30 ~ The Caste System, the Untouchables, and the Rawness of Reality.

The Other Side of India. Part 2.

I was fortunate to meet and share moments with many Indians, from different places and social spheres. Through these experiences, I got to appreciate the way they live. Their mood and that parallel way of living, in which their main expectations are not driven by the increase of material wealth, the frenzy for productivity, or "growth" in the same terms we see it. It seems they have a different set of priorities.

I feel that – those who can, of course – take care of their time. They preserve their moments of leisure, those small and precious moments of peace, with an air of relaxation and nonchalance, laughing in the face of our fast-paced rhythm and our constant rush to get to places we don’t even know we’re going. Those moments, the simple ones in life.

An Italian dolce far niente philosophy, but with their own style – something like: Go with the flow, no stress, and Shanti, shanti. And so, their ideology, their patience, and their movements tend to be very relaxed. There is always time for a Chai, and they carry an almost enviable ease about life, which, paradoxically, doesn’t seem to extend to their driving or public behavior. Perhaps that's where they pour all their chaos.

–You have to think less– Robin, my Indian friend from Dharamkot, used to tell me –You think too much. You have to think less, you will be more happy... and every time he saw me again, he would ask the same thing: –Are you thinking too much again? And just like that, he served as a gentle reminder for my mental peace.

The realistic answer was almost always: –Yes, of course, I can’t help it, it’s in my nature – but I would always reply with a surprised, self-assured face, saying, No, yet he was always right.

Sometimes I felt that, with their hearty doses of spicy Indian food, their essential chai, their revered gods, their rituals, and their temples, it seemed – at least from the outside – that it was enough. It seemed that money slipped by them a bit, and you can see that in the way they are, in the way they give, in the way they receive – and in the way they don't receive, too. You can feel it, and luckily, it’s contagious, making us rethink a few things.

Is that why, once you come to India, you always come back? Like a first love...

Within the religious spheres, Sadhus – the Hindu spiritual practitioners – adopt a life of renunciation, total detachment, and austerity, choosing a life of meditation. Many in temples, others in caves, in the forest, as close as possible to the Ganga, or moving from village to village with their few possessions: their twilight-orange robes, a metal lunchbox, and a few blankets to sleep on. They survive on the offerings that people provide and dedicate their lives to the fulfillment of their practices, sometimes extreme.

Temples and also many ashrams often provide support to those who cultivate their spiritual world and to those most in need. They offer community meals and help with basic needs for those who come to them. So, it’s common to see small trucks on the streets of India distributing food from huge metal buckets, surrounded by lines of people, and that's when you realize the abundance of India. Food is rarely lacking.

It seems that surviving isn't that difficult, that everyone finds their own way. In Rishikesh, I saw a woman without both hands, and yet, she is an artist. She paints with her feet. Yes, as you heard, she holds the brushes between her toes, and not only that, she paints a world that shows you anything is possible. She tells you, without speaking, that we complain about having so much, but instead of complaining, she transforms. She shows you what you would believe to be impossible. That, too, is Indian Magic.

"Everything is possible for the one who believes," says the Bible. If you’re fortunate enough to believe...

Some find solutions. Others, with their bodies also mutilated, sitting by the sides of the roads, show you that not everything has a solution, that not everyone has access to one, and that perhaps the solutions they have left are somewhere else. Not everyone has the same rights, and that, too, is part of the reality.

As if this weren’t enough, between the economic and religious situation – or the product of both – a particular caste system intertwines, and here we begin to add complexity to a static and archaic social regime based on a religious legend written in the sacred Hindu scriptures. An underground world, seemingly invisible to us foreigners, but surprisingly, it still plays a role in many spaces today. And this is when we delve a bit deeper into their culture and begin to perceive the social differences and the inequity of rights that at first seemed invisible.

This is when the seems start to be questioned, and the differences begin to stand out regarding what each individual is allowed or not allowed to do. An Indian friend explained a bit about the caste system, which is not an easy topic to delve into with everyone here. It’s still a very controversial and conservative topic – still somewhat taboo – that triggers all sorts of responses and reveals the most intrinsic harshness of religion.

He told me that this hierarchical social division originated many years ago, almost 1500 years before Christ. The caste system is mentioned in the Vedas, the oldest texts that form the foundation of Hindu religion, considered to be of divine origin: it is said that they were heard directly by the sages, and therefore they carry eternal truths. (1) In these texts appears the creation myth, where it is said that the Hindu population arises from the body of the Primordial God, Purusha, the original, unique, and omnipresent divinity that constitutes everything.

