INDIAN SOCIAL LIFE
There is no woman in the world who is so bound down by custom, so tied
to the wheel of conventionality, as is the Indian woman, both Hindu and
Mohammedan. In the olden times the ancient law-makers realized the
danger menacing a people surrounded by an inferior race, as were the
natives of India compared to their Aryan invaders, and instituted that
remarkable social system that peculiarly affects the women of the
country, and is the cause of many of the evils that has made her life
one not to be envied—caste.
Hindu society is divided into hundreds of communities consisting of
several clans, each clan having its own peculiar customs and iron-bound
rules. The clans are composed of families, governed by the family
custom, which in turn must obey the clan custom, and these must be
governed by the rules of the community. If a person violates the custom,
he forfeits all the privileges which he or his family may have in the
life of the community. His social life is entirely cut off from other
families and from the protection of his people. No one of his community
will eat or drink with him, visit his house, or marry his children. The
priest will not serve him, the barber will not shave him, nor the
washman wash for him. He will be absolutely alone and friendless in the
world, not able to get employment, even allowed to starve by the members
of his own family, who dare not help him, knowing they themselves would
be outcasted. He may not have the solace of joining another caste,
either lower or higher, because he must live and die in the caste in
which he was born.
Originally there were only four great castes in India: the Brahmans, or
priestly class, who held all the intellectual or cultural prerogatives;
the Kashatriyas, or warrior caste; the Vaisayas, or merchant caste; and
the Sudras, or working class. Below that still are the outcastes, who
are almost slaves, and do the lowest menial services. Manu, the great
law-maker, said that the Brahman issued from the head of Brahma, hence
his intellectual superiority; the warrior from his arms, the husbandman
from his thighs, and the Sudras from his feet, thus exactly placing the
man’s social position in life.
The laws of caste as explained by Mr. Dutt, a Hindu writer, are as
follows—
Individuals cannot be married who do not belong to the same caste.
A man may not eat with another not of his own caste.
His meals must be cooked by persons either of his own caste or by
Brahmans.
No man of an inferior caste is to touch his food or the dishes in which
they are served, or even to enter his cook-room.
No water or other liquid contaminated by the touch of a person of
inferior caste can be made use of—rivers, tanks, and other large sheets
of water being held incapable of defilement.
Articles of dry food, such as rice, wheat, etc., do not become impure by
passing through the hands of a person of inferior caste so long as they
remain dry, but cannot be taken if they become wet or greased.
Certain prohibited articles, such as cow’s flesh, pork, fowls, etc., are
not to be eaten.
The ocean and other boundaries of India must not be crossed.
These rules would not be so oppressive if there were only the four
original great castes into which society was first divided, but now each
class is divided into thousands of subdivisions, whose members may not
intermarry, nor eat together, nor even touch the food prepared by those
of another community. Mr. Sidney Low has very well expressed the
difficulties caused by this very intricate social ruling in his “Vision
of India”—
“To get a loose analogy, we might suppose that everybody who could claim
descent from one of the old Norman families in England formed one caste;
that members of the ‘learned professions,’ who had never soiled
themselves with commerce, were combined in a second; and that others
consisted exclusively of bankers or moneylenders, or of pork butchers,
costermongers, bricklayers, and so on _ad infinitum_.
“Add that a man born in the costermonger class would remain, or ought to
remain, a member of that connection to the end of his days, and that he
would bring up his sons to the same business; that a greengrocer ought
not to eat food in company with a poulterer, that a baker might not give
his daughter in marriage to a cheesemonger, and that neither could have
any matrimonial relations with a bootmaker; and, further, that none of
these persons could place himself in personal contact with a clergyman
or a solicitor—imagine all this, and you begin to acquire some faint
notion of the involved tangle in which the entire Hindu community has
managed to get itself enwound.”
