The untouchables

B.K. ROY BURMAN †

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I LOVE to think that it was a warm winter evening but I am not so sure.

The year was 1955.

I was talking to a small group of men and women in a sweeper’s hut in an industrial town near Calcutta. Just outside the hut were the wheelbarrows and handcarts used for the removal of night soil. The dumping ground was also not far. The odour was all around us.

I was asking them about their salary, security of job, method of removal of night soil and so on. They were answering in a plaid, monotonous tone. All my attempts to introduce some warmth in the discussion failed. I was face-to-face with human glaciers. But the crash came all of a sudden. I was startled by a loud wail. It was from one of the elderly ladies in the group. For a minute or so there was utter confusion. I was apprehensive that inadvertently I had hurt her feelings But the face of others were glowing with mirth and happiness, both. The lady was crying that her husband died five years too soon, to see the day when somebody in Hindustan cared to ask how they lived.

It was becoming dark, but the darkness was illuminated by tears of bitter happiness.

I wonder whether the light is still there.

The weather is too foul and it is more than likely that the light has gone out.

The weather, however, has all along been foul.

It was 1950, I was travelling in the forest tract of Sundergarh district of Orissa. One early morning, coming out of the forest, I reached a village. First I went to a cluster of huts, which happened to be a hamlet of the weavers (Janti). The previous night, the Jantis had staged an open air performance (jatra) on the mythological theme of Subhadraharan (elopement of Subhadra). The Jantis said that their co-villagers belonging to the Agaria caste did not participate in the jatra. And why? Several years ago, Mahatma Gandhi, during his visit to Orissa, had told the people that the profession of the weavers was a most respectable one, and, like a mother, the Jantis clothed the people; due honour should, therefore, be shown to them.

When the Jantis enacted ‘Subhadraharan’, the Agarias enacted Sitaharan (abduction of Sita). No wonder, this is the country where Gandhi was murdered.

But, where does the root of the tragedy lie? Gandhi named the untouchables harijans – the children of God. Many among the untouchable castes, particularly the educated ones, did not take to this nomenclature kindly. They wondered why they had been singled out as the children of God. Were not others also the children of God? When the untouchables were specially mentioned, did it not merely mean that attempts were being made to make their conditions tolerable rather then destroy the system which bred inequality?

Ambedkar was relentless in his criticism of the orientation given by Gandhi to the national movement on the question of untouchables. No doubt, in 1921, Gandhi wrote in Young India, ‘I consider the removal of untouchability as a most powerful factor in the process of attainment of Swaraj.’ Uplift of the untouchables was an important item in the Bardoli programme of constructive work drawn up in 1922. In 1932-33, under the inspiration of Gandhi, the Harijan Sevak Sangh was organized to work for the removal of the social disabilities of the untouchables.

But, there is the other side of the picture as well. In 1921-22 Gandhi wrote in Navajivan, To destroy the caste system and adopt the Western European social system means that Hindus must give up the principle of hereditary occupation which is the soul of the case system. Hereditary principle is an eternal principle. To change it is to create disorder. I have no use for a Brahmin if I cannot call him a Brahmin for my whole life. It will be chaos if every day a Shudra is to be changed into a Brahmin.’ Gandhi went further and observed, ‘The caste system is a natural order of society. In India it has been given a religious coating’ (quoted in B. R. Ambedkar, What the Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables, 1948, p. 287).

 

Even regarding the specific aspects of the disabilities suffered by the untouchable castes, Gandhi’s utterances are open to various interpretations: ‘Inter-dining and inter-caste marriages are in no way essential for the promotion of the spirit of brotherhood or for the removal of untouchability’ (Harijan 29.4.33, p. 2). Thirteen years later, Gandhi seems to have shifted his position considerably. In his own words, ‘At one time I did say that inter-dining was not an essential part of the campaign for the removal of untouchability. Personally, I was for it. Today I encourage it. In fact, today I even go further’ (Harijan, 28.7.46, p. 316).

