Fighting Caste in North India
The Lahore Letter (Lahore 21st June 1929)
Dear Sir,
The “Revolt” has interested us greatly. Its articles represent the true spirit of Self-respect, which the Non-Brahmins and others, the victims of the iniquities of caste system should imbibe in them. We are especially glad to note that the Self- respect movement is a veritable crusade against the present day institution of Varnashram or caste system as we call it in the North. We have been giving currency to your articles in the “Kranti,” and you will find one or two articles translated into “Urdu” and inserted in the next issue of our magazine.
You will be interested to know that there are very potent forces working in the North to uproot the evil of caste system and there is remarkable awakening among those who have been suffering under the iron heels of this injurious system. The people are realizing as never before the havoc done by the caste system and when these ripples of dissatisfaction combine with the waves rising in the South, they are destined to take the form of a huge storm, which will sweep all these unnatural barriers put up between man and man, and the Hindu society will become a homogenous whole.
It is the misfortune of India that such leaders as Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya and others do not see the danger, and are still harping the tunes that suited the times a century age. In order to make the North and South join together in this important task of demolishing the birth distinctions which are eating the vitals of Hindu society, we have decided to start a fortnightly paper in Hindi, which will be of the same type as the “Revolt” and we believe it will prove to be a real link between your movement and ours…
In the best of bonds,
I am yours sincerely, Secretary, Jat Pat Torak Mandal, Lahore.
Revolt, 30 June 1929
Social Persecution (By Har Bhagwan, Lahore)
People of the North are not so conservative in social matters as those of the South. The incessant inroads of the foreigners from the North-West, which culminated in the Muhammadan conquests, and the consequent migration of the Brahmins to the South, have been responsible for making the forces of orthodoxy somewhat imbecile. The effects of the superiority of the Brahmins are therefore not so terrible in the Punjab as in other Provinces. There are places – especially towns – where the cobra of caste distinctions has been made quite impotent, but the citadels of orthodoxy are also not wanting, where organized opposition is offered whenever a spirited soul ventures to break away form the fetters of caste.
Recently two inter-caste marriages have been celebrated under the auspices of the Jat-Pat Torak Mandal, Lahore, one at Chiniot Dirstict Jhang, (Punjab), and the other at Lahaksar, District Sharanapur (U.P.). The opposition was so strong at Chiniot that the parties concerned have had to smuggle through to Lahore for getting the marriage consecrated. At Lhaksar social persecution grew so worse and even fatal that the marriage ceremony was performed under Police vigilance. At Chiniot the brother of the girl, who is a doctor, was subjected to severe persecution. He was not only expelled from his caste brotherhood but was also forced to vacate his rented shop. Hindus did not give him any place for carrying on his business, for which he was willing to pay any amount of rent. When a shop was secured from a Muhammadan, the Hindus were audacious enough to have a theft expected and his things carried away. But our hero was not cowed down, and we are glad he is still suffering the persecution patiently and cheerfully. The bridegroom on the other hand has not yet been advised to return to his home for fear that his new wedded wife might be snatched away from him, and he is in exile for over a month now.
At Lhaksar, Mr. Vidya Brat, the only guardian of his sister was threatened by the caste Panchayat to dissuade from marrying her out of his caste, and thereby to save himself and the bridegroom party from bloodshed. After the culprits were bound down and the police had placed a picket at the village our courageous friend was able to have the marriage celebrated, with full-pledged boycott from his relatives and caste people.
These spirited souls are the members of the Jat-Pat Torak Mandal, Lahore, and we are proud for the determination and capacity for patient suffering that they have exhibited. The movement for caste destruction is sure to flourish with the increase of interest among young men and women to purposely break caste in marriage, and we are happy that our members are made of that stuff. These persecutions will disappear with the multiplication of inter-caste marriages, and even if they persist they will add fuel to the fire. The foundations of orthodoxy are shaken, and I can visualize the day when the North and South will combine in their effort to purge India of the evil of caste system.
Revolt, 25 August 1929
Wanted: A Social Revolution (By Mr. L. Gobind Ram Khana M.A., LL.B.)
