THE DEPRESSED CASTES.
The only classes in British India for whom no real representation has
been devised in the enlarged Indian Councils are the millions of humble
toilers who constitute what are known as the "depressed castes." Under
present social conditions in India, this was probably inevitable.
Though, rather unreasonably, the vast majority of them go to swell the
numbers of the Hindu population in the census upon which Hindu
representation ought, according to Hindu politicians, to be based, those
politicians have certainly not as yet shown any title to speak on their
behalf. For there is no more striking contrast to the liberal and
democratic professions of a body which claims, as does the Indian
National Congress, to represent an enlightened, progressive, and
national Hinduism than the fact that in the course of its 25 years'
existence it has scarcely done anything to give practical effect to its
theoretical repudiation of a social system that condemns some 50
millions out of the 300 millions of the Hindu population of India to a
life of unspeakable degradation. For a long time to come, the depressed
castes will probably find, as in the past, their truest friends and best
qualified representatives among the European members of Council, who,
just because they are aliens, are free from all the influences, whether
of interest or of prejudice, which tend to divide Hindu society into so
many watertight compartments. Let any one who has any doubts on this
point read some of the documents published in the Blue-books on the
reforms--petitions from low-caste communities imploring Government not
to commit the defence of their interests to the Hindu Brahman, but to
continue to them the direct and unselfish protection which they have
hitherto enjoyed at the hands of British administrators.
The "depressed classes" of whom we generally speak as Pariahs, though
the name properly belongs only to one particular caste, the Pareiyas in
Southern India, include all Hindus who do not belong to the four highest
or "clean" castes of Hinduism, and they are therefore now officially and
euphemistically designated as the Panchamas--i.e., the fifth caste.
Many of the Panchamas, especially in Southern India, are little better
than bonded serfs; others are condemned to this form of ostracism by the
trades they ply. Such are not only the scavengers and sweepers, but also
the workers in leather, the Chamars and Muchis of Northern and Central
India, and the Chakilians and Madigas of Southern India, who with their
families number 14 or 15 million souls; the washermen, the
_tadi_-drawers and vendors of spirituous liquors, the pressers of oil,
and, in many parts of the country, the cowherd and shepherd castes, &c.
They are generally regarded as descendants of the aboriginal tribes
overwhelmed centuries ago by the tide of Aryan conquest. Some of those
tribes, grouped together in the Indian Census under the denominational
rubric of "Animists" and numbering about 8-1/2 millions, have survived
to the present day in remote hills and jungles without being absorbed
into the Hindu social system, and have preserved their primitive
beliefs, in which fetish worship, and magic are the dominant elements.
Low as is their social _status_, it is but little lower than that of the
Panchamas who have obtained a footing on the nethermost rung of the
social ladder of Hinduism without being admitted to any sort of contact
with its higher civilization or even to the threshold of its temples.
Hinduism with all its rigidity is, it is true, sufficiently elastic to
sanction, at least tacitly, a slow process of evolution by which the
Panchama castes--for there are many castes even amongst the
"untouchables"--gradually shake off to some extent the slough of
"uncleanness" and establish some sort of ill-defined relations even with
Brahmanism. For whilst there is on the one hand a slowly ascending scale
by which the Panchamas may ultimately hope to smuggle themselves in
amongst the inferior Sudras, the lowest of the four "clean" castes, so
there is a descending scale by which Brahmans, under the pressure of
poverty or disrepute, sink to so low a place in Brahmanism that they are
willing to lend their ministrations, at a price, to the more prosperous
of the Panchamas and help them on their way to a higher _status_. Thus
probably half the Sudras of the present day were at some more or less
remote period Panchamas. Again, during periods of great civil commotion,
as in the 18th century, when brute force was supreme, not a few
Panchamas, especially low-caste Mahrattas, made their way to the front
as soldiers of fortune, and even carved out kingdoms to themselves at
the point of the sword. Orthodox Hinduism bowed in such cases to the
accomplished fact, just as it has acquiesced in later years when
education and the equality of treatment brought by British rule have
enabled a small number of Panchamas to qualify for employment under
Government.
