Author: V. G. Julie Rajan, Philadelphia
Publication: Hinduism Today
Date: April/May/June 2003
Education, economics and protest
drive changes and reform to India's ancient societal divisions
Caste is not a pleasant topic for
Hindus, and in the international arena today, it has elicited a shame upon
the Hindu religion. I have written this article to initiate dialogue within
our community. The negative issues associated with caste will not go away,
but will only tear at the credibility of the religion. I am not suggesting
the abolishment of Hinduism or of Hindu texts or the defamation of those
in the upper castes. Rather, I write out of reverence for Hinduism itself,
to initiate change, to affirm the positive aspects of Hinduism and to bring
a spiritual sense of unity to Hindu believers worldwide.
Origins: The standard explanations
of India's caste system are based on the now discredited "Aryan Invasion"
theory of ancient India. We await new speculations from the historians
and anthropologists. Suffice it to say that many ancient societies had
hereditary classes of people, eventually lost in social upheaval. The modern
term caste is derived from the Portuguese casta, alluding to family, tribe
or race, and was introduced into Indian society in the late 16th century.
The Hindu religious texts describe
varna ashrama dharma, the religious/social law delineating duties of four
castes. Gurudeva, Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, founder of Hinduism
Today, wrote, "The original caste system had these four divisions. The
divisions were all based on the ability of the individual to manage his
body, his mind and his emotions properly. If he stopped fulfilling the
dharma of his caste, society would recognize that he had moved from one
caste and was now in another. The original caste system was based on self-discipline
through education and through personal sadhana. The original caste system
was based on the unfoldment of the consciousness within each individual
through the chakras. People everywhere naturally divide themselves up into
castes. We have the workers. You go to work, you work under somebody else-that
happens all over the world-that's the shudra caste. We have the merchants,
who are self-motivated. That's the vaishya caste. We have the politicians
and the lawmakers and the law-enforcement people. That's the kshatriya
caste. And then you have the priests, the ministers, the missionaries.
That's the brahmin caste. Every society has these four castes working within
it in one way or another."
Jati and its advantages: Today,
most Hindus do not abide by the chatur varna (four caste) system but classify
themselves according to the more specific colloquial form of caste known
as the jati system. Jati are horizontal divisions within the four castes,
and there are thousands of them, segregated according to occupational,
sectarian, regional and linguistic distinctions. "The operative unit even
today for social and marriage purposes is not caste but jati. You talk
of brahmins as a caste, which is pan-Indian, but the fact is that a Tamilian
brahmin would rarely have a marriage alliance with a Punjabi brahmin,"
stated Madhu Kishwar, editor of Manushi magazine and one of India's foremost
women's rights advocates. "They are as far apart from each other culturally
as could possibly be. It's really not the operative and, yet, we have the
whole notion of brahmin domination, brahmins as a caste, whereas the regional
differences matter much more."
Kishwar points out the advantages
of the jati system: "It allows even the most disadvantaged and impoverished
groups to identify themselves and a political assertion based on their
numerical strength. It has kept democracy not just alive, but has given
it very deep roots. I think all these modernists attacking caste can't
understand the survival strategy of the subcontinent. For example, it has
provided social security for a rural migrant when he or she comes to the
city as an impoverished economic refugee."
Kishwar's points are valid. There
are certain advantages to the caste system with regard to communal pride
and access to political power. But what about those at the bottom, the
untouchable Dalits? On November 4, 2001, the conversion of several thousand
Dalits to Buddhism gained worldwide attention. "I am walking out of Hinduism
because the 3,000-year-old caste system will never allow me any respect
or dignity," stated the organizer of the event, Ram Raj, who dropped his
first name upon conversion.
Caste and class discrimination:
As a Hindu, you might wonder: Is this really a fair portrayal of Hinduism?
Is the caste system so unique to Hindu society? And is it really that bad?
It cannot be denied that all countries have experienced, or are experiencing,
some form of caste. For example, modern-day Britain supports strong class
divisions on the basis of economics. Recently Laura Spence, a student of
the lower social economic class, was not admitted into upper-crust Oxford,
despite her extraordinary academic qualifications. Harvard University gladly
admitted her, on a full scholarship.
