural powers and inclinations to the
exigencies of social rules.
5 [Caste cannot preserve a nonexistent "racial purity"]
[1:] Some have dug a
biological trench in defence of the Caste System. It is said that the
object of Caste was to preserve purity of race and purity of blood. Now
ethnologists are of the opinion that men of pure race exist nowhere and that
there has been a mixture of all races in all parts of the world. Especially is
this the case with the people of India. Mr. D. R.
Bhandarkar in his paper on
"Foreign Elements in the Hindu Population" has stated that
"There is hardly a class or Caste in India which has not a foreign
strain in it. There is an admixture of alien blood not only among the warrior
classes —the Rajputs and the Marathas—but also among the Brahmins
who are under the happy delusion that they are free from all foreign
elements." The Caste system cannot be said to have grown as a means of
preventing the admixture of races, or as a means of maintaining purity of
blood.
[2:] As a matter of fact [the] Caste system came into being
long after the different races of India had commingled in blood and culture. To
hold that distinctions of castes are really distinctions of race, and to treat
different castes as though they were so many different races, is a gross
perversion of facts. What racial affinity is there between the Brahmin of the Punjab
and the Brahmin of Madras? What racial affinity is there between the
untouchable of Bengal and the untouchable of Madras? What
racial difference is there between the Brahmin of the Punjab and the Chamar
of the Punjab? What racial difference is there between the Brahmin of Madras
and the Pariah of Madras? The Brahmin of the
Punjab is racially of the same stock as the
Chamar of the Punjab, and the Brahmin of Madras is of the same race as the Pariah
of Madras.
[3:] [The] Caste system does not demarcate racial division.
[The] Caste system is a social division of people of the same race. Assuming
it, however, to be a case of racial divisions, one may ask: What harm could
there be if a mixture of races and of blood was permitted to take place in
India by intermarriages between different castes? Men are no doubt divided from
animals by so deep a distinction that science recognizes men and animals as two
distinct species. But even scientists who believe in purity of races do not
assert that the different races constitute different species of men. They are
only varieties of one and the same species. As such they can interbreed and
produce an offspring which is capable of breeding and which is not sterile.
[4:] An immense lot of nonsense is talked about heredity and eugenics
in defence of the Caste System. Few would object to the Caste System if
it was in accord with the basic principle of eugenics, because few can object
to the improvement of the race by judicious mating. But one fails to understand
how the Caste System secures judicious mating. [The] Caste System is a negative
thing. It merely prohibits persons belonging to different castes from
intermarrying. It is not a positive method of selecting which two among a given
caste should marry.
[5:] If Caste is eugenic in origin, then the origin of sub-castes
must also be eugenic. But can anyone seriously maintain that the origin of
sub-castes is eugenic? I think it would be absurd to contend for such a
proposition, and for a very obvious reason. If caste means race, then
differences of sub-castes cannot mean differences of race, because sub-castes
become ex hypothesia[= by hypothesis] sub-divisions of one and the same
race. Consequently the bar against intermarrying and interdining between
sub-castes cannot be for the purpose of maintaining purity of race or of blood.
If sub-castes cannot be eugenic in origin, there cannot be any substance in the
contention that Caste is eugenic in origin.
[6:] Again, if Caste is eugenic in origin one can understand the bar
against intermarriage. But what is the purpose of the interdict placed on
interdining between castes and sub-castes alike? Interdining cannot
infect blood, and therefore cannot be the cause either of the improvement or of
[the] deterioration of the race.
[7:] This shows that Caste has no scientific origin, and that those
who are attempting to give it an eugenic basis are trying to support by science
what is grossly unscientific. Even today, eugenics cannot become a
practical possibility unless we have definite knowledge regarding the laws of
heredity. Prof. Bateson in his Mendel's Principles of Heredity says,
"There is nothing in the descent of the higher mental qualities to suggest
that they follow any single system of transmission. It is likely that both they
and the more marked developments of physical powers result rather from the coincidence
of numerous factors than from the possession of any one genetic element."
To argue that the Caste System was eugenic in its conception is to
attribute to the forefathers of present-day Hindus a knowledge of
heredity which even the modern scientists do not possess.
[8:] A tree should be judged by the fruits it yields. If Caste is
eugenic, what sort of a race of men should it have produced? Physically
speaking the Hindus are a C3 people. They are a race of Pygmies and dwarfs, stunted in stature and
wanting
in stamina. It is a nation 9/10ths of which is declared to be unfit
for military service. This shows that the Caste System does not embody
the eugenics of modern scientists. It is a social system which embodies
the arrogance and selfishness of a perverse section of the Hindus who
were superior enough in social status to set it in fashion, and who had the
authority to force it on their inferiors.
6
[Caste prevents Hindus from forming a real society or nation]
[1:] Caste does not result in economic efficiency. Caste cannot
improve, and has not improved, the race. Caste has however done one thing. It
has completely disorganized and demoralized the Hindus.
[2:]
The first and foremost thing that must be recognized is that Hindu
Society is a myth. The name Hindu is itself a
foreign
name. It was given by the Mohammedans to the natives for the purpose of
distinguishing themselves [from them]. It does not occur in any Sanskrit
work prior to the Mohammedan invasion. They did not feel the necessity
of a common name, because they had no conception of their having constituted a
community. Hindu Society as such does not exist. It is only a collection of
castes. Each caste is conscious of its existence. Its survival is the be-all
and end-all of its existence. Castes do not even form a federation. A caste has
no feeling that it is affiliated to other castes, except when there is a Hindu-Muslim
riot. On all other occasions each caste endeavours to segregate itself and to
distinguish itself from other castes.
[3:] Each caste not
only dines among itself and marries among itself, but each caste prescribes its
own distinctive dress. What other explanation can there be of the innumerable
styles of dress worn by the men and women of India, which so amuse the
tourists? Indeed the ideal Hindu must be like a rat living in his own
hole, refusing to have any contact with others. There is an utter lack among
the Hindus of what the sociologists call "consciousness of kind."
There is no Hindu consciousness of kind. In every Hindu the consciousness that
exists is the consciousness of his caste. That is the reason why the Hindus
cannot be said to form a society or a nation.
[4:] There are, however, many Indians whose patriotism does not permit
them to admit that Indians are not a nation, that they are only an amorphous
mass of people. They have insisted that underlying the apparent diversity there
is a fundamental unity which marks the life of the Hindus, inasmuch as there is
a similarity of those habits and customs, beliefs and thoughts, which obtain
all over the continent of India. Similarity in habits and customs, beliefs and
thoughts, there is. But one cannot accept the conclusion that therefore, the Hindus
constitute a society. To do so is to misunderstand the essentials which go to
make up a society. Men do not become a society by living in physical proximity,
any more than a man ceases to be a member of his society by living so many
miles away from other men.
[5:] Secondly, similarity in
habits and customs, beliefs and thoughts, is not enough to constitute men into
society. Things may be passed physically from one to another like bricks. In
the same way habits and customs, beliefs and thoughts of one group may be taken
over by another group, and there may thus appear a similarity between the two.
Culture spreads by diffusion, and that is why one finds similarity between
various primitive tribes in the matter of their habits and customs, beliefs and
thoughts, although they do not live in proximity. But no one could say that
because there was this similarity, the primitive tribes constituted one
society. This is because similarity in certain things is not enough to
constitute a society.
[6:] Men constitute a society
because they have things which they possess in common. To have similar things
is totally different from possessing things in common. And the only way by
which men can come to possess things in common with one another is by being in
communication with one another. This is merely another way of saying that
Society continues to exist by communication—indeed, in communication. To make
it concrete, it is not enough if men act in a way which agrees with the acts of
others. Parallel activity, even if similar, is not sufficient to bind men into
a society.
[7:] This is proved by the fact
that the festivals observed by the different castes amongst the Hindus
are the same. Yet these parallel performances of similar festivals by the
different castes have not bound them into one integral whole. For that purpose
what is necessary is for a man to share and participate in a common activity,
so that the same emotions are aroused in him that animate the others. Making
the individual a sharer or partner in the associated activity, so that he feels
its success as his success, its failure as his failure, is the real thing that
binds men and makes a society of them. The Caste System prevents common
activity; and by preventing common activity, it has prevented the Hindus from
becoming a society with a unified life and a consciousness of its own
being.
7 [The worst feature of the Caste System is an anti-social spirit]
[1:] The Hindus
often complain of the isolation and exclusiveness of a gang or a clique and
blame them for anti-social spirit. But they conveniently forget that this
anti-social spirit is the worst feature of their own Caste System. One
caste enjoys singing a hymn of hate against another caste as much as the
Germans enjoyed singing their hymn of hate against the English during the last
war [=World War I]. The literature of the Hindus is full of caste genealogies
in which an
attempt is made to give a noble origin to one
caste and an ignoble origin to other castes. The Sahyadrikhand is a
notorious instance of this class of literature.
[2:] This anti-social spirit is not confined to caste alone. It has
gone deeper and has poisoned the mutual relations of the sub-castes as
well. In my province the Golak Brahmins, Deorukha Brahmins, Karada
Brahmins, Palshe Brahmins, and Chitpavan Brahmins all claim to be
sub-divisions of the Brahmin caste. But the anti-social spirit that prevails
between them is quite as marked and quite as virulent as the anti-social spirit
that prevails between them and other non-Brahmin castes. There is nothing
strange in this. An anti-social spirit is found wherever one group has
"interests of its own" which shut it out from full interaction with
other groups, so that its prevailing purpose is protection of what it has got.
[3:] This anti-social spirit, this spirit of protecting its own
interests, is as much a marked feature of the different castes in their
isolation from one another as it is of nations in their isolation. The Brahmin's
primary concern is to protect "his interest" against those of the
non-Brahmins; and the non-Brahmins' primary concern is to protect their
interests against those of the Brahmins. The Hindus, therefore, are not merely
an assortment of castes, but are so many warring groups, each living for itself
and for its selfish ideal.
[4:] There is another feature of caste which is deplorable. The
ancestors of the present-day English fought on one side or the other in the
Wars of the Roses and the Cromwellian War. But the descendants of those who
fought on the one side do not bear any animosity—any grudge—against the
descendents of those who fought on the other side. The feud is forgotten. But
the present-day non-Brahmins cannot forgive the present-day Brahmins for
the insult their ancestors gave to Shivaji. The present-day
Kayasthas will not forgive the present-day Brahmins for the infamy cast
upon their forefathers by the forefathers of the latter. To what is this
difference due? Obviously to the Caste System. The existence of
Caste and Caste Consciousness has served to keep the memory of past feuds
between castes green, and has prevented solidarity.
8 [Caste prevents the uplift and incorporation of the aboriginal
tribes]
[1:] The recent [constitutional] discussion about the excluded
and partially included areas has served to draw attention to the position of
what are called the aboriginal tribes in India. They number about 13
millions, if not more. Apart from the question of whether their exclusion from
the new Constitution is proper or improper, the fact still remains that these
aborigines have remained in their primitive uncivilized state in a land which
boasts of a civilization thousands of years old. Not only are they not
civilized, but some of them follow pursuits which have led to their being classified
as criminals.
[2:] Thirteen millions of people
living in the midst of civilization are still in a savage state, and are
leading the life of hereditary criminals!! But the Hindus have never
felt ashamed of it. This is a phenomenon which in my view is quite
unparalleled. What is the cause of this shameful state of affairs? Why has no
attempt been made to civilize these aborigines and to lead them to take to a
more honourable way of making a living?
[3:] The Hindus will probably seek to account for this savage
state of the aborigines by attributing to them congenital stupidity. They will
probably not admit that the aborigines have remained savages because they had
made no effort to civilize them, to give them medical aid, to reform them, to
make them good citizens. But supposing a Hindu wished to do what the Christian
missionary is doing for these aborigines, could he have done it? I submit
not. Civilizing the aborigines means adopting them as your own, living in their
midst, and cultivating fellow-feeling—in short, loving them. How is it possible
for a Hindu to do this? His whole life is one anxious effort to preserve his
caste. Caste is his precious possession which he must save at any cost. He
cannot consent to lose it by establishing contact with the aborigines, the remnants
of the hateful Anaryas of the Vedic days.
[4:] Not that a Hindu could not be taught the sense of duty to
fallen humanity, but the trouble is that no amount of sense of duty can enable
him to overcome his duty to preserve his caste. Caste is, therefore, the real
explanation as to why the Hindu has let the savage remain a savage in the midst
of his civilization without blushing, or without feeling any sense of
remorse
or repentance. The Hindu has not realized that these aborigines are a source of
potential danger. If these savages remain savages, they may not do any harm to
the Hindus. But if they are reclaimed by non-Hindus and converted to their
faiths, they will swell the ranks of the enemies of the Hindus. If this happens,
the Hindu will have to thank himself and his
Caste
System.
9 [The higher castes have conspired to keep the lower castes down]
[1:] Not only has the Hindu made no effort for the humanitarian
cause of civilizing the savages, but the higher-caste Hindus have deliberately
prevented the lower castes who are within the pale of Hinduism from rising to
the cultural level of the higher castes. I will give two instances, one of the Sonars
and the other of the Pathare Prabhus. Both are communities quite
well-known in Maharashtra. Like the rest of the communities desiring to
raise their status, these two communities were at one time endeavouring to
adopt some of the ways and habits of the Brahmins.
[2:] The Sonars were styling themselves Daivadnya Brahmins
and were wearing their "dhotis" with folds in them, and using
the word namaskar for salutation. Both the folded way of wearing
the "dhoti" and the namaskar were special to the Brahmins. The
Brahmins did not like this imitation and this attempt by Sonars to pass off as
Brahmins. Under the authority of the Peshwas, the Brahmins successfully
put down this attempt on the part of the Sonars to adopt the ways of the
Brahmins. They even got the President of the Councils of the East India
Company's settlement in Bombay to issue a prohibitory order against
the Sonars residing in Bombay.
[3:] At one time the Pathare Prabhus had widow-remarriage as a
custom of their caste. This custom of widow-remarriage was later on looked upon
as a mark of social inferiority by some members of the caste, especially
because it was contrary to the custom prevalent among the Brahmins. With
the object of raising the status of their community, some Pathare Prabhus
sought to stop this practice of widow-remarriage that was prevalent in their
caste. The community was divided into two camps, one for and the other against
the innovation. The Peshwas took the side of those in favour of
widow-remarriage, and thus virtually prohibited the Pathare Prabhus from
following the ways of the Brahmins.
[4:] The Hindus criticise the Mohammedans for having
spread their religion by the use of the sword. They also ridicule Christianity
on the score of the Inquisition. But really speaking, who is better and more
worthy of our respect—the Mohammedans and Christians who attempted to thrust
down the throats of unwilling persons what they regarded as necessary for their
salvation, or the Hindu who would not spread the light, who would
endeavour to keep others in darkness, who would not consent to share his
intellectual and social inheritance with those who are ready and willing to
make it a part of their own make-up? I have no hesitation in saying that if the
Mohammedan has been cruel, the Hindu has been mean; and meanness is worse than
cruelty.
