Tag Archives: Ritual

Archival Note

Published in Dalit Voice (Vol. 29, Issue No. 03, 01/02/2010), this essay by V. T. Rajshekar examines Hinduism through the question of caste. He traces caste divisions to the Purusha Sukta and the Bhagavad Gita, then turns to the Manusmriti and its treatment of Brahmins, Sudras and women.

Rajshekar connects these religious texts to the oppression of Dalits and cites accounts of violence against Untouchables alongside condemnations of caste from writers and public figures. His argument leads to a direct question: if caste is part of the religious order Rajshekar identifies as Hinduism, can Hinduism exist without caste?

The essay closes by putting that question to the Hindu believer featured in the film that prompted Rajshekar’s article. How can Hindu faith be reconciled with the caste system? And if caste is rejected, what does that mean for the religious traditions that Rajshekar argues have sustained it?

Read the full piece here

 

British Anthropologist Details Barbarity of Hinduism

“Revelations: How do you know god exists”, is a film by Anthony Thomas (Channel 4). I saw this film on Aug. 16, 2009. I was particularly interested in what the Hindus had to say. I lived in India for 15 years and found their belief system very confusing. The Hindus as well as the others interviewed failed to show us how he knew god exists.

PART-1

The caste system & origins of Hinduism:

Hinduism is based on myth. Seven rishis overheard “wisdom” being spoken by the gods. This wisdom they passed on to mankind as the four Vedas:

1. Rig Veda
2. Yajur Veda
3. Sama Veda
4. Atharva Veda

The Rig Veda is our principal concern. It is a composition of 1,028 poems. But more of this later.

HINDU & GREEK GODS

33 crore gods:

According to Lord Winstone (April 17, 2006), the Hindus have about 330,000,000 gods. Shiva, one of the main gods, has 1,008 epithets. Most deities have consorts: Shiva’s wife is Parvati, Vishnu’s wife is Lakshmi and Brahma’s wife is Sarasvati. Mention must be made of two other important gods: Durga and Kali. Sitala is the goddess of smallpox. And the Hindu deity Devagana, it is believed, lives in the anus. And so on.

The Greeks also believed in gods and goddesses. The Greek philosophers found that the gods and goddesses resembled mortals too much and the “myths were nothing but human notions”.

Xenophanes who lived about the year 570 BC was the exponent of this view. There followed developments from a mythological mode to one based on experience and reason. The aim of Greek philosophy was to find natural rather than supernatural explanations for natural processes. The Greek gods and goddesses were then relegated to the realms of fiction.

But the Hindus, on the other hand, continue to believe in their gods and goddesses to this day. The Hindu belief that human beings are born unequal is based on a Vedic hymn called Purusha Sukta found in the fourth veda, the Rig Veda.

According to the Purusha Sukta, the social divisions into which all human beings fall are:

(1) Brahmins, the highest caste, (2) Kshatriyas, the warrior caste, (3) Vaisyas, the merchant caste and (4) Sudras, the working caste.

GOD CREATED CASTE SYSTEM

Outside this demarcation based on strict hereditary lines are the outcastes or Untouchables, who do not belong to any caste at all. They are called Dalits today. It was further confirmed by God Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita (4.13):

The fourfold caste was created by me by the different distribution of guna and karma.

It was finally codified by someone called Manu, the greatest lawgiver.

Who was this Manu?

Manu was born directly of the god Brahma and was hermaphrodite. The human race began from Manu and his family. (Romila Thaper: A History of India, p. 28).

HINDU LAWS OF MANU

Gidoomal and Thomson on p. 17 of their book, A Way of Life, say:

Manu represents the beginning. A semi-divine mythical creature; he is the first man, the first king of India, the first to light the sacrificial fire and the first and the greatest lawgiver.

Every Hindu man and woman is expected to follow the laws of Manu which came to be called Varnashrama Dharma or Manusmriti. They were written down about 200 BC. Hindus follow the laws of Manu to the letter even to this day. And what are some of the laws set by Manu for Hindus to follow?

Here are some taken at random:

(1) The Brahmins are the highest caste. They are the gods among humans.

(2) The drum, the illiterate, the low caste, animals and women must be beaten to make them fit.