Time and again have I ruminated over the destiny of my community; and this has always resulted in bringing before my mental vision the doleful picture of a mighty nation, the custodian of a splendid culture conceived and evolved in thousands of years, crumble into decadence. I have always tried to shake off this dismal vision, but in spite of best efforts have always failed to do so. Sometimes a tiny ray of hope has appeared to silver this lowering cloud, but only to disappear as soon as it loomed on any mental horizon. Painful though it be, I have seen the Hindu community struggling in the throes of death. The activities of the Arya Samaj to regenerate Hinduism and the efforts of the All-India Hindu Mahasabha with its ramifications all over India to consolidate the Hindus and infuse new life into them, have appeared to me in this mood of despondency the flickering of a wick close to its extinction.
The present Hindu community looks like a mere skeleton of its old self, the vitals whereof have been eaten into by a canker which has had its seat in its heart for untold of centuries. One can easily see what this canker is. It is none other than the caste system, which is the most peculiar institution that the Aryans settling in Bharatvarsha built up, but which carried in itself the elements of dissolution of their own society. I wonder very much if the caste system ever did any good to the Hindu community, as far as I can look into the past with the aid of what little knowledge of history I possess. I cannot see that the stratifications of Hindu society into layers of rigid and inflexible castes was ever of any benefit to the society. In Hindu history we find a pristine fluid caste system of the Aryans gradually solidified into rigid classes. We also find vestiges of struggles on the part of lower caste to shake off the dominance of the priestly classes, but it appears that though these struggles at times relaxed the grip of the dominant priestly classes, this grip always became tighter over society afterwards.
It was perhaps the lengthy and complex rituals attendant upon all important religious and social functions, which gave the Brahmins a firm hold over the other classes. But whatever the reason, one bad example led to another and every class began to assert its superiority over those below it in social hierarchy. Commingling of blood, inter-dining and even free inter-communication between different classes of people stopped and all those forces which go to create a strong nationality thus ceased to work. Bonds of sympathy between different classes of people weakened, and class arrogance increased. Lord Buddha saw how detrimental this class arrogance was to the attainment of highest spirituality and final bliss. He raised his powerful voice against caste system, and preached religious and social equality and the element of social democracy was for the first time introduced into two spheres. But with the decline of Buddhism, the evil genius of the Hindu society reared up its head again and society relapsed into its old division. These divisions multiplied, now we are faced with the unifying spectacle of castes divided into sub-castes and sub-sub-castes infinitum and ad nauseum.
Even a slight insight into Indian History will show what disastrous effects this caste system has had on the political life of the Hindus. The analysis of the cause of the political subjugation of the Hindus by foreign invaders will bring into prominence two things: firstly over-refinement of the masses and their aversion to fight secondly, the caste system. Otherwise such an awfully speedy subjugation is inexplicable considering that India, was teeming with millions, whereas the invaders came comparatively in very small numbers and were faced with almost insuperable natural barriers, lofty mountains, impenetrable forests and mighty rivers. This is an astounding fact. No other great nation was so easily conquered. The history of our foreign invasion is a history of great humiliation and shame brightened up only by flashes here and here and there of heroism of the Rajputs. Rajputs were the only fighting class, and even they were by no means united among themselves.
Whenever, therefore, a Rajput army was defeated the whole population lay at the mercy of the invaders because the existing caste system had prepared no other class of people to put up a fight. That defeat of one small army of the Kshatriya class was taken as a providential defeat of the entire kingdom.