It cannot, however, be stated that Gandhi’s shifts of position have uniformly been in the direction of an assertion of greater rights for the untouchables. In 1944, he wrote, ‘Temple entry is the one spiritual act that would constitute the message of freedom to the "untouchables" and assure them that they are not outcastes before God’ (Harijan, 11.2.33, p. 5). But, in 1934 he wrote, ‘I have absolutely no desire that the temple should be opened to Harijans, until caste Hindu opinion is ripe for the opening. It is not a question of Harijans asserting their right of temple entry or claiming it. They may or may not want to enter that temple even when it I declared open to them. But it is the bounden duty of every caste Hindu to secure that opening for Harijans’ (Harijan, 23.2.34, p. 10).

 

It is not difficult to understand why some sections of the untouchable elite consider that in this orientation the functional equivalent of the ‘children of God’ is the ornamentation of their position as the helpless creatures at the mercy of man.

Ambedkar has caustically commented on this approach: ‘Why appeal to the worst of human failings, namely, pride and vanity in order to voluntarily accept what on a rational basis he would resent as a cruel discrimination against him? What is the use of telling the scavenger that even a Brahmin is prepared to do scavenging when it is clear that according to the Hindu Shastras and Hindu notions, even if a Brahman did scavenging, he would never be subject to the disabilities of one who is a born scavenger. For, in India, a man is not a scavenger because of his work. He is a scavenger because of his birth, irrespective of the question whether he does scavenging or not. If Gandhism preached that scavenging was a noble profession, with the objective of inducing those who refuse to engage in it, one could understand it. But why appeal to the scavenger’s pride and vanity in order to induce him and him only to keep on scavenging by telling him that scavenging is a noble profession and that he need not be ashamed of it? To preach that poverty is good for the Shudra untouchable and for none else, to preach that scavenging is good for the untouchables and for none else and to make them accept these onerous impositions as voluntary purposes of life, by appealing to their failings is an outrage and a cruel joke on the helpless classes’ (B.R. Ambedkar, op. cit., pp. 303-304).

One can argue that Ambedkar was too harsh to Gandhi. He failed to appreciate that Gandhi was moving both ahead of his time and along with it. When Gandhi speaks of hereditary occupations as a natural order, he refers to the limits of occupational mobility. As an ideal, it is obviously incompatible with the democratic ethos of modern society. What, however, appealed to Gandhi was the so-called non-competitive basis of economic organization inherent in the caste system or the apparent security of economic pursuits provided by it to the artisan and servicing castes. But it was the security of the cage. Maybe it was not an iron cage; it was a bamboo cage with many holes.

 

In rejecting discrimination on the basis of caste, creed or religion, except for protective discrimination, in favour of the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, India’s Constitution has rejected hereditary occupations as an ideal. But, for social planning one cannot overlook the existence of considerable occupational immobility as an empirical fact. It is true of almost any society. In Soviet Turkmenia, for instance, even fifty years after the socialist revolution, I was told that the bulk of the shoeshine boys were Bokhara Jews, the road cleaners were Kurds.

Looked at in a different way, Ambedkar’s critique of Gandhi was a critique of Hindu society as a whole.

When the untouchables are considered to be the children of God, whose position is to be retrieved within the framework of the caste system, two courses of action follow. The untouchable castes spend their social energy in the blind alley of Sanskritization. They accept one of the economically and politically dominant castes, which also enjoys a high ritual status, as the reference group and emulate its lifestyle. They give up widow remarriage, go in for child marriage, abjure from non-vegetarian food, discourage outdoor activities by their females, but what do they gain? They do not have the economic resources at their command; neither do they have the aura of history behind them. Soon they find themselves in the arid zone of vanishing dreams.

The rest of society also tries to be godly to the children of God. Ameliorative and welfare programmes are launched. But the magnitude of the effort is frequently determined by political pressures and pulls. Ambedkar has described such activities as political charity.

 

Before independence, the ameliorative and welfare programmes promoted by non-official agencies set up on the inspiration of Gandhi, mainly related to the provision of sources of drinking water, eradication of illiteracy and inculcation of hygienic habits. Simultaneously, attempts were made to persuade the caste Hindus to admit the untouchables to the temples in the different parts of the country.

The Constitution of free India requires the state to undertake activities for the advancement of education, removal of disabilities and improvement of the conditions of life of the untouchables as a statutory obligation. Besides, there are reservations of seats in legislatures, educational institutions and public services.

Undoubtedly, impressive efforts have been made by the organs of the state and state supported non-official agencies to implement the programme. But, side by side there has been social sabotage by the dark forces of society.