From his body arise the different castes: from Purusha’s head come the Brahmins, the teachers and intellectuals who form the top of the social hierarchy. From the God’s arms come the Kshatriyas, the warriors and rulers. From his legs come the Vaishyas, the merchants, and from his feet, the Shudras, who dedicated themselves to servile work.

Outside the caste system – and outside of society as well – are the Dalits and the so-called Untouchables. They don’t belong to any caste; rather, this classification includes all those who fall outside the others, thus, the impure.

The term in Hindi means "broken, crushed, oppressed" – and as I write this, a tear falls from my heart. – They are the pariahs, the marginalized, the excluded, and those who, in the name of this system, have suffered "justified" and constant human rights abuses. Murders, rapes, and massacres based on a supposed “social disposition” – if such a combination of words together made any sense.

They have been excluded from society, having to form their own temples and communities because they couldn’t mix with the other castes.Of course, they couldn’t marry anyone from another caste either, so the total destiny of their life was completely determined. Static and fatalistic.

In that context, the possibility of transformation didn’t exist – just like in all the castes – but in this case, the desolation was extreme. They were condemned.

The caste system itself was "officially" abolished about 70 years ago by the Indian Constitution of 1950, partly driven by the revolutionary ideas of equality of rights from Mahatma Gandhi. Among other things, it aimed to end this situation of discrimination and inequity by abolishing Untouchability, seeking to eliminate the violation of human rights inflicted on the aberrantly named Untouchables.

The truth is that, while in many urban sectors, thanks to social struggles, the situation has changed for many, for thousands, it is still preserved. The ideologies, practices, customs, and entrenched mental configurations are often the hardest to move.

In many rural or religious villages, among scholars, teachers, and more traditional Brahmins (priests) – paradoxically? – these rigid and disastrous principles still persist. The higher castes still hold the monopoly of privileges, deepening an unequal system, exclusion of rights, and social and labor discrimination, which, in my eyes, is violent and heartless. The paradoxes of religion and how it deeply installs itself in social consciousness seem to be no exception in India or anywhere in the world.

In many cities, many of them began to call themselves only by their first names, attempting to erase the mark of a surname that labels them and keeps them immobilized in their conditions – and lack of conditions. In the state of Bihar in particular, it was one of the places where this movement emerged. I imagine that due to their humble conditions, their majority membership in the lower castes, and the urgent need for remedy and forgetfulness.

The term Untouchable had shocked me deeply since I first heard it, but it wasn’t until I spoke with Rameez, much later after arriving in India, that I was able to understand it and, most importantly, dimension it: Untouchables, they cannot be touched.

–Not even their own shadow could touch the bodies of the higher castes, that’s why they were called Untouchables. In many places, they used to carry a broom tied to their backs to erase their own footprints, so no one would even walk in their steps...

Yes, what you read... I couldn’t believe what I was hearing either. I stood there with my mouth open for a long while trying to understand the unthinkable, trying to grasp such an atrocity. It just seemed abominable.

–They couldn’t even approach the other castes. Their job was to work with excrement, literally cleaning the latrines of the higher classes and the waste of other humans – something only they did. They also worked in crematoriums, collected garbage, and removed dead animals. They simply weren’t allowed to work in anything else.

A shiver ran through my body. It still runs through me every time I think about it.

The question that traverses thousands of years of history and the cruelest systematic brutalities:

How could and can one be so heartless and cruel in the name of “God”?

In the large cities, things have changed. In thousands of villages, in the humble, remote houses of vast India, parts of these atrocities continue to exist.

How wrong we human beings are…Broken, as the term suggests, is how a community should end up after such tremendous unconsciousness.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

As I mentioned before, these lines are an attempt to think together about a very, very complex topic. It is a lived approach to a controversial, broad, and difficult subject to address and understand.India is vast, and there are thousands of different realities coexisting, where everything intertwines. This is just a sketch to show – also – this reality and to allow us to think and open up other questions.

If you are interested in the topic, I’ll share a book that was recommended to me: “Annihilation of Caste” by B.R. Ambedkar, one of the greatest defenders of the rights of the Dalits and the principal author of the Indian Constitution of '50.

(1) The Rigveda, Yajurveda, Samaveda, and Atharvaveda. Prayers, hymns, formulas, mantras, and the heart of all Hindu theology and spiritual practices. After its oral transmission, it was formalized in writing in the Manusmriti, one of the most important sacred texts in Hindu culture ↩