THE HINDU CASTE SYSTEM
The word "caste" is derived from the Latin term _castus_, which
signified purity of breed. It was the term used by Vasco da Gama and
his fellow-Portuguese adventurers, four centuries ago, as they landed
upon the southwestern coast of India and began to study the social and
religious condition of the people. The word expressed to them the
remarkable bond which held the people together; the subsequent
generations of foreigners and English-speaking natives have adopted it
as the most appropriate term to express the unique system which
prevails all over India. No other people, in the history of the world,
have erected a social structure comparable to this of India. For
twenty-five centuries it has controlled the life of nearly one-sixth
of the human race. Other countries have, or have had, tribal
connections, class distinctions, trade unions, religious sects,
philanthropic fraternities, social guilds, and various other
organizations. But India is the only land where all these are
practically welded together into one consistent and mighty whole,
which dictates the every detail of human relationship and controls the
whole destiny of man for time and eternity. For it should be
remembered that India has consistently declined to recognize any
distinction between the social and the religious. These are the
reverse and the obverse of life; they are brought to the same rules
and must yield obedience to the same authority. Religion, to the
Hindu, permeates the whole social domain; and social order draws its
sanctions from, and is enforced by the penalties of, religion. To
marry outside one's caste, to eat food cooked by an outcast, to cross
the ocean, to delay unduly the marriage of a daughter,--these, and a
thousand other delinquencies which may seem absolutely harmless to a
Westerner, are not only regarded as social irregularities, but also as
sins whose penalties will harass the soul beyond the grave or
burning-ground. Herein does caste reveal its uniqueness, and from this
does it pass on to the exercise of its extraordinary tyranny over the
people.
I
The origin of caste is a subject of much uncertainty and debate. In
ancient Vedic times, caste was unknown. Society, in those days, was
more elastic and free, and resembled that of other lands. And yet it
showed a tendency toward a mechanical division which later grew into
the caste system. It was not until the time of the great lawgiver,
Manu, about twenty-five centuries ago, that the system crystallized
into laws, and the organization became so compact as to force itself
upon all the people and become an integral part of recognized Hindu
law. Manu and other lawgivers found the basis of caste rules in the
traditions of an ancient Brahman tribe. These they elaborated and
enforced.
The ancient name for caste was _varna_, which means "colour." This
name is suggestive, and has led many authorities to trace back the
whole system to original race-purity, as indicated by the colour of
the skin. The first incursion of the fair Aryans from the northwest
settled down, it is claimed, in the northern portions of the country.
They gradually mingled and intermarried with the dark-skinned
Dravidian and aboriginal population, with the natural consequence of
a loss of race-purity and of whiteness of complexion. A subsequent
descent of a new Aryan host upon the plains of northern India found
the descendants of their predecessors of darker hue than themselves,
which bespoke their race degeneracy; so they kept aloof from them.
Later, however, they began to mingle with the former inhabitants, so
that their descendants partly lost the ancestral complexion. A still
later Aryan incursion declined to have intercourse with the
descendants of those who last preceded them. Thus we have four classes
divided upon the basis of colour, or _varna_, which may correspond
with the four great original castes of India.
The traditional theory of the Hindus themselves, in reference to caste
origin, is admirably simple and quite adequate to satisfy ninety-nine
per cent of the devotees of that faith to-day. Brahma, the first god
of the Hindu triad, the Creator, was the immediate source and founder
of the caste order; for he caused, it is said, the august Brahman to
proceed out of his divine mouth, while the warlike and royal Kshatriya
emanated from his shoulders, the trading, commercial Vaisya, from his
thighs, and the menial Sudra, from his feet. And from these four
primal classes have descended, through myriads of permutations and
minglings, the present hydra-headed caste organization.