10 [Caste prevents Hinduism from being a missionary religion]
[1:] Whether the Hindu religion was or was not a missionary
religion has been a controversial issue. Some hold the view that it was never a
missionary religion. Others hold that it was. That the Hindu religion was once
a missionary religion must be admitted. It could not have spread over the face
of India, if it was not a missionary religion. That today it is not a
missionary religion is also a fact which must be accepted. The question
therefore is not whether or not the Hindu religion was a missionary religion.
The real question is, why did the Hindu religion cease to be a missionary
religion?
[2:] My answer is this: the Hindu religion ceased to be a
missionary religion when the Caste System grew up among the Hindus.
Caste is inconsistent with conversion. Inculcation of beliefs and dogmas is not
the only problem that is involved in conversion. To find a place for the
convert in the social life of the community is another, and a much more
important,
problem that arises in connection with conversion.
That problem is where to place the convert, in what caste? It is a problem
which must baffle every Hindu wishing to make aliens converts to his religion.
[3:] Unlike a club, the membership of a caste is not open to all and
sundry. The law of Caste confines its membership to persons born in the caste.
Castes are autonomous, and there is no authority anywhere to compel a caste to
admit a new-comer to its social life. Hindu Society being a collection
of castes, and each caste being a closed corporation, there is no place for a
convert. Thus it is the caste which has prevented the Hindus from
expanding and from absorbing other religious communities. So long as Caste
remains, Hindu religion cannot be made a missionary religion, and Shudhi
will be both a folly and a futility.
11 [Caste deprives Hindus of mutual help, trust, and fellow-feeling]
[1:] The reasons which have made Shudhi
impossible for Hindus are also responsible for making Sanghatan
impossible. The idea underlying Sanghatan is to remove from the mind of the Hindu
that timidity and cowardice which so painfully mark him off from the Mohammedan
and the Sikh, and which have led him to adopt the low ways of treachery and
cunning for protecting himself. The question naturally arises: From where does
the Sikh or the Mohammedan derive his strength, which makes him brave and
fearless? I am sure it is not due to relative superiority of physical strength,
diet, or drill. It is due to the strength arising out of the feeling that all Sikhs
will come to the rescue of a Sikh when he is in danger, and that all Mohammedans
will rush to save a Muslim if he is attacked.
[2:] The Hindu can derive no such strength. He cannot feel
assured that his fellows will come to his help. Being one and fated to be
alone, he remains powerless, develops timidity and cowardice, and in a fight
surrenders or runs away. The Sikh as well as the Muslim stands
fearless and gives battle, because he knows that though one he will not be
alone. The presence of this belief in the one helps him to hold out, and
the absence of it in the other makes him to give way.
[3:] If you pursue this matter
further and ask what is it that enables the Sikh and the Mohammedan to feel so
assured, and why is the Hindu filled with such despair in the matter of
help and assistance, you will find that the reasons for this difference lie in
the difference in their associated mode of living. The associated mode of life
practised by the Sikhs and the Mohammedans produces
fellow-feeling. The associated mode of life of the Hindus does not.
Among Sikhs and Muslims there is a social cement which makes them
Bhais. Among Hindus there is no such cement, and one Hindu does
not regard another Hindu as his Bhai. This explains why a Sikh says and feels
that one Sikh, or one Khalsa, is equal to sava lakh men.
This explains why one Mohammedan is equal to a crowd of Hindus. This difference
is undoubtedly a difference due to Caste. So long as Caste remains, there will
be no Sanghatan; and so long as there is no Sanghatan the Hindu will
remain weak and meek.
[4:] The Hindus claim to be a very tolerant people. In my
opinion this is a mistake. On many occasions they can be intolerant, and if on
some occasions they are tolerant, that is because they are too weak to oppose
or too indifferent to oppose. This indifference of the Hindus has become so
much a part of their nature that a Hindu will quite meekly tolerate an insult
as well as a wrong. You see amongst them, to use the words of Morris,
"The great treading down the little, the strong beating down the weak,
cruel men fearing not, kind men daring not and wise men caring not." With
the Hindu Gods all-forbearing, it is not difficult to imagine the pitiable
condition of the wronged and the oppressed among the Hindus. Indifferentism is
the worst kind of disease that can infect a people. Why is the Hindu so
indifferent? In my opinion this indifferentism is the result of the Caste
System, which has made Sanghatan and co-operation even for a good
cause impossible.
12 [Caste is a powerful weapon for preventing all reform]
[1:] The assertion by the individual of his own
opinions and beliefs, his own independence and interest—as over against group
standards, group authority, and group interests—is the beginning of all reform.
But whether the reform will continue depends upon what scope the group affords
for such individual assertion. If the group is tolerant and fair-minded in
dealing with such individuals, they will continue to assert [their beliefs],
and in the end will succeed in converting their fellows. On the other hand if
the group is intolerant, and does not bother about the means it adopts to
stifle such individuals, they will perish and the reform will die out.
[2:] Now a caste has an unquestioned right to excommunicate any man
who is guilty of breaking the rules of the caste; and when it is realized that
excommunication involves a complete cesser [= cessation] of social intercourse,
it will be agreed that as a form of punishment there is really little to choose
between excommunication and death. No wonder individual Hindus have not
had the courage to assert their independence by breaking the barriers of Caste.
[3:] It is true that man cannot get on with his fellows. But it is
also true that he cannot do without them. He would like to have the society of
his fellows on his terms. If he cannot get it on his terms, then he will be
ready to have it on any terms, even amounting to complete surrender. This is
because he cannot do without society. A caste is ever ready to take advantage
of the helplessness of a man, and to insist upon complete conformity to its
code in letter and in spirit.
[4:] A caste can easily organize
itself into a conspiracy to make the life of a reformer a hell; and if a
conspiracy is a crime, I do not understand why such a nefarious act as an
attempt to excommunicate a person for daring to act contrary to the rules of
caste should not be made an offence punishable in law. But as it is, even law
gives each caste an autonomy to regulate its membership and punish dissenters
with excommunication. Caste in the hands of the orthodox has been a powerful
weapon for persecuting the reformers and for killing all reform.
13 [Caste destroys public spirit, public opinion, and public charity]
[1:] The effect of caste on the ethics of the Hindus is simply
deplorable. Caste has killed public spirit. Caste has destroyed the sense of
public charity. Caste has made public opinion impossible. A Hindu's
public is his caste. His responsibility is only to his caste. His loyalty is
restricted only to his caste. Virtue has become caste-ridden, and morality has
become caste-bound. There is no sympathy for the deserving. There is no
appreciation of the meritorious. There is no charity to the needy. Suffering as
such calls for no response. There is charity, but it begins with the caste and
ends with the caste. There is sympathy, but not for men of other castes.
[2:] Would a Hindu acknowledge and follow the leadership of a
great and good man? The case of a Mahatma apart, the answer must be that
he will follow a leader if he is a man of his caste. A Brahmin will
follow a leader only if he is a Brahmin, a Kayastha if he is a Kayastha,
and so on. The capacity to appreciate merits in a man, apart from his caste,
does not exist in a Hindu. There is appreciation of virtue, but only when the
man is a fellow caste-man. The whole morality is as bad as tribal morality. My
caste-man, right or wrong; my caste-man, good or bad. It is not a case of
standing by virtue or not standing by vice. It is a case of standing by, or not
standing by, the caste. Have not Hindus committed treason against their country
in the interests of their caste?
14 [My ideal: a society based on Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity]
[1:] I would not be
surprized if some of you have grown weary listening to this tiresome tale of
the sad effects which caste has produced. There is nothing new in it. I will
therefore turn to the constructive side of the problem. What is your ideal
society if you do not want caste, is a question that is bound to be asked of
you. If you ask me, my ideal would be a society based on Liberty, Equality,
and Fraternity. And why not?
[2:]
What objection can there be to Fraternity? I cannot imagine any. An ideal
society should be mobile, should be full of
channels
for conveying a change taking place in one part to other parts. In an ideal
society there should be many interests consciously communicated and shared.
There should be varied and free points of contact with other modes of
association. In other words there must be social endosmosis. This is
fraternity, which is only another name for democracy. Democracy is not merely a
form of government. It is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint
communicated experience. It is essentially an attitude of respect and reverence
towards one's fellow men.
[3:] Any objection to Liberty? Few object to liberty in the sense of a
right to free movement, in the sense of a right to life and limb. There is no
objection to liberty in the sense of a right to property, tools, and materials,
as being necessary for earning a living, to keep the body in a due state of
health. Why not allow a person the liberty to benefit from an effective and
competent use of a person's powers? The supporters of Caste who would allow
liberty in the sense of a right to life, limb, and property, would not readily
consent to liberty in this sense, inasmuch as it involves liberty to choose
one's profession.
[4:] But to object to this kind of liberty is to perpetuate slavery.
For slavery does not merely mean a legalized form of subjection. It means a
state of society in which some men are forced to accept from others the
purposes which control their conduct. This condition obtains even where there
is no slavery in the legal sense. It is found where, as in the Caste System,
some persons are compelled to carry on certain prescribed callings which are
not of their choice.
[5:] Any objection to equality?
This has obviously been the most contentious part of the slogan of the French
Revolution. The objections to equality may be sound, and one may have to admit
that all men are not equal. But what of that? Equality may be a fiction, but
nonetheless one must accept it as the governing principle. A man's power is
dependent upon (1) physical heredity; (2) social inheritance or endowment in
the form of parental care, education, accumulation of scientific knowledge,
everything which enables him to be more efficient than the savage; and finally,
(3) on his own efforts. In all these three respects men are undoubtedly
unequal. But the question is, shall we treat them as unequal because they are unequal?
This is a question which the opponents of equality must answer.
[6:] From the standpoint of the individualist, it may be just to treat
men unequally so far as their efforts are unequal. It may be desirable to give
as much incentive as possible to the full development of everyone's powers. But
what would happen if men were treated as unequally as they are unequal in the
first two respects? It is obvious that those individuals also in whose favour
there is birth, education, family name, business connections, and inherited
wealth, would be selected in the race. But selection under such circumstances
would not be a selection of the able. It would be the selection of the
privileged. The reason, therefore, which requires that in the third respect [of
those described in the paragraph above] we should treat men unequally, demands
that in the first two respects we should treat men as equally as possible.
[7:] On the other hand, it can be urged that if it is good for the
social body to get the most out of its members, it can get the most out of them
only by making them equal as far as possible at the very start of the race.
That is one reason why we cannot escape equality. But there is another reason
why we must accept equality. A statesman is concerned with vast numbers of
people. He has neither the time nor the knowledge to draw fine distinctions and
to treat each one equitably, i.e. according to need or according to capacity.
However desirable or reasonable an equitable treatment of men may be, humanity
is not capable of assortment and classification. The statesman, therefore, must
follow some rough and ready rule, and that rough and ready rule is to treat all
men alike, not because they are alike but because classification and assortment
is impossible. The doctrine of equality is glaringly fallacious but, taking all
in all, it is the only way a statesman can proceed in politics—which is a
severely practical affair and which demands a severely practical test.
15 [The Arya Samajists' "Chaturvarnya"
retains the old bad caste labels]
[1:] But there is a set of
reformers who hold out a different ideal. They go by the name of the Arya
Samajists, and their ideal of social organization is what is called Chaturvarnya,
or the division of society into four classes instead of the four
thousand castes that we have in India. To make it
more attractive and to disarm opposition, the protagonists of Chaturvarnya take
great care to point out that their Chaturvarnya is based not on birth but on
guna (worth). At the outset, I must confess that notwithstanding the
worth-basis of this Chaturvarnya, it is an ideal to which I cannot reconcile
myself.
[2:] In the first place, if under the Chaturvarnya of the Arya
Samajists an individual is to take his place in the Hindu Society
according to his worth, I do not understand why the Arya Samajists insist upon
labelling men as Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra.
A learned man would be honoured without his being labelled a Brahmin. A soldier
would be respected without his being designated a Kshatriya. If European
society honours its soldiers and its servants without giving them permanent
labels, why should Hindu Society find it difficult to do so, is a question
which Arya Samajists have not cared to consider.
[3:] There is another objection to the continuance of these labels.
All reform consists in a change in the notions, sentiments, and mental
attitudes of the people towards men and things. It is common experience that
certain names become associated with certain notions and sentiments which
determine a person's attitude towards men and things. The names Brahmin,
Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Shudra are names which are
associated with a definite and fixed notion in the mind of every Hindu.
That notion is that of a hierarchy based on birth.
[4:] So long as these names
continue, Hindus will continue to think of the Brahmin, Kshatriya,
Vaishya, and Shudra as hierarchical divisions of high and low,
based on birth, and to act accordingly. The Hindu must be made to unlearn
all this. But how can this happen, if the old labels remain, and continue to
recall to his mind old notions? If new notions are to be inculcated in the
minds of people, it is necessary to give them new names. To continue the old
names is to make the reform futile. To allow this Chaturvarnya based on
worth to be designated by such stinking labels as Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya,
Shudra, indicative of social divisions based on birth, is a snare.
16 ["Chaturvarnya" would face impossible difficulties in
practice]
[1:] To me this Chaturvarnya with its old labels is utterly
repellent, and my whole being rebels against it. But I do not wish to rest my
objection to Chaturvarnya on mere grounds of sentiments. There are more solid
grounds on which I rely for my opposition to it. A close examination of this
ideal has convinced me that as a system of social organization, Chaturvarnya is
impracticable, is harmful, and has turned out to be a miserable failure. From a
practical point of view, the system of Chaturvarnya raises several difficulties
which its protagonists [=advocates] do not seem to have taken into account. The
principle underlying Caste is fundamentally different from the principle
underlying Chaturvarnya. Not only are they fundamentally different, but
they are also fundamentally opposed.
[2:] The former [=Chaturvarnya] is based on worth. How are you going
to compel people who have acquired a higher status based on birth, without
reference to their worth, to vacate that status? How are you going to compel
people to recognize the status due to a man, in accordance with his worth, who
is occupying a lower status based on his birth? For this, you must first break
up the Caste System, in order to be able to establish the Chaturvarnya
system. How are you going to reduce the four thousand castes, based on birth,
to the four Varnas, based on worth? This is the first difficulty which
the protagonists of the Chaturvarnya must grapple with.
[3:] There is a second difficulty which the protagonists of Chaturvarnya
must grapple with, if they wish to make the establishment of Chaturvarnya a
success. Chaturvarnya pre-supposes that you can classify people into four
definite classes. Is this possible? In this respect, the ideal of Chaturvarnya
has, as you will see, a close affinity to the Platonic ideal. To Plato, men
fell by nature into three classes. In some individuals, he believed, mere
appetites dominated. He assigned them to the labouring and trading classes.
