Conversion of Untouchables

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