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Caste has been and still is a scourage and a curse on India, and will yet endanger the unity, peace, and independence of India and her peoples. But mere professions of this sentiment take one nowhere. Almost from the time of Lord Buddha, tirades have been delivered against caste, but caste itself was not destroyed because the fundamental basis for caste was not subjected to attack. Great reformers and philosophers like Sankaracharya, Ramanujacharya, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Dayananda Saraswati and Gandhi never carried an assault against the fundamentals. In fact they lived all through in caste and died as high-castemen. If one or two of them realised the futility and iniquity of caste and declared for a casteless society at the close of their lives, they were murdered by caste fanatics.
Barhmanism which goes by the name of Hinduism is based on caste, priestcraft, untouchability, and karma. It knows nothing about justice, liberty, equality, and fraternity and is therefore the total enemy of democracy. There is no Hindu without a caste and no caste without a grade in the caste hierarchy. Politically and legally, all Indians may be equal today, but in the social and religious spheres, there is still none without caste, and inferiority and superiority complexes. As politics and religion are interwined, Hindu social polity cannot stand apart from politics. Society, said Rousseau, must be “studied in the individual and the individual in society; those who desire to treat politics and morals apart from one another will never understand either.” Gandhiji has also said that those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means. Western habits, heterodox manners, cropped heads, bare foreheads, threadless chests, changed diet, ignorance of Sanskrit, make the modern Hindu a cosmopolitan in outdorr life. At home, in the kitchen, in the prayer room, with women, and for material purposes, the same modern is all caste with rare exceptions. However, heterodoxy and rationalism are definite steps against Brahmanism and Varnashrama.
Added to the terrible disadvantages which caste placed on the lower castes, there is the karma theory in Hindu life, which sustains iniquity, removes sympathy from the educated and the wealthy, and obliterates the ambition for betterment in the lower castes themselves. The misery, poverty and illiteracy of the low castes are taken for granted and the privileges, wealth and power of the higher castes are taken granted by the karma theory. “The doctrine of Karma.” Said Dr. Gilbert Slater, “is doubtless valuable in assisting a man to bear his own misfortunes with equanimity, but to the outsider its effect in enabling him to look complacently on the sufferings of others is even more marked. Politically it is an anti-democratic force, as it tends to blunt indignation and nullify protests against social injustice. What valid objection is there to the privileged position of the Brahmin and to the social degradation of the Pariah or Chandala, if the Brahmin was born a Brahmin because of his previous virtue, and the Pariah a Pariah either by way of promotion from a non-human existence, or as a penalty for sins committed as a member of a higher caste? if, moreover, the virtuous Pariah will be born again in due time as a Brahmin and the unworthy Brahmin as a Pariah?” (Dravidian Element in Indian Culture—page 99.) It is this infamous karma theory that kept hierarchic caste, priestcraft and untouchability alive in India for millenniums.
“By ignoring the limits imposed by nature and reason,” says P.Lakshmi Narasu, “the doctrine of Karma assumes that the distinctions between the Brahmin and the Pariah is as legitimate and natural as the distinction between man and beast. Nothing can be more fatal to the equal rights of all rational beings than the vague pantheistic connections that are set up by soul theories. It is with a view to explain existing evils that the doctrine of Karma puts an indelible stain on certain men and supports the authority of caste. If pessimism atrophies the instinct of revolt in the heart of man, the fatalism, which is the result of the doctrine of transmigration, extirpates from the mind the idea that existing social conditions may be unjust. The heart becomes hardened against the poor, the wretched, and the outcast. Thus has the doctrine of Karma consecrated and eternalised the inequality of conditions, the division of society into castes.” (A study of caste-page 135.)
While admitting the validity of the Karma theory for what-ever it may be worth Dr. S.Radhakrishnan has this much to say. “Unfortunately the theory of Karma became confused with fatality in India when man himself grew feeble and was disinclined to do his best. It was made an excuse for inertia and timidity and was turned into a message of despair and not of hope” (The Hindu View of Life-page 76.) When not only the physical and mental condition of man but also his very caste and ancestral occupation were connected to Karma, the doctrine cannot have any other effect on man. The doctrine has clearly been used to prevent people from overstepping the bounds of caste prescribed by varnashrama and never to give hope or succour to the downtrodden. If the common man is to have liberty to exert his energies to find a honourable place in the life of the nation, and if he is not to be deterred by any extraneous influences other than the inherent natural limitations placed on his mental and physical capacities, the doctrine of Karma must necessarily be discredited and disabused. Everybody recognises the ill effects of the doctrine, but yet would not propagate against it as it would undermine the foundations of the vested interests and privileged position of the upper castes, the priests and the plutocrats.