But modern and scientific students of the social order of India
entirely discard and ignore all Hindu mythical explanations and
_Puranic_ legends concerning this subject, and endeavour to trace the
present system to its sources and primal causes through patient
historic research and through a most elaborate system of
anthropometric and ethnographic examinations conducted all over the
land. The subject, however, is so vast and complicated that
authorities upon the subject are still considerably at variance in
their theories of origin. We may conveniently classify the prevailing
theories, according to their emphasis, as follows:--
(_a_) _The Religious Theory._--This gives emphasis to the religious
influence as the dominant one in the formation of the social order of
the land. It is maintained that the clever and unscrupulous Brahman
has, to a large extent, originated it and nursed it into its present
wonderful proportions, in order to create and perpetuate his own
supremacy among the people of India. As the spiritual head of
Hinduism, and the recognized source of religious power among its
devotees, he required and devised this organization, with himself as
its undisputed head, and with a distinct recognition by all others of
his supremacy in the Hindu faith as a _conditio sine qua non_ of their
admission as castes into the Hindu system. Up to the present day, the
public acceptance of the supreme religious authority of the Brahman is
one of the two conditions which qualify any people to admission into
the sisterhood of Hindu castes. The other condition is separation from
all other peoples in matters which will be hereafter mentioned.
There are potent reasons for accepting this theory; for the strongly
entrenched position which religion still holds in the system, both as
a basis and as a regulator, notwithstanding other antagonizing
influences, is a testimony to its original place and power therein.
Any social order whose direction is regulated by social injunctions
and whose forms and ritual are enforced by religious penalties must be
recognized as a mighty religious system.
(_b_) _The Tribal Theory._--Moreover, there were many aboriginal
tribes which entered the ranks of Hinduism through the formation of
new castes. Mr. Risley, in the Census of 1901, refers to such. (See
Vol. I, p. 521). They gradually abandoned their old tribal customs and
entered upon new paths which brought them into conformity with Hindu
usages. Or in some cases they preserved tribal habits and even their
tribal _totems_, and baptized them into the new faith and thus became
separate castes in the Hindu order.
As in the past, so "all over India at the present moment there is
going on a process of the gradual and insensible transformation of
tribes into castes. The stages of this operation are in themselves
difficult to trace.... They usually set up as Rajputs, their first
step being to start a Brahman priest, who invents for them a mythical
ancestor, supplies them with a family miracle connected with the
locality where their tribes are settled, and discovers that they
belong to some hitherto unheard-of clan of the great Rajput
community." (Census 1901, Vol. II, p. 519.) It is precisely the same
process which brought the many Dravidian and even more primitive
tribes of South India into the Hindu fold; and it is a curious fact
that these same people are to-day the greatest sticklers in the land
for caste and its myriad rules.
(_c_) _The Social Theory._--Some hold with Sir Denzil Ibbetson, in the
Census Report of 1881, "that caste is far more a social than a
religious institution; that it has no necessary connection whatever
with the Hindu religion, further than that under that religion
certain ideas and customs common to all primitive nations have been
developed and perpetuated in an unusual degree." This is acknowledged
to be an exaggerated statement. It may possibly be true that "caste
has no _necessary_ connection with Hinduism," but it is emphatically
true that caste, as understood by all, does not exist apart from that
faith.
It is, however, a fact that divisions have occurred within castes,
owing to the development of slight social differences between the
members. For instance, several castes have been created by the
degradation of members of the existing castes on account of their
marriage of widows. The Pandarams of South India are held in
distinction among the begging castes because of their abstention from
meat, alcohol, and widow marriage. Indeed, it is interesting to note
that a former caste status has been more frequently lost by, and
degradation to a new caste has been consequent upon, the adoption of
widow marriage, than through almost any other act. And, at present,
this prohibition of the marriage of widows, including child widows, is
the most tenaciously and unrighteously enforced caste custom in India.