I was visiting a high school set up under the scheduled castes welfare programme. I was told that the children of the sweepers were studying along with the children of the caste Hindus in the school. On verification I found that it was true; but the sweeper children were segregated in separate benches in one corner of the same class.

 

In one district of a progressive state, the district magistrate informed me that there was no untouchability in his district. As I was coming out of his office, his sweeper approached me. He was finding it difficult to get his son admitted to the primary school. I approached the teacher. He assured me that he did not believe in untouchability. But as he came to the class on the morning immediately after bathing and performing puja, he did not like to be defiled by touching a sweeper boy. He had no objection to teaching the boy if a night class were started. It goes without saying that this god-fearing man did not mention the extra remuneration he expected when a night class was started.

In another state, the god’s shadow stopped on the verandah of the school. The teacher not only admitted the children of the fisherman caste to the school, he even allowed them to hear the lessons sitting on the verandah while the children of the caste Hindus were sitting inside the room. In still another state, the sons of the untouchable castes and caste Hindus were living in the same hostel of a secondary school, but they were mutually segregated in different rooms. Besides, while the caste Hindu students were not required to wash their plates after eating, the scheduled caste students were required to do so. In the case of the former, the plates were washed by the menials of the hostel.

Even so, here was a social revolution compared to what was practised in another school in a ‘progressive’ state. In the latter, the caste Hindu students had gone on strike when untouchable students were admitted to their hostel. As a compromise an adjoining building was taken on rent and the untouchable students were lodged there, even though the two hostels were put under the same administrative control.

Even the enlightened youth fail to recognize their brothers in the face of the ‘children of God’. Perhaps they toss their loyalty between the ancestors and God.

Social sabotage takes myriads of forms. In one state, a Gandhi ghar (Home of Gandhi) was constructed as the symbol of unity of the village. But the village means ‘all excepting the untouchables’. On the other hand, if the untouchables were denied their share, it might invoke the wrath of the state. A second Gandhi ghar was, therefore, constructed in the untouchable locality.

 

Providing separate drinking water wells for the untouchables under the programme of removal of untouchability is a common practice almost everywhere. One may, however, wonder whether it does not have just the opposite effect by legitimizing untouchability. But here is a real dilemma, and one does not know how to resolve it. The untouchables are too weak in the local power structure to assert their right of drawing water from the common village well. Legal action can assist them to a limited extent only. In this context, should their minimum right as citizens to have an assured source of drinking water remain in abeyance until the legal and the moral issues are sorted out with the caste Hindus? In short, though put somewhat crudely the essential question remains: should institutional reform come first or amelioration first.

 

Even in respect of economic welfare schemes, the same dilemma continues. Although a large number of schemes have been introduced to diversify the occupational structure of the untouchable castes, quite frequently the bulk of them remain tied down to their traditional occupations. As improvement in the economic life of these people would require strengthening the technological and economic base of occupations. Where attempts in this direction have been successful, two contradictory results follow. Either the traditional association of the caste with the occupation is strengthened or it is weakened. Where the association is strengthened, it also reinforces casteism and delays the transformation of the social structure. Where the association is weakened, new sets of people get into the occupation and derive the benefits of improved technology; but the craftsmen belonging to the untouchable castes are thrown out. They cannot immediately take to alternative occupations with higher returns. Thus, they suffer economic insecurity and are impoverished.

Reservations in the services also seem to have yielded diminishing returns to the untouchable castes. Even twenty-five years after independence, the proportion of scheduled castes in the Class I, II and III services are meagre, in spite of the reservations. Besides, during this period, occupational opportunities in trade and commerce and industries in the private sector have gone up several fold. But few from among the untouchable castes have been able to reach administrative, ministerial and supervisory positions in these concerns.

Various studies and enquiries suggest that there is considerable evasion on the part of the employers at different levels. There is, however, another aspect to the question. Reservation conditioned the educated elites among the untouchable castes to look upon the administrative bureaucracy as their reference group. Psychologically, they orient themselves towards it. When they cannot get into it, they feel excessively frustrated; and at the same time, they can hardly take any entrepreneurial role in trade, commerce and other arenas.

