THE UNTOUCHABLES OF INDIA

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22343, 5 March 1938, Page 21

THE UNTOUCHABLES OF INDIA

SIXTY million human beings, living as social outcasts, form what is known in India as the oppressed classes." Sixty million human beings living in sordid hovels or' obscure caves survive on the waste which they find in the streets and which they fight over like animals; they sleep on straw, live in filth, and die like beasts, stretched out on manure heaps. Relegated to filthy quarters, forced to the most degrading drudgery, hounded, maltreated, aTnd oppressed by all the world, the untouchable finds himself in a worse plight than the leper. The leper can nowadays hope for a cure, but no miracle can save the untouchable. No one can erase the brand of his dishonour stamped upon him by his birth. He is chased from the temples, and heaven help him if, in passing a Hindu at his meal, he allows his shadow to fall on the rice or pancakes. For the Hindu would be obliged to throw his defiled food into the river and to pay a Brahmin at least a rupee for purification. And he would thrash the poor untouchable with a stick. When he crosses the highway, the untouchable must shout continually and throw down palm leaves at certain points to mark his approach or passing, for the Brahmins and Kachatrvas are subject to defilement at a distance which varies, according to regions, between 30 and 40 yards. He is forbidden to bow before the gross pitiless idols of the temples. Gandhi's Endeavours Some years ago, after the celebrated "Poona Pact," Gandhi launched a campaign for the emancipation of the untouchables. In one day he came.close to losing his immense popularity. Meetings followed meetings. In the large cities violent mobs spilled

blood, and fanatic Brahmins scoured the country to organise resistance to what they called "sacrilegious reforms." Yet all Gandhi proposed was that the untouchables should be allowed to enter the temples. Since the orthodox Hindus. of Madras unanimously rejected this proposal, the untouchables decided to make a "symbolic gesture." They invaded the forbidden precincts and, as a sign of protest, laid their hands on the sacred elephants. The answer to this act was a massacre of untouchables, then the purification of the temple and the elephants, and finally the organisation of processions and expiatory sacrifices. Reasons for Ban The untouchables are the descendants of coloured people who inhabited the Hindu Peninsula before the invasion of white-skinned Aryans. To maintain their purity—their colour and racial characteristics —the Aryans established the present caste system, by which they hoped to avoid mixing. But the results have been that the Aryans' skin has darkened, they have lost the characteristics of the white race; but they keep intact their inhuman social system. "Born a pariah, always a pariah," is the dictum, and indeed there is no case on record where an untouchable has ever succeeded in breaking the barriers of his 1000-year-old prison. His child is also a pariah, and his children's children are untouchables to the end of time. No matter how courageous, intelligent, or ambitious he may be, the untouchable can have no hope of emancipation as long as he remains in India. It is true that there is one means of escape: conversion to Christianity. But the escape is not real, for the Hindu considers all those outside his own faith as untouchables. As a "Christian untouchable" the Indian's life may be a little more tolerable. This explains in part why most Hindus who accept Chris-

Caste as an Instrument of Racial Purity

tianity belong to the class of untouchables. The situation is slightly different with the casteless girl. She may fall into the hands of pandas—lndian kidnappers—who ride through the poor sections of the untouchables in search of girls of six to eight years. When a child is kidnapped she is brought to the Punjab where the men are strong and healthy and the women are rare. Affirming that the little girl belongs to the Brahmin or Kachatrvas caste, they sell her to some man as a "fiancee." When the marriage has been celebrated, the panda will receive payment, and everybody will be satisfied, the husband because he has a wife, the wife because she is no longer a pariah, and the parents because they will no longer have to support their daughter. In any case, if the girl had not been sold by the panda, she would suffer the same fate at the hands of her parents but without enjoying her change of caste.