CHANGING INDIA

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 80, 2 October 1933, Page 3

CHANGING INDIA

UNTOUCHABLES' PLACE

A NEW ATTITUDE

Certainly. India" has changed. A missionary friend, who is not perhaps so young as he was, reminds me of the kind of incident that was not unusual when he first came to India thirty or forty years ago; says a writer in tho "Manchester Guardian." ■ The untouchable^ belonging. to a village had suddenly got religion or ambition. A leader1 had arisen among them who exhorted his brethren to cleanse themselves from their filth and rise in the world of Hinduism as they had seen some of the lower touchablo castes succeed in doing. Accordingly, ainoirg other, goo^resolutions of less importance, the untouchables determined to giva up the dearest and deadliest of their sins, the occasional Sunday dinner of beef, roast or,raw. : So when the next village cow died and was duly' skinned there followed nofuneral feast, only a aimple burial ceremony ,amid unfeigned regrets for the loss of the departed. Next morning, however, the regrets were'succeeded by a proud consciousness of virtue which expressed itself in their demeanour, and thus attracted the unfavourable notice of the caste villagers, good conservative farmers and ploughmen. Inquiries were made, and before evening the facts were known beyond a peradventure; the village custom had been violated, and a Panchayat'"sat to consider the situation in all its ''aspects! The speeches made at that Partehayat were unfortunately not recorded, but it is not impossible to ""restore conjecturally the main lines along which tho argument developed. This was ■ the thin, end of the wedge. The untouchables would be wanting to send their children to school next. This was gros3 impiety; rebellion against the sacred law of Karma; this" was a monstrous violation of custom —that is, of the constitutional law of the village. Again, "if these fellows give up their filthy customs and get clean they will think themselves as good as us, 'and then who is to do our dirty work for us without expecting any pay but kicks and curses?" THE ORDER. Whatever the arguments, there emerged from the debate a unanimous resolution, and this resolution was promptly acted on. Orders were sent through tho appropriate channels to tho untouchables to the effect that they should disinter the poor ep.w—which had now been not much more than 24 hours underground—and eat' her. The thing was done. Whether the untouchables liked what they had to swallow history does not relate, but some years probably elapsed before another uplift movement threatened the sacred foundations of the village constitution. '■..... So things were forty yearsago. The change in outlook that,has since taken placo is well illustrated by a letter published in the Madras "Hindu." In this letter a Brahmin lawyer notes that a "Hindu Central Committee" has offered "generously to help the social and economic uplift of the 'Harrjans,' a title meaning 'children of God,' recently substituted for the disgraceful old names applied to the untouchables, if they will desist from seeking to force their way into the temples of the caste Hindus." He reports that a certain colony of untouchables in a suburb of Madras have taken up an attitude on this question which is surely more in harmony with the spirit of religion than the demands put forward on their behalf by professional agitators. They feel that for them to enter the temples of caste Hindus must wound the feelings of many excellent orthodox people and cannot therefore be pleasing to God. THEIR OWN TEMPLE. Accordingly they have erected a temple of their own, dedicated to Sri Krishna, and are conducting worship there, inviting the untouchables from all parts of the city to attend and distributing to them sanctified presents of vegetable food. They have, it appears, at the same time forsworn the eating of flesh. Their Brahmin patron now — not perhaps without a touch of irony— invites the "Hindu Central Committee" to fulfil its promise by aiding these untouchables to distribute offerings "of Tice, butter, and milk, which will not only have a certain religious efficacy but may also be expected to make up for the deficiency in the untouchables' diet which has resulted from their resolution to abstain from meat." "In thus helping the untouchables," the letter concludes, "the Hindu Central Committee would be nobly carrying on the true tradition of the Hindus as illustrated by the. story of King Sibi, who gave a portion of his flesh as food to a hawk as a. substitute for the pigeon it was chasing." "Well hit, the.Brahmin," I think we shall all feol inclined to say. And whether this actual experiment has since succeeded or not, whether the untouchables do or do not get lavish subscriptions to enable them to distribute rice, milk, and butter, at least we can feel pretty sure that orthodox Hindu public opinion has no. longer either the inclination or the power to compel them to revert to ft diet of carrion.