(3) A woman must never be independent.

(4) The Brahmin is holy and has a claim to veneration even if he commits shameful deeds.

(5) A Brahmin is born as the highest on earth, the lord of all created things. Whatever exists in the world is the property of the Brahmin on account of the excellence of his origin. The Brahmin is indeed entitled to it all.

(6) The lord has prescribed only one occupation for Sudras (the lowest caste). They must perform service without malice to the other three castes.

(7) Those who educate Sudras will go to hell. A Sudra is unfit to receive education. The upper varnas or castes should not impart education or give advice to a Sudra. Violators will go to hell, called Asamvritta.

(8) If a Sudra (low caste) listens to a recitation of the Vedas (Hindu holy books), his ears shall be filled with tin or lac. If he recites Vedic texts, his tongue shall be cut. Only the Brahmins are entitled to receive the teachings imparted in the Vedas.

ATROCITIES AGAINST DALITS

It is difficult to credit the misanthropic effusions as law to this man who, it is said, was the son of Brahma, the supreme god. No wonder Indian women in 2000 AD

“publicly burned copies of the Manusmriti declaring that the text was misogynistic” (Introducing Hinduism, Lall & Von Lodon, p. 30).

Then there are millions and millions of people in India who have no caste at all. They are without caste because of sins committed by them in a previous incarnation. They are called outcastes or Untouchables. Today they are referred to as Dalits.

The effect of Manu on the outcastes has been devastating. From the time they are born till they die they suffer discrimination and humiliation at every turn of their lives.

GOD ORDERED HINDUS TO KILL DALITS

They have no redress. Here are a few examples of atrocities chosen at random which are committed against the Untouchables:

(1) 1969: India: A Million Mutinies Now by V. S. Naipaul (Viking): “In 1969, 40 Untouchables (Harijans) were burnt alive in a hut.”

(2) April 14, 1992: Commemorating the birthday of Dr. Ambedkar: “20 houses belonging to Untouchables were burnt at Kadalur village (80 km from Madras).” Reported by Henry Thiagaraj in The Wounded Society.

(3) June 18, 2000: The London Observer. “A picture showing a village of low castes (Untouchables) being massacred by high caste thugs in Bihar, India.”

(4) March 30, 2003: The Guardian: “A young lower caste woman was set on fire and burned to death yesterday by the upper caste father of the man she accused of raping her.”

(5) Dec. 16, 2005: Dalit Voice (magazine, p. 9). Gohana (Haryana) incident in Aug. 2005 when 60 Untouchable houses were burnt with police looking on.

(6) 2006: Indian National Bureau of Crime report. 27,007 crimes had been committed against Dalits. Many go unreported (See box):

In 1999, William Dalrymple, reviewing Robert Deliege’s book, The Untouchables of India, says in the London Sunday Times:

“Hindus actually believe god has authorised atrocities to be committed against these Untouchables.”

UNIVERSALLY CONDEMNED

Never in any part of this wide, wide world, whether savage or civilised, is systematic murder of human beings given such divine approval, except in India. Dalrymple goes on to say in the same review:

“In many high caste-dominated villages no Untouchable is allowed to ride a bicycle, sit down or even wear shoes in the presence of a high caste Hindu… Reported incidents of serious violence against Untouchables run at about 9,000 cases annually and this is the tip of the iceberg”.

The caste system of which untouchability is the indispensable part is integral to Hinduism.

‘….those whose conduct has been evil will quickly attain evil birth, the birth of a dog, the birth of a hog, or the birth of a Chandala (Untouchable).

Chandogya, translated by Dr. S. Radhakrishnan and quoted by Pratima Bowes in her The Hindu Religious Tradition (p. 57).

The caste system and especially untouchability is universally condemned.

(1) Dr. Karan Singh, a leading Hindu thinker, in his Essays on Hinduism, quoted by Gidoomal & Thomson (p. 9), described the ill-treatment of Untouchables “over the centuries as a standing disgrace”.

(2) Pratima Bowes, The Hindu Religious Tradition (p. 17): The opinion (is) often expressed that the caste system is the centre of the Hindu religion and that the breakdown of this system means the end of this religion.

