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V
CASTE AND ITS CONCOMITANTS
IN the foregoing chapter, Hinduism has been regarded in its religious, as distinct from its social, aspect. Our object was to ascertain how far it bore out the widespread belief in the innate spirituality, the " lofty idealism," of the Indian character. But Hinduism is much more than a religion. It has begotten, and it continues to enforce with all the power of sacerdotal sanctions, an extremely elaborate social system. Of this social system what are we to say ? Is it one which justifies the people who adhere, to it in claiming an independent and equal place among the nations of the world ? And, if not, what chances are there of any effectual amendment within reasonable time ?
It is beating at an open door to demonstrate the evils of caste. If Hinduism had been in other respects the loftiest and purest religion imaginable, its intimate association with caste would have rendered it a calamity to the Indian people. I have earnestly endeavoured, by reading and personal inquiry, to discover the good side of caste—I will not say any general justification of the system, but even any appreciable set-off against its manifest evils. The endeavour has been almost fruitless. Is a caste a benefit society ? Scarcely, if at all: caste comradeship manifests itself much more in ostentatious " treating" than in systematic helpful charity.* Is a caste a trade-guild ? Occasionally, in a very limited degree. The purposes of trade-protection are much better fulfilled by organizations specially directed to that end. It is said that caste secured a high level of hereditary skill in arts and handicrafts. I am not a sufficiently convinced adherent of Weissmann to deny the possibility of inherited aptitude ; but the probability is that the alleged effect was due simply to the influence of caste in promoting early and assiduous apprenticeship. So much merit may be allowed it ; but a good apprenticeship-system has been evolved elsewhere, without enforced heredity of function. Even if, in these or other respects, some odds and ends of benefit may, be shown to have resulted from caste, they are as nothing compared to the mountainous evils it has entailed upon unhappy India. It has enfeebled her politically by substituting class-exclusiveness for solidarity, class-vanity for patriotism. It has impoverished her physically by fostering a marriage system which is thoroughly unhealthy both in its obligations and in its restrictions. It has corrupted her morally by making insensate arrogance a religious and social duty. It has paralysed her intellectually by forcing her to occupy her mind with infantile rules and distinctions, and to regard them as the most serious interests in life.
Nor is there any defence for caste in the "tu quoque " argument. It is true that class-distinctions, class-vanity
* Sir Bampfylde Fuller (Studies of Indian Life and Sentiment, p. 202), speaking of the extraordinary power of resistance to famine if it be not too long continued, says, " It is due in the main to the efficacy of the family and the caste as institutions for mutual relief. There is no man but has some one to turn to in misfortune. . . . Indeed it might perhaps be argued that caste owes its extraordinary development to apprehension of famine. Caste certainly establishes some such responsibility for relief as was thrown upon English villages by the Poor Law settlement." This is the most plausible plea for caste that I have come across ; but most authorities declare it to be a very inefficient Poor Law. Mutual helpfulness within the limits of the family is, of course, a different matter.
and class-arrogance obtain to a certain extent throughout the world, and that in many countries—in England among the rest—they manifest themselves in noxious and ridiculous forms. Certainly there is too much of caste in Europe and America, where, moreover, it is accompanied by a paltry wealth-worship which is at any rate less conspicuous in India.. But apart from the fact that caste is infinitely more complex, more rigid and more inhuman in India than anywhere else in the world, there is a fundamental difference which deprives the comparison of all validity. It is simply that in Christian and Muhammadan countries religion fights against caste, or, failing to do so, neglects its manifest duty ; whereas in India religion is so inextricably identified with caste that one may almost reverse the order of the concepts and say that caste is religion. In the West, people are of many minds as to the permanent value and necessity of class distinctions. Some hold social equality to be an idle dream ; a few even believe that hereditary aristocracy is an institution of high social value. But scarcely anyone would openly deny that
Scarcely anyone would openly deny that homage ought to be paid rather to worth than to birth, and all the more to worth if it has not enjoyed, from the outset, the advantages of birth and station. Religion and social theory, in a word, both profess to be equalitarian, whatever defects of practice we may have to admit and deplore. But in India the most inhuman snobbery is a religious duty. In India alone, of all countries in the world, are millions of human beings placed outside the pale, not only of society, but of religion, by the mere fact of their being born to useful and necessary but conventionally degrading functions. Other countries share the benefits or evils (as the case may be) of a hereditary aristocracy ; in India alone there is a hereditary and exclusive priesthood, a hereditary and hopeless sediment of " untouchables."* India has the monopoly of the Brahmin and the Pariah.