 

There is also a growing realization among some sections of the untouchable elites that it is not always desirable that because of reservation, government service should absorb their best talent. As government servants, politics is taboo and this rules out the potential of competent leaders from among them. They deplore that scheduled caste leadership is absent even in their non-official organizations which receive state assistance. In this matter, however, apart from the availability of competent workers, the basic question of organization strategy is involved which will be discussed separately.

If the long range benefit of reservation in the services is being questioned, there should also be rethinking on the actual impact of reservation in educational institutions and in the legislatures, and of the special schemes of benefit to the scheduled castes.

There is reason to believe that although the actual percentage of literacy among the scheduled castes is still rising the rate of progress in literacy has been falling. It seems that reservation in educational institutions has strengthened an elitist orientation. As a result, while a small section of the scheduled castes have benefited, many more are condemned to perpetual illiteracy. The gap between the educated and the uneducated among the untouchables is thus increasing.

Against this widening gap, reservation in the legislatures frequently encourages the fragmentation of their political will. This provides the climate which makes it possible even to use the special programmes for their welfare against their interest. Such programmes in the special sector are meant to supplement the programmes for the benefit of the scheduled castes in the general sector. But frequently, the existence of programmes in the special sector is used as a plea for doing nothing in the general sector.

This would have been justified had the per capita outlay in the special sector been at least equal to the per capita outlay in the general sector. But, it is nowhere near that. In desperation today many among the scheduled castes are wondering whether they would have received a better deal without the special sector provisions. This, however, is difficult to prove: the distortion has taken place at the implementation stage of the plan and such distortion could have taken place even without the special sector.

 

The picture so far gives an idea of the near dead end that the approach to the scheduled castes with its welfare-ameliorative-protective discrimination orientation has reached.

Along with this, every day the newspapers publish grim pictures of mounting tension in rural societies, harrowing tales of atrocities perpetrated against the untouchables, and bewildered anger of the intelligentsia. One wonders what all this means and what is the way out?

In a letter to A. V. Thakkar, General Secretary of the Anti-Untouchability League (later converted into the Harijan Sevak Sangh), Ambedkar suggested an alternative approach. He wanted that rather than dissipating its energies on items like temperace, gymnasium, cooperation, libraries, schools etc., the League should concentrate on campaigns to (a) secure civil rights, (b) equality of opportunity and (c) social intercourse (op. cit., pp. 134-140).

 

One can see the rudiments of a crusader’s approach in this letter. Ambedkar complains that his letter did not evoke any response. It was not even acknowledged. Obviously the crusader’s approach did not fit in with Gandhi’s at that time. Perhaps Gandhi thought that it would disrupt national unity when we were fighting against colonial rule.

Ambedkar refers to another interesting fact. To a group of deputationists who waited on Gandhi requesting him to appoint untouchables on the managing committee of the Harijan Sevak Sangh, Gandhi is said to have observed that, ‘The welfare work for the untouchables is a penance which the Hindus have to do for the sin of untouchability. The money that has been collected has been contributed by the Hindus. From both points of view, the Hindus alone must run the Sangh. Neither ethics nor right would justify the untouchables in claiming a set on the Board of the Sangh’ (op. cit., p. 142).

It is not clear whether the words are Gandhi’s own, but there is no reason to doubt that his stand in the particular context has been correctly stated. What is important is the role assigned to the untouchables in this approach. They are to be the passive objects for the practice of virtue by the caste Hindus. The same orientation seems to underlie most of the non-official organizations working among the untouchables. Even now, very few of them have untouchables in effective positions in the organs of decision making.

These organizations can more appropriately be characterized as social-service organizations, but not voluntary organizations. They are hardly in any position to mobilize the voluntariness of the communities they serve. As a result, along with the development of the communities concerned, a progressive alienation takes place with the organizations which claim to be serving them with state support. Simultaneously, the voluntary mobilization of the communities run along courses of their own, without state support or without interacting with the wider milieu of the society.

Broadly, the voluntary actions of the untouchables have burst on the Indian scene in two different waves and relate to issues of differing order. The first wave took place in the early fifties. The central issue was the refusal of the untouchables to render forced services like removal of carcasses, palanquin bearing and so on. The law was in their favour, but the traditional society was not.

 

There were repercussions. The untouchables were subjected to all sorts of harassment. They were boycotted and denied employment opportunities by the owners of land. Sometimes their houses were burnt, and sometimes they were even physically tortured. There were many local setbacks, but in the long run the untouchables were successful in asserting their civil rights to a great extent. Even where they continue to render traditional services, there has been a qualitative change. Economic relationship rather than social coercion has been the important detemining factor.

