NEW SOCIAL IDEAS
[_Purusha, the One Spirit, embodied,_]
"Whom gods and holy men made their oblation.
With Purusha as victim, they performed
A sacrifice. When they divided him,
How did they cut him up? What was his mouth?
What were his arms? And what, his thighs and feet?
The Brahman was his mouth; the kingly soldier
Was made his arms; the husbandman, his thighs;
The servile Sudra issued from his feet."
From the _Rigveda_, Mandala x. 90,
translated by Sir M. MONIER WILLIAMS.
[Sidenote: Caste represses individuality.]
New ideas in the social sphere first claim our attention. The individual
and the community, each have rights, says a writer on the philosophy of
history, and it is hurtful when the balance is not preserved. If the
community be not securely established, the individuals will have no
opportunity to develop; if the individual be not free, the community can
have no real greatness. Speaking broadly, when Western social ideas meet
Indian, the conflict is between the rights of the individual as in
Western civilisation, and the rights of the community or society as in
the Indian. India stands for the statical _social_ forces, modern Europe
for the dynamical and _individualistic_. In India, as in France before
the Revolution, certain established usages are prejudicially affecting
the progress of the individual, fettering him in many ways. I refer to
caste, the denial of the brotherhood of mankind, the artificial
barricading of class from class, the sacrifice of the individual to his
class--condemned by native reformers like Ramananda, Kabir, Nanak, and
Chaitanya long before the advent of European ideas. Whatever the origin
or original advantages of the caste system, it has long operated to
repress individuality.[9] It is a vast boycotting agency ready to hand
to crush social non-conformity.[10] One can easily understand that if
society is rigidly organised for certain social necessities (marriage
for example) into a number of mutually exclusive sets or circles,
admission to all of which is by birth only, an individual cast out from
any set must perish. No one will eat with him, no one will intermarry
with him or his sons and daughters. It is into such a society that
modern social ideas have been sown, the ideas let us say of John Stuart
Mill's book, _On Liberty_--the _individual's_ liberty, that is to
say--which used to be a common university text-book in India.
[Sidenote: Caste suggests an imperfect idea of the community.]
[Sidenote: Nevertheless, a practical solidarity in Hinduism.]
Besides setting the community too much above the individual, the caste
system is faulty in presenting to the Indian mind an imperfect idea of
the community. The caste is the natural limit to one's interest and
consciousness of fellowship, to the exclusion of the larger community.
According to Raja Rammohan Roy, writing in 1824, the caste divisions are
"_as_ destructive of national union as of social enjoyment." In _Modern
India_, Sir Monier Williams expresses himself similarly. Caste "tends to
split up the social fabric into numerous independent communities, and to
prevent all national and patriotic combinations." Too much, however, may
be made of this, for the practical solidarity of Hinduism, in spite of
caste divisions, is one of the most striking of social phenomena in
India. Whatever may have brought it about, the solidarity of Hinduism is
an undeniable fact. The supremacy of the priestly caste over all may
have been a bond of union, as likewise the necessity of all castes to
employ the priests, for the Jewish ritual and the tribe of Levi were the
bonds of union among the twelve tribes of Israel. Sir Alfred Lyall
virtually defines Hinduism as _the employment of brahman priests_, and
it is the adoption of brahmans as celebrants in social and religious
ceremonies that marks the passing over of a non-Hindu community into
Hinduism. It is thus it becomes a new Hindu caste.[11] Then, uniting
further the mutually exclusive castes, many are the common heritages,
actual or adopted, of traditions and sacred books, and the common
national epics of the Ramayan and the Mahabharat. The cause of the
solidarity is not a common creed, as we shall see when we reach the
consideration of new religious ideas, ideas.
[Sidenote: New ideas opposed to caste, namely, individual liberty and
nationality.]
If Hinduism as a social system is to be moved by the modern spirit, we
may look for movement in the direction of freedom of individual action,
that is, the loosening of caste; we may look for larger ideas of
nationality and citizenship, superseding to some extent the idea of
caste. As is not infrequent in India, Government pointed out the way for
public opinion. In 1831 the Governor-General, Lord William Bentinck,
issued his fiat that no native be debarred from office on account of
caste, creed, or race, and that a son who had left his father's religion
did not thereby forfeit his inheritance.
[Sidenote: Loosening of caste.]