" During times of conquest and migration," says Max Muller, " such as are represented to us in the hymns of the Rig-Veda, the system of castes, as it is described, for instance, in the Laws of Manu, would have been a simple impossibility. . . . On the other hand we do find in the gramas of the Five Nations, warriors, sometimes called nobles, leaders, kings ; counsellors, sometimes called priests, prophets, judges ; and working-men, whether ploughers, or builders, or road-makers. These three divisions we can clearly perceive, even in the early hymns of the Rig-Veda." These divisions manifestly correspond to the Kshattryas, Brahmins and Vaisyas of later times ; and when we add the Sudras, or servile caste, originally consisting, no doubt, of the conquered aborigines, we have the four castes of classic tradition. So far, the origin of caste is clear enough and normal enough : the problem which no one has satisfactorily solved is to account for the innumerable ramifications of later days, and the absolute tyranny which caste prejudice and exclusiveness came to exercise over the mind of the whole Indian people. It is not difficult to trace several of the influences which have gone to the building up of the system. Totemism, for instance, played its part ; and clan-practices of endogamy and exogamy are familiar to anthropologists all over the world. But the fact that many of the elements of caste are to be found elsewhere and everywhere, only renders it harder to understand why in India alone the system should have run into such monstrous developments. To say that, in India, everything runs into exaggeration and monstrosity is only to re-state the problem, not to solve it. " The system arose out of weakness and lifelessness among the people," says Mr. R. C. Dutt, " and
* " The term untouchable, as applied to over 50,000,000 Indians, is in no sense merely metaphoric." Saint Nihal Singh in Contemporary Review, March, 1913." to a certain extent it has perpetuated that weakness." One can understand that enervation begotten of climate might render the mass of the people easy victims to the exorbitant pretensions of the priestly caste ; but why should " weakness and lifelessness " generate the fantastic multiplication of mutually exclusive groups throughout the whole social system ? There is surely a good deal yet to be done in tracing out, not only the historic, but the psychological origins of caste.
In its practical effect, it may be likened to a virulent epidemic. It seems as though the Indian peoples were peculiarly susceptible to the bacillus of arrogance. Generated among the Brahmins, the microbe spread, by way of servile imitation, through all classes, until a passion for having someone to despise and look down upon became universal and ineradicable. Snobbery has been defined as a mean admiration for mean things ; but here we have an inverted and much more inhuman snobbery, which consists in aggressive contempt, without any semblance of a rational basis. " The Brahmin won't take water from me ; therefore it is necessary to my self-respect that I should find someone from whom I may decline to take water"—this, or something like it, appears to have been the instinctive feeling which lay at the root of caste. The desire to hand on a humiliation is one of the common foibles of human nature ; but in India alone has it become a ruling principle of life. The infection has penetrated to the very depths of the social scale, so that one of the difficulties in the way of raising the " depressed " castes, is that no one is so " depressed " but that he will object to having his children educated along with the children of someone whom he imagines to be a hair's-breadth lower than himself.*
* Dubois speaks of a case in which a serious riot had nearly arisen because a shoemaker at a public festival had stuck red flowers in his turban, which the Pariahs—mark that ! —insisted that none of his caste had a right to wear. The Census of 1901 recognizes 2,378 " main castes " as distinct from minor and fluctuating sub-divisions. As to precedence:
"It is impossible," says Sir Herbert Risley, " to draw up any scheme for the whole of India. One might as well try to construct a table of social precedence for Europe, which would bring together on the same list Spanish grandees, Swiss hotel-keepers, Turkish Pashas, and Stock-Exchange millionaires, and should indicate the precise degree of relative distinction attaching to each."