(_d_) _The Occupational Theory._--All regard fellowship in the same
trade, or occupation, as the most prolific source of caste alignment,
in modern times at least. Ibbetson contends that "the whole basis of
diversity of caste is diversity of occupation. The old division into
Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaisya, Sudra, and Mlechha, or outcast, who is
below the Sudra, is but a division into the priest, the warrior, the
husbandman, the artisan, and the menial.... William Priest, John King,
Edward Farmer, and James Smith are but the survivals in England of the
four _varnas_ of Manu." (Census of 1881.) This statement needs serious
qualification. Farming, which is followed to-day by a majority of the
population of India, is an occupation which is subsidized by no caste
and is followed practically by the members of all castes. The Brahmans
are the only ones who are degraded by following the plough. And there
is a growing number of trades, introduced by modern civilization,
which have not yet been touched by the caste system, and which the
enterprising youth of different grades of Hindu society are entering
with eagerness. And yet, while this is a fact, it is equally true that
the functional type of castes is developing and spreading much more
rapidly than any other. In the town of Madura, a few of the families,
from the weaver caste, opened a remunerative trade in the manufacture
of fireworks. They at first began it as an extra, to add to their
very meagre income. Gradually it encroached upon their time until it
became their sole occupation. To-day they are prospering in their new
trade. But to them and their castemen their change of trade involves
the transfer of caste relations. No longer being weavers, they do not
see how they can continue to be bound by ties to their former castemen
or former fellow-tradesmen; hence the old connubial and convivial
bonds of caste are relaxing, and the weavers decline to have
fellowship with them as formerly on these lines. Thus, in all parts of
the land, we have present-day illustrations of the creation of
functional castes. And it is an interesting inquiry whether this mania
for creating a new caste for every rising trade and occupation will
finally overcome and absorb all occupations created by the demands of
modern life and advancing civilization, or whether it will in time
succumb to the spirit of modern progress until all occupations shall
be emancipated from the tyranny of caste and shall be open to all men
who desire to enter them.
(_e_) _The Crossing Theory._--According to Manu's _Dharma Sastra_ one
might be led to believe, as Hindus do stoutly maintain, that nearly
all modern castes have been created by interbreeding. Those caste laws
of twenty-five centuries ago taught that the offspring of the union
of a woman of higher with a man of lower caste could belong to the
caste of neither parent, and therefore formed a new and a separate
caste. The names of castes thus formed are given with much detail in
Manu's works. But it does not require much wisdom for one to perceive
the absurdity of the working out of such a system, and the
impossibility connected with it as an adequate basis for the caste
organization of the present day. Yet interbreeding has doubtless been
an important element in the elaboration of the stupendous caste
organization. We have abundant illustration of this very process and
its results in modern times. Among the Dravidians, especially, there
are many castes which trace their origin to miscegenation. Among the
Munda tribe we find nine such divisions; also five among the Mahilis,
who themselves claim their descent from the union of a Munda with a
Santhal woman.
This will not be unexpected when it is remembered that endogamy is the
prime law of most Hindu castes; and this, too, in a land where
immorality and adultery are so prevalent. Other sources of Hindu
castes are mentioned. Some, like the Mahrattas, have behind them
national traditions, and a history to which they refer and of which
they are proud. Others, still, have, by migrating from the home of the
mother caste, severed their connection from the parent stock and have
formed a separate and independent caste.
It is unnecessary to state that not one of the above theories is
adequate to account for all the existing castes of the land. These
forces have entered, with varying degrees of efficiency, into their
structure,--one being dominant as a causal power in one, and another
in another. And yet it may be stated that of all these caste-producing
forces religion and occupation have had marked preeminence; and they
are more influential to-day than ever before.
II
We shall next consider the various Characteristics or Manifestations
of Caste. The system is a very flexible one; and yet its
characteristics are practically the same in all parts of the country.