But these exceptions are so rare and the evolutionary process is so
infinitely slow and laborious that they do not visibly affect the
yawning gulf between the "clean" higher-caste Hindu and the "unclean"
Panchama. The latter may have learned to do _puja_ to Shiva or Kali or
other members of the Hindu Pantheon, but he is not allowed within the
precincts of their sanctuaries and has to worship from afar. Nor are the
disabilities of the Panchama merely spiritual. In many villages he has
to live entirely apart. He is not even allowed to draw water from the
village well, lest he should "pollute" it by his touch, and where there
is no second well for the "untouchables," the hardship is cruel,
especially in seasons of drought when casual water dries up. In every
circumstance of his life the vileness of his lot is brought home to the
wretched pariah by an elaborate and relentless system of social
oppression. I will only quote one or two instances which have come
within my own observation. The respective distances beyond which
Panchamas must not approach a Brahman lest they "pollute" him differ
according to their degree of uncleanness. Though they have been laid
down with great precision, it is growing more and more difficult to
enforce them with the increasing promiscuity of railway and street-car
intercourse, but in more remote parts of India, and especially in the
south, the old rules are still often observed. In Cochin a few years ago
I was crossing a bridge, and just in front of me walked a
respectable-looking native. He suddenly turned tail, and running back to
the end of the bridge from which we had both come, plunged out of sight
into the jungle on the side of the road. He had seen a Brahman entering
on to the bridge from the other end, and he had fled incontinently
rather than incur the resentment of that high-caste gentleman by
inflicting upon him the "pollution" of forbidden proximity as the
bridge, though a fairly broad one, was not wide enough for them to pass
each other at the prescribed distance. In the native State of Travancore
it is not uncommon to see a Panchama witness in a lawsuit standing about
a hundred yards from the Court so as not to defile the Brahman Judge and
pleaders, whilst a row of _peons_, or messengers, stationed between him
and the Court, hand on its questions to him and pass back his replies.
No doubt the abject ignorance and squalor and the repulsive habits of
many of these unfortunate castes help to explain and to perpetuate their
ostracism, but they do not exculpate a social system which prescribes
or tolerates such a state of things. That if a kindly hand is extended
to them, even the lowest of these depressed can be speedily raised to a
higher plane has been abundantly shown by the efforts of Christian
missionaries. They are only now beginning to extend their activities to
the depressed castes of Northern India, but in Southern India important
results have already been achieved. The Bishop of Madras claims that
within the last 40 years, in the Telugu country alone, some 250,000
Panchamas have become Christians, and in Travancore another 100,000.
During the last two decades especially the philanthropic work done by
the missionaries in plague and famine time has borne a rich harvest, for
the Panchamas have naturally turned a ready ear to the spiritual
ministrations of those who stretched out their hands to help them in the
hour of extreme need. Bishop Whitehead, who has devoted himself
particularly to this question, assures me that, in Southern India at
least, the rate at which the elevation of the depressed castes can be
achieved depends mainly upon the amount of effort which the Christian
missions can put forth. If their organizations can be adequately
strengthened and extended so as to deal with the increasing numbers of
inquirers and converts, and, above all, to train native teachers, he is
convinced that we may be within measurable distance of the reclamation
of the whole Panchama population. What the effect would be from the
social as well as the religious point of view may be gathered from a
recent report of the Telugu Mission, which most lay witnesses would, I
believe readily confirm:--
If we look at the signs of moral and spiritual progress
during the last 40 years, the results of the mission work have
been most encouraging. It is quite true that naturally the
Panchamas are poor, dirty, ignorant, and, as a consequence
of many centuries of oppression, peculiarly addicted
to the more mean and servile vices. But the most hopeful
element in their case is that they are conscious of their
degradation and eager to escape from it. As a consequence,
when formed into congregations under the care of earnest
and capable teachers, they make marked progress materially,
intellectually, and morally. Their gross ignorance disappears;
they become cleaner and more decent in their persons
and homes; they give up cattle poisoning and grain stealing,
two crimes particularly associated with their class; they
abstain from the practice of infant marriage and concubinage,
to which almost all classes of Hindu society are addicted;
they lose much of the old servile spirit which led them to
grovel at the feet of their social superiors, and they acquire
more sense of the rights and dignity which belong to
them as men. Where they are able to escape their
surroundings they prove themselves in no way inferior,
either in mental or in moral character, to the best of their
fellow-countrymen. Especially is this the case in the Mission
Boarding Schools, where the change wrought is a moral
miracle. In many schools and colleges Christian lads of
Panchama origin are holding their own with, and in not a
few cases are actually outstripping, their Brahman competitors.
... In one district the Hindus themselves
bore striking testimony to the effect of Christian teaching on
the pariahs, "Before they became Christians," one of them
said, "we had always to lock up our storehouses, and were
always having things stolen. But now all that is changed,
We can leave our houses open and never lose anything."
In the heyday of the Hindu Social Reform Movement, before it was checked
by the inrush of political agitation, the question of the elevation of
the depressed castes was often and earnestly discussed by progressive
Hindus themselves, but it is only recently that it has again been taken
up seriously by some of the Hindu leaders, and notably by Mr. Gokhale.
