From Adam's Peak to Elephanta

by Edward Carpenter

There is certainly a most remarkable movement taking place in India to-day, towards modern commercialism and Western education and ideas, and away from the old caste and communal system of the past—a movement which while it is in some ways the reverse of our Western socialist movement answers curiously to it in the rapidity and intensity of its development and in the enthusiasm which it inspires. The movement is of course at present confined to the towns, and even in these to sections and coteries—the 90 per cent. agricultural population being as yet practically unaffected by it—but here again it is the old story of the bulk of the population being stirred and set in motion by the energetic few, or at any rate following at some distance on their lead; and we may yet expect to see this take place in the present case.

Knowing as we do at home the evils which attend our commercial and competitive order of society it is difficult to understand the interest which it arouses in India, until we realise the decay and degradation into which caste and the ancient communism have fallen. On these latter institutions commercialism is destined to act as a solvent, and though it is not likely that it will obliterate them—considering how deeply they are rooted in the genius of the Indian people, and considering how utterly dissimilar that genius is to the genius of the West—still it may fairly be hoped that it will clean away a great deal of rubbish that has accumulated round them, and free them to be of some use again in the future, when the present movement will probably have had its fling and passed away. On all sides in India one meets with little points and details which remind one of the Feudal system in our own lands; and as this passed in its due time into the commercial system so will it be in India—only there is a good deal to indicate that the disease, or whatever it is, will not be taken so severely in India as in the West, and will run its course and pass over in a shorter time.

The complexity into which the caste system has grown since the days when society was divided into four castes only—Brahmans, Kshattriyas, Vaisyas, and Sudras—is something most extraordinary. Race, occupation and geographical position have all had their influence in the growth of this phenomenon. When one hears that the Brahmans alone are divided into 1,886 separate classes or tribes, one begins to realise what a complicated affair it is. “The Brahmans,” says Hunter in his Indian Empire, “so far from being a compact unit are made up of several hundred castes who cannot intermarry nor eat food cooked by each other.” Of course locality has a good deal to do with this sub-division; and it is said that a Brahman of the North-West is the most select, and can prepare food for all classes of Brahmans (it being a rule of all high caste that one must not touch food cooked by an inferior caste); but family and genealogical descent also no doubt have a good deal to do with it; and as to employment, even among the Brahmans, though manual labor is a degradation in their eyes, plentiful individuals may be found who follow such trades as shepherds, fishermen, porters, potters, etc. Dr. Wilson of Bombay wrote two large volumes of his projected great work on Caste, and then died; but had not finished his first subject, the Brahmans!

In the present day the Brahmans are I believe pretty equally distributed all over India, forming their own castes among the other races and castes, but of course not intermarrying with them, doing as a rule little or no manual work, but clustering in thousands round temples and holy places, full of greed and ever on the look-out for money. Though ignorant mostly, still they have good opportunities in their colleges for learning, and some are very learned. They alone can perform the temple services and priestly acts generally; and oftentimes they do not disguise their contempt for the inferior castes, withdrawing their skirts pharisaically as they pass, or compelling an old and infirm person to descend into the muddy road while they occupy the narrow vantage of the footway.

This pharisaism of caste marks not only the Brahmans, but other sections; a thousand vexatious rules and regulations hedge in the life of every “twice-born” man; and the first glance at the streets of an Indian town makes one conscious of something antagonistic to humanity, in the broad sense by which it affords a common ground to the meeting of any two individuals. There are difficulties in the way of mere human converse. Not only do people not eat together (except they belong to the same section); but they don’t touch each other very freely; don’t shake hands, obviously; even the terms of greeting are scanty. A sort of chill strikes one: a noli-me-tangere sentiment, which drives one (as usual) to find some of the most grateful company among the outcast. Yet the people are disposed to be friendly, and in fact are sensitive and clinging by nature; but this is the form of society into which they have grown.

The defence of the system from the native religious point of view is that Caste defines a man’s position and duties at once, limits him to a certain area of life, with its temptations and possibilities and responsibilities—(caste for instance puts a check on traveling; to go to sea is to break all bounds)—and saves him therefore from unbridled license and the insane scramble of the West; restricts his outward world and so develops the inward; narrows his life and so causes it to reach higher—as trees thickly planted spire upward to the sky. Caste, it is said, holds society in a definite form, without which vague turmoil would for ever ensue, distracting men to worldly cares and projects and rendering them incapable of the higher life. When however this last is developed within an individual, then—for him—the sanction of caste ceases, and he acknowledges it no more. As to the criticism—so obvious from the Western point of view—of the unfairness that a man should be confined all his life to that class or stratum in which he is born, to the Indian religioner this is nothing; since he believes that each man is born in those surroundings of life which belong to his stage of progress, and must get the experience which belongs to that stage before moving farther.

However this may be, the rigidity of caste as it yet exists gives a strange shock to one’s democratic notions. “Once a dhobi always a dhobi,” says the proverb. The washerman (dhobi) is one of the poorest and most despised of men; the word is in fact a common term of reproach; but once a washerman, a washerman (save in the rarest cases) you will remain. And once a pariah always a pariah—a thing that no caste man will touch. Yet—and here comes in the extraordinary transcendental democracy (if one may call it so) of the Hindu religion—Brahm himself, the unnameable God, is sometimes called the dhobi, and some of the greatest religious teachers, including Tiruvalluvar, the author of the Kurral, have been drawn from the ranks of the Pariahs.

The English themselves in India hardly realise how strong are the caste feelings and habits among all but the few natives who have fairly broken with the system. At a levee some few years back a Lieut.-Governor, to show his cordial feeling towards a native Rajah, put his hand on the prince’s shoulder, while speaking to him; but the latter, as soon as he could decently disengage himself, hurried home and took a bath, to purify himself from the touch! Nor to this day can the mass of the people of India get over the disgust and disapprobation they felt towards the English when they found that they insisted on eating beef—a thing that only the very lowest classes will touch; indeed this habit has not only done a good deal to alienate the sympathies of the people, but it is one of the chief reasons why the English find it so hard or next to impossible to get servants of good caste.

An acquaintance of mine in Ceylon who belongs to the Vellála caste told me that on one occasion he paid a visit to a friend of his in India who belonged to the same caste but a different section of it. They had a Brahman cook, who prepared the food for both of them, but who being of a higher caste could not eat after them; while they could not eat together because they did not belong to the same section. The Brahman cook therefore ate his dinner first, and then served up the remainder separately to the two friends, who sat at different tables with a curtain hanging between them!

I myself knew of a case in which an elderly native gentleman was quite put to it, and had to engage an extra servant, because, though he had a man already who could cook and draw water for him to drink, this man was not of the right caste to fill his bath! Can one wonder, when caste regulations have fallen into such pettiness, that the more advanced spirits hail with acclaim any new movement which promises deliverance from the bondage?