XX
There is no doubt, in my opinion, that unless
you change your social order you can achieve little by way of progress. You
cannot mobilize the community either for defence or for offence. You cannot
build anything on the foundations of caste. You cannot build up a nation, you
cannot build up a morality. Anything that you will build on the foundations of
caste will crack and will never be a whole.
The only question that remains to be considered
is—How to bring about the reform of the Hindu social order? How to abolish
caste? This is a question of supreme importance. There is a view that in
the reform of caste, the first step to take, is to abolish sub-castes. This
view is based upon the supposition that there is a greater similarity in
manners and status between sub-castes than there is between castes. I think,
this is an erroneous supposition. The Brahmins of Northern and Central India
are socially of lower grade, as compared with the Brahmins of the Deccan and Southern
India. The former are only cooks and water-carriers while the latter occupy a
high social position. On the other hand, in Northern India, the Vaishyas and
Kayasthas are intellectually and socially on a par with the Brahmins of the
Deccan and Southern India. Again, in the matter of food there is no similarity
between the Brahmins of the Deccan and Southern India, who are vegetarians and
the Brahmins of Kashmir and Bengal who are non-vegetarians. On the other hand,
the Brahmins of the Deccan and Southern India have more in common so far as
food is concerned with such non-Brahmins as the Gujaratis, Marwaris, Banias and
Jains. There is no doubt that from the standpoint of making the transit from
one caste to another easy, the fusion of the Kayasthas of Northern India and
the other Non-Brahmins of Southern India with the Non-Brahmins of the Deccan
and the Dravid country is more practicable than the fusion of the Brahmins of the
South with the Brahmins of the North. But assuming that the fusion of
sub-Castes is possible, what guarantee is there that the abolition of sub- Castes
will necessarily lead to the abolition of Castes? On the contrary, it may
happen that the process may stop with the abolition of sub-Castes. In that
case, the abolition of sub-Castes will only help to strengthen the Castes and
make them more powerful and therefore more mischievous. This remedy is
therefore neither practicable nor effective and may easily prove to be a wrong
remedy. Another plan of action for the abolition of Caste is to begin with
inter-caste dinners. This also, in my opinion, is an inadequate remedy. There
are many Castes which allow inter-dining. But it is a common experience that
inter-dining has not succeeded in killing the spirit of Caste and the
consciousness of Caste. I am convinced that the real remedy is inter-marriage.
Fusion of blood can alone create the feeling of being kith and kin and unless
this feeling of kinship, of being kindred, becomes paramount the separatist
feeling—the feeling of being aliens— created by Caste will not vanish. Among
the Hindus inter-marriage must necessarily be a factor of greater force in
social life than it need be in the life of the non-Hindus. Where society is
already well-knit by other ties, marriage is an ordinary incident of life. But
where society cut asunder, marriage as a binding force becomes a matter of
urgent necessity. The real remedy for breaking Caste is inter-marriage.
Nothing else will serve as the solvent of Caste. Your Jat-Pat-Todak Mandal
has adopted this line of attack It is a direct, and frontal attack, and I
congratulate you upon a correct diagnosis and more upon your having shown the
courage to tell the Hindus what is really wrong with them. Political tyranny is
nothing compared to social tyranny and a reformer, who defies society, is a
much more courageous man than a politician, who defies Government. You are
right in holding that Caste will cease to be an operative force only when
inter-dining and inter-marriage have become matters of common course. You have
located the source of the disease. But is your prescription the right
prescription for the disease? Ask yourselves this question; why is it that a
large majority of Hindus do not inter-dine and do not inter-marry? Why is it that
your cause is not popular? There can be only one answer to this question and it
is that inter-dining and inter-marriage are repugnant to the beliefs and dogmas
which the Hindus regard as sacred. Caste is not a physical object like a wall
of bricks or a line of barbed wire which prevents the Hindus from co-mingling
and which has, therefore, to be pulled down. Caste is a notion, it is a state
of the mind. The destruction of Caste does not therefore mean the destruction
of a physical barrier. It means a notional change. Caste may be bad.
Caste may lead to conduct so gross as to be called man’s inhumanity to man. All
the same, it must be recognized that the Hindus observe Caste not because they
are inhuman or wrongheaded. They observe Caste because they are deeply
religious. People are not wrong in observing Caste. In my view, what is wrong
is their religion, which has inculcated this notion of Caste. If this is
correct, then obviously the enemy, you must grapple with, is not the people who
observe Caste, but the Shastras which teach them this religion of Caste.
Criticising and ridiculing people for not inter-dining or inter-marrying or
occasionally holding inter-caste dinners and celebrating inter-caste marriages,
is a futile method of achieving the desired end. The real remedy is to destroy
the belief in the sanctity of the Shastras. How do you expect to
succeed, if you allow the Shastras to continue to mould the beliefs and
opinions of the people? Not to question the authority of the Shastras, to
permit the people to believe in their sanctity and their sanctions and to blame
them and to criticise them for their acts as being irrational and inhuman is an
incongruous way of carrying on social reform. Reformers working for the removal
of untouchability including Mahatma Gandhi, do not seem to realize that the
acts of the people are merely the results of their beliefs inculcated upon
their minds by the Shastras and that people will not change their
conduct until they cease to believe in the sanctity of the Shastras on
which their conduct is founded. No wonder that such efforts have not produced
any results. You also seem to be erring in the same way as the reformers
working in the cause of removing untouchability. To agitate for and to organise
inter-caste dinners and inter-caste marriages is like forced feeding brought
about by artificial means. Make every man and woman free from the thraldom of
the Shastras, cleanse their minds of the pernicious notions founded on
the Shastras, and he or she will inter-dine and intermarry, without your
telling him or her to do so. It is no use seeking refuge in quibbles.
It is no use telling people that the Shastras
do not say what they are believed to say, grammatically read or logically
interpreted. What matters is how the Shastras have been understood by
the people. You must take the stand that Buddha took. You must take the stand
which Guru Nanak took. You must not only discard the Shastras, you must
deny their authority, as did Buddha and Nanak. You must have courage to tell the
Hindus, that what is wrong with them is their religion—the religion which has
produced in them this notion of the sacredness of Caste. Will you show that
courage?
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