Yet some sort of classification may be attempted in accordance with the following criteria :
" That particular castes are supposed to be modern representatives of one or other of the castes of the theoretical Hindu system (Brahmins, Kshattryas, Vaisyas) ; that Brahmins will take water from certain castes ; that Brahmins of high standing will serve particular castes ; that certain castes, though not served by the best Brahmins, have nevertheless got Brahmins of their own . . . ; that certain castes are not served by Brahmins at all, but have priests of their own ; that the status of certain castes has been raised by their taking to infant marriage, or abandoning the re-marriage of widows ; that the status of some castes has been lowered by their living in a particular locality ; that the status of others has been modified by their pursuing some occupation in a special or peculiar way ; that some can claim the services of the village barber, the village palanquin-bearer, the village midwife, etc., while others cannot ; that some castes may not enter the courtyard of certain temples ; that some castes are subject to special taboos, such as that they must not use the village well, that they must live outside the village, or in a separate quarter, that they must leave the road on the approach of a high-caste man, or must call out to give warning of their approach. ... In Western and Southern India Brahmins will as a rule take water only from Brahmins. In Northern India they will take water and certain sweetmeats from some of the better class of Sudra castes. In Madras the idea of ceremonial pollution by the proximity of a member of an unclean caste has been developed with much elaboration. In Cochin a Yayar can pollute a man of a higher caste only by touching him, the Kammalan group (masons, blacksmiths, carpenters and leather-workers) pollute at twenty-four feet, toddy-drawers at thirty-six feet, Pulayan or Cheruman cultivators at forty-eight feet, Paraiyan (Pariahs) who eat beef, at sixty-four feet." There is a caste of Brahmins in Bengal who are permanently degraded by the fact that four centuries ago their forefathers were compelled to eat, or as some say only to smell, the beef-steaks that had been cooked for a renegade Brahmin, the dewan of a Muhammadan prince.
Nothing would be easier than to fill pages with instances of the absurdity and cruelty of caste.* It would be difficult, however, to find a clearer example of what it really means than the following account, given by a Hindu reformer, Pundit Rambhaj Dutt, of his efforts to raise the depressed classes in the Punjab, whom the barbers refused to shave and who were forbidden to draw water from the wells which the higher castes regarded as their exclusive property :
" The Pundit's first difficulties were with the people whom he was striving to help. They suspected him of mercenary motives, and declined to have anything to do with his propaganda. At the principal meeting at which he was to have opened his campaign not a single Dhoomna attended. But the Pundit was equal to the occasion. Instead of delivering his address, he at once betook himself to the quarters of the town in which the untouchables dwelt, and was able to induce many of them to follow him to the place of meeting. He assured them that he had no intention of demanding * Men will die in famine-time rather than accept food from a low-caste or casteless person. At Lahore, only last year, a chuprassi was mortally injured by a bomb explosion. As he lay on the ground in agony, someone brought him a glass of water ; but " a man in the crowd said that he was a brother of the dying man, and that, as he was a Brahmin they ought not to give him anything to drink." At Kohat, not long ago a group of women were drawing water at a welt, when a child fell in The only man at hand was a " sweeper " who wanted to go down to its rescue ; but the women would not suffer him to pollute the well, and the child was drowned. It has been remarked that Nana Sahib, at Cawnpore, did not lose caste by engaging butchers to slaughter some hundred and fifty women and children in the Bibi Garh ; but if he had let one little girl live, and taken a glass of water from her hands, he could scarcely have expiated the pollution. In Southern India it used to be a law that no man of the degraded castes might enter a village before 9 a.m. or after 4 p.m., lest the slanting rays of the sun should cast his shadow across the path of a Brahmin. money from them or of taking away their women, but that his sole object was to have their rights accepted by the higher castes. The Pundit went from shop to shop and from house to house appealing to the Hindus to admit the low castes to the privileges mentioned above, and his words seem to have carried conviction. In the presence of thousands of Hindu men and women the great work of shuddi or purification was performed on hundreds of the untouchables. ' For two days,' writes the Pundit, ' we went on shaving and purifying crowds of men, women and children. More than 1,400 were admitted into the Arya or Hindu community. We had distributed the twenty-seven razors which I had purchased for the purpose, while several barbers were working with their own razors. But the most 'touching part of his account relates to the inception of the reform permitting the low castes to draw water from the wells of the village community. The Pundit called a meeting of the several biradaries or caste groups, and, in moving language, prayed them to admit their low caste brethren to this privilege so vital in a tropical country. His prayer was granted. In a body the whole assembly arose and proceeded to the heart of the Hindu quarter of Sujampur where the incidents related here took place. Thousands of Hindus stood round the well when the Pundit called upon one of the Dhoomna leaders to draw water from it. What followed is best told in the Pundit's own words. ' It was too much for him. He took off his shoes, and with folded hands trembling with emotion he asked the biradari if he could really go up to the well. They cheerfully assented. I helped him up the stairs, and told him to ask their permission three times. He did so thrice, each time the permission was granted, the brotherhood becoming more and more enthusiastic and full of feeling in their sympathetic reply to his petition. On this I asked the man to fall at the feet of the brotherhood who had raised him. He obeyed and drew water from the well amidst cheers.''*
This, be it noted, is not an event of fifty, twenty-five, or even ten years ago, but of the year of grace 1912 ; and there are in India from fifty to sixty millions as abject as these Dhoomnas.