Others revealed to him that over and above appetites, they had a courageous
disposition. He classed them as defenders in war and guardians of internal
peace. Others showed a capacity to grasp the universal reason underlying
things. He made them the law-givers of the people.
[4:] The criticism to which Plato's Republic is
subject, is also the criticism which must apply to the system of Chaturvarnya,
insofar as it proceeds upon the possibility of an accurate classification of
men into four distinct classes. The chief criticism against Plato is
that his idea of lumping individuals into a few sharply-marked-off classes is a
very superficial view of man and his powers. Plato had no perception of the
uniqueness of every individual, of his incommensurability with others, of each
individual as forming a class of his own. He had no recognition of the infinite
diversity of active tendencies, and the combination of tendencies of which an
individual is capable. To him, there were types of faculties or powers in the
individual constitution.
[5:] All this is demonstrably wrong. Modem science has shown that the
lumping together of individuals into a few sharply-marked-off classes is a
superficial view of man, not worthy of serious consideration. Consequently, the
utilization of the qualities of individuals is incompatible with their
stratification by classes, since the qualities of individuals are so variable. Chaturvarnya
must fail for the very reason for which Plato's Republic must fail—namely,
that it is not possible to pigeonhole men, according as they belong to
one class or the other. That it is impossible to accurately classify people
into four definite classes, is proved by the fact that the original four
classes have now become four thousand castes.
[6:] There is a third difficulty
in the way of the establishment of the system of Chaturvarnya. How are
you going to maintain the system of Chaturvarnya, supposing it was established?
One important requirement for the successful working of Chaturvarnya is the
maintenance of the penal system which could maintain it by its sanction. The
system of Chaturvarnya must perpetually face the problem of the transgressor.
Unless there is a penalty attached to the act of transgression, men will not
keep to their respective classes. The whole system will break down, being
contrary to human nature. Chaturvarnya cannot subsist by its own inherent
goodness. It must be enforced by law.
[7:] That without penal sanction the ideal of Chaturvarnya
cannot be realized, is proved by the story in the Ramayana of Rama
killing Shambuka. Some people seem to blame Rama because he
wantonly and without reason killed Shambuka. But to blame Rama for
killing Shambuka is to misunderstand the whole situation. Ram Raj was a
Raj based on Chaturvarnya. As a king, Rama was bound to maintain
Chaturvarnya. It was his duty therefore to kill Shambuka, the Shudra who
had transgressed his class and wanted to be a Brahmin. This is the reason why
Rama killed Shambuka. But this also shows that penal sanction is
necessary for the maintenance of Chaturvarnya. Not only penal sanction is
necessary, but the penalty of death is necessary. That is why Rama did not
inflict on Shambuka a lesser punishment. That is why the Manu-Smriti prescribes
such heavy sentences as cutting off the tongue, or pouring of molten lead in
the ears, of the Shudra who recites or hears the Veda. The
supporters of Chaturvarnya must give an assurance that they could successfully
classify men, and that they could induce modern society in the twentieth
century to re-forge the penal sanctions of the Manu-Smriti.
[8:] The protagonists of Chaturvarnya do not seem to have
considered what is to happen to women in their system. Are they also to be
divided into four classes, Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and
Shudra? Or are they to be allowed to take the status of their husbands?
If the status of the woman is to be the consequence of marriage, what becomes
of the underlying principle of Chaturvarnya—namely, that the status of a person
should be based upon the worth of that person? If they are to be classified
according to their worth, is their classification to be nominal or real?
[9:] If it is to be nominal, then
it is useless; and then the protagonists of Chaturvarnya must admit that
their system does not apply to women. If it is real, are the protagonists of
Chaturvarnya prepared to follow the logical consequences of applying it to
women? They must be prepared to have women priests and women soldiers. Hindu
society has grown accustomed to women teachers and women barristers. It may
grow accustomed to women brewers and women butchers. But he would be a bold
person who would say that it will allow women priests and women soldiers. But
that will be the logical outcome of applying Chaturvarnya to women. Given these
difficulties, I think no one except a congenital idiot could hope for and
believe in a successful regeneration of the Chaturvarnya.
17 ["Chaturvarnya" would be the most vicious system for the
Shudras]
[1:] Assuming that Chaturvarnya is
practicable, I contend that it is the most vicious system. That the Brahmins
should cultivate knowledge, that the Kshatriya should bear arms, that
the Vaishya should trade, and that the Shudra should serve,
sounds as though it was a system of division of labour. Whether the theory was
intended to state that the Shudra need not, or whether it was intended to lay
down that he must not, is an interesting question. The defenders of
Chaturvarnya give it the first meaning. They say, why need the Shudra trouble
to acquire wealth, when the three [higher] Varnas are there to support him? Why
need the Shudra bother to take to education, when there is the Brahmin to whom
he can go when the occasion for reading or writing arises? Why need the Shudra
worry to arm himself, when there is the Kshatriya to protect him? The theory of
Chaturvarnya, understood in this sense, may be said to look upon the Shudra as
the ward and the three [higher] Varnas as his guardians. Thus interpreted, it
is a simple, elevating, and alluring theory.
[2:] Assuming this to be the
correct view of the underlying conception of Chaturvarnya, it seems to
me that the system is neither fool-proof nor knave-proof. What is to happen if
the Brahmins, Vaishyas, and Kshatriyas fail to pursue
knowledge, to engage in economic enterprise, and to be efficient soldiers,
which are their respective functions? Contrary-wise, suppose that they
discharge their functions, but flout their duty to the Shudra or to one
another; what is to happen to the Shudra if the three classes refuse to support
him on fair terms, or combine to keep him down? Who is to safeguard the
interests of the Shudra—or for that matter, those of the Vaishya and
Kshatriya—when the person who is trying to take advantage of his ignorance is
the Brahmin? Who is to defend the liberty of the Shudra—and for that matter, of
the Brahmin and the Vaishya—when the person who is robbing him of it is the
Kshatriya?
[3:] Inter-dependence of one class on another class is inevitable.
Even dependence of one class upon another may sometimes become allowable. But
why make one person depend upon another in the matter of his vital needs?
Education, everyone must have. Means of defence, everyone must have. These are
the paramount requirements of every man for his self-preservation. How can the
fact that his neighbour is educated and armed help a man who is uneducated and
disarmed? The whole theory is absurd. These are the questions which the
defenders of Chaturvarnya do not seem to be troubled about. But they are
very pertinent questions. Assuming that in their conception of Chaturvarnya the
relationship between the different classes is that of ward and guardian, and
that this is the real conception underlying Chaturvarnya, it must be admitted
that it makes no provision to safeguard the interests of the ward from the
misdeeds of the guardian.
[4:] Whether or not the relationship of guardian and ward was the real
underlying conception on which Chaturvarnya was based, there is no doubt
that in practice the relation was that of master and servants. The three
classes, Brahmins, Kshatriyas, and Vaishyas, although not very happy in
their mutual relationship, managed to work by compromise. The Brahmin flattered
the Kshatriya, and both let the Vaishya live in order to be able
to live upon him. But the three agreed to beat down the Shudra. He was
not allowed to acquire wealth, lest he should be independent of the three
[higher] Varnas. He was prohibited from acquiring knowledge, lest he should
keep a steady vigil regarding his interests. He was prohibited from bearing
arms, lest he should have the means to rebel against their authority. That this
is how the Shudras were treated by the Tryavarnikas is evidenced by the Laws
of Manu. There is no code of laws more infamous regarding social rights
than the Laws of Manu. Any instance from anywhere of social injustice
must pale before it.
[5:] Why have the mass of people tolerated the social evils to which
they have been subjected? There have been social revolutions in other countries
of the world. Why have there not been social revolutions in India, is a
question which has incessantly troubled me. There is only one answer which I
can give, and it is that the lower classes of Hindus have been
completely disabled for direct action on account of this wretched Caste
System. They could not bear arms, and without arms they could not rebel. They
were all ploughmen—or rather, condemned to be ploughmen—and they never were
allowed to convert their ploughshares into swords. They had no bayonets, and
therefore everyone who chose, could and did sit upon them. On account of the Caste
System, they could receive no education. They could not think out or know
the way to their salvation. They were condemned to be lowly; and not knowing
the way of escape, and not having the means of escape, they became reconciled
to eternal servitude, which they accepted as their inescapable fate.
[6:] It is true that
even in Europe the strong has not shrunk from the exploitation—nay, the
spoliation—of the weak. But in Europe, the strong have never contrived to make
the weak helpless against exploitation so shamelessly as was the case in India
among the Hindus. Social war has been raging between the strong and the weak
far more violently in Europe than it has ever been in India. Yet the weak in
Europe has had in his freedom of military service, his physical weapon; in
suffering, his political weapon; and in
education, his moral weapon. These three weapons for emancipation were never
withheld by the strong from the weak in Europe. All these weapons were,
however, denied to the masses in India by the
Caste
System.
[7:] There cannot be a more degrading system of social organization
than the Caste System. It is the system which deadens, paralyses, and
cripples the people, [keeping them] from helpful activity. This is no
exaggeration. History bears ample evidence. There is only one period in Indian
history which is a period of freedom, greatness, and glory. That is the period
of the Mourya Empire. At all other times the country suffered from
defeat and darkness. But the Mourya period was a period when the Caste
System was completely annihilated—when the Shudras, who constituted the
mass of the people, came into their own and became the rulers of the country.
The period of defeat and darkness is the period when the Caste System
flourished, to the damnation of the greater part of the people of the country.
18 ["Chaturvarnya" is nothing new; it is as old as the
Vedas]
[1:] Chaturvarnya is not new. It is as old as the Vedas.
That is one of the reasons why we are asked by the Arya Samajists to
consider its claims. Judging from the past, as a system of social organization
it has been tried and it has failed. How many times have the Brahmins
annihilated the seed of the Kshatriyas! How many times have the
Kshatriyas annihilated the Brahmins! The Mahabharata and the Puranas
are full of incidents of the strife between the Brahmins and the Kshatriyas.
They even quarreled over such petty questions as to who should salute first, as
to who should give way first, the Brahmins or the Kshatriyas, when the two met
in the street.
[2:] Not only was the Brahmin an eyesore to the Kshatriya
and the Kshatriya an eyesore to the Brahmin, it seems that the Kshatriyas had
become tyrannical, and the masses, disarmed as they were under the system of Chaturvarnya,
were praying to Almighty God for relief from their tyranny. The Bhagwat
tells us very definitely that Krishna had taken avatar for one
sacred purpose: and that was, to annihilate the Kshatriyas. With these
instances of rivalry and enmity between the different Varnas before us,
I do not understand how anyone can hold out Chaturvarnya as an ideal to be
aimed at, or as a pattern on which the Hindu Society should be
remodelled.
19 [Caste among Hindus is not the same as
"caste" among non-Hindus]
[1:] I have dealt with those, those who are outside your group [=the Mandal]
and whose hostility to your ideal [= the destruction of Caste] is quite open.
There appear to be others who are neither without you nor with you. I was
hesitating whether I should deal with their point of view. But on further
consideration I have come to the conclusion that I must, and that for two
reasons. Firstly, their attitude to the problem of caste is not merely an
attitude of neutrality, but is an attitude of armed neutrality. Secondly, they
probably represent a considerable body of people. Of these, there is one set
which finds nothing peculiar nor odious in the Caste System of the
Hindus. Such Hindus cite the case of Muslims, Sikhs, and
Christians, and find comfort in the fact that they too have castes amongst
them.
[2:] In considering this question,
you must at the outset bear in mind that nowhere is human society one single
whole. It is always plural. In the world of action, the individual is one limit
and society the other. Between them lie all sorts of associative arrangements
of lesser and larger scope—families, friendships, co-operative associations,
business combines, political parties, bands of thieves and robbers. These small
groups are usually firmly welded together, and are often as exclusive as
castes. They have a narrow and intensive code, which is often anti-social. This
is true of every society, in Europe as well as in Asia. The question to be
asked in determining whether a given society is an ideal society is not whether
there are groups in it, because groups exist in all societies.
[3:] The questions to be asked in determining
what is an ideal society are: How numerous and varied are the interests which
are consciously shared by the groups? How full and free is the interplay with
other forms of associations? Are the forces that separate groups and classes
more numerous than the forces that unite them? What social significance is
attached to this group life? Is its exclusiveness a matter of custom and
convenience, or is it a matter of religion? It is in the light of these
questions that one must decide whether caste among Non-Hindus is the same as
Caste among Hindus.
[4:] If we apply these considerations to castes among Mohammedans,
Sikhs, and Christians on the one hand, and to castes among Hindus
on the other, you will find that caste among Non-Hindus is fundamentally
different from caste among Hindus. First, the ties which consciously make the Hindus
hold together are non-existent, while among Non-Hindus there are many that hold
them together. The strength of a society depends upon the presence of points of
contact, possibilities of interaction, between different groups which exist in
it. These are what Carlyle calls "organic filaments"— i.e.,
the elastic threads which help to bring the disintegrating elements together
and to reunite them. There is no integrating force among the Hindus to
counteract the disintegration caused by caste. While among the Non-Hindus there
are plenty of these organic filaments which bind them together.
[5:] Again it must be borne in
mind that although there are castes among Non-Hindus, as there are among Hindus,
caste has not the same social significance for Non-Hindus as it has for Hindus.
Ask a Mohammedan or a Sikh who he is. He tells you that he is a
Mohammedan or a Sikh, as the case may be. He does not tell you his caste,
although he has one; and you are satisfied with his answer. When he tells you
that he is a Muslim, you do not proceed to ask him whether he is a Shiya or
a Suni; Sheikh or Saiyad; Khatik or Pinjari. When he tells
you he is a Sikh, you do not ask him whether he is Jat or Roda, Mazbi
or Ramdasi. But you are not satisfied, if a person tells you that he is a
Hindu. You feel bound to inquire into his caste. Why? Because so essential is
caste in the case of a Hindu, that without knowing it you do not feel sure what
sort of a being he is.
[6:] That caste has not the same social significance among Non-Hindus
as it has among Hindus is clear, if you take into consideration the
consequences which follow breach of caste. There may be castes among Sikhs
and Mohammedans, but the Sikhs and the Mohammedans will not outcast a
Sikh or a Mohammedan if he broke his caste. Indeed, the very idea of
excommunication is foreign to the Sikhs and the Mohammedans. But with the
Hindus the case is entirely different. A Hindu is sure to be outcasted if he
broke caste. This shows the difference in the social significance of caste to
Hindus and Non-Hindus. This is the second point of difference.
