India, Its Life and Thought Part 5

CHAPTER V

THE HINDU CASTE SYSTEM (_continued_)

IV

The agency through which, and the occasion upon which, caste penalizes its members are manifold.

Formerly, Hindu kings, under instruction from their pandit ministers, would enforce caste observances. But under the present non-Hindu State no such action could be expected. In many instances pandits have to be consulted both as to whether a member has really violated _shastraic_ injunctions and as to the penalty which should be inflicted in that special case. In doubtful cases, pandits of various trainings and leanings are called who present conflicting opinions which end in confusion.

In Southern India important cases of caste violation among non-Vishnuvite Hindus are under the jurisdiction of the Superiors of Sankarite monasteries. Some of these a.s.sume and exercise Papal authority in such matters among their people. Usually, however, each local caste organization deals directly with infractions of its own rules, and is competent to deal drastically, and as a court of final resort, with all cases of caste infringement within its own membership. It may be done in public a.s.sembly, when all male members are present and have a voice; or the caste _panchayat_, or council of five, may sit in judgment upon the case and have right of final action. This latter tribunal is the more common in South India, and is more in harmony with the spirit and methods of the land.

There are a number of courses of action which are adequate as causes of removal from caste.

One of these is a change of faith. The abandonment of the ancestral religion, which is the mother of caste spirit and organization, especially when the newly accepted faith repudiates openly caste and all that belongs to it, inevitably leads to expulsion from caste. In most cases this has resulted upon conversion to either Christianity or Mohammedanism. But this is not as universal as we could wish or as many suppose, as we shall see later on. It may be seen how, in a ma.s.s movement of a large body of men toward Christianity, for instance, the people may easily, and would naturally, carry with them into the new faith many of their old customs and habits, including much that pertains to, and is of the essence of, caste.

Roman Catholicism has interpreted caste chiefly from a social standpoint, and has therefore regarded it as a social inst.i.tution which can be adapted to, and adopted into, the Christian religion.

Protestantism, or, at least, Anglo-Saxon Protestantism, has regarded caste as primarily and dominantly a religious inst.i.tution, whose spirit antagonizes fundamentally our faith, and which must be opposed at all points. Hence it is a part of the pledge of every one who enters into the Protestant fellowship in India that he will eschew and oppose caste at all times. And it may be said that, though Hinduism loves dearly compromise and evasion, it has in the main held that a man who has accepted the Christian faith and has been publicly baptized into its conviction of the "fatherhood of G.o.d and the brotherhood of all men," has no place in its own caste system, and it consistently deals with him as with an outcast. As we have already seen, every man who has travelled abroad has lost thereby caste and has to undergo expiation before reinstatement. It matters not how thoroughly he has tried to preserve caste customs during his travels and in the foreign land, he is regarded by all as a _de facto_ outcast.

Marrying a widow is also an act which severs caste ties and places a man under the ban. Of course, this applies not to the few castes which allow widow-remarriage. But as the bulk of Hindus deny the right of a widow to remarry (though there is no caste obstacle to a widower taking unto himself a new virgin wife every year of his life), a man cannot enter into an alliance with a widow without losing caste thereby.

Beef-eating is regarded as so heinous a sin that no member of a respectable caste would expect consideration for a moment. And yet Dr.

J. H. Barrows has said that the famous Swamy, Vivekanantha, when with him at Chicago, ate a whole plateful of beef in his presence and with a great deal of relish. But he, of course, had graduated out of the ordinary level of Hindu-hood into the sacred heights of Swamyhood, in which a man is exempt from the mean limitation of caste, and when the vulgar sins of common Hindu life are trans.m.u.ted into the ordinary blessings and privileges of saintdom.

In like manner, vegetarian castes punish their members for the eating of any meat. The Hindu aversion to meat is very common; it is also sanitary and wholesome; for meat-eating in the tropics is neither necessary nor conducive to health. And yet the Pariah outcast has no scruples in this matter. It is indeed true that he would deem it a sin to butcher a cow or an ox; but he will not hesitate to poison his neighbour's cattle, that he may thereby have enough carrion to eat.

For the carcases of the dead cattle of the village are the perquisite of the Pariah; and it is upon finding such that he enjoys his only feasts of plenty. But to the ordinary Hindu all bovine kind are divine, and the flesh of the same is strictly and vehemently tabooed.