In this case we see reform at work, as, indeed, it is in many quarters ; but it moves very slowly and with many relapses. Time out of mind, attempts have been made to
* Times of India, September 11, 1912. 90 expel the virus of caste from the Indian body politic ;* but often the sects which thought to abolish it have ended in themselves becoming castes, as exclusive as all the rest. The founders of the Sikh religion declared against caste, with very little effect. Of the three sections of the Brahmo Samaj, a reforming body founded by Rammohun Roy about 1830, only one does not recognize caste. The Arya Samaj, a younger and much more vigorous sect of reformers, professes to reject caste altogether; but, says Sir Herbert Risley, " the preaching of members of the Samaj is in advance of their practice." I myself heard of a case in which the members of a local branch of the Samaj were violently excited by the discovery that a chamar, or leather-worker, had intruded among them under false pretences. In another place, a leading member of the community declined to sit at table with me, not, it was explained, because he himself had any objection, but because it might have scandalized the weaker brethren. The idea that the spread of railways, and the popular taste for railway travelling, tends to break down the barriers of caste, is, as we shall presently see, only partially true.
As regards eating and drinking, it is said that in Bengal the restrictions have almost disappeared ; but this is far from being the case elsewhere. The Aryan Brotherhood in Bombay recently gave a dinner to which invitations were issued in deliberate disregard of caste distinctions,
* Dr. Hoernle, however, points out that " Neither Buddhism nor Jainism represents a revolt against the tyranny of caste, but only against the caste exclusiveness of Brahmin ascetics ; caste, as such, was fully acknowledged by them. The Buddhist or Jain priest only acted as the spiritual guide of his followers ; for their religious and ceremonial observances, Brahmin priests had always to be called in."
It seems to be pretty commonly recognized that neither ice nor soda-water counts as water for the purpose of conveying pollution ; while biscuits and patent medicines are also exempted from the strict operation of caste rules. Sir Narayan Chandavarkar occupying the chair. The occasion was most harmonious, but many of the guests got into sad trouble with the panchayats, or committees, of their castes. Apparently it was the presence of one man, known or suspected to be an " untouchable," that caused the scandal. Some of the offenders were " out-casted," others made their peace by doing penance, or in other words going through a particularly nasty process of purification.* It is characteristic that in discussing this dinner one of the " Anglo-Vernacular" papers of Bombay approved it in an English* article, but condemned it in its vernacular columns. One of the evils of the present condition of affairs is that it engenders hypocrisy : lip-service to enlightenment while the heart is still in the bondage of prejudice, or (more commonly perhaps) conformity to social prejudice without any conviction behind it.