Perhaps the best way to clearly describe these to a western reader is
to quote at length what we may call Mr. Risley's capital western
paraphrase of the system in _Blackwood's Magazine_, a decade ago. "Let
us," he writes, "imagine the great tribe of Smith ... in which all the
subtle _nuances_ of social merit and demerit have been set and
hardened into positive regulations affecting the intermarriage of
families. The caste thus formed would trace its origin back to a
mythical eponymous ancestor, the first Smith, who converted the rough
stone hatchet into the bronze battle-axe and took his name from the
'smooth' weapons that he wrought for his tribe. Bound together by this
tie of common descent they would recognize as the cardinal doctrine of
their community the rule that a Smith must always marry a Smith, and
could by no possibility marry a Brown or a Jones. But, over and above
this general canon, two other modes or principles of grouping within
the caste would be conspicuous. First of all, the entire caste of
Smith would be split up into an indefinite number of in-marrying
clans, based upon all sorts of trivial distinctions. Brewing Smiths
and baking Smiths, hunting Smiths and shooting Smiths, temperance
Smiths and licensed victualler Smiths, Smiths with double-barrelled
names and hyphens, Smiths with double-barrelled names without hyphens,
Conservative Smiths and Radical Smiths, tinker Smiths, tailor Smiths,
Smiths of Mercia, Smiths of Wessex,--all these and all other
imaginable varieties of the tribe Smith would be, as it were,
crystallized by an inexorable law forbidding the members of any of
these groups to marry beyond the circle marked out by the clan
name.... Thus a Hyphen-Smith could only marry a Hyphen-Smith, and so
on. Secondly, and this is the point which I more especially wish to
bring out here, running through this endless series of clans we should
find another principle at work breaking up each clan into three or
four smaller groups which form a sort of ascending scale of social
distinction. Thus the clan of Hyphen-Smiths, which we take to be the
cream of the caste--the Smiths who have attained the crowning glory of
double names securely welded together by hyphens--would be again
divided into, let us say, Anglican, Dissenting, and Salvationist
Hyphen-Smiths, taking ordinary rank in that order. Now the rule of
these groups would be that a man of the Anglican could marry a woman
of any group, that a man of the Dissenting group could marry into his
own or the lowest group, while the Salvationist Smith could only marry
into his own group. A woman could, under no circumstance, marry down
into a group below her. Other things being equal, it is clear that
two-thirds of the Anglican girls would get no husbands, and two-thirds
of the Salvationist men no wives. These are some of the restrictions
which would control the process of match-making among the Smiths if
they were organized in a caste of the Indian type. There would also
be restrictions as to food. The different in-marrying clans would be
precluded from marrying together, and their possibilities of
reciprocal entertainment would be limited to those products of the
confectioners' shops into the composition of which water, the most
fatal and effective vehicle of ceremonial impurity, had not entered.
Fire purifies, water pollutes. It would follow in fact that they could
eat chocolates and other sweetmeats together, but could not drink tea
or coffee, and could only partake of ices if they were made without
water and were served on metal, not porcelain, plates."
Mr. Risley might have added considerably to these restrictions and
limitations without exhausting the catalogue.
Let us briefly enumerate those elements which enter into caste. The
first and the most important is intermarriage within the caste. None
except members of totemistic castes can, with impunity, look beyond
the sacred borders of their own caste for conjugal bliss. So long as
castes remain endogamous they will preserve their integrity, and their
foundations will never be removed. This is the _fons et origo_ of
caste perpetuity. All other characteristics may pass away; if this
remain, all is well with the organization. And it is this which
remains with devilish pertinacity and mischief-working power in the
infant Native Christian Church of India. It is this same extreme evil
which the social reformers of India are trying to puncture. But all
that they dare to struggle and hope for is the right of members of
subdivisions of any caste to intermarry. A generation ago, there were
1886 divisions in the Brahman caste alone, no two of which could enjoy
connubial or convivial privileges together. It is not up to the most
sanguine reformer of India to seek that all Brahmans enjoy the right
of intermarrying,--he only asks that the divisions among the Brahmans
may be reduced, and intermarriage may be sanctioned among
subdivisions. Yet even this meagre quest is not likely to be
gratified. This is not surprising, for the defenders of the system
well know that if this stronghold of caste is at all weakened, the
whole will speedily yield to modern attack. This, doubtless, is the
reason why orthodox Hindus are so vehement in their opposition to any
and all endeavour to remove the many disabilities and cruelties which
the marriage regulations of the land inflict upon Hindu women. There
is no land under the sun whose weaker sex suffer more from marital
legislation than India; and yet the people can do nothing practically
to remedy the crying evils of the same, simply because the mighty
engine of caste is arrayed against them. Its perpetuity is linked
closely with the resistance of all efforts at reform.
