PLIGHT OF THE OUTCASTS OF BRITISH INDIA

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 26, 23 October 1937, Page 15

PLIGHT OF THE OUTCASTS OF BRITISH INDIA

SIXTY MILLION OPPRESSED

Problem of Untouchables

J^URING some receut travels in British India some friends and 1 were oue day touring in the State of Orissa near Kalahandi, says Edmond Demaitre in Lectures Pour Tous, Paris. We had taken the main highway^ and had walked for several houns nnder a torrid sun which seemed to trausform the country into an jnferno. The road was deserted; travellers and peasant^ alike had sought refuge under the tamarind-trees and banyans whose leaves were hidden in a thick layer of ausfc and sand. . . Suddenly a shrill cry broke the deathly spel! of heat and silence. A fantastic creature, running as if it were ehased by a swarm of djinns, and cutchihg in its arma a dozen or so palm leaves, had left the road for the fields, all the while shouting meauingless things. I had often heard that the village Hindu women had an insane fear of white men; they think that the vpry sight of their fine dark slcins is enough to make the most stoic feringhee lose his head. Thinking that we might juSt nOw. have witnessed a wild flower' of Hindustan saving herself from . an imaginary danger, I said to. my friends:' "She's certainly frightened . . . she muSt be very pretty, ehf . . "Shef" my more experienced English l friend replied. "That was an 'untouchabj.6' getting out of our way and giving wafning. . . Remember, a BrahmiTi cannot assoQiate with us, and the mere presence of an uutouchable is enough to drive him a hundred yards away." "Yoti don't mean to tell .me that these things exist in 1937?" I remonstrated. "They do still exist, and wili last for a long time to come," he answered. « * # Sixty million human bcings. living as socia] outcasts, form what is known in India as the "oppressed classes," iBixty million human beings living in

sordid hovels or obscure cavea 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 ou manure-heaps, wkenee they return to fertilise the land. The worst suffering caused by torture and confinement is nothing compared to the abjeet misery, the physical and moral baseness in which the untouehable ie 'condcmned to live. Consigued to filthy quarters, forced to the most degrading drudgery, hounded, mistreated and oppressed by all the world, tlie untouehable finds himself in a worse plight than the leper The leper can hope for a eure. But no miracle can save the untouehable. No cne can erase the brand of his hislionour stamped npon hira by his birth He is ehased from the temples, and heaven help him if. in passing a Hindv at his meal, he allows his shadow to fnl' on t.he rice or nanoakes. For tho Hin^ would be obliged to throw his defile^ food into the river and to»pay a Brah min at least a rnp'ee for purifiration And he would fhrnsh the poor untouph able with a sticlc. When he erosses the highwav. the tonehablp must shout continually an'' tliTow dowu unlm leaves at. certn^ uoiuts to maTlc his npnroaeh of -naP'sin" for the Brahmins aud Kaehnfrvns nw snb.iect to defilemen^ af n whieh varies, nfeordincr ro^iniiPbetween 30 an'd 40 yards. He is

forbidden to bow before the grosa pitiless idols of the temples. Some years ago, following 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 spxlled blood, and fanatic Brahmins scoured the peninsula to organise resistance to \ybat they called "sacrilegioue reforms." Yet all Gandhi proposed was that the untouchables be allowed to enter the temples. Since the orthodox Hindus of Madras Unanimously rejected this proposal, tlie untouchables decided to make a "symbolie gesture." They invaded the forbidden precincts and, as a sign of protest5 laid their hands on the sacred Clephante. The answer to this act was a massaere of untouchables, then the purification of the temple and the elephants, and finally the organisation of processions and expiatory sacrifices. The problems of the untouchablea in Tndia is the appalling result of the first racial experiment known to history. The untouchables are the descendants of coloured people who inhabited the Hindu Peninsula before the invasion of white-skinned Aryans. Tn order tr> maintain their purity — their colour "acial characteristics — the Arvan? estnblished the prcsent easte systetn 'uH'hich they hoped to avoid mixinff. P"' the results have been that the Aryanc' ekin ht« darkened, they have lost tlu n

characteristics of the white race; but they keep intact their iahuman eocial system. "Bora a pariah, always a pariah" is the dictum, and indeed there is no case on record where an untouehable has ever succeeded in breaking the barriens of his thousand-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 uutouchable can have no hope of emancipation as long as he remains in India. It is true that there ls one moana of escape: couversion to Christiaaity. But the escape is-not real, for the Hindu considens all those outside his own faith as untouchables. As a "Christianuiitoucliable" the Indian's life may be a little more tolerable. This explains iu

part why most Hindus who accept Christianity beloug to the class of untouchables. The situation ia slightly differeiit with the casteless girl. She may fal] into the hands of pandas— Indian kid nappers — who ride through the poor sections of the untouchables in search of girls of. six to eight yeafs. When a child is kidnapped she is brought to the Punjab where the men are strbng and healthy and the women are rare. Affirming that the little girl belonga to the Brahmin or Kchatyras caste, they sell her to some man as a "fiancee." When the marriage has been celebrated, the panda wili receive payment) and' everybody wili be satisfied, the husband because he has a wife the wife because she is no longer a pariah, and the parents beeaxise they wili no longer have to support their daughter. In any case. if the girl had not been fiold hv the panda, she would sufifer the same fate at tho hands of her parents lm f witliout ujoyiug her change of caste. .