[7:] But there is also a third and a more important one. Caste among
the non-Hindus has no religious consecration; but among the Hindus most
decidedly it has. Among the Non-Hindus, caste is only a practice, not a sacred
institution. They did not originate it. With them it is only a survival. They
do not regard caste as a religious dogma. Religion compels the Hindus to treat
isolation and segregation of castes as a virtue. Religion does not compel the
Non-Hindus to take the same attitude towards caste. If Hindus wish to break
caste, their religion will come in their way. But it will not be so in the case
of Non-Hindus. It is, therefore, a dangerous delusion to take comfort in the
mere existence of caste among Non-Hindus, without caring to know what place
caste occupies in their life and whether there are other "organic
filaments" which subordinate the feeling of caste to the feeling of
community. The sooner the Hindus are cured of this delusion, the better.
[8:] The other set
[of "neutral" Hindus] denies that caste presents any problem
at all for the Hindus to consider. Such Hindus seek comfort in the view that
the Hindus have survived, and take this as a proof of their fitness to survive.
This point of view is well expressed by Prof. S. Radhakrishnan in his
Hindu View of Life. Referring to Hinduism he says,
"The
civilization itself has not been a short-lived one. Its historic records date
back for over four thousand years and even then it had reached a stage of
civilization which has continued its unbroken, though at times slow and static,
course until the present day. It has stood the stress and strain of more than
four or five millenniums of spiritual thought and experience. Though peoples of
different races and cultures have been pouring into India from the dawn of
History, Hinduism has been able to maintain its supremacy and even the
proselytising creeds backed by political power have not been able to coerce the
large majority of
Hindus to their views. The Hindu culture possesses some
vitality which seems to be denied to some other more forceful currents.
It is no more necessary to dissect Hinduism than to open a tree to see whether
the sap still runs."
The name of Prof. Radhakrishnan is big enough to invest with
profundity whatever he says, and impress the minds of his readers. But I must
not hesitate to speak out my mind. For I fear that his statement may become the
basis of a vicious argument that the fact of survival is proof of fitness to
survive.
[9:] It seems to me that the
question is not whether a community lives or dies; the question is on what
plane does it live. There are different modes of survival. But not all are
equally honourable. For an individual as well as for a society, there is a gulf
between merely living, and living worthily. To fight in a battle and to live in
glory is one mode. To beat a retreat, to surrender, and to live the life of a
captive is also a mode of survival. It is useless for a Hindu to take
comfort in the fact that he and his people have survived. What he must consider
is, what is the quality of their survival. If he does that, I am sure he will
cease to take pride in the mere fact of survival. A Hindu's life has been a
life of continuous defeat, and what appears to him to be life everlasting is
not living everlastingly, but is really a life which is perishing
everlastingly. It is a mode of survival of which every right-minded Hindu who
is not afraid to own up to the truth will feel ashamed.
20 [The real key to destroying Caste is rejection of the Shastras]
[1:] There is no
doubt, in my opinion, that unless you change your social order you can achieve
little by way of progress. You cannot mobilize the community either for defence
or for offence. You cannot build anything on the foundations of caste. You
cannot build up a nation, you cannot build up a morality. Anything that you
will build on the foundations of caste will crack, and will never be a whole.
[2:] The only question that
remains to be considered is—How to bring about the reform of the Hindu
social order? How to abolish Caste? This is a question of supreme
importance. There is a view that in the reform of Caste, the first step to take
is to abolish sub-castes. This view is based upon the supposition that
there is a greater similarity in manners and status between sub-castes than
there is between castes. I think this is an erroneous supposition. The Brahmins
of Northern and Central India are socially of lower grade, as
compared with the Brahmins of the Deccan and Southern India. The
former are only cooks and water-carriers, while the latter occupy a high social
position. On the other hand, in Northern India, the Vaishyas and Kayasthas
are intellectually and socially on a par with the Brahmins of the Deccan and
Southern
India.
[3:] Again, in the
matter of food there is no similarity between the Brahmins of the Deccan
and Southern India, who are vegetarians, and the Brahmins of Kashmir
and Bengal, who are non-vegetarians. On the other hand, the Brahmins of
the Deccan and Southern India have more in common so far as food is concerned
with such non-Brahmins as the
Gujaratis,
Marwaris, Banias, and Jains.
[4:]
There is no doubt that from the standpoint of making the transition from one
caste to another easy, the fusion of the
Kayasthas of Northern India and
the other Non-Brahmins of Southern India with the Non-Brahmins of
the Deccan and the Dravidian country is more practicable than the
fusion of the Brahmins of the South with the Brahmins of the North. But
assuming that the fusion of sub-castes is possible, what guarantee is
there that the abolition of sub-castes will necessarily lead to the abolition
of castes? On the contrary, it may happen that the process may stop with the
abolition of sub-castes. In that case, the abolition of sub-castes will only
help to strengthen the castes, and make them more powerful and therefore more
mischievous. This remedy is therefore neither practicable nor effective, and
may easily prove to be a wrong remedy.
[5:] Another plan of
action for the abolition of Caste is to begin with inter-caste dinners. This
also, in my opinion, is an inadequate remedy. There are many castes which allow
inter-dining. But it is a common experience that inter-dining has not succeeded
in killing the spirit of Caste and the consciousness of Caste. I am convinced
that the real remedy is inter-
marriage.
Fusion of blood can alone create the feeling of being kith and kin, and unless
this feeling of kinship, of being kindred, becomes paramount, the separatist
feeling—the feeling of being aliens—created by Caste will not vanish. Among the
Hindus, inter-marriage must necessarily be a factor of greater force in
social life than it need be in the life of the non-Hindus. Where society is
already well-knit by other ties, marriage is an ordinary incident of life. But
where society is cut asunder, marriage as a binding force becomes a matter of
urgent necessity. The real remedy for breaking Caste is inter-marriage.
Nothing else will serve as the solvent of Caste.
[6:] Your Jat-Pat-Todak Mandal has adopted this line of attack.
It is a direct and frontal attack, and I congratulate you upon a correct
diagnosis, and more upon your having shown the courage to tell the Hindus
what is really wrong with them. Political tyranny is nothing compared to social
tyranny, and a reformer who defies society is a much more courageous man than a
politician who defies the government. You are right in holding that Caste will
cease to be an operative force only when inter-dining and inter-marriage have
become matters of common course. You have located the source of the disease.
[7:] But is your prescription the right prescription for the disease?
Ask yourselves this question: why is it that a large majority of Hindus
do not inter-dine and do not inter-marry? Why is it that your cause is not
popular?
[8:] There can be only one answer to this question, and it is that
inter-dining and inter-marriage are repugnant to the beliefs and dogmas which
the Hindus regard as sacred. Caste is not a physical object like a wall
of bricks or a line of barbed wire which prevents the Hindus from commingling
and which has, therefore, to be pulled down. Caste is a notion, it is a state
of the mind. The destruction of Caste does not therefore mean the destruction
of a physical barrier. It means a notional change.
[9:] Caste may be bad. Caste may
lead to conduct so gross as to be called man's inhumanity to man. All the same,
it must be recognized that the Hindus observe Caste not because they are
inhuman or wrong-headed. They observe Caste because they are deeply religious.
People are not wrong in observing Caste. In my view, what is wrong is their
religion, which has inculcated this notion of Caste. If this is correct, then
obviously the enemy you must grapple with is not the people who observe Caste,
but the Shastras which teach them this religion of Caste. Criticising
and ridiculing people for not inter-dining or inter-marrying, or occasionally
holding inter-caste dinners and celebrating inter-caste marriages, is a futile
method of achieving the desired end. The real remedy is to destroy the belief
in the sanctity of the Shastras.
[10:] How do you expect to succeed, if you allow the Shastras
to continue to mould the beliefs and opinions of the people? Not to question
the authority of the Shastras—to permit the people to believe in their
sanctity and their sanctions, and then to blame the people and to criticise
them for their acts as being irrational and inhuman—is an incongruous way of
carrying on social reform. Reformers working for the removal of untouchability,
including Mahatma Gandhi, do not seem to realize that the acts of
the people are merely the results of their beliefs inculcated in their minds
by the Shastras, and that people will not change their conduct until
they cease to believe in the sanctity of the Shastras on which their
conduct is founded.
[11:] No wonder that such efforts have not produced any results. You
also seem to be erring in the same way as the reformers working in the cause of
removing untouchability. To agitate for and to organise inter-caste dinners and
inter-caste marriages is like forced feeding brought about by artificial means.
Make every man and woman free from the thraldom of the Shastras, cleanse
their minds of the pernicious notions founded on the Shastras, and he or
she will inter-dine and inter-marry, without your telling him or her to do so.
[12:] It is no use seeking refuge in quibbles. It is no use telling
people that the Shastras do not say what they are believed to say, if
they are grammatically read or logically interpreted. What matters is how the Shastras
have been understood by the people. You must take the stand that Buddha
took. You must take the stand which Guru Nanak took. You must not only
discard the Shastras, you must deny their authority, as did Buddha and
Nanak. You must have courage to tell the Hindus that what is wrong with
them is their religion—the religion which has produced in them this notion of
the sacredness of Caste. Will you show that courage?
21 [Internal reform of the Caste
System is virtually impossible]
[1:] What are your chances of success? Social reforms fall into
different species. There is a species of reform which does not relate to the
religious notions of a people, but is purely secular in character. There is
also a species of reform which relates to the religious notions of a people. Of
such a species of reform, there are two varieties. In one, the reform accords
with the principles of the religion, and merely invites people who have
departed from it, to revert to them and to follow them.
[2:] The second is a reform which not only touches the religious
principles but is diametrically opposed to those principles, and invites people
to depart from and to discard their authority, and to act contrary to those
principles. Caste is the natural outcome of certain religious beliefs which
have the sanction of the Shastras, which are believed to contain the
command of divinely inspired sages who were endowed with a supernatural wisdom
and whose commands, therefore, cannot be disobeyed without committing a sin.
[3:] The destruction of Caste is a reform which falls under the third
category [that is, the second variety of the second species]. To ask people to
give up Caste is to ask them to go contrary to their fundamental religious
notions. It is obvious that the first and second species of reform are easy.
But the third is a stupendous task, well-nigh impossible. The Hindus
hold to the sacredness of the social order. Caste has a divine basis. You must
therefore destroy the sacredness and divinity with which Caste has become
invested. In the last analysis, this means you must destroy the authority of
the Shastras and the Vedas.
[4:] I have emphasized this question of the ways and means of
destroying Caste, because I think that knowing the proper ways and means is
more important than knowing the ideal. If you do not know the real ways and
means, all your shots are sure to be misfires. If my analysis is correct, then
your task is herculean. You alone can say whether you are capable of achieving
it.
[5:] Speaking for myself, I see the task to be well-nigh impossible.
Perhaps you would like to know why I think so. Out of the many reasons which
have led me to take this view, I will mention some which I regard as most
important. One of these reasons is the attitude of hostility which the Brahmins
have shown towards this question. The Brahmins form the vanguard of the
movement for political reform, and in some cases also of economic reform. But
they are not to be found even as camp-followers in the army raised to break
down the barricades of Caste. Is there any hope of the Brahmins ever taking up
a lead in the future in this matter? I say no.
[6:] You may ask why.
You may argue that there is no reason why Brahmins should continue to
shun social reform. You may argue that the Brahmins know that the bane of Hindu
Society is Caste, and as an enlightened class they could not be expected to be
indifferent to its consequences. You may argue that there are secular Brahmins
and priestly Brahmins, and if the latter do not take up the cudgels on behalf
of those who want to break Caste, the former will.
[7:] All this of course sounds very plausible. But in all this it is
forgotten that the break-up of the Caste system is bound to adversely
affect the Brahmin caste. Having regard to this, is it reasonable to expect
that the Brahmins will ever consent to lead a movement, the ultimate
result of which is to destroy the power and prestige of the Brahmin caste? Is
it reasonable to expect the secular Brahmins to take part in a movement
directed against the priestly Brahmins? In my judgment, it is useless to make a
distinction between the secular Brahmins and priestly Brahmins. Both are kith
and kin. They are two arms of the same body, and one is bound to fight for the
existence of the other.
[8:] In this connection, I am
reminded of some very pregnant remarks made by Prof. Dicey in his
English Constitution. Speaking of the actual limitation on the
legislative supremacy of Parliament, Dicey says:
"The
actual exercise of authority by any sovereign whatever, and notably by
Parliament, is bounded or controlled by two limitations. Of these the one is an
external, and the other is an internal limitation. The external limit to the
real power of a sovereign consists in the
possibility
or certainty that his subjects or a large number of them will disobey or resist
his laws....The internal limit to the exercise of sovereignty arises from the
nature of the sovereign power itself. Even a despot exercises his powers in
accordance with his character, which is itself moulded by the circumstance
under which he lives, including under that head the moral feelings of the time
and the society to which he belongs. The Sultan could not, if he woulrfd,
change the religion of the Mohammedan world, but even if he could do so, it is
in the very highest degree improbable that the head of Mohammedanism should
wish to overthrow the religion of Mohammed; the internal check on the exercise
of the Sultan's power is at least as strong as the external limitation. People
sometimes ask the idle question, why the Pope does not introduce this or that
reform? The true answer is that a revolutionist is not the kind of man who
becomes a Pope and that a man who becomes a Pope has no wish to be a
revolutionist."
[9:] I think these remarks apply equally to the Brahmins of
India, and one can say with equal truth that if a man who becomes a Pope has no
wish to become a revolutionary, a man who is born a Brahmin has much less
desire to become a revolutionary. Indeed, to expect a Brahmin to be a
revolutionary in matters of social reform is as idle as to expect the British
Parliament, as was said by Leslie Stephen, to pass an Act requiring all
blue-eyed babies to be murdered.
[10:] Some of you will say that
it is a matter of small concern whether the Brahmins come forward to
lead the movement against Caste or whether they do not. To take this view is,
in my judgment, to ignore the part played by the intellectual class in the
community. Whether you accept the theory of the great man as the maker of
history or whether you do not, this much you will have to concede: that in
every country the intellectual class is the most influential class, if not the
governing class. The intellectual class is the class which can foresee, it is
the class which can advise and give the lead. In no country does the mass of
the people live the life of intelligent thought and action. It is largely
imitative, and follows the intellectual class.
[11:] There is no exaggeration in saying that the entire destiny of a
country depends upon its intellectual class. If the intellectual class is honest,
independent, and disinterested, it can be trusted to take the initiative and
give a proper lead when a crisis arises. It is true that intellect by itself is
no virtue. It is only a means, and the use of means depends upon the ends which
an intellectual person pursues. An intellectual man can be a good man, but he
can easily be a rogue. Similarly an intellectual class may be a band of
high-souled persons, ready to help, ready to emancipate erring humanity—or it
may easily be a gang of crooks, or a body of advocates for a narrow clique from
which it draws its support.