But even in Bengal, though restrictions on the jus convivii may be almost extinct, the jus conubii is extending much more slowly—and this, of course, is a far more serious matter. For it is one of the gravest of India's many misfortunes that, while social custom makes marriage an imperative obligation and celibacy a disgrace, caste sets narrow bounds to the field of choice, and so leads to infant marriage, and the prohibition of widow re-marriage, not to mention darker, though less wide-spread, evils. In assuming these things to be evils, do I imply that Western ideas as to marriage and the relations of the sexes are the last word of social wisdom ? Certainly not; no one doubts that in these matters our practices, and even our principles, stand in glaring need of amendment. But again, the " tu quoque " plea is of no avail. Our habits are not, like those of India, mere crystallizations of barbarism ; and, even if they were, would that make the Indian habits any better ? In the Vedas there is no trace of infant marriage ; free courtship
* It includes swallowing a bolus composed of the panchagavya, the five products of the cow—milk, curds, ghee, urine and dung.
of the modern type is recognized : and widow re-marriage is so far from being prohibited that there are special words for " a man who has married a widow, " a woman who has taken a second husband," " a son of a woman by her second husband." As for suttee—the burning of widows —there is some trace of its having existed in pre-Vedic times, and having been replaced by a symbolic and innocent ceremony. One passage in the Rig-Veda was made by the Brahmins to justify the practice : literally " made," by the deliberate alteration of the word Agre nto Agne— " perhaps the most flagrant instance," says Mr. R. C. Dutt, " of what can be done by an unscrupulous priesthood." But the Vedic period had not long passed before all three practices were firmly established. The Laws of Manu prescribe that a man of thirty shall marry a girl of twelve, a man of twenty-four a girl of eight. The custom of ancestor-worship, the necessity of having an heir to do sraddha to your ghost, rendered marriage imperative; while endogamy forced you to marry within your clan ; exogamy (in many cases) forbade you to marry within your group ; and hypergamy frequently (though not universally) forbade a girl to marry a man of a group lower than her own in social standing. It is not quite clear how the idea arose that to have a marriageable daughter unmarried was the direst of social reproaches ; but it can readily be understood that when once it was firmly rooted in the popular mind, a father would take no risks of finding a daughter left on his hands, and would be especially anxious to get her disposed of before she could possibly develop a will of her own. Where hypergamy was added to the other difficulties of the marriage market, the birth of a daughter came to be regarded as a calamity; whence the prevalence of female infanticide* in many parts of India, but particularly among the Rajputs. Nor is this
* The practice, however, is not entirely due to the artificial restrictions on marriage begotten of the caste system. There are clear traces of it in the Vedas. an ancient horror, dragged from the archives of anthropology. Mr. E. A. Gait, the director of the Census of 1911, tells us that a friend of his was discussing with the Durbar of a native state the amount which ought to be expended on the marriage of the Chief's sister, and, as there was some difference of opinion, he asked how much had been spent on similar occasions in the past. " He was told in reply that there was no precedent.The girl was the first in the family that had been allowed to live ! " The same authority goes on to say: "A middle-aged Punjabi gentleman recently told me that he had been compelled, as a boy, to assist at the murder of an infant sister, and that an aunt had had seven daughters and had killed them all." Even now infanticide is kept in check in Rajputana only by making things unpleasant for a village which cannot show a fair proportion of girls. I asked one of the officers who had taken the 1911 census in this district whether the practice was really a thing of the past. " They vow and swear that it is," was his reply " but the statistics are against them." That female children are much neglected there is no doubt. " Girls," says Mr. Gait, " are neither so well-fed nor so well-clothed as boys, nor, if they are ill, are they carefully looked after. In Gujarat there is a proverb, ' The parents look after the boys and God looks after the girls.' "*
The ban upon widow re-marriage is clearly due to the same cause as female infanticide : where it is so difficult, and at the same time so necessary, to get a girl married at once, it is naturally regarded as unfair that any woman should add to the glut in the wife-market by getting married twice. Suttee was, of course, a conclusive safeguard against widow re-marriage ; but it was more than that. It was a sacrificial rite, comparable with the burying of his horse
* The exposure of female infants used to be very common in Bengal, where, too, the caste of Kulin Brahmins used to make a profession of " marrying" girls by the score, and so relieving their parents of the reproach attaching to their celibacy, and arms along with a dead chieftain ; it obviated all difficulties as to property and dower ; and it was a useful deterrent for any lady who might be tempted to compass the death of her lord and master by witchcraft or poison. I do not know that the latter motive was ever avowed in India, as it is in some parts of West Africa; but it is not in human nature that so obvious an advantage should not have contributed to render the institution popular— with husbands.
