The term “Hindu Culture” has a very wide significance and unless we state clearly what we mean by it in this connection, it will be difficult to make anything of the nature of general remarks in this short chapter. Our object from the beginning of this volume has been to trace the evolution in its broad national outlook of Hindu life from its earliest sources. In the previous :chapters we have passed. quickly through many centuries, catching and arranging in a comprehensive form the dominant features and forces which have brought the nation to its present condition. Our attempt in the present chapter will be confined to an examination of Hindu life as it is now. Secondly, we do not propose to refer to the political and democratic influences which are slowly infusing a new spirit into the people, . however dim it may be, and illuminating the hearts of the really great leaders. Their effect so far has been so superficial, that but for the promises of the future which they hold out, they do not weigh very much in a consideration of the inherited tendencies and prevailing ideals of the present generation. Thirdly, we will restrict our consideration to the more or. less permanent institutions which are common to the whole community, because our intention is not to describe all the internal currents and counter-currents, the jerks and windings of the cultural stream, but merely to survey the general direction of its course, to watch where it is, on -the whole, leading us. Fourthly, the institutions ° considered will be such as can be easily studied by any interested person taking a quiet trip to a few villages in any part of India. Fifthly, we do not believe that there is much good to be derived from an examination of what ‘has been said and written, what is professed. We must rely on what is being done, what is being lived. Sixthly, we must not forget that, though Hinduism continues to be essentially Brahmanical, the Brahmans are no longer its sole custodians’ or champions. All the chief Hindu communities share responsibility for its preservation. The evil blood courses through the veins of all Hindus. Hindu culture will, therefore, mean the spirit and general tendencies of the socio- religious institutions which make’ the Hindus a distinct people with an individuality of their own, which are an expression of their common collective life, which they cherish as their most valued possessions, and which form the strongest bond of union or uniformity among them.
The word “Hindu” might lead one to think that the unity is one of creed or faith. Unfortunately, or as some believe fortunately, it is not so. Hinduism is not a religion in the sense in which Buddhism, Muhammadanism and Christianity are religions. All the hundreds of tribes and castes of India, who are not Muhammadans or Christians are treated as Hindus; the aggregate of their traditions, beliefs and customs and institutions is called Hindu- _ism, though they may be mutually irreconcilable themselves. Frankly speaking, it is not possible to say definitely who is a Hindu and what is Hinduism. These questions ‘have been considered again and again by eminent scholars, and so far no satisfactory answer has been given. Hinduism has within itself all types of religion such as Theism, Atheism, Poly- theism, Adwaitism, Dwaitism, Saivism, Vaishnavism and so forth. It contains nature worship, ancestor worship, animal worship, idol worship, demon worship, symbol worship, self-worship, and the highest – god worship. Its conflicting philosophies will con- found any ordinary person. From barbarous practices and dark superstitions, up to the most mystic rites and sublime philosophies there is place for all gradations and varieties in Hinduism. Similarly among the Hindu population are found half barbarian wild tribes, and depressed classes and untouchables, along with cultured gentle natures and highly evolved souls, , “Though the Hindus are thus separated from other religious communities, it should not be imagined that they are united by a bond of a common system of doctrines. There is in fact no system of doctrines, no teacher, or school of teaching, no single god that is accepted by all the Hindus. Again no amount of deviation from the established doctrines, or disregard of any book or even of some customs, would cause a person to fall from Hinduism, that is become liable. to exclusion from the Hindu community.”’*
There are scholars who find sanctity in this vagueness, in the so-called universal character, in the absence of all restraints of form and scope, in this unique vacuity and brilliant disorganisation. The honest truth, however, seems to be that the various attempts made by successive teachers and kings in the past to restore order and some sort of uniformity have not succeeded to any considerable extent. The work has to be continued if the wild forest, in which good and bad things thrive in their natural freedom, is to be converted into an orderly well planned garden.. No doubt there is beauty and grandeur in the forest, but it is a beauty and granduer for which man can no more take credit than for that of the sun and the stars. It is not a question of ultimate
*Page 34 Essay on Hinduism, by S. V. Kelkar,
values at all; it is one of human needs and practical issues. If we want a garden, we have to do a good deal of clearing and planning and pruning. If the Hindus want to function as an organized nation along with the other nations of the world, as an independent nation in the midst of other independent nations, they will not be able to do it in their present disorganisation and chaos.