[12:] You may think it a pity that the intellectual class in India is
simply another name for the Brahmin caste. You may regret that the two
are one; that the existence of the intellectual class should be bound up with
one single caste; that this intellectual class should share the interest and
the aspirations of that Brahmin caste, and should be a class which has regarded
itself as the custodian of the interest of that caste, rather than of the
interests of the country. All this may be very regrettable. But the fact
remains that the Brahmins form the intellectual class of the Hindus. It is not
only an intellectual class, but it is a class which is held in great reverence
by the rest of the Hindus.
[13:] The Hindus are taught that the Brahmins are
Bhudevas (Gods on earth) .
The Hindus are taught that Brahmins alone can be their teachers. Manu says,
"If it be asked how it should be with respect to points of the Dharma which
have not been specially mentioned, the answer is, that which Brahmins who are
Shishthas propound shall doubtless have legal force":
[14:]
[15:] When such an intellectual class, which holds the rest of the
community in its grip, is opposed to the reform of Caste, the chances of
success in a movement for the break-up of the Caste system appear to me
very, very remote.
[16:] The second reason why I say the task is
impossible will be clear, if you will bear in mind that the Caste system
has two aspects. In one of its aspects, it divides men into separate
communities. In its second aspect, it places these communities in a graded
order one above the other in social status. Each caste takes its pride and its
consolation in the fact that in the scale of castes it is above some other
caste. As an outward mark of this gradation, there is also a gradation of
social and religious rights, technically spoken of as Ashtadhikaras and Sanskaras.
The higher the grade of a caste, the greater the number of these rights; and
the lower the grade, the lesser their number.
[17:] Now this gradation, this
scaling of castes, makes it impossible to organise a common front against the Caste
System. If a caste claims the right to inter-dine and inter-marry with
another caste placed above it, it is frozen the instant it is told by
mischief-mongers—and there are many Brahmins amongst such
mischief-mongers—that it will have to concede inter-dining and inter-marriage
with castes below it! All are slaves of the Caste System. But all the slaves
are not equal in status.
[18:] To excite the proletariat to bring about an economic revolution,
Karl Marx told them: "You have nothing to lose except your
chains." But the artful way in which the social and religious rights are
distributed among the different castes, whereby some have more and some have
less, makes the slogan of Karl Marx quite useless to excite the Hindus
against the Caste System. Castes form a graded system of sovereignties,
high and low, which are jealous of their status and which know that if a
general dissolution came, some of them stand to lose more of their prestige and
power than others do. You cannot, therefore, have a general mobilization of the
Hindus (to use a military expression) for an attack on the Caste System.
22 [No reformers, and no appeals to reason, have so far succeeded]
[1:] Can you appeal to reason, and ask the Hindus to discard
Caste as being contrary to reason? That raises the question: Is a Hindu free to
follow his reason? Manu has laid down three sanctions to which every Hindu must
conform in the matter of his behaviour:
[2:]
[3:] Here there is no place for reason to play its part. A Hindu
must follow either Veda, Smriti or sadachar. He
cannot follow anything else.
[4:] In the first place, how are the texts of the Vedas and Smritis
to be interpreted whenever any doubt arises regarding their meaning? On this
important question the view of Manu is quite definite. He says:
[5:]
[6:] According to this rule, rationalism as a canon of interpreting
the Vedas and Smritis is absolutely condemned. It is regarded to
be as wicked as atheism, and the punishment provided for it is excommunication.
Thus, where a matter is covered by the Veda or the Smriti, a Hindu
cannot resort to rational thinking.
[7:] Even when there is a
conflict between Vedas and Smritis on matters on which they have
given a positive injunction, the solution is not left to reason. When there is
a conflict between two Shrutis, both are to be regarded as of equal
authority. Either of them may be followed. No attempt is to be made to find out
which of the two accords with reason. This is made clear by Manu:
[8:]
[9:] "When there is a conflict between Shruti and Smriti,
the Shruti must prevail." But here too, no attempt must be made to
find out which of the two accords with reason. This is laid down by Manu in the
following shloka:
[10:]
[11:] Again, when there is a conflict between two Smritis, the Manu
Smriti must prevail, but no attempt is to be made to find out which of the
two accords with reason. This is the ruling given by Brihaspati:
[12:]
[13:] It is, therefore, clear that in any matter on which the Shrutis
and Smritis have given a positive direction, a Hindu is not free
to use his reasoning faculty. The same rule is laid down in the Mahabharat:
[14:]
[15:] He must abide by their directions. Caste and Varna are
matters which are dealt with by the Vedas and the Smritis, and
consequently, appeal to reason can have no effect on a Hindu.
[16:] So far as Caste and Varna are concerned, not only the Shastras
do not permit the Hindu to use his reason in the decision of the
question, but they have taken care to see that no occasion is left to examine
in a rational way the foundations of his belief in Caste and Varna. It must be
a source of silent amusement to many a Non-Hindu to find hundreds and thousands
of Hindus breaking Caste on certain occasions, such as railway journeys and
foreign travel, and yet endeavouring to maintain Caste for the rest of their
lives!
[17:] The explanation of this
phenomenon discloses another fetter on the reasoning faculties of the Hindus.
Man's life is generally habitual and unreflective. Reflective thought—in the
sense of active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or
supposed form of knowledge, in the light of the grounds that support it and the
further conclusions to which it tends—is quite rare, and arises only in a
situation which presents a dilemma or a crisis. Railway journeys and foreign
travels are really occasions of crisis in the life of a Hindu, and it is
natural to expect a Hindu to ask himself why he should maintain Caste at all,
if he cannot maintain it at all times. But he does not. He breaks Caste at one
step, and proceeds to observe it at the next, without raising any question.
[18:] The reason for this astonishing conduct is to be found in the
rule of the Shastras, which directs him to maintain Caste as far as
possible and to undergo prayaschitta when he cannot. By this
theory of prayaschitta, the Shastras, by following a spirit of
compromise, have given caste a perpetual lease on life, and have smothered the
reflective thought which would have otherwise led to the destruction of the
notion of Caste.
[19:] There have been
many who have worked in the cause of the abolition of Caste and Untouchability.
Of those who can be mentioned, Ramanuja, Kabir, and others stand
out prominently. Can you appeal to the acts of these reformers and exhort the Hindus
to follow them?
[20:] It is true that Manu has included sadachar as one
of the sanctions along with Shruti and Smriti. Indeed, sadachar
( )
has been given a higher place than Shastras:
[21:]
[22:] According to this, sadachar, whether it is dharmya
or adharmya, in accordance with Shastras or contrary to Shastras,
must be followed. But what is the meaning of sadachar? If anyone
were to suppose that sadachar means right or good
acts—i.e., acts of good and righteous men—he would find himself greatly
mistaken. Sadachar does not means good acts or acts of good men. It
means ancient custom, good or bad. The following verse makes this
clear:
[23:]
[24:]
As though to warn people against the view that sadachar means
good acts or acts of good men, and fearing that
people might understand it that way and follow
the acts of good men, the Smritis have commanded the Hindus in
unmistakable terms not to follow even Gods in their good deeds, if they are
contrary to Shruti, Smriti, and sadachar. This may sound
to be most extraordinary, most perverse, but the fact remains that is an injunction issued to the Hindus
by their Shastras.
[25:] Reason and morality are the
two most powerful weapons in the armoury of a reformer. To deprive him of the
use of these weapons is to disable him for action. How are you going to break
up Caste, if people are not free to consider whether it accords with reason?
How are you going to break up Caste, if people are not free to consider whether
it accords with morality? The wall built around Caste is impregnable, and the
material of which it is built contains none of the combustible stuff of reason
and morality. Add to this the fact that inside this wall stands the army of Brahmins
who form the intellectual class, Brahmins who are the natural leaders of the Hindus,
Brahmins who are there not as mere mercenary soldiers but as an army fighting
for its homeland, and you will get an idea why I think that the breaking up of
Caste among the Hindus is well-nigh impossible. At any rate, it would take ages
before a breach is made.
[26:] But whether the doing of the deed takes time or whether it can
be done quickly, you must not forget that if you wish to bring about a breach
in the system, then you have got to apply the dynamite to the Vedas and
the Shastras, which deny any part to reason; to the Vedas and Shastras,
which deny any part to morality. You must destroy the religion of the Shrutis
and the Smritis. Nothing else will avail. This is my considered view of
the matter.
23 [Destroying Caste would not destroy the true
principles of Religion]
[1:] Some may not understand what I mean by destruction of Religion;
some may find the idea revolting to them, and some may find it revolutionary.
Let me therefore explain my position. I do not know whether you draw a
distinction between principles and rules. But I do. Not only do I make a
distinction, but I say that this distinction is real and important. Rules are
practical; they are habitual ways of doing things according to prescription.
But principles are intellectual; they are useful methods of judging things.
Rules seek to tell an agent just what course of action to pursue. Principles do
not prescribe a specific course of action. Rules, like cooking recipes, do tell
just what to do and how to do it. A principle, such as that of justice,
supplies a main heading by reference to which he is to consider the bearings of
his desires and purposes; it guides him in his thinking by suggesting to him
the important consideration which he should bear in mind.
[2:] This difference between rules and principles makes the acts done
in pursuit of them different in quality and in content. Doing what is said to
be good by virtue of a rule, and doing good in the light of a principle, are
two different things. The principle may be wrong, but the act is conscious and
responsible. The rule may be right, but the act is mechanical. A religious act
may not be a correct act, but must at least be a responsible act. To permit of
this responsibility, Religion must mainly be a matter of principles only. It
cannot be a matter of rules. The moment it degenerates into rules, it ceases to
be Religion, as it kills the responsibility which is the essence of a truly
religious act.
[3:] What is this Hindu
Religion? Is it a set of principles, or is it a code of rules? Now the Hindu
Religion, as contained in the Vedas and the Smritis, is nothing
but a mass of sacrificial, social, political, and sanitary rules and
regulations, all mixed up. What is called Religion by the Hindus is nothing but
a multitude of commands and prohibitions. Religion, in the sense of spiritual
principles, truly universal, applicable to all races, to all countries, to all
times, is not to be found in them; and if it is, it does not form the governing
part of a Hindu's life. That for a Hindu, Dharma means commands and
prohibitions, is clear from the way the word Dharma is used in the Vedas
and the Smritis and understood by the commentators. The word Dharma as
used in the Vedas in most cases means religious ordinances or rites.
Even Jaimini in his Purva-Mimamsa defines Dharma as "a
desirable goal or result that is indicated by injunctive (Vedic)
passages."
[4:]
To put it in plain language, what the Hindus call Religion is really
Law, or at best legalized class-ethics. Frankly, I
refuse to call this code of ordinances as
Religion. The first evil of such a code of ordinances, misrepresented to the
people as Religion, is that it tends to deprive moral life of freedom and
spontaneity, and to reduce it (for the conscientious, at any rate) to a more or
less anxious and servile conformity to externally imposed rules. Under it, there
is no loyalty to ideals; there is only conformity to commands.
[5:] But the worst evil of this
code of ordinances is that the laws it contains must be the same yesterday,
today, and forever. They are iniquitous in that they are not the same for one
class as for another. But this iniquity is made perpetual in that they are
prescribed to be the same for all generations. The objectionable part of such a
scheme is not that they are made by certain persons called Prophets or
Law-givers. The objectionable part is that this code has been invested with the
character of finality and fixity. Happiness notoriously varies with the
conditions and circumstances of a person, as well as with the conditions of
different people and epochs. That being the case, how can humanity endure this
code of eternal laws, without being cramped and without being crippled?
[6:] I have, therefore, no hesitation in saying that such a religion
must be destroyed, and I say there is nothing irreligious in working for the
destruction of such a religion. Indeed I hold that it is your bounden duty to
tear off the mask, to remove the misrepresentation that is caused by misnaming
this Law as Religion. This is an essential step for you. Once you clear the
minds of the people of this misconception, and enable them to realize that what
they are told is Religion is not Religion, but that it is really Law, you will
be in a position to urge its amendment or abolition.
[7:] So long as
people look upon it as Religion they will not be ready for a change, because
the idea of Religion is generally speaking not associated with the idea of
change. But the idea of law is associated with the idea of change, and when
people come to know that what is called Religion is really Law, old and
archaic, they will be ready for a change, for people know and accept that law
can be changed.
24 [A true priesthood should be based on qualification, not heredity]
[1:] While I condemn a Religion of Rules, I must not be understood to
hold the opinion that there is no necessity for a religion. On the contrary, I
agree with Burke when he says that "True religion is the foundation
of society, the basis on which all true Civil Government rests, and both their
sanction." Consequently, when I urge that these ancient rules of life be
annulled, I am anxious that their place shall be taken by a Religion of
Principles, which alone can lay claim to being a true Religion. Indeed, I am so
convinced of the necessity of Religion that I feel I ought to tell you in
outline what I regard as necessary items in this religious reform. The
following, in my opinion, should be the cardinal items in this reform:
1. There should be one and only one standard book of Hindu
Religion, acceptable to all Hindus and recognized by all Hindus. This of
course means that all other books of Hindu religion such as Vedas, Shastras,
and Puranas, which are treated as sacred and authoritative, must by law
cease to be so, and the preaching of any doctrine, religious or social,
contained in these books should be penalized.
2. It would be better if priesthood among Hindus were abolished.
But as this seems to be impossible, the priesthood must at least cease to be
hereditary. Every person who professes to be a Hindu must be eligible
for being a priest. It should be provided by law that no Hindu shall be
entitled to be a priest unless he has passed an examination prescribed by the
State, and holds a sanad from the State permitting him to
practise.
3. No ceremony performed by a priest who does not hold a sanad
shall be deemed to be valid in law, and it should be made penal [=punishable]
for a person who has no sanad to officiate as a priest.
4. A priest should be the servant of the State, and should be subject to
the disciplinary action of the State in the matter of his morals, beliefs, and
worship, in addition to his being subject along with other citizens to the
ordinary law of the land.
5. The number of priests should be limited by law according to the
requirements of the State, as is done in the case of the I.C.S.
[2:]
To some, this may sound radical. But to my mind there is nothing revolutionary
in this. Every profession in India is
regulated. Engineers must show proficiency,
doctors must show proficiency, lawyers must show proficiency, before they are
allowed to practise their professions. During the whole of their career, they
must not only obey the law of the land, civil as well as criminal, but they
must also obey the special code of morals prescribed by their respective
professions. The priest's is the only profession where proficiency is not
required. The profession of a Hindu priest is the only profession which
is not subject to any code.
[3:] Mentally a priest may be an
idiot, physically a priest may be suffering from a foul disease such as
syphilis or gonorrhea, morally he may be a wreck. But he is fit to officiate at
solemn ceremonies, to enter the sanctum sanctorum [=holiest part] of a Hindu
temple, and to worship the Hindu God. All this becomes possible among the Hindus
because for a priest it is enough to be born in a priestly caste. The whole
thing is abominable, and is due to the fact that the priestly class among
Hindus is subject neither to law nor to morality. It recognizes no duties. It
knows only of rights and privileges. It is a pest which divinity seems to have
let loose on the masses for their mental and moral degradation.