The second wave is gaining momentum currently. It relates primarily to the movement of the agricultural labourers and share croppers to establish their rights over the lands cultivated by them. The failure to successfully implement the land reform measures through normal administrative actions has aggravated the situation. As the bulk of the agricultural labourers and share croppers belong to the untouchable and other castes of low ritual status, the ethnic dimension is added to this movement of the essentially rural proletariat. In some parts of the country, particularly where intensive cultivation and multiple cropping have augmented the employment opportunities of the agricultural labourers, they are also fighting for higher wages. The implementation of a crash employment programme or guaranteed employment programme has also strengthened their hands.

 

The massive assertion of their rights by the mute millions of history has naturally caused consternation among the landlords, rich peasant and other vested interests in rural society. They also find it to their advantage to dilute the socio-economic character of the movement and project it as social arrogance of the untouchables. This helps to mobilize the support of the poorer sections of their own castes and at least to neutralize the castes of the middle ritual status, who are generally small and medium farmers.

The rural reaction is on the war path. Through terrorizing the untouchable castes and other poor, it wants to nullify the progressive measures of socio-economic transformation launched by Indira Gandhi. On the other hand, unless the welfare ameliorative measures and the measures of protective discrimination are linked up with this task of socio-economic transformation, the stalemate indicated earlier will continue.

But, there are too many diversionary channels for draining out social energy. I was among the untouchable weavers of Sambalpur one night. Four naked sanyasis (mendicants) were performing a yagna (sacrifice) in the darkness. They informed me that they were the worshippers of the void (Sunyadevta). The day of the advent of God on earth is near. Rama will accompany him as an archer; the chief of the army has already arrived in the form of a cowboy at Mayurbhanj. When God himself will descend, all the travails of the untouchables will be over. In the meantime, the people are to perform yagnas and feed the sanyasis to hasten the advent of God.

They poured ghee (clarified butter) on the sacrificial fire. For a moment, the soul of darkness was chastened; the faces of the people were glowing with hope – and then there was more darkness.

 

I wonder whether the movement initiated by Ambedkar for a mass conversion of the untouchables to Buddhism is not a negation of his negation of the Gandhian orientation towards ‘the children of God’. Why did he require the umbrella of God – though it be an umbrella a different kind? Did he not feel secure enough in the brotherhood of man? Or, was he unwilling to carry the crusade to its logical end?

Parallel to the ambivalence of Hindu society as a whole to the question of the untouchables, there is an ambivalence of the untouchable elites to the question of socio-economic transformation. There needs to be new search for the meaning of all that is happening and not happening.

The main issues arising from what has gone before are:

1. Can there be real improvement in the standard of living of the untouchable castes and can the social disabilities which they suffer from be removed to a very significant extent without launching an all out attack on the caste system itself?

2. In the historical structural setting of India, can one get out of the maze of the caste system simply by changing one’s religion?

3. In the long range strategy of removing the stigma of untouchability and various civic and ritual disabilities to which a vast mass of humanity in the country is subjected, what are the roles of the well-meaning social liberals and philanthropists, on the one hand and the crusaders from among the Scheduled Castes (as well as others) for their civic rights and for a share in the economic and political power structure of the country, on the other?

4. To what extent have state efforts to improve the conditions of the untouchable castes through constitutional safeguards and concessions promoted or retarded their effective participation in the decision making process at the various levels of the democratic polity? Besides, what is the impact of such safeguards and concessions on the diversification of the economic pursuits and mobilization of the social energy of the untouchable castes for progress and national integration?

5. Can the sharpening of class conflict centring on the interests of the landless labourers, marginal farmers and those who by force of tradition or under other forms of compulsion are required to render unclean and/or demeaning services, automatically resolve the caste tangle? Or is it necessary to develop a strategy which will require the mobilization of the class forces and also the organization of the platforms of the untouchables and other so-called low castes and link them up in a relationship of minimal internal contradictions so that the reactionary forces cannot use one against the other?

 

* The article was originally titled ‘The problem’.

  Seminar 177, ‘The Untouchables’, May 1974, pp. 10-15.

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