India is one of the oldest countries where history has
witnessed the best and the worst forms of human civilization. The best forms
are seen in the spiritual and philosophical fields; and the worst ones in the
religious and social fields. When the Aryans came from outside India, conquered
the original inhabitants, settled and mixed up with them by ties of blood and
economy, a society of mixed bloods was evolved, and when the ideas of purity of
blood dominated the thinkers in the Indo-Aryan society, they evolved a formula
to make watertight compartments in the society. These compartments were four in
the beginning, to wit, Brahman (priest), Kshatriya (warrior), Vaishya
(merchant) and Shudra (servant). The ideas of ritualism in the yadna (sacrifice)
ceremonies by priestly class gave rise to strict rules and regulations in the
various ways of over increasing numbers of ritualistic rites, which resulted in
segregating impure from pure from even amongst themselves. This process, in
twin, resulted in sub-dividing the four classes, into a number of divisions,
later on called castes. The number of castes in the society are more than 500,
each keeping away from another. Some of these castes are turned Untouchables,
Unseeables, Pariahs, etc. Some castes were not to be touched by higher castes,
some were not to be even seen by them. Some untouchable castes were to keep
their distance from an approaching higher caste person from opposite direction,
by 15 feet to 45 feet. Unseeable Untouchables were to lie flat, face downwards
on the ground, muddy or thorny, when they saw a higher caste person coming from
behind or front side so that he might not see them. Touching an untouchable or
seeing an unseeable by a higher caste Hindu was a sin, as the Hindu scriptures told
the higher caste Hindus. These scriptures were written long after the
Mahabharat was written by Vyas, when the various worst forms of social
divisions were being evolved from century to century. Thus the birth of four
divisions of the society in the beginning was credited to ShriKrishna, the
Eighth incarnation of God of Hindus, as the former tells Arjun in the Geeta,
held sacred by the Hindus, that he had created chaturvarnya, the four classes.
The Smritis and the Puranas, written later on, perpetuated this theory, which
came to be regarded as sacred and lasting forever. When India came in contact
with Western ideas of social, political and economic organisations, her sons and
daughters got new enlightenment and saw the utter foolishness of their own
ideas of social, religious, political and economic organisations who could not
go together harmoniously to bring about human happiness. Thus, the enlightened
Indians took up end-gels against old fashioned ideas and orthodoxy of the
Hindus, and set in the winds of reformation in the Hindu society in the mid
nineteenth century. This is the first great factor that contributed to forming
of the basis of reformation in the Hindu society.
The second factor which forced the enlightened caste
Hindus to realise more quickly the dire necessity of annihilating the custom of
practicing untouchability was conversion of the Untouchables by the Muslims and
the Christians. The Muslims were the first in this field and took away a large
portion of the caste Hindus and the Untouchables. Some of the converts to Islam
from the untouchables became great fighters against the Hindus and a few became
noblemen of the Muslim Emperors of India. One Hindu Untouchable from Bengal
converted to Islam became a terror to the Hindus and he established his name
Kala Pahad (Black Mountain) about whom mothers sang lullabies to frighten
children in cradles to sleep. Another Hindu Untouchable from Gujarat who became
a Muslim and assumed a name of Khushrukhan entered the Imperial Palace at
Delhi, and by dint of his personal qualities became a leading light at the
court of the Emperor Mubarakshah Sultan (1396- 1390). He got the Sultan
murdered and ascended the Delhi throne and ruled for some five months. The
Delhi citizens decided him as an untouchable Sultan and he, to pacify his
wounded egoism, killed many Hindus and Muslims and dragged their women into his
personal Zanana. The Christian Missionaries from all the corners of Europe and
America entered the field of converting the Indians and they found the
Untouchables as the most reliable material to work upon. No doubt the
Christianity had worked wonders in India and especially among the untouchable
converts. They had beaten the Muslims so far as the welfare measures for
converts were concerned. But the Muslims had beaten them on only one score,
viz, social and religious equality. Untouchables converted to Islam could enter
the Mosque and pray with other Muslim devotees, be he the poorest or the
richest. The untouchables converted to Christianity were not allowed to enter
the Churches, reserved for white skinned Christians and high caste Hindus
converted as Christians. The Christian Missionaries did not succeed in
demolishing caste barriers among converted Christians. And so the said spiral
of the Hindu caste system persisted to continue even among the Hindu converts
to Christianity. Though such was the position the untouchable converted
Christians were happy because they were not regarded as Untouchables,
Unseeables and Unapproachables by the white as well as high caste Christians.
All these developments from the thirteenth to the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries in India made the Hindu society to go down and down in population and
the enlightened Hindus became conscious of this whole gigantic sociological
phenomena. They started a movement to remove untouchability and to elevate the
untouchables socially and economically.
Source
Book : Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar
Author : Shri. C. B. Khairmoday
