Part 19 (1/2)
XXIII
THE CASTE SYSTEM IN INDIA
Of Hinduism as a religious or ecclesiastical inst.i.tution we had something to say in another chapter; of Hinduism as Social Fact bare mention was made. And yet it is in its social aspects, in its enslavement of all the women and the majority of the men who come within its reach, that Hinduism presents its most terrible phases. For Hinduism is Caste and Caste is Hinduism. Upon the innate, Heaven-ordained superiority of the Brahmin and the other twice-born castes, and upon the consequent inferiority of the lower castes, the whole system of Brahminism rests.
Originally there were but four castes: The Brahmin or priest caste who were supposed to have sprung from the head of Brahma or G.o.d; the Kshatriya or warrior caste who sprang from his arms, the Vasiya or merchant and farmer cla.s.s who sprang from his thigh, and the Sudra or servant and handicraftsmen cla.s.s who came from his feet. The idea of superiority by birth having once been accepted as fundamental, however, these primary castes were themselves divided and subdivided along real or imaginary lines of superiority or inferiority until to-day the official government statistics show 2378 castes in India.
You cannot marry into any one of the other 2377 cla.s.ses of Hindus; you cannot eat with any of them, nor can you touch any of them.
Thus Caste is the Curse of India. It is the very ant.i.thesis of democracy--blighting, benumbing, paralyzing to all aspiration and all effort at change or improvement.
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No man may rise to a higher caste than that into which he is born; but he may fall to a lower one.
There is no opportunity for progress; the only way to move is backward. Don't kick against the p.r.i.c.ks therefore. You were born a Brahmin with wealth and power because you won the favor of the G.o.ds in some previous existence; or you were born a Sudra, predestined to a life of suffering and semi-starvation, because in your previous existence you failed to merit better treatment from the G.o.ds. If you are only a sweeper, be glad that you were not born a pig or a cobra.
Kismet, Fate, has fixed at birth your changeless station in this life; and, more than this, it has written on your brow the things which must happen to you throughout your whole existence.
The Brahmin put himself into a position of superiority and then said to all the other cla.s.ses: Rebel not at the inequalities of life. They are ordained of the G.o.ds. The good that the higher castes enjoy is the reward of their having conducted themselves properly in previous existences. Submit yourself to your lot in the hope that with obedience to what the Brahmins tell you, you may possibly likewise win birth into a higher caste next time. But strike a Brahmin even so much as with a blade of gra.s.s and your soul shall be reborn into twenty and one lives of impure animals before it a.s.sumes human shape again.
Never in human history has the ingenuity of a ruling cla.s.s devised a cleverer or a crueller mode of perpetuating its supremacy. Never has there been a religion more depressing, more hopeless, more deadening to all initiative. ”_Jo hota so hota_,”--”What is happening was to happen”--so said the wounded men who had gone to the Bombay hospital to have their limbs amputated a few days before I got there. ”It is written on my forehead,” a man will often say with stoical indifference when some calamity overtakes him, in allusion to the belief that on the sixth night after birth Vidhata writes on every man's forehead the main events of his life-to-be, and no act {228} of his can change them. ”I was impelled of the G.o.ds to do the deed,” a criminal will say in the courts. ”And I am impelled of the G.o.ds to punish you for it,” the judge will sometimes answer. If plague comes, the natives can only be brought by force to observe precautions against it. ”If we are to die, we shall die; why offend the G.o.ds by attempting interference with their plans?” The fatalism of the East as expressed by Omar Khayyam is the daily creed of India's millions:
”We are no other than a Moving Row Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go. . . .
”But helpless Pieces of the Game He plays Upon this Checkerboard of Nights and Days.”
It is in this fatalistic conception of life that caste is rooted; but for this belief that all things are predestined, no people would ever have been so spiritless as to submit to the tyranny of the caste system. Perhaps it should also be added that the belief in the transmigration of the soul has also had a not inconsiderable influence. Though you have fared ill in this life, a million rebirths may be yours ere you finally win absorption into Brahma, and in these million future lives the G.o.ds may deal more prodigally with you.
Indeed, the things you most desire may be yours in your rebirth. ”You are interested in India; therefore you may have your next life as an Indian,” an eminent Hindu said to me. But Heaven forbid!