[4:] The priestly class must be
brought under control by some such legislation as I have outlined above. This
will prevent it from doing mischief and from misguiding people. It will
democratise it by throwing it open to everyone. It will certainly help to kill
the Brahminism and will also help to kill Caste, which is nothing but Brahminism
incarnate. Brahminism is the poison which has spoiled Hinduism. You will
succeed in saving Hinduism if you will kill Brahminism. There should be no
opposition to this reform from any quarter. It should be welcomed even by the Arya
Samajists, because this is merely an application of their own doctrine of guna-karma.
[5:] Whether you do that or you do not, you must give a new doctrinal
basis to your Religion—a basis that will be in consonance with Liberty,
Equality and Fraternity; in short, with Democracy. I am no authority on the
subject. But I am told that for such religious principles as will be in
consonance with Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, it may not be necessary for
you to borrow from foreign sources, and that you could draw for such principles
on the Upanishads. Whether you could do so without a complete
remoulding, a considerable scraping and chipping off from the ore they contain,
is more than I can say. This means a complete change in the fundamental notions
of life. It means a complete change in the values of life. It means a complete
change in outlook and in attitude towards men and things.
[6:] It means
conversion—but if you do not like the word, I will say it means new life. But a
new life cannot enter a body that is dead. New life can enter only into a new
body. The old body must die before a new body can come into existence and a new
life can enter into it. To put it simply: the old must cease to be operative
before the new can begin to enliven [=to live] and to pulsate. This is what I meant
when I said you must discard the authority of the Shastras, and destroy
the religion of the Shastras.
25 [If Hindu Society is to progress, its
traditions must be able to evolve]
[1:] I have kept you too long. It is time I brought this address to a close.
This would have been a convenient point for me to have stopped. But this would
probably be my last address to a Hindu audience, on a subject vitally
concerning the Hindus. I would therefore like, before I close, to place before
the Hindus, if they will allow me, some questions which I regard as vital, and
invite them seriously to consider the same.
[2:] In the first place, the Hindus must consider whether it is
sufficient to take the placid view of the anthropologist that there is nothing
to be said about the beliefs, habits, morals, and outlooks on life which obtain
among the different peoples of the world, except that they often differ; or
whether it is not necessary to make an attempt to find out what kind of
morality, beliefs, habits, and outlook have worked best and have enabled those
who possessed them to flourish, to grow strong, to people the earth and to have
dominion over it. As is observed by Prof. Carver,
"Morality and religion,
as the organised expression of moral approval
and
disapproval, must be regarded as factors in the struggle for existence as truly
as are weapons for offence and defence, teeth and claws, horns and hoofs, furs
and feathers. The social group, community, tribe, or nation, which develops an
unworkable scheme of morality or within which those social acts which weaken it
and unfit it for survival, habitually create the sentiment of approval, while
those which would strengthen and enable it to be expanded habitually create the
sentiment of disapproval, will eventually be eliminated. It is its habits of
approval or disapproval (these are the results of religion and morality) that
handicap it, as really as the possession of two wings on one side with none on
the other will handicap the colony of flies. It would be as futile in the one
case as in the other to argue, that one system is just as good as another."
[3:] Morality and religion,
therefore, are not mere matters of likes and dislikes. You may dislike
exceedingly a scheme of morality which, if universally practised within a
nation, would make that nation the strongest nation on the face of the earth.
Yet in spite of your dislike, such a nation will become strong. You may like
exceedingly a scheme of morality and an ideal of justice which, if universally
practised within a nation, would make it unable to hold its own in the struggle
with other nations. Yet in spite of your admiration, this nation will
eventually disappear. The Hindus must, therefore, examine their religion
and their morality in terms of their survival value.
[4:] Secondly, the Hindus
must consider whether they should conserve the whole of their social heritage,
or select what is helpful and transmit to future generations only that much and
no more. Prof. John Dewey, who was my teacher and to whom I owe so much,
has said: "Every society gets encumbered with what is trivial, with dead
wood from the past, and with what is positively perverse....As a society
becomes more enlightened, it realizes that it is responsible not to
conserve and transmit the whole of its existing achievements, but only such as
make for a better future society." Even Burke, in spite of the
vehemence with which he opposed the principle of change embodied in the French
Revolution, was compelled to admit that "a State without the means of some
change is without the means of its conservation. Without such means it might
even risk the loss of that part of the constitution which it wished the
most religiously to preserve.'' What Burke said of a State applies equally to a
society.
[5:] Thirdly, the Hindus must consider whether they must
not cease to worship the past as supplying their ideals. The baneful effects of
this worship of the past are best summed up by Prof. Dewey when he says:
"An
individual can live only in the present. The present is not just something
which comes after the past; much less something produced by it. It is what life
is in leaving the past behind it. The study of past products will not help us
to understand the present. A knowledge of the past and its heritage is of great
significance when it enters into the present, but not otherwise. And the
mistake of making the records and remains of the past the main material of
education is that it tends to make the past a rival of the present and the
present a more or less futile imitation of the past."
[6:] The principle which makes little of the present act of living and
growing, naturally looks upon the present as empty and upon the future as
remote. Such a principle is inimical to progress, and is a hindrance to a
strong and a steady current of life.
[7:] Fourthly,
the Hindus must consider whether the time has not come for them to
recognize that there is nothing fixed, nothing eternal, nothing sanatan;
that everything is changing, that change is the law of life for individuals as
well as for society. In a changing society, there must be a constant revolution
of old values; and the Hindus must realize that if there must be standards to
measure the acts of men, there must also be a readiness to revise those
standards.
26 [The struggle is yours; I have
now decided to leave the Hindu fold]
[1:] I have to confess that this address has become too lengthy.
Whether this fault is compensated to any extent by breadth or depth is a matter
for you to judge. All I claim is to have told you candidly my views. I have
little to recommend them but some study and a deep concern in your destiny. If
you will allow me to say it, these views are the views of a man who has been no
tool of power, no flatterer of greatness. They come from one, almost the whole
of whose public exertion has been one continuous struggle for liberty for the
poor and for the oppressed, and whose only reward has been a continuous shower
of calumny and abuse from national journals and national leaders, for no other
reason except that I refuse to join with them in performing the miracle—I will
not say trick—of liberating the oppressed with the gold of the tyrant, and
raising the poor with the cash of the rich.
[2:] All this may not be enough
to commend my views. I think they[= Dr. Ambedkar's views] are not likely to
alter yours. But whether they do or do not, the responsibility is entirely
yours. You must make your efforts to uproot Caste, if not in my way, then in
your way.
[3:] I am sorry, I will not be
with you. I have decided to change. This is not the place for giving reasons.
But even when I am gone out of your fold, I will watch your movement with
active sympathy, and you will have my assistance for what it may be worth.
Yours is a national cause. Caste is no doubt primarily the breath of the Hindus.
But the Hindus have fouled the air all over, and everybody is infected—Sikh,
Muslim, and Christian. You, therefore, deserve the support of all those
who are suffering from this infection—Sikh, Muslim, and Christian.
[4:] Yours is more difficult than the other national cause, namely Swaraj.
In the fight for Swaraj you fight with the whole nation on your side. In this,
you have to fight against the whole nation—and that too, your own. But it is
more important than Swaraj. There is no use having Swaraj, if you cannot defend
it. More important than the question of defending Swaraj is the question of
defending the Hindus under the Swaraj. In my opinion, it is only when
Hindu Society becomes a casteless society that it can hope to have strength
enough to defend itself. Without such internal strength, Swaraj for Hindus may
turn out to be only a step towards slavery. Good-bye, and good wishes for your
success.
A Vindication Of Caste By Mahatma Gandhi
(A
Reprint of his Articles in the Harijan)
[1:]
Dr. Ambedkar's Indictment (I)
[2:] The readers will recall the fact that Dr. Ambedkar was to have
presided last May at the annual conference of the Jat-Pat-Todak Mandal of
Lahore. But the conference itself was cancelled because Dr. Ambedkar's
address was found by the Reception Committee to be unacceptable. How far
a Reception Committee is justified in rejecting a President of its choice
because of his address that may be objectionable to it is open to question. The
Committee knew Dr. Ambedkar's views on caste and the Hindu scriptures.
They knew also that he had in unequivocal terms decided to give up Hinduism.
Nothing less than the address that Dr. Ambedkar had prepared was to be expected
from him. The committee appears to have deprived the public of an opportunity
of listening to the original views of a man who has carved out for himself a
unique position in society. Whatever label he wears in future, Dr. Ambedkar is
not the man to allow himself to be forgotten.
[3:] Dr. Ambedkar was not going to be beaten by the Reception
Committee. He has answered their rejection of him by publishing the address at
his own expense. He has priced it at 8 annas, I would suggest a
reduction to 2 annas or at least [= at most] 4 annas.
[4:] No reformer can ignore the address. The
orthodox will gain by reading it. This is not to say that the address is not
open to objection. It has to be read only because it is open to serious
objection. Dr. Ambedkar is a challenge to Hinduism. Brought up as a Hindu,
educated by a Hindu potentate, he has become so disgusted with the so-called Savarna
Hindus or the treatment that he and his people have received at their hands
that he proposes to leave not only them but the very religion that is his and
their common heritage. He has transferred to that religion, his disgust against
a part of its professors [=believers].
[5:] But this is not to be
wondered at. After all, one can only judge a system or an institution by the
conduct of its representatives. What is more, Dr. Ambedkar found that the vast
majority of Savarna Hindus had not only conducted themselves inhumanly
against those of their fellow religionists whom they classed as untouchables,
but they had based their conduct on the authority of their scriptures, and when
he began to search them he had found ample warrant for their beliefs in
untouchability and all its implications. The author of the address has quoted
chapter and verse in proof of his three-fold indictment—inhuman conduct itself,
the unabashed justification for it on the part of the perpetrators, and the
subsequent discovery that the justification was warranted by their scriptures.
[6:] No Hindu who prizes
his faith above life itself can afford to underrate the importance of this
indictment. Dr Ambedkar is not alone in his disgust. He is its most
uncompromising exponent and one of the ablest among them. He is certainly the
most irreconcilable among them. Thank God, in the front rank of the leaders he
is singularly alone, and as yet but a representative of a very small minority.
But what he says is voiced with more or less vehemence by many leaders belonging
to the depressed classes. Only the latter, for instance Rao Bahadur
M. C. Rajah and Dewan Bahadur Srinivasan, not only do not
threaten to give up Hinduism, but find enough warmth in it to compensate for
the shameful persecution to which the vast mass of Harijans are
exposed.
[7:] But the fact of many leaders remaining in the Hindu fold
is no warrant for disregarding what Dr. Ambedkar has to say. The Savarnas
have to correct their belief and their conduct. Above all, those who are
[preeminent] by their learning and influence among the Savarnas have to give an
authoritative interpretation of the scriptures. The questions that Dr.
Ambedkar's indictment suggests are:
[8:]
1.
What are the scriptures?
2. Are all the printed texts to be regarded as an integral part of them,
or is any part of them to be rejected as unauthorised interpolation?
3. What is the answer of such accepted and expurgated scriptures on the
question of untouchability, caste, equality of status, inter-dining and
intermarriages? (These have been all examined by Dr. Ambedkar in his address.)
4. I must reserve for the next issue my own answer to these questions and
a statement of the (at least some) manifest flaws in Dr. Ambedkar's thesis.
(Harijan,
July 11, 1936)
[9:]
Dr. Ambedkar's Indictment (II)
[10:]
The Vedas, Upanishads, Smritis and Puranas,
including the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, are the
Hindu Scriptures. Nor is
this a finite list. Every age or even generation has added to the list. It
follows, therefore, that everything printed or even found handwritten is
not scripture. The Smritis, for instance, contain much that can never be
accepted as the word of God. Thus many of the texts that Dr. Ambedkar quotes
from the Smritis cannot be accepted as authentic. The scriptures,
properly so-called, can only be concerned with eternal verities and must appeal
to any conscience, i.e. any heart whose eyes of understanding are opened.
Nothing can be accepted as the word of God which cannot be tested by reason or
be capable of being spiritually experienced. And even when you have an
expurgated edition of the scriptures, you will need their interpretation. Who
is the best interpreter? Not learned men surely. Learning there must be. But
religion does not live by it. It lives in the experiences of its saints and
seers, in their lives and sayings. When all the most learned commentators of
the scriptures are utterly forgotten, the accumulated experience of the sages
and
saints will abide and be an inspiration for ages
to come.
[11:] Caste has nothing to do
with religion. It is a custom whose origin I do not know, and do not need to
know for the satisfaction of my spiritual hunger. But I do know that it is
harmful both to spiritual and national growth. Varna and Ashrama are
institutions which have nothing to do with castes. The law of Varna teaches us
that we have each one of us to earn our bread by following the ancestral
calling. It defines not our rights but our duties. It necessarily has reference
to callings that are conducive to the welfare of humanity and to no other. It
also follows that there is no calling too low and none too high. All are good,
lawful and absolutely equal in status. The callings of a Brahmin—spiritual
teacher—and a scavenger are equal, and their due performance carries equal
merit before God, and at one time seems to have carried identical reward before
man. Both were entitled to their livelihood and no more. Indeed one traces even
now in the villages the faint lines of this healthy operation of the law.
[12:] Living in Segaon with its population of 600, I do not
find a great disparity between the earnings of different tradesmen, including Brahmins.
I find too that real Brahmins are to be found, even in these degenerate days,
who are living on alms freely given to them and are giving freely of what they
have of spiritual treasures. It would be wrong and improper to judge the law of
Varna by its caricature in the lives of men who profess to belong to a
Varna, whilst they openly commit a breach of its only operative rule.
Arrogation of a superior status by and of the Varna over another is a denial of
the law. And there is nothing in the law of Varna to warrant a belief in
untouchability. (The essence of Hinduism is contained in its enunciation of one
and only [one] God as Truth and its bold acceptance of Ahimsa as the law
of the human family.)
[13:] I am aware that my interpretation of Hinduism will be disputed
by many besides Dr. Ambedkar. That does not affect my position. It is an
interpretation by which I have lived for nearly half a century, and according
to which I have endeavoured to the best of my ability to regulate my life.
[14:] In my opinion the profound mistake that Dr. Ambedkar has made in
his address is to pick out the texts of doubtful authenticity and value, and
the state of degraded Hindus who are no fit specimens of the faith they
so woefully misrepresent. Judged by the standard applied by Dr. Ambedkar, every
known living faith will probably fail.