An unsympathetic Government made suttee illegal in 1829 ; but it is said that cases of it still occur. In the matter of child-marriage, the Government is practically powerless, though in British territory the consummation of such a marriage before the wife has reached the age of twelve is now a penal offence. Enlightened Indian opinion is alive to the physical and moral evils arising from the practice, as well as to the cruelty of forbidding the re-marriage of widows, thousands of whom have never been wives. But enlightened opinion, in India, is pathetically powerless against the sheer inertia of immemorial habit. Moreover, qualified observers hold that the influence of railways and the printing-press is helping the ingrained snobbery of caste to introduce these abuses into social strata which were formerly innocent of them.
" The strength of the Hinduizing movement," says Sir Herbert Risley, " has been greatly augmented by the improvement of communications. People travel more, pilgrimages can be more easily made, and the influence of the orthodox section of society is thus much more widely diffused." And again : " The extension of railways which indirectly diffuses Brahmanical influence; the tendency to revive the authority of the Hindu scriptures, and to find in them the solution of modem problems ; and the advance of vernacular education which increases the demand for popular versions of and extracts from these writings—these are among the causes which, in my opinion, are tending on the one hand to bring about the more rigid observance of the essential incidents of caste, especially of those connected with marriage, and on the other to introduce greater laxity in respect of the minor injunctions which are concerned with food and drink." Imitation of the higher by the lower castes being " the ultimate law of the caste system," and child marriage and widow non-marriage being tokens, from of old, of social distinction, they are thought to be spreading in India, very much as the habit of dining in evening dress is spreading in England. Can enlightened opinion make head against such a tendency ?
One would answer in the affirmative with greater confidence if enlightened opinion were not so afraid of its own enlightenment, and so determined to make out that—a few trifling defects apart—Hindu civilization is on the whole the most exalted and enviable the world has ever seen. One cannot but be a little sceptical of the regeneration that is to be founded on such very imperfect conviction of sin.
I take up a book entitled Hindu Progress (1904), consisting of " Papers collected and edited by N. Subbarau Pantulu Garu, B.A., B.L., Fellow of the Madras University, and formerly Member of the Legislative Council, Madras." The fourth of the twenty essays included in this work is entitled " The Aims of Hindu Social Life," by Mr. N. Ramanujachariar, M.A. In it I read :
" Every one who has in any way studied ancient India with profit knows how well and harmoniously this mighty and complex social organization of the Hindus has worked for thousands of years, and how it has always tended to help on peace, order and progress. Can the history of the world point out one other instance of a social organization which has worked so successfully for so long a time ? Even to-day it is as full of strength and vitality as it was in ancient times. But owing to various causes, internal and external, it is not now in perfect working order."
Before such an utterance of inveterate and insensate racial vanity, one is almost tempted to despair. The social organization of India " tended to help on peace ; " yet the country was, from the beginning of history, and almost without respite, torn by cruel wars. The social organization promoted " order : " yet, from sheer lack of any approach to order, India fell into the hands of a European trading company, who had to crush whole armies* of marauders, and to put down, with great difficulty, organized dacoity and the amiable religion of the Thugs. The social organization made for " progress : " yet, in another mood, the panegyrists of Hinduism will mourn the decay and disappearance of the splendid civilizations of the past; while the evidences, if not of decline, at least of age-old stagnation, are written broad over the face of the land. The social organization has worked with unexampled " success : " yes, if it be a sign of success to render the country incapable of self-defence or self-direction, and to subject her for a thousand years to the domination of one foreign conqueror after another. If Mr. Ramanujachariar represents the frame of mind of the friends of " Hindu progress "—and he not unfairly represents a considerable section of them—one can only wonder what may be the mental attitude of those who are not friends of progress, but conservatives. Truly there seems to be some ground for the opinion of many who know the Indian character well, that if British rule were withdrawn to-day, sutteef * would be revived to-morrow.