Next in importance to the connubial is the convivial legislation of
caste. It is the business of every member of a caste to conserve the
purity of his _gens_ by eating only with his fellow-castemen. Under no
circumstance can he inter-dine with those of a caste below his own.
The dictates of caste in this matter are sometimes beyond
understanding. Not only must a man eat with those of his own
connection; he must be very scrupulous as to the source of the
articles which he is about to eat; he must know who handled them, and
especially who cooked them. Some articles of food, such as fruit, are
not subject to pollution; while others, preeminently water, are to be
very carefully guarded against the polluting touch of the lower
castes. The writer has entered a railway car and accidentally touched
a Brahman's water-pot under the seat, whereupon the disgusted owner
seized the vessel and immediately poured out of the car window all its
contents. It has been truly said that that monster of cruelty, Nana
Sahib of Cawnpore, was able, without any violation of caste rules, to
massacre many innocent English women and children at the time of the
great Mutiny; but to drink a cup of water out of the hand of one of
those tender victims of his treachery and rage would have been a
mortal sin against caste, such as could be atoned for only in future
births and by the fiery tortures of hell! The rationale of this
interdiction is doubtless the desire to preserve the purity of caste
blood. As food becomes a part of the body, and, as the Hindu thinks,
of the life, it is imperative that all the members of a caste shall
eat only the same kind of food, and also that which has not been
subjected to the ceremonially polluting touch of outsiders.
This urgency is increased by the fact that different castes proscribe
different articles of diet. The _Sivar_, so-called, are strict
vegetarians, and will have absolutely no communion in food with
meat-eaters, even though the latter may belong to a higher caste than
themselves. Meat of any kind is an abomination to them. Other
respectable castes will touch only chicken meat, others mutton, a very
few pork, while no caste will permit its members to eat beef. No sin
is regarded by the orthodox with more horror than that of killing and
eating the flesh of the cow,--the most sacred and most commonly
worshipped animal of India.
These convivial rules of caste are the greatest obstacles to social
union and fellowship among the people of India. Westerners hardly
realize the extent to which their communion is based upon the
convivial habit. Many times a friendship which lasts a lifetime is
formed by strangers sitting together at the common dinner table. And,
in the same way, are the old friendships of life generally renewed and
cemented in the West. And it is a significant fact that the Christian
faith antagonizes Hinduism at this very point by enacting that its
great Sacrament of love and communion of life in Christ be embodied in
a perpetual and universal "drinking of the same cup and eating of the
same bread." In nothing is Hinduism becoming more manifestly a burden
to the educated community than in this restriction about inter-dining;
and in nothing are they more ready, as we shall see later, to violate
caste customs than in this matter.
Then comes, as a natural consequence of the above, limitations to the
contact of persons of differing castes. If a Brahman cannot eat with a
Sudra, because it supposedly brings a taint to his pure blood, no more
can he, with impunity, come into personal contact with him. The touch
of such is pollution to his august and pure person; and the very air
the low castes breathe brings to his soul and body taint and poison.
