CHAPTER XIV.
THE DEPRESSED CASTES.
The only classes in British India for whom no real representation has been devised in the enlarged Indian Councils are the millions of humble toilers who constitute what are known as the "depressed castes." Under present social conditions in India, this was probably inevitable. Though, rather unreasonably, the vast majority of them go to swell the numbers of the Hindu population in the census upon which Hindu representation ought, according to Hindu politicians, to be based, those politicians have certainly not as yet shown any title to speak on their behalf. For there is no more striking contrast to the liberal and democratic professions of a body which claims, as does the Indian National Congress, to represent an enlightened, progressive, and national Hinduism than the fact that in the course of its 25 years' existence it has scarcely done anything to give practical effect to its theoretical repudiation of a social system that condemns some 50 millions out of the 300 millions of the Hindu population of India to a life of unspeakable degradation. For a long time to come, the depressed castes will probably find, as in the past, their truest friends and best qualified representatives among the European members of Council, who, just because they are aliens, are free from all the influences, whether of interest or of prejudice, which tend to divide Hindu society into so many watertight compartments. Let any one who has any doubts on this point read some of the documents published in the Blue-books on the reforms—petitions from low-caste communities imploring Government not to commit the defence of their interests to the Hindu Brahman, but to continue to them the direct and unselfish protection which they have hitherto enjoyed at the hands of British administrators.
The "depressed classes" of whom we generally speak as Pariahs, though the name properly belongs only to one particular caste, the Pareiyas in Southern India, include all Hindus who do not belong to the four highest or "clean" castes of Hinduism, and they are therefore now officially and euphemistically designated as the Panchamas—i.e., the fifth caste. Many of the Panchamas, especially in Southern India, are little better than bonded serfs; others are condemned to this form of ostracism by the trades they ply. Such are not only the scavengers and sweepers, but also the workers in leather, the Chamars and Muchis of Northern and Central India, and the Chakilians and Madigas of Southern India, who with their families number 14 or 15 million souls; the washermen, the tadi-drawers and vendors of spirituous liquors, the pressers of oil, and, in many parts of the country, the cowherd and shepherd castes, &c. They are generally regarded as descendants of the aboriginal tribes overwhelmed centuries ago by the tide of Aryan conquest. Some of those tribes, grouped together in the Indian Census under the denominational rubric of "Animists" and numbering about 8-1/2 millions, have survived to the present day in remote hills and jungles without being absorbed into the Hindu social system, and have preserved their primitive beliefs, in which fetish worship, and magic are the dominant elements. Low as is their social status, it is but little lower than that of the Panchamas who have obtained a footing on the nethermost rung of the social ladder of Hinduism without being admitted to any sort of contact with its higher civilization or even to the threshold of its temples.
Hinduism with all its rigidity is, it is true, sufficiently elastic to sanction, at least tacitly, a slow process of evolution by which the Panchama castes—for there are many castes even amongst the "untouchables"—gradually shake off to some extent the slough of "uncleanness" and establish some sort of ill-defined relations even with Brahmanism. For whilst there is on the one hand a slowly ascending scale by which the Panchamas may ultimately hope to smuggle themselves in amongst the inferior Sudras, the lowest of the four "clean" castes, so there is a descending scale by which Brahmans, under the pressure of poverty or disrepute, sink to so low a place in Brahmanism that they are willing to lend their ministrations, at a price, to the more prosperous of the Panchamas and help them on their way to a higher status. Thus probably half the Sudras of the present day were at some more or less remote period Panchamas. Again, during periods of great civil commotion, as in the 18th century, when brute force was supreme, not a few Panchamas, especially low-caste Mahrattas, made their way to the front as soldiers of fortune, and even carved out kingdoms to themselves at the point of the sword. Orthodox Hinduism bowed in such cases to the accomplished fact, just as it has acquiesced in later years when education and the equality of treatment brought by British rule have enabled a small number of Panchamas to qualify for employment under Government.