Mr. Low quotes from the census report of Sir H. Risley further to
illustrate what the caste system means in the matrimonial sphere, that
sphere that especially touches the womanhood of India—
“He imagines the great tribe of the Smiths throughout Great Britain
bound together in a community, and recognizing as their cardinal
doctrine that a Smith must always marry a Smith, and could by no
possibility marry a Brown, a Jones, or a Robinson. This seems fairly
simple; there would be quite enough Miss Smiths to go round. But, then,
note that the Smith horde would be broken up into smaller clans, each
fiercely endogamous. Brewing Smiths,” Sir H. Risley asks us to observe,
“must not mate with baking Smiths; shooting Smiths and hunting Smiths,
temperance Smiths and licensed-victualler Smiths, Free Trade Smiths and
Tariff Reform Smiths, must seek partners for life in their own
particular section of the Smithian multitude. The Unionist Smith would
not lead a Home Rule damsel to the altar, nor should Smith the tailor
wed the daughter of a Smith who sold boots.”
In its effect upon women the caste system has been most deleterious
because of the difficulty of finding husbands within the same caste. It
has led to the making away with undesirable daughters, which was
frequently practised by the parents before the English Government
stepped in and made female infanticide a crime and severely punished the
culprits. Yet we are told that the disproportion of female to male
children shows that the practice has not been completely stamped out,
and that many fathers foreseeing the financial difficulties to be
encountered in marrying their daughters, have deliberately made away
with them at birth. In the smaller villages the crime is difficult of
detection, but when the ratio of girls to boys falls particularly low in
a community, the Government quarters extra police upon the people,
making all the inhabitants contribute towards the cost of their
maintenance, and the records soon show that girl babies are again being
born in the villages.
Life in a high-caste Brahman family is much more complicated than that
of the low-caste family, and many burdens are added to the already heavy
ones borne by the Hindu woman, because of the rituals and customs woven
around this caste system. A woman told me that she had a friend who
lived in the house of two maiden aunts who were most orthodox Hindus.
This woman was not allowed to touch a thing in the morning before her
bath. Beside her bed was a long pole with which she must handle her
towels and clothing, and she was not permitted to enter the presence of
her aunts until her uncleanliness had been removed by ablutions and
prayers.
The mother-in-law of my friend has practically no social intercourse
with her son’s wife because she has broken caste, eats with Europeans,
and wears shoes made from leather. Her own mother at first felt her
daughter’s disgrace keenly, and would not see her for many years. At
last love triumphed over custom, and now the mother will visit the
daughter if assured that a place will be made ceremonially clean where
she may spread her mat of holy dharba grass, on which she sits while
chatting. She will receive nothing from the hand of her daughter,
neither water nor food, and when she returns home she takes a complete
bath and changes her wearing apparel that has become polluted by contact
with her daughter’s house.
Orthodox Hindus do not like sitting upon a mat of cloth or walking upon
a carpet. In many houses a wooden bench or board is kept for visitors.
The wife of a Resident in one of the Indian cities gave a reception to
which came several ladies from the conservative Hindu families. They
carefully avoided walking upon the rugs, and sat upon the edge of the
chairs, looking most unhappy. The wife of the Resident asked an advanced
Hindu lady why her afternoon was not a success so far as the Indian
guests were concerned. She was told that the only thought that possessed
these little women was a desire to get home. They wished to be polite
and stay as long as etiquette demanded, but they welcomed with avidity
the finality of the party when they might return and bathe and purify
themselves from the close contact of foreigners and Mohammedans.
The members of the Brahmo Samaj, that progressive offshoot of Hinduism,
have broken caste and allow their women to go about freely. I was in a
town of Southern India with a member of this sect, and we called upon
the head mistress of a large school for girls. She was at home with her
newly born baby, waiting for the forty days of uncleanness to pass
before returning to her school. She was a very intelligent woman,
talking freely of the good and the bad of their social system. She said
that a school for girls such as that of which she was the head, where
four hundred young girls were being educated in modern thought, would
have the greatest influence upon the women of the next generation, but
that it would take time to eradicate the instincts of generations of
ignorance and superstition, so deeply woven into the very nature of the
Indian woman.