A similar, though less extravagant, strain of ultra-conservative liberalism runs through a recent speech of the Honourable the Maharajadhiraja Bahadur of Burdwan, at the opening of the ninth All-India Kshattrya (Warrior-Caste) Conference at Agra. The Maharaja, I should state,
* Literally armies—sometimes as many as 30,000 men, horse, foot and artillery, attached to no state or government, and openly living on rapine.
* Many educated Indians look back to suttee with pride and a sort of sentimental regret. Note the spirit in which it is treated in The Prince of Destiny, a Drama of India, by Sarath Kumar Ghosh. I was at first inclined to regard the opinion that suttee would revive on the withdrawal of the British, as an irresponsible suggestion to which little weight was to be attached ; but further inquiry has led me to modify this view. Sir Bampfylde Fuller, a close and competent observer, who always weighs his words, says that " beyond all doubt " suttee is " popular," and would be revived at the first opportunity. (Studies in Indian Life and Sentiment, p. 161.) The recent suicide by burning of several Bengali girls points in the same direction. is not a ruling prince, but a great land-owning potentate. He speaks severely of several members of the Kshattrya community who, in marrying their children, " ignored the resolutions that we have been carrying year after year about the curtailment of expenditure, the restriction of ' nautches,' and the avoidance of fireworks at marriage festivities." He deplores with evident sincerity " the ignorance of the uneducated among us, and of the poor unfortunate women of our community from whom enlightenment has been withheld." He urges the removal of barriers to intermarriage between sub-sections of the caste.
" In all this," he says, " I am with you. But for God's sake don't go further. What I advocate is not mixed marriages. I only mean taking into our fold Kshattryas of every grade and sub-caste, whilst the other means a deluge. It means sowing the seeds of confusion and chaos. ... If you lean too much on the delicate reed of social emancipation of the West, you will go under, you will eventually be committing a racial suicide, so great, so stupendous, that I tremble even to think of it. I therefore say, brethren, advance, but advance cautiously : but, on the other hand, revive the glories of the past."
Alas for those " glories of the past " ! They are like to prove a terrible hindrance to the greatness of the future.* The Hindu who could persuade his countrymen to listen to the plain truth about the past would do more for swaraj than any number of political declaimers.
Not, of course, that one would ignore the inherent difficulties of the case, or look for a sudden and general abandonment of secular tradition. It is neither surprising nor discouraging that the mass of the people should move very slowly, if at all, towards a saner social system; the
* The Rev. C. F. Andrews, a writer animated by the most ardent sympathy with India's national aspirations, says that some years ago " a paralysing recollection of India's greatness in the past took the place of hopeful optimism in the present." I hope he is right in thinking that the paralysis is passing away.
discouraging part of the matter is that the enlightened classes should be so half-hearted in their enlightenment. With conservatism in religion one can feel a good deal of sympathy. It is even possible that many people do, as a matter of fact, penetrate the rather revolting husk of Hinduism, interpret allegorically its multitudinous idolatry, and cling to the lofty spiritual creed which is understood to lurk behind it. But where is the spiritual substratum of caste ? What sympathy can we feel with conservatism in infant marriage*—that practice whereby " a child awakens to conscious life—married " ? What respect for the habit of mind, which, admitting that there are a few little adjustments to be made, yet defends and even boasts of the Indian social system as a whole ? There was, indeed, something to be said for caste so long as it was not caste : before it took on the characteristics which now give the word its meaning. But these characteristics, and the social habits ensuing from them, are nothing more nor less than a disease of the body politic; and the frank recognition of this fact is the beginning of wisdom for every Indian who wishes his country to take rank among the great nations of the future.