Punishment is also dealt out, as we have seen, to those who eat any food cooked by an outcast, whether he be Christian, Mohammedan, or Pariah. And the same is true of eating with an outcast, or with one who is of a lower caste than himself. Indeed, so far is this spirit carried by certain high castes that to be seen eating by a member of a lower caste, or to allow the shadow of a stranger to fall upon one's prepared food, is pollution. Hence the care with which all Hindus seek privacy and avoid the gaze of men during mealtime.

Officiating as a priest in the house of a low-cla.s.s Sudra is strictly prohibited to a Brahman, and he loses caste thereby. He and other "twice born" are also driven out of caste if they throw away the sacred thread which is the outer badge of their second birth and dignity.

A woman, when found in open sin with a man of another caste, and a widow, when she can no longer hide the consequence of her immorality, are no longer in caste.

It is hardly necessary to mention that marrying outside of one's own caste is a sin which finds no countenance, but severest punishment, in nearly all castes.

Generally speaking, we may say that caste authority is exercised only in cases where ceremonial observance and social usages are violated.

In matters that are purely ethical, and which bear upon the character and moral elevation of the individual and the clan, caste rarely acts; for it does not consider that its honour is compromised or its organic life impaired by such conduct.

It should also be mentioned that caste is not even in the distribution of its dispensations and punishments. A man of wealth and social influence succeeds in staving off many acts of caste displeasure which would fall heavily upon the poor and friendless man. Such a man may, and often does, trample under foot every command of the decalogue, and at the same time defy and violate a good moiety of the injunctions of his caste. And yet, because of his wealth and general importance in caste councils, he stands unimpeached and unrebuked.

In matters of caste observance and discipline, villages are much more conservative and strict than cities. In the latter, as we shall see, caste observance is much relaxed, and life is more on modern lines.

V

The results of the caste system in India are many and manifest. It has sown its seed for many centuries and to-day reaps a rich harvest in life and conduct. It should not be a.s.sumed, and it cannot be a.s.serted, that this great system has always been an unmixed evil to the people of this land.

No organization which has bound by its fetters for eighty generations nearly a sixth of the population of the globe, and which continues to grip them to-day with tyrannical power, can be devoid of any redeeming feature. The very perpetuity and prosperity of the scheme argues for its possession of some rational features, originally connected with it, which gave it sanction to the myriads who have submitted to its reign over them. But it is exceedingly difficult to discover that excellence which originally commended it to the people of this land.

Nor do the writings of those who have striven to defend the system a.s.sist us in making this discovery. A modern Brahman defence by Jogendra Nath Bhattacharya (see "Hindu Castes and Sects," pp. 1-10) gives only one ray of light upon the subject when he observes that "the legislation of the Rishis was calculated not only to bring about union between the isolated clans that lived in primitive India, but to render it possible to a.s.similate within each group the foreign hordes that were expected to pour into the country from time to time." In those remote days when weakness through isolation threatened their very existence, and when there was no possibility of a general union of all the people for defence, thorough organization of clans into castes brought strength and confidence and was a conspicuous blessing.

It was in those days a convenient and effective way of enforcing religious obligations upon the heterogeneous clans. It also was then probably useful in preserving purity of blood among the higher races, and in conserving the n.o.bility of the Aryan who was destined to rule the mixed races of India for many centuries.

Nor is the system without possibilities of good in modern times, as was ill.u.s.trated recently by the action of a prominent North India caste in prohibiting large expenses in marriage and in raising, by legislation, the limit of the marriageable age of its girls.

But, alas, any good that may possibly inhere in the system has largely remained _in posse_ rather than _in esse_. The history of caste has been one of evil, and it is no wonder that such a fair-minded writer as Mr. Sherring, who has probably made a more thorough study of the subject than any other man, should call the organization "a monstrous engine of pride, dissension, and shame" (see Preface to his "Hindu Tribes and Castes"). Considering the subject, therefore, in its bearing upon the life of India to-day, and studying its results as we now find them among all cla.s.ses of the people and in their definite bearing upon the future of the land, we are compelled to p.r.o.nounce against it at all points.

It is, in the first place, the source of interminable discord and dissension all over the land. It not only arrays caste against caste; but bitter animosity is the order of the day among the subdivisions of castes. In every one of the numberless castes in the land there are divisions and subdivisions galore. And while the Sudras acknowledge the supremacy of the "twice born," among the myriad clans of the Sudras themselves there is endless a.s.sumption and contention, every one, fomented by pride, claiming primacy and distinction above the others. Recently, in South India, this feeling led to a serious riot, in which not a few lives were lost and villages devastated.