At the close of the visit the baby was brought to me, and rather lacking
a subject for conversation I made the unfortunate remark to the baby,
“You will grow up a good Hindu and stick to your caste.” I was not
prepared for the storm of protest it raised from my friend who had
brought me to the home. She turned on me furiously and said: “How can
you say such things, you, a modern woman? Caste is the ruin of India. If
we want progress we must break caste: it is our only hope.”
It is not caste alone that makes the rules that govern the life and
actions of the Indian woman, but from birth to the burning-ground every
detail of life is cast into a mould of ceremony and ritual, which in the
hands of a less spiritual people would have degenerated into mere sham.
Of the sixteen events in the life of a man, all are viewed from a
religious aspect, and accompanied by a religious ceremony. The most
sacred prayers are said in the morning before partaking of food, and it
is the husband, the head of the house, who is supposed to say the
prayers for all beneath his roof-tree. “No sacrifice is allowed to women
apart from their husbands, no religious rite, no fasting; as far as a
wife honours her lord, so far is she exalted in heaven,” says the laws
of Manu, yet the instinct of religion is strong in the Hindu woman, as
it is in women all over the world, and they do perform a worship. At the
time of her marriage, at the marriage of her children, and at many of
the sacred feasts, the wife must sit with her husband during the time he
is engaged in the performance of the acts of worship, though she takes
no active part in the ceremonies. If a man has lost his wife, he cannot
perform the sacrifice of fire.
The Hindu woman has her gods, which she keeps in the kitchen, the most
sacred room in a Hindu household. In all the time I was in India I never
saw the inside of the kitchen of any of my Indian friends. I have been
told that it is divided into two parts, the smaller room used for the
cooking and as pantry for the storing of food, and must be kept free
from ceremonial defilement. The larger half of the kitchen of a
middle-class household serves as dining-room, and in an alcove or in one
corner are the household gods and the utensils to be used in their
worship. None of the images used by a woman are consecrated, but she
lights her lamp and bows her head and prays for the safety of her dear
ones, then offers a bit of fruit or betel or a sweetmeat that she has
prepared, and scatters sandal paste and coloured rice or the petals of
sweet-smelling flowers over her god. There is generally in each tiny
yard or in the kitchen a tulasi plant, around which the women walk while
chanting a prayer. This plant is considered the wife of Vishnu, and is
revered by all. There are many blessings promised to one who attends and
waters one of these plants, and it will keep care and tribulation from
its worshippers and grant pardon to the sinner who cherishes the tulasi
plant. Yet it is more particularly worshipped by women. At one time, it
is said, women were commanded to walk around it one hundred and eight
times each day, which certainly was a blessing from a hygienic point of
view, as it gave exercise to these shut-in women, who are restricted to
the four walls of their homes.
At night when the lamps are lighted the wife makes obeisance to the
flame, saying—
The flame of this lamp is the supreme good.
The flame of this lamp is the abode of the Supreme.
By this flame sin is destroyed,
Oh, Thou light of the evening, we praise thee.
At the time of the evening meal the men have an elaborate religious
ceremony, but the women say simply, “Govinda, Govinda,” a name for
Vishnu, before partaking of their food.
The devout mother teaches her children the tales of the gods, and at
worship time when the bell is sounded they are taught to place their
hands together in the attitude of prayer and bow their little heads to
the gods. It is the father who is expected to teach them the Vedic texts
and the truths to be found in the Puranas.
The daily worship is held in the homes, but on feast days or for
especial acts of devotion, such as prayers for the blessings of a son,
or the giving of thanks for favours received, the women go to the
temples. These are crowded on holy days or days of anniversary of the
gods. No one ever goes to the temple empty-handed, and one sees the
little brass jar of holy water, the wreath of marigold or sweet-smelling
flowers which are supposed to give pleasure to the aesthetic senses of
the gods. Many women take a coconut to the temple, which fruit seems to
be generally connected with temple worship. The breaking of the coconut
is said to represent the slaying of the sacrificial animal, which is
only done now in the temples dedicated to Kali, that goddess of terror
who delights in the blood of her victims.
