AMBEDKAR: WHO WEAKEND THE HINDU SOCIETY ?

How can a country be defended if its army cannot be increased in the hour of its peril? It is not Buddha who, as is often alleged. weakened Hindu society by his gospel of non- violence. It is the Bramhmanic theory of Chaturvarna that has been responsible not only for the defeat but for the decay of Hindu society. Some of you will take offense at what I have said about the demoralizing effect of the Hindu socio-religious ideal on Hindu society. But what is the truth? Can the charge be denied? Is there any society in the world which has unapproachables, unshadowables, and unseeables? Is there any society which has got a population of Criminal Tribes? Is there a society in which there exists today primitive people, who live in jungles, who do not know even to clothe themselves? How many do they count in numbers? Is it a matter of thousands ? I wish they numbered a paltry few. The tragedy is that they have to be counted in millions. millions of Untouchables. milions of Criminal Tribes, millions of Primitive Tribes! One wonders whether the Hindu civilization is civilization of in- famy? This is about the ideal. Turn now to the state of things as it existed when Ranade came on the scene. It is impossible to realize now the state of degradation they had reached when the British came on the scene and with which the Refouners like Ranade were faced. Let me begin with the condition of the intellectual class. The rearing and guiding of a civilization must depend upon its intellectual class-upon the lead given by the Brahmins. Under the old Hindu Law the Brahmin enjoyed the benefit of the clergy and not to be hanged even if he was guilty of murder, and the East India Company allowed him the privilege till 1817. That is no doubt because he was the salt of the Earth. Was there any salt left in him? His profession had lost all its nobility. He had become a pest. The Brahmin systematically preyed on society and profiteered in Religion. The Puranas and Shastras which he manufactured in tons are treasure trove of sharp practices which the Brahmins employed to befool, beguile and swindle the the common mass of poor, illiterate and superstitious Hindus. It is impossible in this address to give references to them. I can only refer to the coercive measures which the Brahmins had sanctified as proper to be employed against the Hindus to the encashment of their rights and privileges. Let those who want to know read the preamble to Regulation XXI of 1795 According to it whenever a Brahmin wan ted to get anything which could not be willingly got from his victim, he resorted to various coercive practices-lacerating his own body with knives and razors, of threatening to swallow some poison were the usual tricks he practised to carry out his selfish purposes. There were other ways employed by the Brahmin to coerce the Hindus which were as extraordinary as they were shameless. A common practice was the erection in front of the house of his victim of the koorha circular enclosure in which a pile of wood was placed-within the enclosure an old woman was placed ready to be burnt in the koorh if his object wes not granted. The second devise of such a kind was the placing of his women and children in the sight of his victim and threaten to behead them. The third was the Dhurne starving on the doorstep of the victim. This is nothing Brahmins had started making claims for a right to deflower the women of non-Brahmins. The practice prevailed in the family of the Zamorin of Calicut and among the Vallabhachari sect of Vaishnavas. What depths of degradation the Brahmins had fallen tol II. as the Bible, says, the salt has lost its flavour wherewith shall it be salted? No wonder the Hindu Society had its moral bonds loosened to a dangerous point. The East India Company had in 1819 to pass a Regulation (VII of 1819) to put a stop to this moral degeneracy. The preamble to the Regulation says that women were employed wholesale to entice and take away the wives or female children for purposes of prostitution, and it was common practice among husbands and fathers to desert their families and children. Public conscience there was none, and in the absence of conscience it was futile to expect moral indignation against the social wrongs. Indeed the Brahmins were engaged in defending every wrong for the simple reason that they liv- ed on them. They defended untouchabi- lity which condemned millions to the lot of the helot. They defended caste, they defended female child marriage and they defended enforced widowhood-the two great props of the Caste System. They defended the burning of widows & they defended the social system of graded in- equality with its rule of hypergamy which led the Rajputs to kill in their thousands the daughters that were born to them. What shames! What wrongs! Can such a Society show its face before civilized nations? Can such a Society hope to ser- vive ? Such were the questions which Ranade asked. He concluded that on only one condition it could be saved namely, rigourous social reform.