It is wrong to suppose that the conversion of the millions of Hindus to Islam was entirely due to the force employed by the Muhammadan rulers and invaders. The Muhammadan invaders were no doubt fired by enthusiasm of proselytisation and made large conversions at the point of sword, but all the conversion that has taken place during the last eight centuries cannot be ascribed to sheer force. The Muhammadan political domination practically ceased to exist when on the ruins of the Moghal Empire, the Mahartta kingdoms rose up in Deccan and Central India and the British power reared its head in the Punjab. But conversion has never ceased. Unpalatable thought it may be, rugged truth must be owned, that it was because of the rotten social system of the Hindus and the power of assimilation of the Muhammadans that a steady stream of Hindu converts into Islam has gone on. With the ascendancy of British power, forcible conversions had stopped but did the conversion of the Hindus stop therewith? Let us not console ourselves with the current idea that the conversion of the Hindus into Islam was the result of sheer brutal force. Self-complacency is mortal’s greatest enemy. We must shake it off if we want to get at the root of the evil. To my mind compulsory widowhood, social inequality among different classes of the Hindus, and almost inhuman and barbarous treatment which we have accorded to those, whom we are pleased to denominate as submerged classes have combined to drive millions of Hindus into the fold of Islam. This conversion is more likely to increase in near future than to decrease, until the circumstances are entirely changed. The spirit of equality is stalking abroad. All over the world the forces of democracy are leveling down differences and are creating equal opportunity for mankind by razing down barriers between man and man. India is no longer an isolated country, and the world forces cannot fail to react upon its social system. The so-called depressed classes have also begun to feel the touch of the ‘wind’ and their breasts are now heaving with new aspirations. Their craving for an equal and more humanitarian treatment has increased, and if their appetite is not satisfied, while living as members of the Hindu Society, they are bound to seek this satisfaction in another society. The result is clearly the dissolution, and extinction of the Hindus. Because there is very little likelihood that the Hindus will mend their system. They have had during the past and they are receiving in the present most glaring warnings of the fact, but they have taken no heed. The Hindus are hopelessly lost to all reform. Every reform movement in India only succeeded for a time and ultimately dashed itself into pieces like breakers against a rock of stone. Buddha, Chaitanya, Nanak, Kabir, Ramdas, Eknath, Namdeva and all the saints have from time to time placed before Hindus the idea of equality of mankind but their teaching have failed to transform the Hindu Society. The Hindus seem to be possessed of such a perverse mentality that to change it seems a hopeless task. Therefore, I say that the Hindu Society is running to its inevitable course of destruction.
Reform being impossible, the only chance of salvation of the Hindu society which I can conceive of, lies in a radical revolution. I wish there were existing in India some great man, who forgetful of distracting problems and fired with a single-minded enthusiasm to purge the Hindu society of this corrosive evil of caste, would take upon himself, the task of gathering up the forces of revolt against the supercilious and haughty upper class Hindus. I wish Mahatma Gandhi had taken upon himself this task, because this is the mission which requires faith in equality, courage, fearlessness, imperviousness to public censure and fortitude against stormy opposition – qualities which Mahatma Gandhi possesses in pre-eminence. I wish I could myself be a standard bearer of his revolution. I wish I could engender in the heart of the people of the depressed classes, the untouchables, a spirit of revolt, a spirit of the true Satyagraha, to enable them to force the hands of the Brahmins and other high class Hindus to renounce their unholy prerogatives and see eye to eye with their trodden brethren on a footing of equality. For, why should these slighted people beg of the so-called upper classes a concession for more kind consideration? Why should they whine and fold their hands and supplicate in all humility to be allowed to draw water from a well, or for such small concessions, which we do not deny even to cattle?
Equality is their right and if the Hindu society is slow to acknowledge their rights, these rights must be wrested from their hands by force. Social revolution therefore is the only means of salvation, if it could be brought about. Will my voice reach the haughty Brahmins of the South who regard themselves as heaven-born and the rest of the humanity contemptible creatures, even below the rank of beasts, not only whose touch but even the shadow of most of who pollutes their sacerdotal selves? For them the whole humanity is divisible into two sections. Brahminic and Non-brahminic, the former being the most sacred beings and the latter made of a far inferior stuff and not fit to touch them of their garments. Is this contempt for mankind not enough to provoke the wrath of heavens? Hindu India is rightly punished for the sins of such supercilious people as these. And the heavens will not be appeased till we succeed in pulling down these false priests from their high pedestals.
Revolt, 24th November 1929
Caste (Jat Pat Torak Conference)
Among the many conferences that were held under the auspices of the Indian National Congress at Lahore, the Jat Pat Torak Conference held under the auspices of the Jat Pat Torak Mandal (Society for breaking caste) deserves our closer attention. This conference whose proceedings we shall publish in detail, later on, and whose resolutions appear elsewhere in this issue, is certainly the most important of the conferences held during the Congress session. When we say this is an important one, we mean it is so, not merely, because its creed of the destruction of caste is also the chief creed of our Self-respect movement, but there is a general feature in the Conference itself which should not be passed over by us. It is almost a hackneyed saying that “a man is known by the company he keeps”. It was only two years back that the same “All India” Congress, during its session at Madras saw its own votaries holding a Varnashramite Conference at Madras. The same Congress, with a mere change of place from our “cultured” presidency to northern most Lahore, has changed its “colour” (Varnam) so suddenly, and so wonderfully that it has allowed the holding of a conference (Jat Pat Torak) entirely opposed to the principle of “Varnam” i.e., caste. This event will give some idea to our North Indian comrades, of the social condition in the South, and of the way in which the wind is blowing in South India.
