HINDU CASTES

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 November 1936, Page 10

HINDU CASTES

CLEAN SPIRIT AND DIRTY FOOD. Contrary to the common opinion, Hinduism and its caste system are flexible, elastic and infinitely adaptable to time and circumstance. Certainly 100 years ago crossing the black water was one of the greatest transgressions. But as time went on it was seen that visits to Europe brought new knowledge, and with knowledge power. The enterprising transgressors could therefore not be kept within the old bounds. It became wiser instead to draw' a. revenue from them. Instead of being finally excommunicated they were restored to caste on making a suitable atonement at the discretion of the caste Panchayat.

Whence come all these ideas of ceremonial purity? Most of them are concerned with securing the purity, at least the ceremonial purity, of a caste man’s food and drink. The anthropologists derive them from the realm of magic, primitive natural science, or pseudo natural science, very bold and far-reaching inductions from a very insufficient basis of observed facts. A man gets ill after receiving food from a stranger. Hence all offered by strangers is impure and dangerous. However that may be, it seems that in India as far back as the written records go there were Brahmin specialists developing and moulding this pseudo-science with an instrument of priestly statecraft. In the Vedic age attention was concentrated on the sacrifice. We heard much of the wicked free-thinkers 1 of the age who neglected their sacrifices and of the dreadful fate that awaited them.

After the rise and decline- of Buddhist. monasticism the emphasis had shifted from the sacrifice to caste rules. These rules concerned not only marriage but also food and [drink to secure the standard of purity to which the caste aspired. The [rules for the lower castes were in the main imitations or adaptations of the stricter Brahminical practice. Breach of rules involved temporary or permanent outcasting. The penalty attached to acts, not thoughts. Provided that you observed the rules you might ridicule them. Hence no pains were taken to make the rules rational. The shadow or sight of a man of lower caste might defile food. Clear water from a mug cleansed by a European w-ould bring pollution, but dirty water from the hands of a Brahmin would be safe and pure. The purity of food depended on the caste, not the cleanliness of the cook.

BRAHMIN COOKS. Brahmins thus acquired a dominant position in this profession. A Brahmin might cook for any caste. If he did there could be no thought of impurity. There was once an Indian rajah who kept a Swiss doctor —no doubt the son of an hotel-keeper. For years the Swiss struggled to get the rajah down into his kitchen to see the appalling'filth there. In vain, the rajah was too wise: He knew that orthodox Hinduism can approve only

one method of kitchen reform. That is the installation of a Brahmin cook. Then the spiritual purity of the food is guaranteed. As to its physical cleanliness —so long as the taste is all right why. bother? But though most rules of caste are explicable only by the logic of the magician, there are others which smack of morality. In' ancient days the Brahmin ate meat, including beef. The flesh of the rhinocerous had in- 1 deed a special religious efficacy.' But 1

as time went on the Brahmin became •a confirmed vegetarian, partly because in the Indian climate flesh easily becomes offensive to sensitive organs. But the chief motive was that he had come to share the Jain’s . reluctance to take animal life. The Jain, of course, carries this reluctance to inconvenient extremes, sparing noxious insects and protesting with clamour against the draining of ponds lest the life of the fish be endangered. From the Jains the very peasants of Gujarat have learnt to spare the monkey and the peacock and to give them freedom to roam and to destroy as they will. Hence the curious spectacle of an American missionary shooting the peacock and hiding the sacred corpse from the eyes of the villagers. Challenged in regard to the morality of this transaction ho explained that the villagers were really grateful to him for ridding them of the sacred nuisance who ate their seed, but did not like to have the fact of the slaughter forced upon their notice. Be that as it may, the high caste rule against eating flesh is upheld on moral grounds, and so also is the ban on alcoholic drink. It is this connection between a puritan morality and the rules of caste that make men of the type of the Maharajah of Mysore reluctant to shake off the restrictive rules. I remember an Indian friend of a quarter of a century back who decided to make a Eurapean tour, doing as little violence as possible to caste rules. He managed comfortably enough in England, but when he got to the Italian countryside he was horrified to find no liquid to drink except undoubtedly fermented wine. He fled as quickly as he could, having sustained life so he assured me, for two whole days without touching liquid in any form except tlie unfermented juice of a few .ripe, grapes

But. of course, wherever there arc restrictive rules the most inconvenient are for the women’s special benefit. Hindus seek to blame the Moslems for purdah, but it seems that the institution was well developed in certain quarters before the Moslems came. -Again,- in South India there is a great banker caste whose men have for generations done business in Burma, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Its women were till recently not allowed to cross a little stream which flows some 20 miles north of their residence.