This idea of ceremonial pollution by contact causes great
inconvenience and trouble, and for that reason has been considerably
mitigated or modified in recent times. The Rajah of Cochin, who lives
temporarily near the writer, and who is evidently a stickler for caste
observances, receives calls from European friends only before nine
o'clock in the morning, for the obvious reason that that is the hour
of his daily ablution. The Maharajah of Travancore bathes at 7 A.M.
daily; hence, intending European guests find reception only before
that early hour. In the State of Travancore, in which Brahmanical
influence is great, even the high caste _Nair_ cannot touch, though he
may approach, a Namburi Brahman. A member of the artisan castes will
pollute his holiness twenty-four feet off; cultivators at forty-eight
feet; the beef-eating Pariah at sixty-four feet. Like the Palestinian
leper of old, the low-caste man of that part of India was, until
recently, expected to leave the road when he saw a Brahman come, and
remove his polluting person to the required number of feet from his
sacred presence. Low-caste witnesses were not allowed to approach a
court of justice, but standing without, at the requisite distance, to
yell their testimony to the Brahman judge who sat in uncontaminated
purity within. The falling of the shadow of a low-caste person upon
any Brahman in India necessitates an ablution on the part of the
latter. It is this frequency of contaminating and polluting
contingencies in the life of the Brahman which requires of him so many
ablutions daily, and which renders him perhaps the cleanest in person
among the sons of men. So many are the dangers of contamination which
daily beset him in the ordinary pursuits of life that relief in the
form of dispensations is granted him, so as to reduce the ceremonies
and diminish the extreme burden of religious observance. This law of
contact and pollution must weigh heavily upon any genuine Hindu of
high caste. The relation of the Maharajah of Travancore to his Prime
Minister, who is a Brahman, is an interesting illustration. The Rajah
is not a born Brahman; he is by many of his people regarded as a
manufactured Brahman. But His Highness himself does not regard himself
as equal, in sacred manhood, to his Brahman Prime Minister; hence he
will never be seated in his presence. Nor will the Brahman Dewan
deign to sit in the presence of his royal master, the Maharajah. Hence
all the business of State (sometimes requiring conferences of three
hours a day) is transacted by them while standing in each other's
presence.
Occupational limitations are observed, as we have already seen, by
many modern castes. Trade castes not only prescribe the one ancestral
occupation to their members; they also, with equal distinctness and
severity, prohibit to all within their ranks any other work or trade.
So in all those legion castes not only has a man his social sphere and
status assigned to him, he is also tied to the trade of his ancestors;
yea, more, he is expected to confine himself to ancestral tools and
methods of work in that narrow rut of life. One day the writer was
accosted by a weaver who was in a famishing condition. He made a
pathetic plea for charity. Manchester cloths were flooding the market;
they therefore could not sell the products of their labour at living
rates. It was suggested that they take up some other trade that could
furnish them a decent living. He lifted up his hands in horror at the
impious suggestion, that they abandon their caste-prescribed
occupation! He felt that he and his were ground between the upper and
nether millstones. To suggest to him that they even change the kind or
style of article which they prepared upon their looms for the market
would have been equally impossible. Out in the villages, where these
people live, it would seem almost as absurd for the weaver to become a
carpenter as for the weaver who uses only cotton thread to become a
silk-weaver, or for those who weave coarse white cloths to produce the
finer coloured cloths worn by the women. No; for generations their
people have given themselves to the production of only one article.
"It is the custom of our people" is the final word. And what has
become customary is by caste enactment made obligatory. And woe be to
him who defies caste. And thus the caste-prescribed trade becomes the
be-all and the end-all of life.
These four--the connubial, the convivial, the contactual, and the
occupational--are the constant factors of the caste existence and
activity in India. But in addition to these, caste takes other
functions and assumes other forms in certain localities and under
certain circumstances. Definite forms of religious observance are
often enjoined, certain places of pilgrimage are sanctioned, marriage
forms prescribed, marriage obligations defined, divorce made possible
or impossible, and the limit of marriage expenses set. There is hardly
a department of life or a duty which men owe to their dead which does
not enter the domain of caste legislation somewhere or other.
A strange and very interesting peculiarity of certain castes is their
totemistic aspect. This characteristic has only recently been
discovered. "At the bottom of the social system, as understood by the
average Hindu, we find, in the Dravidian region of India, a large body
of tribes and castes each of which is broken up into a number of
totemistic septs. Each sept bears the name of an animal, a tree, a
plant, or some material object, natural or artificial, which the
members of that sept are prohibited from tilling, eating, cutting,
burning, carrying, using, etc." (See Census of 1901, Vol. II, pp.