Hierarchical divisions on the basis
of race and economics are part and parcel of the American experience as
well. "In America, we have caste. There are black people and white people,
rich people and poor people, superior people and inferior people," states
Swami Brahmavidyananda of the Institute of Holistic Yoga of North America.
According to Smita Narula, Director
of the Asia Division of Human Rights Watch, the difference between class
and caste is "that being born into a particular caste invites a certain
amount of restrictions on your basic freedoms, your basic rights. So it
is the combination of work and descent-based discrimination that makes
caste different from the class system. There's very little mobility."
Class divisions are mostly culturally
and economically based and, therefore, have the capacity to change as culture
changes [though slowly-see sidebar, page 33]. The inequalities associated
with the Hindu caste system are more complex, mainly with regard to its
undeniable roots in scripture and to the shameful existence of the untouchables.
Other religions receive bad press due to patriarchal constraints of women,
for example, but Hinduism is the only religion to be bombarded with issues
of race, intolerable human rights violations among its own believers and
inequality on such a grand scale.
The untouchables: Although untouchability
was abolished under Article 17 of the Indian Constitution in 1950, it is
still widely practiced all over India today. The untouchables or "scheduled
castes and scheduled tribes" (as they are listed by name on government
schedules) are not associated with any caste mentioned in the original
chatur varna Hindu system. Rather, untouchables are outcastes placed below
the sudra caste. The untouchable sect of Hinduism is relegated to labor
that no other caste will perform, such as the cleaning of latrines, scavenging
dead animals and funeral duties.
In the 1970s with the revolutionary
activities of the Dalit Panthers in Maharastra, untouchables assumed the
name Dalit, or "broken people," to represent themselves as politically
empowered and mobilized nationwide. "The word itself implies the need to
revolt, the need to identify one's oppressions, and then the need to act
against it," said Narula. Today, Dalits represent over 16 percent of India's
population of over 160 million.
After being approached over several
years to monitor the issue, Human Rights Watch embarked on a deep investigation
of the systemic human rights abuses against the Dalit community across
six different states of India. "We realized that we needed to look not
only at the outward manifestations of violence but also at the roots of
why things were happening, and the roots were both large-scale segregation
and economic exploitation," Narula said.
Social stratification has forced
the physical separation of untouchables from the rest of Hindu society
in much the same way Blacks were forceably kept apart in America 40 years
ago or in South Africa ten years back. They are not allowed to live within
the boundary lines of casted Hindu society and, instead, subsist on separate
lands, drinking from separate wells. "We found that in cases, for example,
when Dalits demanded land rights or the return of land that had been taken
from them, punishment would be meted out against their entire community,"
Narula said. "Or if somebody drew water from an upper-caste well, that
they were not supposed to touch even though it was a public well, their
entire village would be burned down."
Protective legislation has been
enacted, but is slow to be enforced. For example, the 1989 Scheduled Castes
and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities Act), offered protection
for untouchables and allowed for remuneration in cases of violent acts
against them. But police corruption, lack of strong law enforcement and
political unwillingness have rendered the law almost useless.
The Dalit human rights movements
have been subjected to a variety of violent acts, as stated in Broken People,
the published culmination of Human Rights Watch's investigations (available
at www.hrw.org/reports/1999/india/). It is the most comprehensive NGO documentation
of human rights violations against Dalits. In addition to several massacres
of Dalits in the 1990s, upper caste men are accused of ongoing cases of
rape against dalit women. Out of hundreds of documented cases, for example,
the rape of a 12-year-old Dalit girl by a man of the Thevar caste in Tamil
Nadu was covered up by the Thevar community via blackmail and kickbacks.
Origin of untouchability: In a religion
that preaches the all-pervasiveness of God, how did untouchability even
come to be? Mahatma Gandhi called it a product of "sheer ignorance and
cruelty." "The scheduled tribes and scheduled castes in India-this is the
biggest problem that we have," said Swami Brahmavidyananda. "This is man's
creation." Explanations also include the "unclean" occupations of the untouchables
and the eating of meat.
Swami Tathagatananda of the Vedanta
Center of New York believes that the development of untouchability through
Hindu history is a result of some basic human tendency, and has nothing
to do with Hinduism itself. "America is a democratic country, but democracy
is not practiced all of the time," he points out. "Good Hindus, like Mahatma
Gandhi, Swami Vivekananda and others, did not believe in untouchability,
but regardless of their beliefs or convictions or vocations against it,
they were not able to remove it. Suppose the American government wants
to abolish drugs. Just because we make a law, you cannot abolish drugs.