[15:]
In his able address, the learned Doctor has overproved his case. Can a religion
that was professed by Chaitanya,
Jnyandeo, Tukaram,
Tiruvalluvar, Ramakrishna Paramahansa, Raja Ram Mohan Roy,
Maharshi Devendranath Tagore, Vivekanand, and a host of others who
might be easily mentioned, be so utterly devoid of merit as is made out
in Dr. Ambedkar's address? A religion has to be judged not by its worst
specimens, but by the best it might have produced. For that and that alone can
be used as the standard to aspire to, if not to improve upon. (Harijan,
July 18, 1936)
[16:]
III: Varna Versus Caste
[17:] Shri Sant Ramji of the Jat-Pat-Todak Mandal of Lahore
wants me to publish the following: "I have read your remarks about Dr.
Ambedkar and the Jat-Pat-Todak Mandal, Lahore. In that connection I beg
to submit as follows:
[18:] We did not invite Dr. Ambedkar to preside over our conference
because he belonged to the Depressed Classes, for we do not distinguish
between a touchable and an untouchableHindu. On the contrary our choice
fell on him simply because his diagnosis of the fatal disease of the Hindu
community was the same as ours; i.e., he too was of the opinion that the caste
system was the root cause of the disruption and downfall of the Hindus. The
subject of the Doctor's thesis for his Doctorate being the caste system, he has
studied the subject thoroughly. Now the object of our conference was to
persuade the Hindus to annihilate castes, but the advice of a non-Hindu in
social and religious matters can have no effect on them. The Doctor in the
supplementary portion of his address insisted on saying that that was his last
speech as a Hindu, which was irrelevant as well as pernicious to the interests
of the conference. So we requested him to expunge that sentence, for he could
easily say the same thing on any other occasion. But he refused, and we saw no
utility in making merely a show of our function. In spite of all this, I cannot
help praising his address, which is, as far as I know, the most learned thesis
on the subject and worth translating into every vernacular of India.
[19:]
Moreover, I want to bring to your notice that your philosophical difference
between Caste and Varna is too subtle to
be grasped by people in general, because for all
practical purposes in the Hindu society Caste and Varna are one and the
same thing, for the function of both of them is one and the same, i.e. to
restrict inter-caste marriages and inter-dining. Your theory of Varnavyavastha
is impracticable in this age, and there is no hope of its revival in the near
future. But Hindus are slaves of caste, and do not want to destroy it. So when
you advocate your ideal of imaginary Varnavyavastha, they find justification
for clinging to caste. Thus you are doing a great disservice to social reform
by advocating your imaginary utility of the division of Varnas, for it creates
a hindrance in our way. To try to remove untouchability without striking at the
root of Varnavyavastha is simply to treat the outward symptoms of a disease, or
to draw a line on the surface of water. As in the heart of their hearts Dvijas
do not want to give social equality to the so-called touchable and untouchable
Shudras, so they refuse to break caste—and give liberal donations for the
removal of untouchability simply to evade the issue. To seek the help of
the Shastras for the removal of untouchability and caste is simply to
wash mud with mud."
[20:] The last paragraph of the letter surely cancels the first. If
the Mandal rejects the help of the Shastras, they do exactly what Dr. Ambedkar
does, i.e. cease to be Hindus. How then can they object to Dr. Ambedkar's
address merely because he said that that was his last speech as a Hindu?
The position appears to be wholly untenable, especially when the Mandal, for
which Shri Sant Ram claims to speak, applauds the whole argument of Dr.
Ambedkar's address.
[21:] But it is pertinent to ask what the Mandal believes, if it
rejects the Shastras. How can a Muslim remain one if he rejects the Quran,
or a Christian remain Christian if he rejects the Bible? If Caste and Varna
are convertible terms, and if Varna is an integral part of the Shastras
which define Hinduism, I do not know how a person who rejects Caste, i.e.
Varna, can call himself a Hindu.
[22:] Shri Sant Ram likens the Shastras to mud. Dr.
Ambedkar has not, so far as I remember, given any such picturesque name to the Shastras.
I have certainly meant when I have said: that if Shastras support the
existing untouchability I should cease to call myself a Hindu.
Similarly, if the Shastras support caste as we know it today in all its
hideousness, I may not call myself or remain a Hindu, since I have no scruples
about interdining or intermarriage. I need not repeat my position regarding Shastras
and their interpretation. I venture to suggest to Shri Sant Ram that it is the
only rational and correct and morally defensible position, and it has ample
warrant in Hindu tradition.
(Harijan,
August 15, 1936)
A Reply to the Mahatma by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar
[1:]
1
I appreciate greatly the honour
done me by the Mahatma in taking notice in his Harijan of the
speech on Caste which I had prepared for the Jat-Pat-Todak Mandal. From
a perusal of his review of my speech, it is clear that the Mahatma completely
dissents from the views I have expressed on the subject of Caste. I am not in
the habit of entering into controversy with my opponents unless there are
special reasons which compel me to act otherwise. Had my opponent been some
mean and obscure person, I would not have pursued him. But my opponent being
the Mahatma himself, I feel I must attempt to meet the case to the contrary
which he has sought to put forth.
[2:] While I appreciate the honour he has done me, I must confess to a
sense of surprise on finding that of all people the Mahatma should
accuse me of a desire to seek publicity, as he seems to do when he suggests
that in publishing the undelivered speech my object was to see that I
was not "forgotten." Whatever the Mahatma may choose to say, my
object in publishing the speech was to provoke the Hindus to think, and
to take stock of their position. I have never hankered for publicity, and if I
may say so, I have more of it than I wish or need. But supposing it was out of
the motive of gaining publicity that I printed the speech, who could cast a
stone at me? Surely not those who, like the Mahatma, live in glass houses.
[3:]
2
Motive
apart, what has the Mahatma to say on the question raised by me in the
speech? First of all, anyone who reads my speech will realize that the Mahatma
has entirely missed the issues raised by me, and that the issues he has raised
are not the issues that arise out of what he is pleased to call my indictment
of the Hindus. The principal points which I have tried to make out in my speech
may be catalogued as follows:
[4:]
1.
That Caste has ruined the Hindus;
2. That the reorganization of the Hindu Society on the basis of Chaturvarnya
is impossible because the Varnavyavastha is like a leaky pot or like a
man running at the nose. It is incapable of sustaining itself by its own virtue,
and has an inherent tendency to degenerate into a Caste System unless
there is a legal sanction behind it which can be enforced against everyone transgressing
his Varna;
3. That the reorganization of the Hindu Society on the basis of Chaturvarnya
would be harmful, because the effect of the Varnavyavastha would be to
degrade the masses by denying them opportunity to acquire knowledge, and to
emasculate them by denying them the right to be armed;
4. That the Hindu Society must be reorganized on a religious basis
which would recognise the principles of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity;
5.
That in order to achieve this object the sense of
religious sanctity behind Caste and Varna must be destroyed;
6.
That the sanctity of Caste and Varna can
be destroyed only by discarding the divine authority of the Shastras.
[5:] It will be noticed that the questions raised by the Mahatma
are absolutely beside the point, and show that the main argument of the speech
was lost upon him.
[6:]
3
Let me examine the substance of the points made by the Mahatma.
The first point made by the Mahatma is that the texts cited by me are not
authentic. I confess I am no authority on this matter. But I should like to
state that the texts cited by me are all taken from the writings of the late Mr.
Tilak, who was a recognised authority on the Sanskrit language and
on the Hindu Shastras. His second point is that these Shastras
should be interpreted not by the learned but by the saints; and that as the
saints have understood them, the Shastras do not support Caste and
Untouchability.
[7:] As regards the first point,
what I would like to ask the Mahatma is, what does it avail to anyone if
the texts are interpolations, and if they have been differently interpreted by
the saints? The masses do not make any distinction between texts which are
genuine and texts which are interpolations. The masses do not know what the
texts are. They are too illiterate to know the contents of the Shastras.
They have believed what they have been told, and what they have been told is
that the Shastras do enjoin as a religious duty the observance of Caste
and Untouchability.
[8:] With regard to the saints, one must admit that howsoever
different and elevating their teachings may have been as compared to those of
the merely learned, they have been lamentably ineffective. They have been
ineffective for two reasons. Firstly, none of the saints ever attacked the Caste
System. On the contrary—they were staunch believers in the System of
Castes. Most of them lived and died as members of the castes to which they
respectively belonged. So passionately attached was Jnyandeo to his
status as a Brahmin that when the Brahmins of Paithan would not
admit him to their fold, he moved heaven and earth to get his status as a
Brahmin recognized by the Brahmin fraternity.
[9:] And even the saint Eknath, who now figures in the film "Dharmatma"
as a hero for having shown the courage to touch the untouchables and
dine with them, did so not because he was opposed to Caste and Untouchability,
but because he felt that the pollution caused thereby could be washed away by a
bath in the sacred waters of the river Ganges [].
The saints have never, according to my study, carried on a campaign against
Caste and Untouchability. They were not concerned with the struggle between
men. They were concerned with the relation between man and God. They did not
preach that all men were equal. They preached that all men were equal in the
eyes of God—a very different and a very innocuous proposition, which nobody can
find difficult to preach or dangerous to believe in.
[10:] The second reason why the teachings of the
saints proved ineffective was because the masses have been taught that a saint
might break Caste, but the common man must not. A saint therefore never became
an example to follow. He always remained a pious man to be honoured. That the
masses have remained staunch believers in Caste and Untouchability shows that
the pious lives and noble sermons of the saints have had no effect on their
life and conduct, as against the teachings of the Shastras. Thus it can
be a matter of no consolation that there were saints, or that there is a Mahatma
who understands the Shastras differently from the learned few or
ignorant many.
[11:] That the masses hold a different view of the Shastras is
a fact which should and must be reckoned with. How that is to be dealt with,
except by denouncing the authority of the Shastras which continue to
govern their conduct, is a question which the Mahatma has not considered. But
whatever the plan the Mahatma puts forth as an effective means to free the
masses from the teachings of the Shastras, he must accept that the pious
life led by one good Samaritan may be very elevating to himself, but in India,
with the attitude the common man has to saints and to Mahatmas—to honour but
not to follow—one cannot make much out of it.
[12:]
4
The third point made by the
Mahatma is that a religion professed by Chaitanya, Jnyandeo, Tukaram,
Tiruvalluvar, Ramkrishna Paramahansa, etc., cannot be devoid of merit as
is made out by me, and that a religion has to be judged not by its worst
specimens but by the best it might have produced. I agree with every word of
this statement. But I do not quite understand what the Mahatma wishes to prove
thereby. That religion should be judged not by its worst specimens but by its
best is true enough, but does it dispose of the matter? I say it does not.
[13:] The question still remains, why the worst number so many and the
best so few. To my mind there are two conceivable answers to this question: (1)
That the worst by reason of some original perversity of theirs are morally
uneducable, and are therefore incapable of making the remotest approach to the
religious ideal. Or: (2) That the religious ideal is a wholly wrong ideal which
has given a wrong moral twist to the lives of the many, and that the best have
become best in spite of the wrong ideal—in fact, by giving to the wrong twist a
turn in the right direction.
[14:] Of these two
explanations I am not prepared to accept the first, and I am sure that even the
Mahatma will not insist upon the contrary. To my mind the second is the
only logical and reasonable explanation, unless the Mahatma has a third
alternative to explain why the worst are so many and the best so few. If the
second is the only explanation, then obviously the argument of the Mahatma that
a religion should be judged by its best followers carries us nowhere—except to
pity the lot of the many who have gone wrong because they have been made to
worship wrong ideals.
[15:]
5
The argument of the Mahatma that Hinduism would be tolerable if
only many were to follow the example of the saints is fallacious for another
reason. (In this connection, see the illuminating article on "Morality and
the Social Structure" by Mr. H. N. Brailsford in the Aryan Path for
April 1936.) By citing the names of such illustrious persons as Chaitanya,
etc,. what the Mahatma seems to me to suggest in its broadest and simplest
form is that Hindu society can be made tolerable and even happy without
any fundamental change in its structure, if all the high-caste Hindus
can be persuaded to follow a high standard of morality in their dealings with
the low-caste Hindus. I am totally opposed to this kind of ideology.
[16:] I can respect those of the
caste Hindus who try to realize a high social ideal in their life.
Without such men, India would be an uglier and a less happy place to live in
than it is. But nonetheless, anyone who relies on an attempt to turn the
members of the caste Hindus into better men by improving their personal
character is, in my judgment, wasting his energy and hugging an illusion. Can
personal character make the maker of armaments a good man, i.e., a man who will
sell shells that will not burst and gas that will not poison? If it cannot, how
can you accept personal character [as sufficient] to make a man loaded with the
consciousness of Caste a good man, i.e., a man who would treat his fellow-men
as his friends and equals? To be true to himself, he must deal with his
fellow-man either as a superior or inferior, according as the case may be; at
any rate, differently from his own caste-fellows. He can never be expected to
deal with his
fellow-men as his kinsmen and equals.
[17:] As a matter of fact, a Hindu does treat all those who are
not of his caste as though they were aliens, who could be discriminated against
with impunity, and against whom any fraud or trick may be practised without
shame. This is to say that there can be a better or a worse Hindu.
But a good Hindu there cannot be. This is so not because there is anything
wrong with his personal character. In fact what is wrong is the entire
basis of his relationship to his fellows. The best of men cannot be moral if
the basis of relationship between them and their fellows is fundamentally a
wrong relationship. To a slave, his master may be better or worse. But there
cannot be a good master. A good man cannot be a master, and a master cannot be
a good man.
[18:] The same applies to the relationship between high-caste and
low-caste. To a low-caste man, a high-caste man can be better or worse as
compared to other high-caste men. A high-caste man cannot be a good man,
insofar as he must have a low-caste man to distinguish him as a high-caste man.
It cannot be good to a low-caste man to be conscious that there is a high-caste
man above him. I have argued in my speech that a society based on Varna
or Caste is a society which is based on a wrong relationship. I had hoped that the
Mahatma would attempt to demolish my argument. But instead of doing that,
he has merely reiterated his belief in Chaturvarnya without disclosing
the ground on which it is based.
[19:]
6
Does the Mahatma practise what he preaches? One does not like
to make personal reference in an argument which is general in its application.
But when one preaches a doctrine and holds it as a dogma, there is a curiosity
to know how far he practises what he preaches. It may be that his failure to
practise is due to the ideal being too high to be attainable; it may be that
his failure to practise is due to the innate hypocrisy of the man. In any case
he exposes his conduct to examination, and I must not be blamed if I ask, how
far has the Mahatma attempted to realize his ideal in his own case?
[20:] The Mahatma is a Bania by birth. His ancestors had
abandoned trading in favour of ministership, which is a calling of the Brahmins.
In his own life, before he became a Mahatma, when the occasion came for
him to choose his career he preferred law to [a merchant's] scales. On
abandoning law, he became half saint and half politician. He has never touched
trading, which is his ancestral calling.
[21:] His youngest son—I take one
who is a faithful follower of his father—was born a Vaishya, has married
a Brahmin's daughter, and has chosen to serve a newspaper magnate. The
Mahatma is not known to have condemned him for not following his ancestral
calling. It may be wrong and uncharitable to judge an ideal by its worst
specimens. But surely the Mahatma as a specimen has no better, and if he even
fails to realize the ideal then the ideal must be an impossible ideal, quite
opposed to the practical instincts of man.