scriptures except a ( passed from mouth to mouth. Mr. Ardershir Sorab- jee has just remarked: “Their religion is a standing travesty of ancient Hinduisth, consisting as it does of rank idolatry mixed with superstition and fetishism of the most degrading type.. They believe in the worship of their innumerable Devas or good . spirits and the propitiation of an equally large number of demons and evil spirits, both of which they assume have their resting places on earth in their idols of stone and marble, gold and silver.” This is true as well of a major portion of the literate classes who accept the prevailing practices without thought or protest. What independent thinkers and -scholars have said and written about Hinduism represent their, aspirations, and what Hinduism ought to be rather than what it is. Many of them avoid all consideration of the truly representative institutions of the Hindus which alone can disclose the heart of the community. What then are those institutions of the present day which will enable one to understand the average Hindu mind best? “They are at least three in number: (1) The social structure represented by the caste ‘system, (2) The religious system of temples, and (3) the philosophical school represented
*Page 136, The Message of Kris hna. :
by the Mutts of Sannyasins. These three constitute the chief forces which hold the community together into some sort of unity and embody their hereditary culture more than anything else does. A study of these three as they are functioning at the present day, and probably nothing else, will disclose the true character of the cultural forces which govern the nation’s mind.
CASTE
The Hindus of India are divided into about three thousand castes and a much larger number of sub-castes, every one of which forms an exclusive group consisting of persons born of members of the group. Every child born of a Hindu becomes, by virtue of such birth and no other consideration whatsoever, a member of the caste and sub-caste of its parents. The members of one group are not allowed to intermarry or inter-dine with those of another group. Each group has a caste-name and a fixed place in the hierarchy of castes graded one above the other.. One born low cannot by any means rise to a higher caste status.
. The castes are quite different from the four Varnas contemplated by the ancient writers. They have nothing in common except that the castes have been recently brought under the old main heads or divisions into Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Sudra. Mr. S. V. Kelkar who has made a scientific study of the entire system of castes, says: “The doctrine of four Varnas, if properly understood, is a very healthy doctrine for any people. This doctrine does not support the caste system, but is antagonistic to it.’*But it is merely a doctrine, and history does not show that it was ever worked in practice. “The fact is that the fourfold castes were merely a
4 *Page 25, The History of Castes.
theoretical division of society to which the tribes and family groups were affiliated.’”*
Others have tried to compare the Eastern castes with the Western classes. They are as different as day and night. Classes with the spirit of prestige ‘and exclusiveness exist in one form or other in all societies, and the Hindus are no exception. There are classes among them in addition to castes: if the whole caste system goes, the class distinctions will still remain in their present form or in a modified form.
The divisions of the caste system are not based on any known principle. They are not racial in _ character, they do not represent separate professions; they do not denote cultural differences. No doubt the members of some groups have their hereditary professions. But the following of that profession will not make one a member of that group, nor will its abandonment cause his exclusion from the caste. Today castes are no more professional or cultural divisions than the administrative divisions such as villages, Taluks and districts of India. We have already seen how the caste movement was started when the priests set themselves up as Brahmans and refused to mingle with the other people. It became “a question of prestige for the rest to do likewise. Some of the Kshatriyas followed the example. But ‘until the rulers of India gave a general recognition to the theories of the Brahmans, the latter had little effect on the popular customs. The Brahmans might have clung to their monopolies and haughty exclusiveness because they advanced their interests; the rest of the Indian population never willingly accepted the Brahmanical dictates so long as they had the power to resist. When the Muhammadans and the English became the master of India, the caste rules
*Page 25, Hinduism and the Modern World, by K. M. Panikkar,
came to be adopted as the law of the Hindu people who had no alternative but to submit to them.
