“The Untouchables”

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 169, 12 April 1930, Page 21

“The Untouchables”

IN anticipation of the Report of the Simon Commission on India, the following contribution by Sir Charles Marris, K. 0.5.1., iu the ludia number of “The Times,” is of special interest:— “To-day castes are to be reckoned by the hundred and identifiable minor castes by the thousand. Caste remains as strongly as ever a matter of birth. A man is born to honour as a Brahmin or to dishonour as a sweeper; the worst of Brahmins cannot lose his sanctity and the noblest of sweepers cannot break his birth’s invidious bar, except by going right outside the pale of his religion. “To a great extent occupation is still determined by a man’s caste, though various causes, such as education and travel and the development Of industry and the desire for Government service, have blurred the boundary lines. “Each caste enforces its own rules by means Of committees called panchayets. A caste man who breaks the rules by engaging in a degrading occupation, or eating improper food, or marrying beyond the pale, is arraigned before the caste tribunal. He may get off by paying a fine or standing a dinner. But for major offences be will be outcaste, and then none of his own caste-fellows will have anything to do with him; nor can he get access to the temples, nor service from any of the other workers, the barber, the cobbler, the washerman, oh whom he depends for necessary offices. “To places where there is a demand for wivCs, girls of humble caste are sometimes brought by dishonest brokers, who dispose of them at a profit by representing them as of higher caste than they are. This practice may suggest the question why a low-caste man doomed to a degrading trade should not likewise go off to some place where he was unknown and give

himself out as of a high caste. The answer Is that unkndwn strangers are always objects Of suspicion in India; and that b(?for6 he wU accepted he would be put through tests under Which he would break down for sheer lack of knowledge of the society which he sought to enter. “There is little difficulty about the precedence of the major castes. Always the Brahmin comes first, and then the modern representatives of the three ‘twice born’ communities. Below them there would be no general agreement as to the sequence. Some Sudras are ‘clean’; othdrs, though not clean, ard yet not thought of as polluted. “Below these, again, are a descending series of ‘Untouchables.’ In the South, where Brabminism is strongest, the degree of pollution with which the various kinds of pariah are invested is measured by the distance withiu which they must not approach a Brahmin. “The depressed classes are reckoned to number from 50 to 60 millions. They used to be thought of as definitely beyond the t>ale of Hinduism. Their position is more ambiguous nowadays,, when, growing tension between Hindus and Moslems makes it important to each community to increase Its numerical strength. • “But If the outcastes are to be,reckoned as Hindus it is only just and proper that Hinduism should treat them better. Logic and expediency alike tend to reinforce the efforts already being made by the more generousminded of the caSte leaders to show more consideration to thdse beyond the pale. The movement has long figured on political programmes; it is now actually gaining strength; but it still has great difficulties to overcome in the shape of orthodox conservatism.”