We remember in this connection, Mrs. Sarojini’s (Naidu) famous tribute to the “pioneers of liberty” here, that “the South Indian Brahmin is as proud and arrogant as the Englishman”. We are sure, our renowned poetess had in her mind nothing but the “pride and arrogance” of caste and colour. The Jat Pat Torak Conference reveals another truth, namely, that more depends upon the manipulators of events than upon the events themselves. If the Madras Congress had only shown its disapproval of its votaries holding Varnashramite Conference, then there would have been no Congress at all. Similarly it is no wonder, if the Lahore Congress had not allowed the Jat Pat Torak Conference, there would have been no Congress at all in Lahore. This is why we observe that the event is important from many aspects.
Before proceeding to the resolutions, we wish to make a few observations to our readers in the South, about the working of the Jat Pat Torak Mandal itself. The Mandal is working wholeheartedly for the destruction of caste, which it believes, and rightly believes to be the only way to national unity and solidarity. This mission it carries through its Urdu monthly “The Kranti”, (of which we had had occasion to write in these columns more than once) which is published with impressive illustrations and instructive articles, and through the publication of frequent pamphlets in English and Urdu. In practical achievements, the Mandal, under the able guidance of its President and Secretary seeks to carry out its noble mission by the encouragement of inter-caste marriages and inter-dining. As such, it is needless further to point out to our readers the importance of the Mandal in general, to our country, and in particular, to our movement. With the full assurance of writing more upon the Mandal and its achievements, on a future occasion, we wish to make a few observations upon the resolutions.
The second resolution “calling upon all kinds of Hindu organisations to include in their programme of work the discouragement of present caste system and encouragement of inter-caste marriages”, is one that needs the careful attention of all the various Leagues and Associations. In this connection we cannot but refer to the shameful action of the “biggest political organisation in India”, in not having allowed Mr. R. K. Shanmugam to table a similar resolution in the Subjects Committee of the Congress held at Madras. That the caste system has been the “generous gift” of the priestly class and that it is still being nurtured by the same community with the help of the numerous puranas, and religious texts, needs no repetition here. So it is evident for the reformer wherein the caste has its origin, and where exactly the axe of reform is to be laid.
The third resolution “calling upon all unmarried young men and women to hive up the consideration of caste while entering into matrimonial alliances”, is a wholesome advice that should be immediately taken up by the younger generation of India. For, the responsible work of breaking up the barriers of caste has devolved upon the shoulders of the young, for it is they who are going to reap the consequences of the past actions of their forefathers. It is time therefore, that the voice of youths gives a ready response to the call of the motherland, in getting rid of the untold social evils existing in our country.
The next resolution of forming a committee to “introduce a Bill in the Legislative Assembly for legalising inter-caste marriages” is fundamentally the most important of the resolutions passed in the Conference. For, very recently we heard in some quarters, vile attempts made by the interested and affected few, for illegalising inter-caste marriages conducted under self-respect methods. To legalise such marriages which are increasing in numbers, it is essential that a law is immediately enacted in order to save the worry of undergoing the tedious and undesirable task of registration.
The fifth and sixth resolutions “advising Hindus of all classes to abstain from mentioning their caste at the time of the census operation and urging upon the Government the necessity of framing the Census Law in such a way as not to make it obligatory on any person to give his caste at the time of census operations” are resolutions ventilating more or less our own opinion on the matter. For we have a mind not only to ask the self-respectors, as far as possible, not to give their castes in the forthcoming Census, but also to declare that they are not Hindus but that they are either Self-respectors, Rationalists or Free thinkers. We insist upon giving up the name “Hindu” because, it is in the first place a fabulous name, having no sane origin nor meaning behind it. Then secondly, the term “Hindu” itself is synonymous with the divisions of caste, and so inseparable are both, that the one vanishes of its own accord, when the other is done away with. Hence we not only applaud such resolutions but also wish the Jat Pat Torak Mandal co-operates with us in bringing about the above aims to practical achievements. While extending our hearty congratulations to the founders of the Mandal and the organisers of the Conference, we promise our warm support also in the noble and generous task that they have pledged themselves to do.
Revolt, 19 January 1930