[22:] Students of Carlyle know that he often spoke on a subject
before he thought about it. I wonder whether such has not been the case with the
Mahatma, in regard to the subject matter of Caste. Otherwise, certain
questions which occur to me would not have escaped him. When can a calling be
deemed to have become an ancestral calling, so as to make it binding on a man?
Must a man follow his ancestral calling even if it does not suit his
capacities, even when it has ceased to be profitable? Must a man live by his
ancestral calling even if he finds it to be immoral? If everyone must pursue
his ancestral calling, then it must follow that a man must continue to be a
pimp because his grandfather was a pimp, and a woman must continue to be a
prostitute because her grandmother was a prostitute. Is the Mahatma prepared to
accept the logical conclusion of his doctrine? To me his ideal of following
one's ancestral calling is not only an impossible and impractical ideal, but it
is also morally an indefensible ideal.
[23:]
7
The Mahatma sees great virtue in a Brahmin remaining a Brahmin all his
life. Leaving aside the fact there are many Brahmins who do not like to
remain Brahmins all their lives, what can we say about those Brahmins who have
clung to their ancestral calling of priesthood? Do they do so from any faith in
the virtue of the principle of ancestral calling, or do they do so from motives
of filthy lucre? The Mahatma does not seem to concern himself with such
queries. He is satisfied that these are "real Brahmins who are living on
alms freely given to them, and giving freely what they have of spiritual
treasures." This is how a hereditary Brahmin
priest appears to the Mahatma—a carrier of spiritual treasures.
[24:] But another portrait of the hereditary Brahmin can also
be drawn. A Brahmin can be a priest to Vishnu—the God of Love. He can be
a priest to Shankar—the God of Destruction. He can be a priest at Buddha
Gaya worshipping Buddha—the greatest teacher of mankind, who taught the noblest
doctrine of Love. He also can be a priest to Kali, the Goddess, who must
have a daily sacrifice of an animal to satisfy her thirst for blood. He will be
a priest of the temple of Rama—the Kshatriya God! He will also be
a priest of the Temple of Parshuram, the God who took on an Avatar to
destroy the Kshatriyas! He can be a priest to Bramha, the Creator of
the world. He can be a priest to a Pir, whose God Allah will not
brook the claim of Bramha to share his spiritual dominion over the world! No
one can say that this is a picture which is not true to life.
[25:] If this is a true picture,
one does not know what to say of this capacity to bear loyalties to Gods and
Goddesses whose attributes are so antagonistic that no honest man can be a
devotee to all of them. The Hindus rely upon this extraordinary
phenomenon as evidence of the greatest virtue of their religion—namely, its
catholicity, its spirit of toleration. As against this facile view, it can be
urged that what is [described as] toleration and catholicity may be really
nothing more creditable than indifference or flaccid latitudinarianism. These
two attitudes are hard to distinguish in their outer seeming. But they are so
vitally unlike in their real quality that no one who examines them closely can
mistake one for the other.
[26:] That a man is ready to
render homage to many Gods and Goddesses may be cited as evidence of his
tolerant spirit. But can it not also be evidence of an insincerity born of a
desire to serve the times? I am sure that this toleration is merely
insincerity. If this view is well founded, one may ask what spiritual treasure
can there be within a person who is ready to be a priest and a devotee to any
deity which it serves his purpose to worship and to adore? Not only must such a
person be deemed to be bankrupt of all spiritual treasures, but for him to
practice so elevating a profession as that of a priest simply because it is
ancestral—without faith, without belief, merely as a mechanical process handed
down from father to son—is not a conservation of virtue; it is really the
prostitution of a noble profession which is no other than the service of
religion.
[27:]
8
Why does the Mahatma cling to the theory of everyone following
his or her ancestral calling? He gives his reasons nowhere. But there must be
some reason, although he does not care to avow it. Years ago, writing on
"Caste versus Class" in his Young India, he argued that the Caste
System was better than a Class System on the ground that Caste was the best
possible adjustment for social stability. If that be the reason why the Mahatma
clings to the theory of everyone following his or her ancestral calling, then
he is clinging to a false view of social life.
[28:] Everybody wants social stability, and some adjustment must be
made in the relationship between individuals and classes in order that
stability may be had. But two things, I am sure, nobody wants. One thing nobody
wants is a static relationship, something that is unalterable, something that
is fixed for all times. Stability is wanted, but not at the cost of change when
change is imperative. The second thing nobody wants is mere adjustment.
Adjustment is wanted, but not at the sacrifice of social justice.
[29:] Can it be said that the adjustment of social relationships on
the basis of caste—i.e,. on the basis of each to his hereditary calling—avoids
these two evils? I am convinced that it does not. Far from being the best possible
adjustment, I have no doubt that it is of the worst possible kind, inasmuch as
it offends against both the canons of social adjustment— namely, fluidity and
equity.
[30:]
9
Some might think that the Mahatma has made much progress,
inasmuch as he now only believes in Varna and does not believe in Caste.
It is true that there was a time when the Mahatma was a full-blooded and a
blue-blooded
Sanatani Hindu. He believed in the Vedas, the Upanishads, the
Puranas, and all that goes by the name of Hindu scriptures; and
therefore, in Avatars and rebirth. He believed in Caste, and defended it
with the vigour of the orthodox. He condemned the cry for inter-dining,
inter-drinking, and inter-marrying, and argued that restraints about
inter-dining to a great extent "helped the cultivation of will-power and
the conservation of a certain social virtue."
[31:]
It is good that he has repudiated this sanctimonious nonsense and admitted that
Caste "is harmful both to spiritual and national growth," and maybe
his son's marriage outside his caste has had something to do with this change
of view. But has the Mahatma really progressed? What is the nature of
the Varna for which the Mahatma stands? Is it the Vedic conception as
commonly understood and preached by Swami Dayanand Saraswati and his
followers, the Arya Samajists? The essence of the Vedic
conception of Varna is the pursuit of a calling which is appropriate to one's
natural aptitude. The essence of the Mahatma's conception of Varna is
the pursuit of one's ancestral calling, irrespective of natural aptitude.
[32:] What is the difference between Caste and Varna, as
understood by the Mahatma? I find none. As defined by the Mahatma, Varna
becomes merely a different name for Caste, for the simple reason that it is the
same in essence—namely, pursuit of [one's] ancestral calling. Far from making
progress, the Mahatma has suffered retrogression. By putting this
interpretation upon the Vedic conception of Varna, he has really made
ridiculous what was sublime. While I reject the Vedic Varnavyavastha for
reasons given in the speech, I must admit that the Vedic theory of Varna as
interpreted by Swami Dayanand and some others is a sensible and an
inoffensive thing. It did not admit birth as a determining factor in
fixing the place of an individual in society. It only recognized worth.
[33:] The Mahatma's view of Varna not only makes
nonsense of the Vedic Varna, but it makes it an abominable thing. Varna and
Caste are two very different concepts. Varna is based on the principle of each
according to his worth, while Caste is based on the principle of each according
to his birth. The two are as distinct as chalk is from cheese. In fact there is
an antithesis between the two. If the Mahatma believes, as he does, in everyone
following his or her ancestral calling, then most certainly he is advocating
the Caste System, and in calling it the Varna System he is not only
guilty of terminological inexactitude, but he is causing confusion worse
confounded.
[34:] I am sure that all his confusion is due to the fact that the
Mahatma has no definite and clear conception as to what is Varna and
what is Caste, and as to the necessity of either for the conservation of
Hinduism. He has said—and one hopes that he will not find some mystic reason to
change his view—that Caste is not the essence of Hinduism. Does he regard Varna
as the essence of Hinduism? One cannot as yet give any categorical answer.
[35:] Readers of his article on
"Dr. Ambedkar's Indictment" will answer "No." In that
article he does not say that the dogma of Varna is an essential part of
the creed of Hinduism. Far from making Varna the essence of Hinduism, he says
"the essence of Hinduism is contained in its enunciation of one and only
God as Truth and its bold acceptance of Ahimsa as the law of the human
family."
[36:] But readers of his article in reply to Mr. Sant Ram will
say "Yes." In that article he says "How can a Muslim remain one
if he rejects the Quran, or a Christian remain Christian if he rejects
the Bible? If Caste and Varna are convertible terms, and if Varna
is an integral part of the Shastras which define Hinduism, I do not know
how a person who rejects Caste, i.e. Varna, can call himself a Hindu."
Why this prevarication? Why does the Mahatma hedge? Whom does he want to
please? Has the saint failed to sense the truth? Or does the politician stand
in the way of the saint?
[37:] The real reason why the Mahatma is suffering from this
confusion is probably to be traced to two sources. The first is the temperament
of the Mahatma. He has in almost everything the simplicity of the child, with
the child's capacity for self-deception. Like a child, he can believe in
anything he wants to believe in. We must therefore wait till such time as it
pleases the Mahatma to abandon his faith in Varna, as it has pleased him
to abandon his faith in Caste.
[38:] The second source of confusion is the double role which the
Mahatma wants to play—of a Mahatma and a politician. As a Mahatma, he may
be trying to spiritualize politics. Whether he has succeeded in it or not,
politics have certainly commercialized him. A politician must know that Society
cannot bear the whole truth, and that he must not speak the whole truth; if he
is speaking the whole truth it is bad for his politics. The reason why the
Mahatma is always supporting Caste and Varna is because he is afraid
that if he opposed them he would lose his place in politics. Whatever may be
the source of this confusion, the Mahatma must be told that he is deceiving
himself, and also deceiving the people, by preaching Caste under the name of
Varna.
The Mahatma says that the standards I have applied to test Hindus and
Hinduism are too severe, and that judged by those standards every known
living faith will probably fail. The complaint that my standards are high may
be true. But the question is not whether they are high or whether they are low.
The question is whether they are the right standards to apply. A people and
their Religion must be judged by social standards based on social ethics. No
other standard would have any meaning, if Religion is held to be a necessary
good for the well-being of the people.
[40:] Now, I maintain that the
standards I have applied to test Hindus and Hinduism are the most
appropriate standards, and that I know of none that are better. The conclusion
that every known religion would fail if tested by my standards may be true. But
this fact should not give the Mahatma as the champion of Hindus
and Hinduism a ground for comfort, any more than the existence of one madman
should give comfort to another madman, or the existence of one criminal should
give comfort to another criminal.
[41:] I would like to assure the Mahatma that it is not the
mere failure of the Hindus and Hinduism which has produced in me the
feelings of disgust and contempt with which I am charged [=filled]. I realize
that the world is a very imperfect world, and anyone who wants to live in it
must bear with its imperfections.
[42:] But while I am prepared to bear with the imperfections and
shortcomings of the society in which I may be destined to labour, I feel I
should not consent to live in a society which cherishes wrong ideals, or a
society which, having right ideals, will not consent to bring its social life
into conformity with those ideals. If I am disgusted with Hindus and
Hinduism, it is because I am convinced that they cherish wrong ideals and live
a wrong social life. My quarrel with Hindus and Hinduism is not over the
imperfections of their social conduct. It is much more fundamental. It is over
their ideals.
[43:]
11
Hindu society seems to me
to stand in need of a moral regeneration which it is dangerous to postpone. And
the question is, who can determine and control this moral regeneration?
Obviously, only those who have undergone an intellectual regeneration, and
those who are honest enough to have the courage of their convictions born of
intellectual emancipation. Judged by this standard, the Hindu leaders who count
are, in my opinion, quite unfit for the task. It is impossible to say that they
have undergone the preliminary intellectual regeneration. If they had undergone
an intellectual regeneration, they would neither delude themselves in the
simple way of the untaught multitude, nor would they take advantage of the
primitive ignorance of others as one sees them doing.
[44:] Notwithstanding the crumbling state of Hindu society,
these leaders will nevertheless unblushingly appeal to ideals of the past which
have in every way ceased to have any connection with the present—ideals which,
however suitable they might have been in the days of their origin, have now
become a warning rather than a guide. They still have a mystic respect for the
earlier forms which makes them disinclined—nay, opposed—to any examination of
the foundations of their Society. The Hindu masses are of course incredibly
heedless in the formation of their beliefs. But so are the Hindu leaders. And
what is worse is that these Hindu leaders become filled with an illicit passion
for their beliefs when anyone proposes to rob them of their [beliefs']
companionship.
[45:] The Mahatma is no exception. The Mahatma appears not to
believe in thinking. He prefers to follow the saints. Like a conservative with
his reverence for consecrated notions, he is afraid that if he once starts
thinking, many ideals and institutions to which he clings will be doomed. One
must sympathize with him. For every act of independent thinking puts some
portion of an apparently stable world in peril.
[46:] But it is
equally true that dependence on saints cannot lead us to know the truth. The
saints are after all only human beings, and as Lord Balfour said, "the
human mind is no more a truth-finding apparatus than the snout of a pig."
Insofar as he [=the Mahatma] does think, to me he really appears to be
prostituting his intelligence to find reasons for supporting this archaic
social structure of the Hindus. He is the most influential apologist of it, and
therefore the worst enemy of the Hindus.
[47:]
Unlike the Mahatma, there are Hindu leaders who are not content
merely to believe and follow. They dare to think, and act in accordance with
the result of their thinking. But unfortunately they are either a dishonest
lot, or an indifferent lot when it comes to the question of giving right
guidance to the mass of the people. Almost every Brahmin has transgressed the
rule of Caste. The number of Brahmins who sell shoes is far greater than
those who practise priesthood. Not only have the Brahmins given up their
ancestral calling of priesthood for trading, but they have entered trades which
are prohibited to them by the Shastras. Yet how many Brahmins who break
Caste every day will preach against Caste and against the Shastras?
[48:] For one honest Brahmin preaching against Caste and Shastras
because his practical instinct and moral conscience cannot support a conviction
in them, there are hundreds who break Caste and trample upon the Shastras
every day, but who are the most fanatic upholders of the theory of Caste and
the sanctity of the Shastras. Why this duplicity? Because they feel that
if the masses are emancipated from the yoke of Caste, they would be a menace to
the power and prestige of the Brahmins as a class. The dishonesty of
this intellectual class, who would deny the masses the fruits of their [=the
Brahmins'] thinking, is a most disgraceful phenomenon.
[49:] The Hindus, in the words of Matthew Arnold, are
"wandering between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be
born." What are they to do? The Mahatma to whom they appeal for
guidance does not believe in thinking, and can therefore give no guidance which
can be said to stand the test of experience. The intellectual classes to whom
the masses look for guidance are either too dishonest or too indifferent to
educate them in the right direction. We are indeed witnesses to a great
tragedy. In the face of this tragedy all one can do is to lament and say—such
are thy Leaders, O Hindus!
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