It is said that the Aryans had no idea of the doctrine of transmigration and that they borrowed it from the Dravidian native philosophy of India. The Buddhists seriously took to the doctrine and later after Buddhism left the land, the Karma theory became the general doctrine of all Hindu religions. “The lack of initiative and enterprise,” say P.A. Wadia and G.N.Joshi of Bombay University, with particular reference to Karma doctrine, “the complete absence of the spirit of adaptiveness and of readiness to respond to stimuli from without, the failure to make use of improved methods even when they are made available to the masses, are only manifestations of the soul of India as forged by the stress of circumstances, moulded by the teaching of her poets and seers, by the institutions and traditions of centuries.” The Wealth of India page 180. Untile belief in this deadly Karma theory is knocked out of the people’s mind, there is little hope of the Indian developing initiative, adventure, and ambition for betterment in this life.
The hierarchic caste and karma based on birth derive their authority not from man-made laws like the Indian Penal Code, but from the Vedas, Srutis and Smritis of the Aryans, all treated as the word of god or god’s manifestation as man on earth. Manu Dharma Sastra is the principal code that regulates Hindu social and religious life. Responsibility for caste with its principles of iniquity is roundly placed on god himself and the infamous Karma theory.
Dr.Hutton who has made an exhaustive study of the Indian caste polity has made it clear that caste is deeply involved in religion. “This aspect of the caste system”, says he, “ has a specific religious sanction. It has been held to have been established by divine ordinance or at best with divine approval, and the Bhagavad Gita, which probably more nearly than any other sacred scripture fulfils for Hindus the function performed for Islam by the Quron or for Christians by the Bible, contains some well-known lines which inculcate the supreme merit of performing one’s caste duties. One’s own duty (i.e. dharma or caste rules) though defective, is better than another’s duty well performed’. Custom, says the Code of Manu, is transcendent law. Perfection, we are told in the Markandeya Purana, can only be attained by the man who deos not deviate from the duties of caste. At any rate it is clear that the social habits of caste are inextricably tied up with religion, their sanction reinforced by the doctrine of Karma.” (Caste in India by J.H.Hutton 1946 page 109). In the circumstances Brahmanism’s incompatibility liberty and equality is quite clear.
The Purusha Sukta of the Rig Veda says that Brahma created the four castes from the different parts of his body,–the Brahmin from the mouth, the Kshatriya from the shoulders, the Vaisya from the thighs, and the Sudra from the legs. Even as an allegory the theory is undemocratic and absurd. The untouchable pariah finds no place in Brahma’s body, either because he is not human at all or because was not created by god. In order that nobody should mistake that Brahma was democratic and ordained “equality” or “fraternity” in his human creation, Articles 92 and 93, Chapter I of Manu Dharma Sastra explain—“Man is stated to be purre above the navel than below; hence the self existent that Swayambu has declared the purest part of him to be his mouth,” and “As the Brahmana sprang from Brahma’s mouth, as he was the first-born, and as he possesses the Veda, he is by right the lord of this whole creation”. (Sacred Books of the East—Laws of Manu by G.Buhler—edted by F.Max Muller.) The Vaisya and the Sudra that sprang from below the navel are therefore impure, inferior and low caste.
To reinforce inequality, and the principle of caste at birth, Brahmanism ordains among other distinctions that the very names of caste members should be suggestive. “Let the first part of a Brahmana’s name denote something auspicious , a Kshatriya’s be connected with power, and a Vaisya’s with wealth, but a Sudra’s express something contemptible.” Again, “The second part of a Brahmana’s name shall be a word implying happiness, of a Kshatriya’s a word implying protection, of a Vaisya’s a term expressive of thriving, and of a Sudra’s an expression denoting service.” (Article 31 and 32, Chapter II-Laws of Manu.)
The first three castes are entitled to initiation (upanayana or thread wearing ceremony), and the rules in the matter have been so differently framed as to emphasise inequality amongst the three. The fourth caste Sudras have been denied initiation and so go without the thread. All Brahmanic Hindus who have no thread are therefore Sudras.
Source : BLASTED HOPES or Democracy in India
by Prof. A.M.Dharmalingam