Once the principle of caste was publicly recognized and enforced by the state, each group wanted to establish its status and prestige by refusing to mingle with others around them. It was a regular competition for social distinction of some sort or other. When the census operations were first introduced a. similar. spirit manifested itself. It is said that in Travancore between the census of 1911 and 1921, 95 new caste groups came into prominence. _ Even the despised Pariahs considered it a privilege to treat some other community as lower in status than themselves, and the method of asserting a superior position was the refusal to intermarry or inter-dine. There was no principle or reason under- lying the formation of most of the present-day castes. Sometimes rivalry between leaders was the cause, at other times it was some silly custom, or -violation of a custom, or some myth which created a split. “One sub-division of a caste feels strong repulsion to another sub-division, because among the latter the use of tobacco is customary; two sections of-one caste do not intermarry and feel strong repulsion for each other because they use different kinds of shoes; two castes refuse to marry with each other to-day because their forefathers at one time quarrel- led over the boundaries of the village or over certain other questions, important or foolish. The primitive nations have always a very strong dislike for one another. Savage nations are sub-divided into an infinity of tribes which, bearing a cruel hatred towards each other, form no intermarriage even when their’ language springs from the same root, and only a small arm of a river or a group of hills separates their habitations.”* The writer has known instances
*Page 28, History of Caste,.by Kelkar.
of members of the same caste refusing to intermarry because they lived in two villages separated by three or four miles only in the same district of an Indian state. These rivalries are but remnants of the old tribal mentality. When a state gives its legal recognition to the foolishness of ignorant men, petty. aversions are magnified and perpetuated as castes. To such ridiculous extent and nicety has the caste feeling been developed in some places that there are persons to whom the touch of their wives and children is pollution and who will be outcaste if they eat food touched by the latter.
Some scholars have tried to read a racial significance into the caste divisions. Even the original division into four Varnas did not denote racial distinction, as the Brahmans, the Kshatriyas and the Vaishyas were all Aryans. Later on different foreign tribes have been indiscriminately admitted into the Hindu circle without any thought of racial characteristics. “In the whole book (Manu Shastra) there . is not a single expression which would indicate that “ our writer has any conception of what we may call race, and the readers of our text should take every care not to put into the word Arya, a meaning which modern philology has attached to the English word “Aryan.” …. “Whethera tribe or family was racially Aryan or Dravidian was a question which never troubled the people of India until foreign ‘scholars came in and began to draw the line.”* The new race theory and the racial persecutions in America, Germany and Africa have given a handle to Hindu orthodoxy to justify their caste dissensions.
Mr. Kelkar further proves that the castes are not supported by Hindu theology or even the Hindu Shastras. “The theology which the Hindus, especially the Brahmans, created’ belonged to various
*Page 82, History of Caste, by Kelkar,
schools. Some schools of theology were silent about castes, and the theories of the most orthodox school (Vedantic) discountenance the caste system in the most uncompromising manner.” –
“Not only have the theology and’ the Varna doctrines been opposed to the Hindu caste system,’ but so has been’ their Dharma philosophy. – What Dharma writers insist on is that everybody should perform the duties of his position (Varna). ‘This Dharma doctrine of the Hindus does not endorse the caste system.”’*
None of the later’ saints and teachers have _ supported the caste divisions. Some perhaps said nothing about them, but most of them have openly condemned the meaningless and ruinous restrictions. The first Sree Sankaracharya, the greatest of all orthodox Acharyas, preached uncompromising Advaitism, the spiritual unity of all creation, and admitted into his order of monks persons of all castes. Mahipati’s history of the saints contains the lives of about 100, saints. They include about 10 women and an equal number of Muhammadans, about 40 ~ non-Brahmans and an equal number of Brahmans. . Among the non-Brahmans saints there are all castes butchers, spinners, weavers, goldsmiths, barbers, mahars, kings, farmers; bankers and soldiers. ‘All of them spoke against the unnatural social barriers – which disfigured Hindu society and violated the rudimentary teachings of true religion. We have already 1foted that the’ sixty-three Saivite saints belonged to all classes from the highest to the lowest. True Saivism recognises no caste. It will be no exaggeration to say that no great religious teacher of India from the most ancient days down to the present has failed to express his abhorrence of the wicked and foolish caste distinctions.
*Pago 25, History of Caste, by Kelkar.