I once asked one of the leading European Hinduizers, why it was that the writings of that school contained, so far as I could see, no outspoken condemnation of caste. The reply ran thus :
* Though the modern tendency is, no doubt, to make boy and girl marriage equivalent to our betrothal, and postpone cohabitation until the parties are at any rate well in their teens, the fact remains that, in many parts of the country, " girls become mothers at the very earliest age that is physically possible." Deussen, an observer more than willing to make the best of everything Indian, writes, " The actual married life begins too early for the girls, before the bodies have attained a sufficient power of resistance. The consequence is that, not only do the women fade very quickly, pine and die, but they bring very delicate children into the world ; and this, with the absence of animal food, is probably the chief reason why the Indian, though not less intelligent, is both physically and mentally unable to compete with the European." My Indian Reminiscences, p. 82. " I do not think the four great castes stand in the way of national growth. Caste has become inflexible, and there lies its evil: if it regained the flexibility of its earlier days, so that men might change their caste, it would be very useful. Class is rigid in Germany : the nobles do not inter-marry with the bourgeoisie or the peasantry, yet Germany has very strong national feeling. As to Hinduism at large, I laid much stress, in past years, upon its greatness, because it was vitally necessary to implant self-respect in the people; without this no building of a nation was possible.'*
To this interesting utterance, there are three pretty obvious rejoinders: (i) Flexible caste, with penetrable partitions, would no longer be caste, but simply class in the European sense of the word. (2) Not in Germany alone, but throughout Europe, inter-class marriages are of doubtful, advantage, because marked differences of education and social tradition are not conducive to married happiness. But it is no such consideration which forbids inter-caste marriages in India. It is simply an inveterate clinging to rules, for the germs of which the anthropologist may discover some justification in the dim dawn of society, but which have long hardened into a rigid system of prejudice, quite out of touch with reason. (3) As for the implanting of self-respect in the people, that, if we take " self-respect " in its higher sense, is eminently desirable. But I very much fear that the efforts of European sympathizers have tended rather to the fostering of self-esteem and self-glorification, which need no outside encouragement.
At a congress of pundits, held a few months ago at Conjeevaram, in Southern India, the following views were elicited :
" On the question of sea voyage, eighteen pundits held that sea voyage is sinful in itself, twenty-seven were of opinion that it becomes sinful only under special circumstances, and one pundit only decreed that it is not sinful at all. On the question of post-puberty marriage for Brahmin girls, eight pundits declared that the Shastras prescribe such marriages ; twenty-one pundits were of opinion that they are permitted by the Shastras under certain circumstances for a period of three or four years after puberty ; while seven held that the Shastras prohibit post-puberty marriages." It is said that the comparatively limited support (in money at any rate) given in India to the movement on behalf of the Indians in South Africa is due to the fact that so many Hindus have no sympathy with the man who sacrifices his caste by crossing the kala pani
(black water) and settling
So long as the thoughts of a people are seriously preoccupied with such considerations as these : so long as they make a religion of snobbery, and a moral obligation of practices from which science and common sense alike revolt: so long as even their educated and thinking classes are more or less prone to regard with complacency all that is most barbarous and disastrous in their historic record : can it be said that that people is ready to take rank on equal terms with the intelligent and civilized nations of the world ? I do not see how any unprejudiced person can answer this question in the affirmative. It is true that there are vices and stupidities among the nations of the West from which the Hindu is comparatively free ; but that is rather because they do not come in his way than because he rises superior to them. It might be argued that a people may as well be pre-occupied with caste as with " sport " ; but such a sophism will scarcely bear examination. Sport is, after all, a distraction of a minority, though a large one ; it is not the essence of the national religion. It may be, in many cases, a more or less deleterious distraction ; * it may be a by-product and symptom of undesirable social conditions ; but it has also its good and healthful aspects, and, at worst, it is not incompatible with very high intelligence in the serious business of life. Caste is, to many millions of Indians, the most serious thing in life, and pre-occupation with its incidents and accessories is the very negation of intelligence. What people can hold its own in the struggle for existence
* If the Hindu is not a " sportsman " it is not because he lacks the gambling instinct. Even the rishis of the Vedas acknowledged the irresistible fascination of the dice-box. which has not the mental energy to shake off such an ancestral obsession ?
I should be disposed to accept the success of the social reform movement as a very fair test of India's moral and intellectual regeneration. In freeing herself from caste and its subsidiary evils, she will give the best possible proof of her fitness for political enfranchisement. But she will never work out her salvation while she continues to think and talk in this strain : " Ours is the eternal ideal of spiritual perfection for the individual and for humanity ; and there is not the least fear that the nation which has been working for the last six thousand years and more towards the achievement of such an aim . . . will ever die so long as it clings firmly to its great social ideal." |