530-535.)
Mr. J. G. Frazer, in the _Fortnightly Review_, gives the following
description of the totem: "A totem is a class of natural phenomena or
material objects--most commonly a species of animals or
plants--between which and himself the savage believes that a certain
intimate relation exists.... This relation leads the savage to abstain
from killing or eating his totem, if it happen to be a species of
animal or plant. Further, the group of persons who are knit to any
particular totem by this mysterious tie commonly bear the name of the
totem, believe themselves to be of one blood, and strictly refuse to
sanction the marriage or cohabitation of members of the group with
each other. This prohibition to marry within the group is now
generally called by the name Exogamy. Thus totemism has commonly been
treated as a primitive system, both of religion and of society."
In absorbing the Dravidian tribes, Brahmanism appropriated the
totemistic cult and incorporated it into the caste system. And many
Dravidian castes which are identified with this cult have the striking
peculiarity of being exogamous as contrasted with the endogamy of the
Aryan section of Hindu castes.
III
The penalties which are inflicted by caste for violation of its rules
are many and very severe. It is hardly too much to say that there is
not on earth an organization more absolute in its power, more
wide-reaching in its sweep of interests, and more crushing in its
punishment, than is caste. In the first place, it so completely hems
in the life of a man, imperatively prescribes for him the routine of
life, even down to the most insignificant details, and thus shuts him
up to his own clan, and with equal completeness cuts him off from the
members of other castes, that it can reduce any recalcitrant member to
certain and speedy obedience, simply because there is no one to whom
he can flee for sympathy and refuge. Even if this whole system had
not, as its first aim and achievement, the alienation of members of
different castes, who is there among Hindus that would interfere with
this function of a caste to discipline its members? For is not "Thou
shalt obey implicitly thy caste," the first law of the Hindu
decalogue, and the one most sincerely believed by all Hindus? The
following are among the penalties inflicted upon one who is under the
ban of his caste:--
All the members of his caste are prohibited from accepting his
hospitality. Not even his own household are permitted to dine with
him. He is boycotted, absolutely, by all his best friends, associates,
and companions. Not one of them dares, under penalty of complete
ostracism, to harbour or favour him. Nor will he be invited to their
homes. They dare not receive him under the shelter of their roofs nor
offer him food. More than once the writer has seen the bitter tyranny
of caste brought to bear upon those who had abandoned caste by
becoming Christians. Here is a youth known to the writer. He is a
member of a respectable caste. He accepts the religion of Christ
publicly as his own. His parents and brothers and sister will cling to
him with the hope of bringing him back to the ancestral faith. But
caste authority steps in. It forbids the family to receive the son and
brother, or to offer him a morsel of food. In that household a sad war
of sentiment is inaugurated. Parental love and family tenderness cling
to the Christian youth; and is he not the hope of the family for the
years to come? But to harbour him means to be outcast as a family; and
how can they endure that? And are they not at heart loyal to the caste
of their fathers? So the conflict runs on for months. One night only
the tender heart of the sister compels her to defy caste to the
extent, not of eating with the dear brother and companion of her
youth, but so far as to bring him the remnant of their meal, not in
one of the home vessels from which he had eaten so often as a Hindu in
the past, but on a plantain leaf and behind the house!
Then, of course, comes the connubial ban whereby all the members of
the caste are prohibited from giving any of their children in marriage
to those of his household. To the Hindu who believes that marriage is
not only the God-given right of every human being, but who also
implicitly believes that it is a heavenly injunction whose fulfilment
rests as a duty upon every father in behalf of his children, this
interdict is the most oppressive of all. But it is enforced with
heartless severity in every case; and any family which may defy the
caste in this respect by entering into conjugal relationship with that
of the one under ban, is at once outcast.