To any observer it is now plain that while caste is still a very
powerful force, and even while new castes, new social rings, are being
formed through the working of the spirit of exclusiveness, the general
ideas of caste are undergoing change. In these latter days one can
hardly credit the account given of the consternation in Calcutta in
1775, when the equality of men before the law was asserted, and the
_brahman_, Nanda-kumar, was hanged for forgery. Many of the orthodox
brahmans shook off the dust of the polluted city from their feet and
quitted Calcutta for a new residence across the Hooghly. In 1904, we
find conservative Hindus only writing to the newspapers to complain that
even in the Hindu College at Benares, the metropolis of Hinduism, some
of the members of the College Committee were openly violating the rules
of caste. In the same year a Calcutta Hindu newspaper, the _Amrita
B[=a]z[=a]r Patrik[=a]_, declared, "Caste is losing its hold on the
Hindu mind."[12] The recent denunciation of caste by an enlightened
Hindu ruler, the Gaekwar of Baroda, is a further significant sign of the
times.
[Sidenote: Offences against caste.]
What does caste forbid and punish? Freedom of thought, if not translated
into social act, has not been an offence against caste at any time in
the period under review, neither has caste taken cognisance of sins
against morality as such. The sins that caste has punished have been
chiefly five, as follows: Eating forbidden food, eating with persons of
lower caste, crossing the sea, desertion of Hinduism for another
religion, marrying with a person of a lower caste, and, in many
communities also, marrying a widow. The Hindustani proverb, "Eight
brahmans, nine cooking-places," hits off with a spice of _proverbial_
exaggeration the old punctiliousness about food. The sin of eating
forbidden food is thus described by Raja Rammohan Roy in 1816: "The
chief part of the theory and practice of Hinduism, I am sorry to say,"
writes the Raja, "is made to consist in the adoption of a peculiar mode
of diet; the least aberration from which (even though the conduct of the
offender may in other respects be pure and blameless) is not only
visited with the severest censure, but actually punished by exclusion
from the society of his family and friends. In a word, he is doomed to
undergo what is commonly called loss of caste."[13] Now, in respect of
the first three of these offences, in all large centres of population
the general attitude is rapidly changing. In the light of modern ideas,
these prohibitions of certain food and of certain company at food, and
of sea voyages, are fading like ghosts at dawn. An actual incident of a
few years ago reveals the prevailing conflict of opinion, especially
with regard to the serfdom which ties down Indians to India.
[Sidenote: An actual case.]
Two scions of a leading family in a certain provincial town of Bengal,
brave heretics, made a voyage to Britain and the Continent, and while
away from home, it was believed, flung caste restrictions to the winds.
On their return, the head of the family gave a feast to all of the caste
in the district, and no one objected to the presence of the two voyagers
at the feast. This was virtually their re-admission into caste. But
shortly after, a document was circulated among the caste complaining,
without naming names, of the readmission of such offenders. The tactics
employed by the family of the offenders are noteworthy. The demon of
caste had raised his head, and they dared not openly defy him. So the
defence set up was the marvellous one that, while on board ship and in
Europe, the young men had never eaten any forbidden or polluted food.
They had lived upon fruit, it was said, which no hand except their own
had cut. The old caste sentiment was so strong that the family of the
voyagers felt compelled to bring an action for libel against the
publishers of the circular. They lost their case, as no offender had
been mentioned by name, and the tyranny of caste thus indirectly
received the support of the courts.
Of course it would still be easier to discover instances of the tyranny
of caste than the assertion of liberty, even among highly educated men.
In this matter of emancipation also, North India is far ahead of the
South. While minister at the court of Indore, 1872-75, the late Sir T.
Madhava Rao, a native of South India, was invited to go to England to
give evidence on Indian Finance before a Committee of the House of
Commons. _On religious grounds_ he was not able to accept the
invitation.[14] Nor is it generally known that the Bengali nobleman who
represented his country at the King's coronation in London belongs to a
family that is out of caste. If the newspapers are to be believed, an
orthodox Bengali Hindu was first invited to attend the coronation, and
was "unable to accept." Had that gentleman accepted and gone, his
example might at once have emancipated his countrymen. But he did not
know his hour. "There is a venial as well as a damning sin," we may
note, in regard to this crossing of the sea. "A man may cross the Indian
Ocean to Africa and still remain an orthodox Hindu. The sanctity of
caste is not affected. But let him go to Europe, and his caste as well
as his creed is lost in the sea."[15] An orthodox Hindu has never been
seen in Britain.
It is worth noting also, that in earlier times it involved loss of caste
to go away South, even within India itself, among the Dravidean peoples
beyond the known Aryan pale in the North. Thus, slowly the cords of
serfdom lengthen.
Towards the fourth of the offences against caste, namely, the adoption
of a new religion, the general attitude has likewise changed, although
to a less degree. In large towns, at least, the convert to Christianity
is not so rigidly or so instantaneously excluded from society as he used
to be, and the Indian Christian community, although small, is now in
many places one of the recognised sections of the community.
