SUPERSTITIONS RIFE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 April 1939, Page 9

SUPERSTITIONS RIFE

INDIA’S HIGH-CASTE PEOPLES. PROBLEMS IN INDIAN LIFE. Instances of how, despite the gradual civilising influences of British rule, India’s high-caste peoples still gird themselves about with taboos and superstitions are described in the text book, “Social Service in India,” prepared for probationers in the India Civil Service.

Sir Edward A. H. Blunt, the editor, writes: —

"Eating taboos are so numerous that the cynic is apt to wonder that any Hindu ever thinks it worth while to eat at all. Before eating he must bathe and dress himself in clean garments. He must not touch an earthen vessel which has contained water. "He must not touch a piece of cotton cloth which has been touched by a person who is not himself ceremonially pure or else has not been dipped in oil or ghi (clarified butter). "He may not read a .printed book at his meal. He may not read a manuscript book unless it is bound 1 with silk and the binder has used a special paste of pounded tamarin seed. "If he does any of these things he is defiled and must either go hungry or have a fresh meal prepared and purify himself before he eats it. A woman may not mention her husband’s name; brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law may not be in the same room together or speak to one another. For penalties such as breaches of etiquette, transgressors may be brought before the court of village elders and ordered to pay a fine, make a pilgrimage, give a feast to the brotherhood, or undergo a course of begging. Sir Edward Blunt estimates that because of the shortage of eligible wives one potential bridegroom in every five must remain unwed. : /Being unwed he must remain sonless. and being sonless he must go to hell.”

No changes, in Sir Edward Blunt’s view, are more likely to improve the welfare of Indian society than female education and marriage reform. "There is also the factor of expediency. If, for example, a Jat’s (high caste Hindu) cow dies in its owner’s sitting room, only an untouchable can remove the corpse. The urgency of this operation, specially when the thermometer stands at 118 deg in the shade, encourages cultivators to remain on friendly terms with their social inferiors.”

The book records, however, that eight lives were recently lost in a riot caused by certain presumptuous untouchables who dared to wear coats with collars, to build a second storey to their houses, and to make sweetmeats in iron instead of in earthen pans. “It will be a long time yet before the caste system can be flung on the dust heap of worn-out superstitions,” says Sir Edward. Other facts which the book brings to the notice of future Indian administrators are that India has probably more than a million lepers and that children of five often have to work, goaded by corporal punishment, for 10 or 12 hours a day in insanitary workshops.

One of the gravest warnings is concerned with India’s enormously increasing population. “Unless the growth of population

can be checked the general standard of living is likely to become lower.” says Sir Edward Blunt. This view is shared by many contributors.