But these exceptions are so rare and the evolutionary process is so infinitely slow and laborious that they do not visibly affect the yawning gulf between the "clean" higher-caste Hindu and the "unclean" Panchama. The latter may have learned to do puja to Shiva or Kali or other members of the Hindu Pantheon, but he is not allowed within the precincts of their sanctuaries and has to worship from afar. Nor are the disabilities of the Panchama merely spiritual. In many villages he has to live entirely apart. He is not even allowed to draw water from the village well, lest he should "pollute" it by his touch, and where there is no second well for the "untouchables," the hardship is cruel, especially in seasons of drought when casual water dries up. In every circumstance of his life the vileness of his lot is brought home to the wretched pariah by an elaborate and relentless system of social oppression. I will only quote one or two instances which have come within my own observation. The respective distances beyond which Panchamas must not approach a Brahman lest they "pollute" him differ according to their degree of uncleanness. Though they have been laid down with great precision, it is growing more and more difficult to enforce them with the increasing promiscuity of railway and street-car intercourse, but in more remote parts of India, and especially in the south, the old rules are still often observed. In Cochin a few years ago I was crossing a bridge, and just in front of me walked a respectable-looking native. He suddenly turned tail, and running back to the end of the bridge from which we had both come, plunged out of sight into the jungle on the side of the road. He had seen a Brahman entering on to the bridge from the other end, and he had fled incontinently rather than incur the resentment of that high-caste gentleman by inflicting upon him the "pollution" of forbidden proximity as the bridge, though a fairly broad one, was not wide enough for them to pass each other at the prescribed distance. In the native State of Travancore it is not uncommon to see a Panchama witness in a lawsuit standing about a hundred yards from the Court so as not to defile the Brahman Judge and pleaders, whilst a row of peons, or messengers, stationed between him and the Court, hand on its questions to him and pass back his replies.
No doubt the abject ignorance and squalor and the repulsive habits of many of these unfortunate castes help to explain and to perpetuate their ostracism, but they do not exculpate a social system which prescribes or tolerates such a state of things. That if a kindly hand is extended to them, even the lowest of these depressed can be speedily raised to a higher plane has been abundantly shown by the efforts of Christian missionaries. They are only now beginning to extend their activities to the depressed castes of Northern India, but in Southern India important results have already been achieved. The Bishop of Madras claims that within the last 40 years, in the Telugu country alone, some 250,000 Panchamas have become Christians, and in Travancore another 100,000. During the last two decades especially the philanthropic work done by the missionaries in plague and famine time has borne a rich harvest, for the Panchamas have naturally turned a ready ear to the spiritual ministrations of those who stretched out their hands to help them in the hour of extreme need. Bishop Whitehead, who has devoted himself particularly to this question, assures me that, in Southern India at least, the rate at which the elevation of the depressed castes can be achieved depends mainly upon the amount of effort which the Christian missions can put forth. If their organizations can be adequately strengthened and extended so as to deal with the increasing numbers of inquirers and converts, and, above all, to train native teachers, he is convinced that we may be within measurable distance of the reclamation of the whole Panchama population. What the effect would be from the social as well as the religious point of view may be gathered from a recent report of the Telugu Mission, which most lay witnesses would, I believe readily confirm:—
If we look at the signs of moral and spiritual progress during the last 40 years, the results of the mission work have been most encouraging. It is quite true that naturally the Panchamas are poor, dirty, ignorant, and, as a consequence of many centuries of oppression, peculiarly addicted to the more mean and servile vices. But the most hopeful element in their case is that they are conscious of their degradation and eager to escape from it. As a consequence, when formed into congregations under the care of earnest and capable teachers, they make marked progress materially, intellectually, and morally. Their gross ignorance disappears; they become cleaner and more decent in their persons and homes; they give up cattle poisoning and grain stealing, two crimes particularly associated with their class; they abstain from the practice of infant marriage and concubinage, to which almost all classes of Hindu society are addicted; they lose much of the old servile spirit which led them to grovel at the feet of their social superiors, and they acquire more sense of the rights and dignity which belong to them as men. Where they are able to escape their surroundings they prove themselves in no way inferior, either in mental or in moral character, to the best of their fellow-countrymen. Especially is this the case in the Mission Boarding Schools, where the change wrought is a moral miracle. In many schools and colleges Christian lads of Panchama origin are holding their own with, and in not a few cases are actually outstripping, their Brahman competitors. … In one district the Hindus themselves bore striking testimony to the effect of Christian teaching on the pariahs, "Before they became Christians," one of them said, "we had always to lock up our storehouses, and were always having things stolen. But now all that is changed, We can leave our houses open and never lose anything."
In the heyday of the Hindu Social Reform Movement, before it was checked by the inrush of political agitation, the question of the elevation of the depressed castes was often and earnestly discussed by progressive Hindus themselves, but it is only recently that it has again been taken up seriously by some of the Hindu leaders, and notably by Mr. Gokhale. One of the utterances that has produced the greatest impression in Hindu circles is a speech made last year by the Gaekwar of Baroda, a Hindu Prince who not only professes advanced Liberal views, but whose heart naturally goes out to the depressed castes, as the fortunes of his own house were made in the turmoil of the eighteenth century by a Mahratta of humble extraction, if not actually of low-caste origin. His Highness does not attempt to minimize the evils of the system.
