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INDIA'S "UNTOUCHABLES"

BY SAINT NIHAL SINGH

OW would you like to be called "untouchable?” How

H would you relish being boycotted socially to such an

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extent that your very shadow would be considered contaminating? How would you feel if you were shunned as something worse than a leper-even worse than the deadliest bacillus? I need not wait for your answer; for no one but a maniac would care to be thus despised by his fellow-men. "Yet, according to the latest census figures available, out of a total population of 294,361,056 in India, of which 207,147,026 are Hindus, no less than 53,206,632-that is, one out of every six East-Indians, or one out of every four Hindus 1 -are called untouchable." This ugly term is by no means employed metaphorically. In very truth these teaming millions are treated worse than lepers, worse than the most destructive germs; for not only is their touch deemed defiling, but the high-caste Hindu, in some parts of Hindostan, makes a common practice of bathing his person and washing all his clothes if the mere shadow of an untouchable" falls upon him. A Brahmin would think much less of shaking hands with a man suffering from a loathsome disease of the most infectious nature, than of permitting to sit on the same carpet with him a confrere professing the same religion of, say, the caste Chuhra (sweeper), or Chamar (those who look after the carcasses of dead animals, and make boots and shoes and other things of leather), no matter how well educated, pious, and morally and physically clean he might be. In many localities the prejudice against these people is so great that they get

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Americans very carelessly use the word "Hindu" for all natives of India. I think this mistake is due to the fact that this term is considered to be a derivative from Hindostan-which is another name for the same country. In this article the phrases East-Indian," or native of India," are employed in a general sense, including the men and women who profess Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Buddhism, Jainism, Christianity, etc. The word "Hindu" is used with reference to those who are Hindus by religious persuasion and to no one else. In reading this paper this fact should be borne in mind.

A low-caste man was recently

into trouble if they wear decent clothes. stoned in Madras because he affected better clothing than he had a right to wear, according to the ideas of his high-caste townsmen. In Mangalore, South Canara, when a lad belonging to one of the socalled "depressed classes" went out in the hot sun on a midsummer day with an umbrella over his head, his sunshade was forcibly taken away from him and he was beaten with it until he promised in the future to get along without this article so necessary in a tropical climate. These are not solitary instances, nor are they figments of the writer's imagination: they are typical of the treatment that Hindu India accords its submerged brethren.

The "untouchables" reside in little huts made of palm leaves or mud, without windows and with a single doorway, usually so small that even a child must stoop in order to enter it, containing absolutely no furniture except a few rudely-baked earthen pots and pans. Generally there is no bedstead of any kind, the whole family sleeping huddled up on the bare dirt floor, which is commonly plastered with cow dung. Only a few rags cover their persons, and these are worn night and day. Their financial condition precludes eating more than one meal a day, and this oftener than not is far from hunger appeasing, and is seldom calculated to appeal to the palate. For this wretched existence they must work hard and for long hours. On account of the filthy conditions in which they live, disease is rampant amongst them. According to the last census eighty-eight out of every hundred thou

sand people of the depressed classes are afflicted with leprosy. In the matter of education they are as deficient as they are in every other virtue. According to the report of the Director General of Public Instruction of Bombay, barely five out of one thousand of the pariah children of the Presidency, of school-going age, attend school. In one word, these fifty-three odd millions of Hindus are not only socially, but also intellectually, physically, financially, and morally, submerged. The worst of it all is that the "untouchables" are not wallowing in the mud through any specific fault of their own. If some heinous social crime had pulled them into the gutter, one would not feel so sorry for them, nor so wroth at the treatment dealt out to them by the

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Hindu body politic. But these unfortunate beings are born to this wretched existence through no sin of their own. The sons and daughters of pariahs are condemned everlastingly to be pariahs, for no other reason than that they are begotten of low-caste progenitors. In addition to the accident of birth, which brings upon them social obloquy and, in its train, mental, monetary, and physical depression, the cruel caste canons ordain that no untouchable" shall ever be anything else. That is to say, these people must forever carry their burden on their backs, and each child they bring into existence must suffer the same fate, in its turn, bequeathing the same heritage to its progeny. Tradition has it that in the old days the social system was not so tyrannical as all this: that it allowed individuals belonging to the "depressed classes" to graduate out of their misery. The names can be cited of many one-time pariahs of ancient days who were uplifted.

It is nowhere clearly stated whether this provision ameliorated the condition of the low-castes as a body, or merely helped a few individuals. The writer inclines to the latter belief. Be this as it may, for hundreds of years Hinduism has altogether frowned upon the pariah and doomed him and his heirs to an everlasting hades on earth.

One may well ask, why this cruelty? In order to find an explanation for it, it is necessary to go back to the days when, in the early dawn of civilization, the fair-skinned Aryans came to India. When, after much hard fighting and spilling of blood, they succeeded in conquering the aborigines of Hindostan, the foreign settlers permitted the dark-skinned natives to form a substratum of their society. Varana, the Sanskrit word for caste, means "color," and must have been coined by the dominant people in the old days to differentiate between the victor and the vanquished. During the centuries that followed this arbitrary division, much intermingling of Aryan and aboriginal blood has taken place. As a general rule, however, this miscegenation has been regulated by the representatives of the victorious race deigning to form connections-often left-handed relations with women of the conquered class, but denying the aboriginal man the privilege of even honorably wedding an Aryan maiden. Thus the original division of the conqueror and the conquered has remained absolutely intact, and to-day the Hindu higher castes, the more or less pure-blooded descendants of the one-time dominant race, arrogantly look down upon the low-castes, the progeny of the vanquished people. Even in the first decade of the twentieth century, this relic of barbarism continues to vitiate Hindu society, as it must have done in days of yore. To the

descendants of the aborigines must be added the offspring of Aryans who, for social crimes, were degraded by their fellow-men to the status of the aborigines. But all internal evidences point to the fact that the number of such people must be limited, and proportionately smaller than that of the offspring of the aborigines. Thus, upon analysis, the situation amounts to this: these much maligned low-castes are nonAryans who are, through mere racial antagonism, treated cruelly by the Aryan Hindus, who, themselves, are far from being absolutely pure-blooded.

Christianity is now seeking to uplift these victims of racial antagonism. The missionaries are doing this, first of all, because the condition of the pariahs is so wretched as to excite the sympathy of anyone who has a grain of humanity in him. Besides, the Teacher himself worked among the lowliest of the lowly, sympathizing with them in their distress, healing their bodily ailments and their wounded hearts. The average Hindu criticises the missionary propaganda in Hindostan, since it makes a special effort to win low-caste souls, and that generally during famine time. The taunt of "rice Christian' and "bread Christian," forcefully emphasizing the economic motive behind the change of religion, is often flung at East-Indians who flock to Christ's standard. Such epithets are only inspired by thoughtlessness, for whoever relieves misery and want is a true benefactor indeed. Moreover, missionaries have accepted the "untouchables" aspiring for a higher life even if it is for a mere mundane higher life-and they