Another mighty resource of the organization, in this connection, is to
interdict to the recreant member the use of all caste servants. For
instance, the caste barber and washerman are commanded to serve him
and his no longer. The severity of this interdiction cannot possibly
be realized by westerners, who are not always dependent upon these
functionaries. But in India every one depends upon the barber and
washerman for their service even more than a westerner does upon the
service of the butcher or the doctor. The Hindu never dreams of the
possibility of doing for himself the duties performed by these caste
servants for him. Moreover, the barbers and washermen of other castes
would, under no circumstance, be allowed to render him the service
thus prohibited to him by his own caste.
Add again to these inflictions the further one of complete isolation
in times of domestic bereavement. Should a member of his family die,
not one of the caste members is permitted to help in the last sacred
rites for the dead. Even at that moment, when one would expect the icy
barriers to melt away, the heart of caste is as hard and its severity
as rigid as ever. The helplessness of a family under these
circumstances is, to any one who is not a slave to the whole accursed
system, most pitiful and heartrending.
Another caste penalty which has received undue public prominence of
late is called _prayaschitta_, which means atonement. It is usually
applied as punishment to those who have had the temerity to cross the
ocean for foreign travel, business, or study. More correctly, it is
rather a process of cleansing and ceremonial rehabilitation than an
act of punishment. The exclusiveness of caste delighted in calling all
foreigners Mlechhas, which, though perhaps not as vigorous a term as
the Chinese sobriquet, "black devils," connoted, and still connotes,
to the caste Hindu, "unclean wretches," contact with whom brings
ceremonial pollution and sin. He who crossed the ocean would
necessarily be debased by these defiling ones and would be, as a
matter of course, engulfed in the pollutions of their life! To
prohibit travel, which necessarily involved such sin and degradation,
became therefore the concern of the ancient lawmakers of India. Hence
the _prayaschitta_, under which the educated community of India chafe
so much at the present time. For many of the best and most promising
youth of India travel abroad or reside temporarily in England, with a
view to perfecting their educational training so as to qualify
themselves for highest positions of usefulness in the homeland. Others
go abroad on business or to behold and study the wonders of western
life and civilization. All men of culture and power in India, at the
present time, are convinced of the evil and absurdity of this caste
law, which is common to all castes, because it is a part of the
general legislation of their religion. They decline to believe that it
is either sin or pollution to go in search of the best that the West
and the East have discovered and can bestow upon one, and that which
is to-day doing most in the elevation and redemption of India herself.
And many of them are defying this obsolete and debasing law of their
faith. Many others are crying for a modern interpretation of the
law--an interpretation which will explain away its bitterness and
render it innocuous. For it is not simply or chiefly the reactionary
and absurd character of this legislation which exasperates the
intelligence of the land; it is the very offensive and revolting
_nature_ of the expiation which preeminently stirs up the rebellion.
In former centuries of darkness, Hindus may have been willing to
submit to the humiliation of eating the five products of the cow as an
atonement for the supposed sin of sea-travel. The culture and
intelligence of the present time is neither so abject nor so
superstitious as to submit to this, without, at least, a vigorous
protest. And yet, what the culture of India seeks to-day is not the
abolishing of this law, which is equally repulsive to their taste and
to their intelligence; it asks only that some way of avoiding the
penalty may be found! And all that Hinduism and caste require of these
foreign-travelled men is not an intelligent submission to its behests,
but an outward observance of them. So the faith and its conservative
defenders are satisfied to see these men of culture, as they return
with the acquired treasures of the West, submit outwardly to this
offensive rite, while their sensitive nature rises in rebellion
against it. And these young scions of the East willingly practise this
hypocrisy and submit to this indignity in order to live at peace with,
and indeed to live at all in, their ancestral caste! It is only an
illustration of the hollowness of the major part of the life of the
educated community in this great land. Well may one exclaim, what can
be expected from a people whose leading men of culture are living this
double and mean life! This is verily "peace with dishonour"!