While in Benares I visited a temple dedicated to Shiva, in which were
several enormous bulls, the animal sacred to this god. They were of a
bluish grey in colour, and from long living in the temple had become as
clever as the priests in looking for offerings from their worshippers.
But while the priests looked for silver or gold, the bulls had an eagle
eye with which to discern from afar the woman who carried a basket of
grain. They stood at the back of the temple and eyed each worshipper as
she entered. If the pious woman had only a brass water-pot in her hand
they did not move; but if they saw a basket, they immediately started
for her, and graciously allowed her to pour the grain into their open
mouths, the woman taking care that she did not pollute the bulls by
touching their lips with her hand. A wreath of marigolds was then thrown
over the neck of the bull, the holy water was poured on his shoulders,
and he returned to his place. I saw an old lady lovingly stroke the back
of one of these pampered beasts, ending with the tail, the end of which
she used to stroke her face, and afterwards lovingly kissed this
appendage of her idol. The expression on her face was one of deepest
reverence, and for her the great blue bull represented the god for whom
her hungry soul was longing. The educated Hindu would say that she was
struggling to find a god as are we all, but that she was still a child
in matters spiritual and required a material representative of her
ideal. They say that the real Hindu, the man who has studied the Vedas
and understands the spirit of his religion, needs no images nor ritual.
In his prayer he plainly shows that to him God is a spirit. He says—
Oh, Lord, pardon my three sins. I have in contemplation clothed Thee
in form, who art formless; I have in praise described Thee, who art
ineffable; and in visiting shrines I have ignored Thy omnipresence.
[Illustration:
A HOLY MAN, BENARES.
To face p. 96.]
In many of the temples, besides the priests to minister to the gods, are
dancing girls, whose duties are to dance at the shrines, sing hymns, and
generally delight the gods. They are a recognized religious institution,
and are honoured next to the priests. They are obtained when quite young
by purchase or by gift. Often in times of famine a girl is sold to the
temple, that her price may save the rest of the family from starvation.
One is given that all may live. In other cases a girl is often a
thank-offering given to the gods because of recovery from sickness or
great tribulation. A rich man, instead of presenting his own daughter,
would buy the daughter of some poor family and present her. These girls,
who have no word to say in regard to the disposal of their persons, are
public women, and the gains of their profession go towards the support
of the temple. If there should be children born to these professional
dancing girls, they are brought up in their mother’s profession, very
much as were the children born to the priestesses of Aphrodite in the
temples of Alexandria.
All Indian girls must be married, consequently these temple women are
formally married to a dagger, a tree, or some inanimate object, who, as
a husband, cannot object to the actions of his wife. Lately, in some
places it has been made a criminal offence to sell a girl or give a
daughter to a temple, and it is only done surreptitiously. One is told
in India that it is a thing of the past, yet in one large temple in the
South there are said to be over one hundred dancing girls kept for the
amusement of the blasé gods.
These dancing girls share with their sisters, the nautch girls, the only
real freedom given to Indian women. The latter are taught to read and
write, to play musical instruments, and to make themselves attractive
and charming to men. They come and go freely, mingling with both men and
women. They are found at all feasts and public ceremonies, and have a
very definite and honourable place in Indian society. Whatever discredit
may be attached to her calling, she is considered a necessary adjunct to
the temple and the home. Her presence at weddings is considered most
fortunate, and in some castes it is the nautch girl who fastens the tali
around the neck of the bride, a ceremony similar to placing the
wedding-ring upon the finger. She holds the centre of the stage at all
entertainments given in honour of guests. While we were in a native
province ruled by a prince who had the reputation of liking wine, women,
and song even more than did the average ruling prince in India, we were
edified by the dancing of a woman brought from Bombay at the expense to
the prince of nearly one hundred pounds a day.
The dancing is extremely modest, as the dancer is fully clothed, and it
is the graceful, languorous poses of her slim body, the waving of her
arms heavily laden with bracelets, and the slow moving, gliding steps
that keep time to the tinkle of the anklets, that charm her admirers.
There is a proverb that says, “Without the jingling of the nautch girl’s
anklets, a dwelling-place does not become pure.”