One of the utterances that has produced the greatest impression in Hindu
circles is a speech made last year by the Gaekwar of Baroda, a Hindu
Prince who not only professes advanced Liberal views, but whose heart
naturally goes out to the depressed castes, as the fortunes of his own
house were made in the turmoil of the eighteenth century by a Mahratta
of humble extraction, if not actually of low-caste origin. His Highness
does not attempt to minimize the evils of the system.
The same principles which impel us to ask for political
Justice for ourselves should actuate us to show social justice
to each other.... By the sincerity of our efforts to
uplift the depressed classes we shall be judged fit to achieve
the objects of our national desire.... The system which
divides us into innumerable castes claiming to rise by
minutely graduated steps from the pariah to the Brahman
is a whole tissue of injustice, splitting men equal by nature
into divisions high and low, based not on the natural standard
of personal qualities but on accidents of birth. The eternal
struggle between caste and caste for social superiority has
become a constant source of ill-feeling.... Want of
education is practically universal amongst the depressed
classes, but this cannot have been the cause of their fall, for
many of the so-called higher classes in India share in the
general ignorance. Unlike them, however, they are unable
to attend the ordinary schools owing to the idea that it is
pollution to touch them. To do so is to commit a sin offensive
alike to religion and to conventional morality. Of
professions as a means of livelihood these depressed classes
have a very small choice. Here, too, the supposed pollution
of their touch comes in their way. On every hand we find
that the peculiar difficulty from which they suffer, in addition to
others that they share with other classes, is their "untouchableness."
After a powerful argument against the theory of "untouchableness" and
against priestly intolerance, the Gaekwar urges not only upon Hindus,
but upon Government the duty of attacking in all earnestness this
formidable problem.
A Government within easy reach of the latest thought,
with unlimited moral and material resources, such as there
is in India, should not remain content with simply asserting
the equality of men under the common law and maintaining
order, but must sympathetically see from time to time that
the different sections of its subjects are provided with ample
means of progress. Many of the Indian States where they
are at all alive to the true functions of government, owing
to less elevating surroundings or out of nervousness, fear to
strike out a new path and find it less troublesome to follow
the policy of _laisser faire_ and to walk in the footsteps of the
highest Government in India, whose declared policy is to let
the social and religious matters of the people alone except
where questions of grave importance are involved. When
one-sixth of the people are in a chronically depressed and
ignorant condition, no Government can afford to ignore
the urgent necessity of doing what it can for their elevation.
Can the Government of India afford to disregard so remarkable an appeal?
The question is not merely a social and moral question, but also a
political one. Whilst some high-caste Hindus are beginning to recognize
its urgency, the more prosperous of the socially depressed castes
themselves are showing signs of restlessness under the ostracism to
which they are subjected. From almost all of these castes a few
individuals have always emerged, who acquired wealth and the relative
recognition that wealth brings with it, and the numbers of such
individuals are increasing. In some cases a whole caste has seen its
circumstances improve under new economic conditions entirety beyond its
own control--like the Namasudras of Bengal, who, as agriculturists, have
had their share of the growing agricultural prosperity of that region.
They are materially better off than they used to be, and so they are no
longer content with their old social _status_ of inferiority. Not only
Christian but Mahomedan missionaries have been at work amongst them, and
though the vast majority remain Hindus, they note, like the Panchamas
all over India must note, the immediate rise in the social scale of
their fellow-caste-men who embrace either Christianity or Islam. For it
is one of the anomalies of this peculiar conception that the most
untouchable Hindu ceases to be quite as untouchable when he becomes a
Christian or a Mahomedan. The Bengalee politician was quick to see the
danger of losing hold altogether of the Namasudras, and he set up a
propaganda of his own, which I have already described, with the object
of winning them over to his side and to his methods of agitation by
promising them in return a relaxation of caste stringency. The question
with which we are confronted is whether we shall ourselves take a hand
in the elevation of the depressed castes or whether we shall leave it to
others, many of whom would exploit them for their own purposes. Is not
this an opportunity for the Government of India to respond to the
Gaekwar's invitation and depart for once from their traditional policy
of _laisser faire_? In the Christian Missions they have an admirable
organization ready to hand which merely requires encouragement and
support. Though there are manifold dangers in giving official
countenance to proselytizing work amongst the higher classes of Indian
society, none of those objections can reasonably lie to co-operating in
the reclamation of whole classes which the orthodox Hindu regards as
beyond the pale of human intercourse. From the religious point of view,
this is a matter which should engage the earnest attention of the great
missionary societies of this country. The hour seems to be at hand when
a great and combined effort is required of them. From the moral and
social point of view they may well claim in this connexion the sympathy
and support of all denominations and no-denominations that are
interested in the welfare and progress of backward races. From the
political point of view the conversion of so many millions of the
population of India to the faith of their rulers would open up prospects
of such moment that I need not expatiate upon them.