It also narrows the sympathies of the people in a most lamentable way.

Among the common people of India it is held that a man's duties to his caste embrace his whole obligation. When a fellow-being is in difficulty and his condition strongly appeals for sympathy, the first, and often the last, question asked is, "Is he a member of my caste?"

If not, like the priest and the Levite of old, his conscience allows him to "pa.s.s by on the other side." Recently a woman perished in the streets of a town near Madura. She was a resident of a village some twenty-five miles away, and was, therefore, a stranger in this town, where she sickened and was carried to a public rest-house. But when her condition became serious and no relatives or caste friends came to her support, she was put out into the street, where she lay helpless for three days in the rain and sunshine. Hundreds of people saw her dying agonies as they pa.s.sed by during those days; but no heart of sympathy went out to her; for was she not a stranger? And it was left to an American, who happened to pa.s.s that way on the third day, to demand of the town officer that she be put back in the rest-house, where she shortly afterward died. Let it not be thought that this is an isolated case. He who is familiar with Indian life knows it is not, for daily he has to witness the woful limitations which caste imposes upon human sympathy.

Caste has also degraded manual labour. The loss of caste by any Brahman who follows the plough is only an application of this rule in the highest quarters. Caste has taught the people of this land that humble toil, however honest it may be, is more than mean; it is sinful. There are millions of the higher castes of India who deem it honourable to beg, and dignified to spend their years in abject laziness, but who would regard it as unspeakable degradation to take a hoe or a hammer and earn an honest living by the sweat of their brow. Nor will their caste rules permit of their undertaking such work. And this spirit has pa.s.sed down the ranks until it pervades the whole of society in India, with the consequence that manual labour is universally regarded as degrading, and with the further natural result that a horde of five and a half millions of lazy, wretched, immoral, able-bodied, religious beggars are burdening this land. And thus mendicancy is made honourable at the expense of honest toil. It should be further remarked that there are a number of begging castes, in which all work is proscribed and mendicity exalted into a divinely ordained profession!

Moreover, caste makes it impossible for India to become a commercial country. So long as foreign travel is banned and contact with other lands is regarded as a sin against heaven and caste, there is little hope that the people of this land will distinguish themselves in that kind of trade and commerce which has made India's mistress, Great Britain, so ill.u.s.trious in wealth and dominion.

And it is this caste spirit which so easily made the great peninsula of India a prey to the "tight little island" many thousands of miles away. For not only has caste made the Hindus an insular people, it has also so divided them that they do not realize any common sentiment, save that of opposition to the State, or seek any common good. Hence they have for many centuries been the easy prey of any adventurers who sought to overcome and despoil them. A genuine national feeling and a patriotic sentiment are all but impossible in the land. And all intelligent Hindus acknowledge this sad condition at present, and many of the best of them publicly maintain that national consciousness, self-rule, and a glowing, triumphant patriotism can be built only upon the ruins of the caste system.

And even as it is a foe to nationality, so is it the mortal enemy of individualism. The caste system is really a glorification of the mult.i.tude as against the individual. Individual initiative and a.s.sertion, liberty of conscience, the right of man to life and the pursuit of happiness,--all these are foibles of the West which it has been the chief business of caste to crush; and upon their ruin it has erected this mighty tower of Babel. In India, it has been the business of men, from time immemorial, not to do what they think to be right, nor to find out, every one for himself, what they consider to be the best and to act according to the dictates of conscience; it has rather been submission to caste dominance. And it is the unblushing teaching of the _Shastras_ that obedience to caste is the fulfilment of duty and the _summum bonum_ of life. So omnipotent and omniscient is the arm and head of caste that men dare not defy it. Hence we are compelled to look in India to-day upon the saddest spectacle of abject manhood the world has known. To those who, like the writer, have spent a lifetime in trying to raise the outcasts and the lower strata of Indian society, the most difficult and discouraging obstacle is the inertia and the abjectness of the people themselves. Through a bitter experience of many centuries they have learned that it does not pay for the individual to a.s.sert himself against the dictates of the caste, or for the lower castes to rise in rebellion against their lot.

They discovered that they were merely b.u.t.ting their heads against an adamantine rock. So they have lost every ambition and hope; and he who would lift them up must first remove that leaden despair which rests upon them like a mighty incubus.

