Some Indians living in US feel that for an average American, India is holy cow, caste system, over-population and malaria. But I do not see anything wrong with these views since the Indian society is on a peculiar line of its own. What else is there to understand about India under the present circumstances?
We are not talking about the past golden history of Dravidian Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro civilization in the pre-Aryan period, of course! It appears that India cannot survive without one Gandhi or another. It was “Mahatma Gandhi” first, and now Indira Gandhi, soon it will be Rajiv Gandhi (could have been Sanjay Gandhi) or Menaka Gandhi and then a little (Rahul) Gandhi and so on. So what is wrong for an American to think that India is Gandhi! I do not see anything wrong in equating the holy cow to India or the Indian (Hindu) faith. Several innocent people have been killed in the name of the holy cow in India. Vinoba Bhave said he will kill himself if cow slaughter is not stopped. But at the same time he did not even open his holy mouth when unfortunate Untouchables of India were killed, burnt alive, their women raped, their children butchered and thrown alive into the fire. So to a Hindu – and thus to an Indian – the life of a cow is much more important than that of a human being. In the recent years, the holy cow has become more holy than ever before, and I will not be surprised to see these holy cows start wandering around pretty soon in this country too, looking at the number of Hindu temples being built. No matter how highly educated a Hindu is, he still firmly believes the superstitious and stupid customs of the Hindu religion without any rational thinking and practises them faithfully, and more so blindly. And as long as this continues to happen, the holy cow will be well and alive!
Regarding caste system, some Hindus living here say they reject the system, but they practice caste in their private life. They come from the upper caste and have never suffered the inhumane practices of untouchability. Caste system – of which untouchability is the nucleus – is the foundation on which Hinduism is built. Untouchables of India today present the world’s goriest form of Apartheid, before which the South African racial segregation and the other Black problems of US and UK pale into insignificance. Caste system of the Hindu religion, and thus its untouchability, is an unique phenomenon unknown to humanity and mankind in any other part of the world. Nothing like this is to be found in any other society – primitive, ancient, or modern. J. H. Hutton in his book, Caste in India, says that “Caste is an exclusively Indian phenomenon. No comparable institution to be seen elsewhere has anything like the complexity, elaboration and rigidity of caste in India. It is virtually inconceivable that the association of circumstances necessary to produce so complex an institution as caste is in India could ever be found in more than one area of the earth’s surface”.
Has mass or higher education, modern living condition, better communication and wider world exposure made Hindus to think that caste system is a barbarous system and all men are created equal, and thus the caste system is a shame to Hindus as a whole and need to be eradicated from the face of the earth? No! The practice of caste has attained a new life, a new vigor and the Hindus – both literates and illiterates, seem to believe more in the teachings of Hinduism which is based on caste hierarchy. There is more killing, raping, burning, oppression, discrimination and exploitation of the unfortunate outcastes by the Hindus in the name of their religion in recent times than ever before. The caste system sanctioned by Hinduism has created the Untouchables, and today about 20% of the Indian population is Untouchables – about 150 millions or 6 times the population of Canada. These people even today are not allowed to drink water in several places, not allowed to enter the Hindu temples and streets where the upper caste Hindus live, and forced to live in slums outside the village boundary. These people are forced to carry human excreta and dead animal on their head. The minute these people ask any questions about the system and their rights as beings, they are crushed, killed, burnt alive and their women raped. They live in constant fear of attack by the Hindus. Their good clothing or good living causes serious concern and resentment among Hindus. Very few of the outcastes struggled against all odds and managed to come up in life and thus started competing with the rest of the Indians (Hindus), and these upper castes cannot even digest this – and hence, the barbarous atrocities and brutalities on the outcastes. Ruth Glass, a British sociologist, narrated some of the atrocities on Dalits in a recent article in the Monthly Review and says these incidents are probably merely the tip of iceberg.
To top it off, I wish to recall a news item which came in India Tribune (Feb. 1, 1982) under “Reign of Police Terror”. In Goliagarh, Raigarh district, an Adivasi woman 45 of age and mother of six children was beaten to her feet by police in front of a magisterial inquiry. While the Adivasi villagers gathered outside, this lady was stripped and chilly powder was applied to her genitals. The police then tortured her with a stick. The lady was then forced to drink the urine of three men and a man was made to heap the ultimate humiliation upon her. Then she was raped and all this time, the police were also laughing and asking obscene questions. Though she was close to losing her consciousness, the police made a man strike a match and singe the lady’s pubic hair. After this incident, a man was paraded naked from his hut to the village school and the police applied chilly powder to his anus and later tried to force in petrol from a pump. India Tribune called this police brutality a “modern sickness”. In India, it is the law of the Hindu caste system which rules the country, or in other words “law of the jungle” (India Tribune, Oct. 1, 1981).