The same principles which impel us to ask for political Justice for ourselves should actuate us to show social justice to each other…. By the sincerity of our efforts to uplift the depressed classes we shall be judged fit to achieve the objects of our national desire…. The system which divides us into innumerable castes claiming to rise by minutely graduated steps from the pariah to the Brahman is a whole tissue of injustice, splitting men equal by nature into divisions high and low, based not on the natural standard of personal qualities but on accidents of birth. The eternal struggle between caste and caste for social superiority has become a constant source of ill-feeling…. Want of education is practically universal amongst the depressed classes, but this cannot have been the cause of their fall, for many of the so-called higher classes in India share in the general ignorance. Unlike them, however, they are unable to attend the ordinary schools owing to the idea that it is pollution to touch them. To do so is to commit a sin offensive alike to religion and to conventional morality. Of professions as a means of livelihood these depressed classes have a very small choice. Here, too, the supposed pollution of their touch comes in their way. On every hand we find that the peculiar difficulty from which they suffer, in addition to others that they share with other classes, is their "untouchableness."
After a powerful argument against the theory of "untouchableness" and against priestly intolerance, the Gaekwar urges not only upon Hindus, but upon Government the duty of attacking in all earnestness this formidable problem.
A Government within easy reach of the latest thought, with unlimited moral and material resources, such as there is in India, should not remain content with simply asserting the equality of men under the common law and maintaining order, but must sympathetically see from time to time that the different sections of its subjects are provided with ample means of progress. Many of the Indian States where they are at all alive to the true functions of government, owing to less elevating surroundings or out of nervousness, fear to strike out a new path and find it less troublesome to follow the policy of laisser faire and to walk in the footsteps of the highest Government in India, whose declared policy is to let the social and religious matters of the people alone except where questions of grave importance are involved. When one-sixth of the people are in a chronically depressed and ignorant condition, no Government can afford to ignore the urgent necessity of doing what it can for their elevation.
Can the Government of India afford to disregard so remarkable an appeal? The question is not merely a social and moral question, but also a political one. Whilst some high-caste Hindus are beginning to recognize its urgency, the more prosperous of the socially depressed castes themselves are showing signs of restlessness under the ostracism to which they are subjected. From almost all of these castes a few individuals have always emerged, who acquired wealth and the relative recognition that wealth brings with it, and the numbers of such individuals are increasing. In some cases a whole caste has seen its circumstances improve under new economic conditions entirety beyond its own control—like the Namasudras of Bengal, who, as agriculturists, have had their share of the growing agricultural prosperity of that region. They are materially better off than they used to be, and so they are no longer content with their old social status of inferiority. Not only Christian but Mahomedan missionaries have been at work amongst them, and though the vast majority remain Hindus, they note, like the Panchamas all over India must note, the immediate rise in the social scale of their fellow-caste-men who embrace either Christianity or Islam. For it is one of the anomalies of this peculiar conception that the most untouchable Hindu ceases to be quite as untouchable when he becomes a Christian or a Mahomedan. The Bengalee politician was quick to see the danger of losing hold altogether of the Namasudras, and he set up a propaganda of his own, which I have already described, with the object of winning them over to his side and to his methods of agitation by promising them in return a relaxation of caste stringency. The question with which we are confronted is whether we shall ourselves take a hand in the elevation of the depressed castes or whether we shall leave it to others, many of whom would exploit them for their own purposes. Is not this an opportunity for the Government of India to respond to the Gaekwar's invitation and depart for once from their traditional policy of laisser faire? In the Christian Missions they have an admirable organization ready to hand which merely requires encouragement and support. Though there are manifold dangers in giving official countenance to proselytizing work amongst the higher classes of Indian society, none of those objections can reasonably lie to co-operating in the reclamation of whole classes which the orthodox Hindu regards as beyond the pale of human intercourse. From the religious point of view, this is a matter which should engage the earnest attention of the great missionary societies of this country. The hour seems to be at hand when a great and combined effort is required of them. From the moral and social point of view they may well claim in this connexion the sympathy and support of all denominations and no-denominations that are interested in the welfare and progress of backward races. From the political point of view the conversion of so many millions of the population of India to the faith of their rulers would open up prospects of such moment that I need not expatiate upon them.