Nor is it much better with the educated cla.s.ses of India. There are hundreds of thousands of these men of western university training who annually a.s.semble in Congress and in Convention, and who in spotless English of Addisonian accent and in the sonorous phraseology of a Macaulay, discourse upon human rights and who denounce the bondage of caste tyranny. And yet they submit, in their own homes, to that same accursed tyranny and are in life as abject as the meanest Pariah in the face of caste edicts which they know to be unrighteous and demeaning to the core.

It should also be remembered that caste is the foster-mother of all the manifold social evils of the land. In pre-caste days in India such evils as child marriage, prohibition of widow remarriage, temple women, excessive marriage expenses, etc., did not exist. They are a part of the caste regime supported and perpetuated by its authority.

Remove this mighty compulsion, and these inst.i.tutions would soon become things of the past.

Another evil of this organization is that of ignoring the ethical and spiritual standard and of measuring everything from a purely formal and ceremonial standpoint. All life is reduced into an unceasing ritual under the perpetual priestly surveillance of caste. All that it asks of man is outward conformity. He may disbelieve and hate every commandment of his faith; but if he conforms, he is a faithful son. On the other hand, he may be a man of unblemished character, and he may even intend to be obedient to caste; but if, some night, a few enemies were to thrust into his mouth and compel him to swallow a piece of beef, no power could save him from the dreadful punishment that would follow. A man may write a tract in condemnation and ridicule of all the G.o.ds of the Hindu pantheon and still remain an acceptable Hindu; but if, in the agony of a burning fever, he should drink a spoonful of water from the hands of a Christian or of a Pariah, his caste would doom him to perdition for it.

In other words, the whole system directly cultivates, in all the people, a hollowness of life which does more than anything else to rob India of her manhood and which makes n.o.bility of character and ethical integrity most difficult things among the Hindu community. A Brahman gentleman described the whole system as a "vast hollow sham." And such it is.

VI

Paradoxical though it may seem, caste spirit is more prevalent and its influence more dominant in India at the present than in the past; yet there is more defiance and violation of caste rules and more frequent and sure evidences of the speedy termination of its reign than at any previous time.

It has ruled so long and so supremely in this country that the Hindu accepts it without questioning; and it has become more than a second nature to him, even a necessity of his being. What would be intolerably irksome to a Westerner is to the Hindu a matter of course.

To the rank and file of the Hindus, caste has ceased to be a matter of question. It is the only order of life with which he is conversant; and while he may be convinced by arguments which prove its cruelty and its many evils, he still clings to it as the only system under which he knows how to live and which he cares to obey.

As we have already seen, the ramifications of caste are more numerous and its authority more general to-day than at any former time. Many Hindu reformers, especially of the Vishnu sects, have followed in the steps of the great Buddha, by denouncing caste, root and branch, and have established their own sects during the last ten centuries on a non-caste basis. But they have all succ.u.mbed to the demon which they antagonized and now generally observe caste rules with the same devotion as other Hindus.

The lower the caste spirit has descended to the "submerged tenth" of the land, the more vehemently have they become inoculated with its virus. The outcast Pariah is not to be outdone in this matter; and so we have Pariahs and Pariahs. Many divisions are found among this wretched cla.s.s, and they are more exclusive in their divisions and more rigid in their narrowness than are many of the high castes.

Even those who have abandoned the Hindu faith and professed another, do not leave behind them this divisive spirit. Perhaps the converts from Mohammedanism have eschewed Hindu caste more than converts to other faiths.

Among Christian converts, though caste is professedly abandoned, it clings with vital tenacity and almost unconquerable persistence to their sense of the fitness of things. Their deepest prejudices and unconscious tendencies, even against their intellectual convictions and sincere professions, unceasingly sway the vast majority of them and lead them into affiliations and narrow sympathies which are Hindu and not Christian. It is true that the oldest Christian community in India, the Syrian Church of Malabar, has long abandoned the Hindu caste organization, with even its mean remnant of caste t.i.tles. And yet that community settled down for many centuries into the conviction that it was merely one caste among the many of that region and must keep itself aloof from and untainted by the surrounding castes. Roman Catholicism, which has still the most numerous Native Christian community in India, has largely adopted the Hindu system and tries to utilize it in the furtherance of Christianity in the land! No greater mistake was ever made than this of trying to uphold and promulgate the meekness, the humility, the love, and the fellowship of Christ by means of the haughty pride, the cruel hate, and the bitter divisiveness of caste.