This certainly may be asserted, that the modern Hindus are being
familiarised as never before with non-brahman leaders, religious and
social. Neither of the recent Br[=a]hma (Theistic) leaders, the late
Keshub Chunder Sen and the late Protap Chunder Mozumdar, was brahman by
caste. The great Bombay reformer, the Parsee, Malabari, is not even a
Hindu. The founder of the Arya sect, the late Dyanand Saraswati, was out
of caste altogether, being the son of a brahman father and a low-caste
mother. The late Swami Vivekananda (Narendranath _Dutt_, B.A.), who
represented Hinduism at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893,
was not a brahman, as his real surname plainly declares. While, most
wonderful of all, the accepted leaders of the pro-Hindu Theosophists,
champions of Hinduism more Hindu than the Hindus, after whom the
educated Hindus flock, are not even Indians; alas, they belong, the most
prominent of them, to the inferior female sex! I mean the Russian lady,
the late Madame Blavatsky, the English ladies Mrs. Annie Besant and Miss
Noble [Sister Nivedita], and the American, Colonel Olcott. Which side of
that glaring incongruity is to give way--brahman and caste ideas, or the
buttressing of caste ideas by outcastes, Feringees, like Mrs. Besant?
It would be interesting to hear an orthodox brahman upon Mrs. Besant's
claim to have had a previous Hindu existence as a Sanscrit pandit. What
sin did the pandit commit, would be his natural reflection, that he was
born again a Feringee, and a woman?
[Sidenote: Unpardonable offences.]
But the offence of the fifth sin, marrying below one's caste, or the
marriage of widows, seems as rank as ever. Upon these points, rather,
the force of caste seems concentrating. The marriage of widows will be
considered when we come to discuss the social inferiority of woman in
India. To marry within one's caste promises to be the most persistent of
all the caste ideas. The official observation is that "whatever may have
been the origin and the earlier developments of caste, this prohibition
of mixed marriages stands forth now as its essential and most prominent
characteristic. The feeling against such unions is deeply engrained."
And again, a second pronouncement on caste: "The regulations regarding
food and drink are comparatively fluid and transitory, while those
relating to marriage are remarkably stable and absolute."[16] The
pro-Hindu lady, already referred to, also agrees. "Of hereditary caste,"
she says, "the essential characteristic is the refusal of
intermarriage."[17] Even Indian Christians are reluctant to marry below
their old caste, and value a matrimonial alliance with a higher. To that
residuum of caste, when it becomes the residuum, one could not object.
The Aryan purity of the stock may be a fiction, as authorities declare
it to be in the great majority of castes and in by far the greater part
of India; but given the belief in the purity of blood, the desire to
preserve it is a natural desire. If one may prophesy, then, regarding
the fate of the caste system under the prevailing modern influences,
castes will survive longest simply as a number of in-marrying social
groups. To that hard core the caste idea is being visibly worn down.
[Sidenote: Support of caste by British authorities.]
With strange obliviousness surely, the British officials are lending
support to caste ideas in various ways, while many of the best minds in
India are groaning under the tyranny. The compilers of the _Report of
the Census of India for_ 1901, gentlemen to whom every student of India
is deeply indebted, in their enumeration of castes, give the imprimatur
of government to such Cimmerian notions as that the touch of certain low
castes is defiling to the higher. The writer and condoner of the
following paragraph surely need a lengthy furlough to Britain or the
States. We read that "the table of social precedence attached to the
_Cochin Report_ shows that while a Nayar can pollute a man of a higher
caste only by touching him, people of the Kammalan group, including
masons, blacksmiths, carpenters, and workers in leather, pollute at a
distance of 24 feet, toddy drawers at 36 feet, Palayan or Cheruman
cultivators at 48 feet; while in the case of the Paraiyan (Pariahs) who
eat beef, the range of pollution is stated to be no less than 64 feet."
Some consolation let us even here take from the fact that in an earlier
publication the extreme range of the polluting X-rays of the pariah is
stated to be 72 feet. So there has been 8 feet of progress for the
pariah. But our point is, that interesting as all that table of
precedence no doubt is, it is out of place in a Government report, which
may be quoted against a poor low-caste man as authoritative
pronouncement regarding his social position. Justice and humanity, good
grounds in the eyes of the Indian Government ere now for legislating
contrary to caste ideas, ought to have enjoined the ignoring of caste
ideas here. It is no mere fancy that after an accident one of these
low-caste masons in South India might be brought to the door of a
Government hospital and be refused admission by a native medical officer
because his presence polluted at a distance of 24 feet--has not the
Government Report declared it so? It is no fancy, for a year or two ago
the Post Office reported that in one village the Post Office was found
located where low castes were not allowed to approach. In some
provinces, also, teachers will object to the admission of low-caste
children in their schools; or "if they admit them make them sit outside
in the verandah."[18] What now of the dignity of manual labour which
many a high official has expounded to native youth? Or to take another
instance of un-British countenancing of the caste idea. The Shahas of
_Bengal_ are a humble caste, and the members of higher castes will not,
as a rule, take water at their hands, so the Government Report tells us.
