The Poor Wretch Must Literally Die
To Everybody, To The Members Of His Own Family As To Strangers.
His Own Household, His Father, Wife, Children, Are All Bound To Turn
Their Faces From Him, Under The Penalty Of Being Excommunicated In
Their Turn.
There is no hope for his sons and daughters of getting
married, however innocent they may be of the sin of their father.
From the moment of "excommunication" the Hindu must totally disappear.
His mother and wife must not feed him, must not let him drink from
the family well. No member of any existing caste dares to sell
him his food or cook for him. He must either starve or buy eatables
from outcasts and Europeans, and so incur the dangers of further
pollution. When the Brahmanical power was at its zenith, such acts
as deceiving, robbing and even killing this wretch were encouraged,
as he was beyond the pale of the laws. Now, at all events, he is
free from the latter danger, but still, even now, if he happens to
die before he is forgiven and received back into his caste, his
body may not be burned, and no purifying mantrams will be chanted
for him; he will be thrown into the water, or left to rot under
the bushes like a dead cat.
This is a passive force, and its passiveness only makes it more
formidable. Western education and English influence can do nothing
to change it. There exists only one course of action for the
excommunicated; he must show signs of repentance and submit to
all kinds of humiliations, often to the total loss of all his
worldly possessions. Personally, I know several young Brahmans,
who, having brilliantly passed the university examinations in England,
have had to submit to the most repulsive conditions of purification
on their return home; these purifications consisting chiefly in
shaving off half their moustaches and eyebrows, crawling in the
dust round pagodas, clinging during long hours to the tail of a
sacred cow, and, finally, swallowing the excrements of this cow.
The latter ceremony is called "Pancha-Gavya," literally, the five
products of the cow: milk, curds, butter, etc. The voyage over
Kalapani, the black water, that is to say the sea, is considered
the worst of all the sins. A man who commits it is considered
as polluting himself continually, from the first moment of his
going on board the bellati (foreign) ship.
Only a few days ago a friend of ours, who is an LL.D., had to
undergo this "purgation," and it nearly cost him his reason. When
we remonstrated with him, pointing out that in his case it was
simply foolish to submit, he being a materialist by conviction
and not caring a straw for Brahmanism, he replied that he was bound
to do so for the following reasons:
"I have two daughters," he explained, "one five, the other six
years old. If I do not find a husband for the eldest of them in
the course of the coming year, she will grow too old to get married,
nobody will think of espousing her. Suppose I suffer my caste to
excommunicate me, both my girls will be dishonored and miserable
for the rest of their lives. Then, again, I must take into
consideration the superstitions of my old mother. If such a
misfortune befell me, it would simply kill her....."
But why should he not free himself from every bond to Brahmanism
and caste? Why not join, once for all, the ever-growing community
of men who are guilty of the same offence? Why not ask all his
family to form a colony and join the civilization of the Europeans?
All these are very natural questions, but unfortunately there is
no difficulty in finding reasons for answering them in the negative.
There were thirty-two reasons given why one of Napoleon's marshals
refused to besiege a certain fortress, but the first of these
reasons was the absence of gunpowder, and so it excluded the
necessity of discussing the remaining thirty-one. Similarly the
first reason why a Hindu cannot be Europeanized is quite sufficient,
and does not call for any additional ones. This reason is that by
doing so a Hindu would not improve his position. Were he such an
adept of science as to rival Tyndall, were he such a clever politician
as to eclipse the genius of Disraeli and Bismarck, as soon as he
actually had given up his caste and kinsmen, he would indubitably
find himself in the position of Mahomet's coffin; metaphorically
speaking, he would hang half-way between the earth and the sky.
It would be an utter injustice to suppose that this state of things
is the result of the policy of the English Government; that the
said Government is afraid of giving a chance to natives who may
be suspected of being hostile to the British rule. In reality,
the Government has little or nothing to do with it. This state
of things must be attributed entirely to the social ostracism,
to the contempt felt by a "superior" for an "inferior" race, a
contempt deeply rooted in some members of the Anglo-Indian society
and displayed at the least provocation. This question of racial
"superiority" and "inferiority" plays a more important part than
is generally believed, even in England. Nevertheless, the natives
(Mussulmans included) do not deserve contempt, and so the gulf
between the rulers and the ruled widens with every year, and long
centuries would not suffice to fill it up.
I have to dwell upon all this to give my readers a clear idea on
the subject. And so it is no wonder the ill-fated Hindus prefer
temporary humiliations and the physical and moral sufferings of
the "purification," to the prospect of general contempt until death.
These were the questions we discussed with the Brahmans during the
two hours before dinner.
Dining with foreigners and people belonging to different castes is,
no doubt, a dangerous breach of Manu's sacred precepts.
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