The latest news of the police merciless and sadistic torture and brutality comes from TN, where in a period of five years, 190 undertrials died in prison due to inhuman treatment such as injury to testicles. The large majority of those who died in custody were poor villagers and slum dwellers, who belong to downtrodden communities (India Today, Sept. 30; 1982). Some Indians here think that it is a misconception of the American to believe that India is nothing but poverty, holy cow, caste system and over population. I wonder what else is there for India to be proud of. Well, really they should include barbarism, brutality, superstition and highest order of hypocrisy to the above list. Some people say India has skyscrapers, computers and other advanced technologies. But what is the use? The majority of the Indians can’t even smell the fruits of these advancement, leave alone get to eat them. The poor Indians are still sleeping on the road side, and still fighting with dogs to eat the thrown-away leftover food. The lower strata of the population still is treated as social exile and discriminated, exploited and oppressed by the small upper castes who seem to enjoy all the good things that India supposed to have achieved in the way of modern technological achievements and in the name of democracy.
One of my American friends who recently visited India on an exchange program describes India as a land of “dictatorship democracy”, meaning that the democracy in India is for the conveniences of the wealthy and for those people who are in the upper strata in social and religious hierarchy. The “poor” Indians have been and are always in the same low place in the Indian system – suffering, starving and oppressed, suppressed, exploited and tortured. Why is it that Indians do not change for the better? According to the British High Commissioner in Delhi, “To a Hindu, the truth is usually that which most suits his convenience at any given moment. There is little place in Hindu ethos for truthfulness, unselfishness, social service or moral courage” (India Tribune, April 3, 82). This observation speaks for itself. The bottom line is that the Hindus will not change their views on anything other than what Hinduism teaches them. Of, course, it teaches them only, “I”, “me”, “myself” “my family” and nothing like compassion for the other man, leave alone helping the other man or at least not to harm him . But Hindu religion teaches to discriminate people by their birth and to treat a section of the society like animals. If Hindu religion would have taught the simple human values, why should a tiny lady from Albania by the name of Mother Teresa should have to come to India to help the India’s destitute? Why is that all the early medical, educational and philanthropic happened to be Christian origin? The Hindu gurus and swamis have hardly enough time to enjoy the luxuries of life and amassing wealth and driving Cadillacs! Why go so far? The so-called elite and educated Indians in this country who talk from roof tops about “Indianism”, helping motherland, patriotic to India etc, waste their millions of dollars in building temples here. Don’t you think that these huge sums of money could help the millions of poor in India ? Instead, the Indians here spend their money in stones and cement, and on the other hand, the American public sends their money to feed the Indian poor! No wonder an observer calls it, the Indians here are only “literates” and not “educated” (India Tribune, July 31, 82).
How could anyone call India a modern state when some of her 100 million subjects have been treated as sub-humans and who have been forced to exist outside the pale of human society? Where else brutality is used as an institution of social control? Where else, but in the traditional India is it that a social order operates by “blaming the victims”? Where else superstition is the order of the day and the upper strata keeps the lower strata poorest of the poor in the name of religion and democracy? India may be a nation of ‘great’ progress; but so long as the progress does not reach the millions of poor Indians, what good does it do to talk about it? Yes, the elites enjoy the fruits of modernization and so they have a vested interest to talk about it. The Indian culture and tradition always talk about “self”, and thus as long as “he” is happy, yes everything is fine and great. Poverty is a disease that every nation wants to eliminate, but I am not sure whether Indians feel that way. Indians are basically violent, and hypocritical set of humans who care least about the other human beings. The past and the present are not woven together like colorful marble, but it really smacks of poverty, blind religious superstition, brutality, discrimination, exploitation, torture and as a whole outright abuse. A small percentage of Indians enjoy every thing; but for the poor, it is a permanent hell, legitimatized in the name of religious and traditional values. The Indian society, to a certain extent is a brutal one, despite the myths of non-violence and passivity. Most horrendous forms of caste tyranny can flourish with impunity only in the Indian society. The new ethic in India reads as follows: “Thou shalt crucify thy neighbour for the fast buck” (India Today, September 30, 1982). It also says that the citizens of India continue to believe that caste bestows special rights on an individual. Untouchability has long ago been ‘abolished’, but caste prejudice is one of the most insidious cankers eating into the country’s vitals. (Sept. 15, 1982).