On the other hand, the Shahas of _Assam_, immigrants from Bengal, have
managed to raise themselves high in the social scale. Why, when an Assam
Shaha takes up his residence again in his motherland, Bengal, should
this Blue-book be casting up to him his humble origin? Why this
un-British weighting of those who are behind in the race? Again, at the
very time of the Census, the Maratha caste was in conflict with the
brahman in two Native States of Western India, Kohlapur and Baroda, over
a matter of religious privileges. The brahman contention is that the
Mahratta pretensions to high-caste blood [kshatriya] are groundless, and
now we have the very same statement in the _Census Report_, backing "the
king of the castle" against "the dirty rascal." Not a century ago,
students of kayasth [clerk] caste were excluded from the Sanscrit
College in Calcutta; they are now within the privileged circle, but
their claim might not yet have been made good had a Government Blue-book
of these earlier days been allowed to brand them as debarred from the
College by their caste. At a public meeting the writer heard one of the
most learned and respected Hindus of Calcutta respectfully protest to
the Lieutenant-Governor against the public recognition in the _Census
Report_ of such irrational social grading.[19]
Similarly in the provision by Government of Caste Hostels for students.
According to the first rule of the Hindu Hostel in connection with the
Government College in Calcutta, "none but respectable Hindu students ...
shall be admitted,... and such inmates shall observe the rules and
usages of Hindu Society." In that rule, "respectable" simply means
_other than low caste_. Now for the _reductio ad absurdum_. A certain
Bengali gentleman of low caste was some years ago entitled to be
addressed as "Honourable," from the high public office he held, yet by
departmental orders the Principal of the Government College would shut
the door of the College Hostel in the face of the Honourable's son.
[Sidenote: New religious organisations repudiate caste.]
Of the new religious organisations of educated India, three repudiate
caste, namely, the Protestant Christian community, the Br[=a]hma
Sam[=a]j or Theistic Association, chiefly found in Bengal, and the
[=A]rya Sam[=a]j or Vedic Association of the United Provinces and the
Punjab. These forces of new religious feeling are marshalled against
caste as a social anomaly and a bar to progress. Mahomedanism in its day
was a powerful force arrayed against caste, but its regenerating power
has long ago evaporated, for in many districts of India caste ideas are
found flourishing among the Mahomedan converts from Hinduism. They have
carried over the caste ideas from their old to their new religion.[20]
The Sikhs in the Punjab also repudiate caste, but they too have
forgotten their old reforming mission. Notwithstanding, we repeat,
Northern India owes an immense debt to these two religions, particularly
to Mahomedanism. Let any one who doubts it observe the caste thraldom of
Southern India, where Mahomedan rule never established itself.
Irrational as caste is in Northern India, it is tenfold more so in the
South, as we have already seen. A noteworthy assertion of "the rights of
men," or more literally of the rights of women, against caste may be
noted in that same caste-bound South India. In the Native State of
Travancore, caste custom had prohibited the women of the lower castes
from wearing clothing above the waist. But about the year 1827, the
women who became Christians began to don a loose jacket as the women of
higher caste had been in the habit of doing. Bitter persecution of the
Christian women followed, but in 1859 the right of these lower-caste
women to wear an upper cloth was legally acknowledged.[21]
But the outstanding evidence of new ideas in regard to caste is
furnished by the Hindu revivalists who, under the leading of Mrs. Annie
Besant and the Theosophists, have established the Hindu College,
Benares, as a buttress of Hinduism. From the _Text-book of Hindu
Religion_ prepared for the College, we learn that these representatives
and champions of orthodoxy defend caste only to the extent of the
ancient fourfold division of society into brahmans, rulers, merchants
and agriculturists (one caste), and servants. What, we may ask, is to
become of the 1886 sub-divisions of the brahman caste alone, all
mutually exclusive with regard to inter-marriage? The text-book actually
quotes sacred texts to show that caste depends on conduct, not on birth,
and refers to bygone cases of promotion of heroes to a higher caste
without rebirth. Its final pronouncement on caste is that "unless the
abuses that are interwoven with it can be eliminated, its doom is
certain." So far has the opinion of orthodox conservative Hinduism
progressed with reference to its fundamental social feature, caste.