There are many laws, but who is obeying the laws? The division of all society
is always based on color, on gender and on money or education."
Gurudeva noted boldly, "Caste-or
at least discrimination on the basis of caste-has been thrown out of the
laws of India, but people still hang on to it as an ego structure. The
high caste people love to hurt the low caste people, so to speak, by ignoring
them, treating them roughly. That's not the way it should be. If you find
the high caste people in your society ignoring and not wanting to speak
with and associate with the lower castes, those are nasty people, and those
are people you should avoid. Spiritual people, even ordinary kindly people,
would never think of behaving that way."
Swami Tathagatananda concurs, "What
you are seeing today is the hardened system which has misinterpreted the
main points of division of labor. This hereditary business was not there
originally. Hindu people have perpetuated this system in order to enjoy
the benefit of the status." Swami Brahmavidyananda said, "The caste system
is in one way good, but in another way harmful. When the ego bonds with
ignorance, then it brings harm to society."
Other religions and regions: Caste
is by no means only a Hindu issue. Today, caste, or the jati system, more
specifically, is pervasive, cutting across religions, cultures and national
identities both in South Asia and its diaspora, according to Kishwar. All
of the religions practiced within the South Asian subcontinent reflect
this very same caste system, especially with regard to untouchability.
Those who convert from Hinduism into Christianity, Buddhism and Islam still
face discrimination on the basis of caste. There are separate churches
in South India for brahmin converts and Dalit converts. The Dalits are
also rendered more vulnerable to violence from the upper castes, as they
lose their right to protection under the 1989 Scheduled Castes and Scheduled
Tribes Act when they change religion.
Caste proves to be a troubling factor
for the younger generation of Hindus in the diaspora. An anonymous contributor
from the US notes: "I am not a brahmin but have brahmin friends who do,
from time to time, bring up their spiritual and intellectual superiority
to me, in very subtle ways. This really undercuts our friendships and is
pretty ridiculous, since I have demonstrated equally, if not more, spiritual
and intellectual superiority than they have."
Toward a solution: Swami Brahmavidyananda
suggests, "We have to reinterpret problematic texts and set a good example
in our society. We should not disrespect our culture, but we should condemn
those who are not properly versed in the philosophy that God belongs to
everyone, God does not feel color or sex, or whether you are white or black."
Most activists fighting for Dalits
are not fighting to dismantle Hinduism - though some are - but to demand
accountability from the Indian government to uphold existing laws, such
as the constitutional abolishment of untouchability and the Prevention
of Atrocities Act (1989). Narula states: "The Dalit movement is also asking
for the international community to work hand in hand with the Indian government
and with NGOs in India to insure enforcement of the laws that are already
in place to take care of issues such as violence, rape, scavenging, bonded
labor and other issues." Higher government representation for Dalits is
needed to bring visibility to their issues.
Dr. Kiran Bedi, India's highest
ranking female police officer, said, "The largest deterrents are the local
politicians who use and abuse the situations for narrow political gain."
Bedi points out that Dalit leaders themselves need to unite in their views.
Swami Brahmavidyananda said, "India
today is not the India of 50 years ago. People want to change. In order
to protect our religion, our system, we should reorganize properly and
slowly. We should pass out right information and correct these issues."
The rise in interfaith and intercaste marriages has forced families to
overlook issues of caste, to learn to live with one another equally.
Gurudeva summarized: "We can see
around us the deterioration of the system which has been abused beyond
the point of recognition. Members of the brahmin caste are now beating
their children, abusing their wives. Members of the kshatriya caste disrespect
the laws of the land. Members of the business caste are deceptive and dishonest.
All are confused, living in anger and in jealousy. No wonder their families
break apart and their businesses fail. In the eyes of the Gods, most of
those who adhere to the caste system that exists today are low caste. This
is because they live in lower consciousness. These undeveloped humans are
struggling through the lower chakras, trying to get out of the dark worlds
of the mind. Let us not be deluded about what the sapta rishis [the "seven
sages"] had in mind when they casted humans according to the soul's spiritual
unfoldment. We should totally ignore the Hindu caste system as lived in
India today and, through example, show a better and more wholesome path
for modern society."