At any rate, with this double layer of nouris.h.i.+ng earth--the belief, first, that what you are now is the result of your actions in previous lives, and, secondly, that there are plenty more rebirths in which any merit you possess may have its just recompense of reward, the caste system has flourished like the Psalmist's green bay tree, though its influence has been more like that of the deadly upas.
If you are a high-caste man you may not only refuse to eat with or touch a low-caste man, your equal perhaps in {229} intelligence and in morals, but in some cases you may even demand that the low-caste man shall not pollute you by coming too near you on the road. On page 540 of the 1901 ”Census of India Report” will be found a table showing at what distances the presence of certain inferior cla.s.ses become contaminating to a Brahmin! Moreover, the low-caste man, offensive to men, is taught that he is equally offensive to the G.o.ds. He must not wors.h.i.+p in the temples; must not even approach them. Usually it is taken for granted that no Pariah will take such a liberty, but in some places I have seen signs in English posted on the temple gates warning tourists who have low-caste servants that these servants cannot enter the sacred buildings.
Not only are these creatures of inferior orders vile in themselves, but the work which they do has also come to be regarded as degrading.
A high-caste man will not be caught doing any work which is ”beneath him.” The cook will not sweep; the messenger boy would not pick up a book from the floor. The liveried Brahmin who takes your card at the American Consulate in Calcutta once lost his place rather than pick up a slipper; rather than humiliate himself in such fas.h.i.+on he would walk half a mile to get some other servant for the duty. It is no uncommon thing to find that your servant will carry a package for you, but will hire another servant if a small package of his own is to be moved. ”I had a boy for thirteen years, the best boy I ever had, till he died of the plague,” a Bombay Englishman said to me, ”and he shaved me regularly all the time. But when I gave him a razor with which to shave himself, I found it did no good. He would have 'lost caste' if he had done barber's work for anybody but a European!”
”I have a good sweeper servant,” a Calcutta minister told me, ”but if I should attempt to promote him beyond his caste and make a house-servant of him, every other servant I have would leave, including my cook, who has been a Christian twenty years!”
The absurdities into which the caste system runs are well {230} ill.u.s.trated by some facts which came to my notice on a visit to a school for the Dom caste conducted by some English people in Benares.
The Doms burn the bodies of the dead at the Ganges ghats, and do other ”dirty work.” Incidentally they form the ”thief caste” in Benares, and whenever a robbery occurs, the instant presumption is that some Dom is guilty. For this reason a great number of Doms (they belong to the Gypsy cla.s.s and have no houses anywhere) make it a practice to sleep on the ground just outside the police station nearly all the year round, reporting to the authorities so as to be able to prove an alibi in case of a robbery. So low are the Doms that to touch anything belonging to one works defilement; consequently they leave their most valuable possessions unguarded about their tents or shacks, knowing full well that not even a thief of a higher caste will touch them.
”We had a servant,” a Benares lady said to me, ”who lost his place rather than take up one end of a forty-foot carpet while a Dom had hold of the other end. The new bearer, his successor, did risk helping move a box with a Dom handling the other side of it, but he was outcasted for the action, and it cost him 25 rupees to be reinstated.
And until reinstated, of course, he could not visit kinsmen or friends nor could friends or kinsmen have visited him even to help at a funeral; his priest, his barber, and his washerman would have shunned him. Again, our bearer, who is himself an outcast in the eyes of the Brahmins, will not take a letter from the hands of our Dom chipra.s.si or messenger boy. Instead, the messenger boy drops the letter on the floor, and the bearer picks it up and thus escapes the pollution that would come from actual contact with the chipra.s.si.” Moreover, there are social gradations even among the Doms. One Dom proudly confided to this lady that he was a sort of superior being because the business of his family was to collect the bones of dead animals, a more respectable work than that in which some other Doms engaged!
Similarly, Mrs. Lee of the Memorial Mission in Calcutta {231} tells how one day when a dead cat had to be moved from her yard her sweeper proudly pulled himself up and a.s.sured her that, though the lowest among all servants, he was still too high to touch the body of a dead animal!
My mention of the Doms as the thief caste of Benares makes this a suitable place to say that I was surprised to find evidences of a well-recognized hereditary robber cla.s.s in not a few places in India.