(3) Caspar Melville, editor of the New Humanist, Nov. 2005 (p. 19), is “against the caste system, the subordination of women and the invested power of the Brahmin”.

(4) Buddha to Manmohan Singh: The caste system has been condemned by writers and reformers from Buddha, Akbar, Mahatma Phule, Periyar, Gora, Tilak, Guru Nanak, Mahavira, Tukaram, Ram Mohan Roy, the Bhakti movement of Southern India to Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister of India, and countless others.

(5) Jawaharlal Nehru in Glimpses of World History (p. 112) says: “The caste system had the seeds of decay in it. It was based on perpetuating inequality and injustice and any such attempt was bound to fail in the end. No sound and stable society can be built upon the basis of inequality and injustice or on the exploitation of one class or group by another.”

BLEAK FUTURE OF HINDUISM

I give you three sources:

(1) Loon and Lall: Introducing Hinduism (p. 127):

As knowledge of India grows around the world: Bollywood, Indian fashions, Indian classical music, tandoori cooking and India’s famed gurus Hinduism will come under increasing scrutiny.

On p. 161, they go on to say:

Secular Indians and many others with a humanist vision think of the future of India as bleak.

(2) Ram Gidoomal & Robin Thomson in A Way of Life, (p. 150) say:

Whoever is in power, the tensions over caste and class will continue.

(3) Nirad Chaudry in his Preface to Hinduism (p. XI) says:

I have lost faith in the tenets of Hinduism, indeed in all established religions long ago.

CONCLUSION

Hinduism without the caste system is like Hamlet without the Prince.

I would like to ask the Hindu believer in the film wrapped in saffron robes and daubed in symbols of Hindu piety how he could reconcile his Hindu faith without the caste system.

Holi arrives each year with fire and colour. On the eve of the festival, bonfires commemorate the burning of Holika; the next day, colours create community, at least symbolically. Yet for many of us Dalit-Bahujan thinkers and activists, Holi is not merely a spring festival. It is also a reminder that myth is never innocent. Who is cast as demonic? Who is sanctified? And who gets to decide? Where do the borders of this community that are based on violence and trauma begin and end?

Religious and mythological reinterpretation has been a recurring strategy in anti-caste thought. Rather than cede the terrain of epics and Puranas to Brahminical authority, generations of thinkers have re-read these stories against the grain, recovering suppressed figures, unsettling canonical heroes, and exposing the moral grammar of caste society. These interventions are not uniform; they differ in clarity, force, and political consequence. But taken together, they reveal a long-standing struggle over cultural meaning.

A major intervention was articulated by Jyotirao Phule in Gulamgiri. Phule reinterpreted the story of King Bali and Vamana, the dwarf incarnation of Vishnu. In the orthodox account, Vamana subdues Bali and consigns him to the netherworld. Phule inverted the moral hierarchy: Bali became the just ruler of the Bahujans, while Vamana symbolised Aryan-Brahmin cunning and conquest. The myth was reframed as political allegory, an account of indigenous dispossession. Invocations of “Bali Raja” as a symbol of egalitarian rule continue to animate Bahujan imagination in parts of India.

Then we return to Holi. The dominant narrative commemorates the burning of Holika, who attempts to immolate the devout Prahlad and is herself consumed by fire. In several Dalit-Bahujan reinterpretations, Holika and other Asura figures are read not simply as embodiments of evil but as representatives of demonised lineages, figures whose defeat encodes the triumph of one social order over another. The bonfire, then, is not only purification; it is conquest ritualised. To question what is being burned, and why, is to interrupt the moral ease of celebration.

One of the most enduring examples centres on Shambuka in the Ramayana. In the orthodox narrative, Rama executes Shambuka, a Shudra ascetic, for performing penance deemed inappropriate to his varna. Anti-caste thinkers have repeatedly foregrounded this episode as an explicit theological defence of hierarchy. The killing is not incidental; it is justified as necessary to restore cosmic order. By elevating Shambuka as a symbol of aspiration punished by caste, Dalit-Bahujan readings transform the moral centre of the story. Dussehra, for some, becomes a day not of triumph but of mourning. This is reinterpretation with sharp political edges: it confronts scripture at the precise point where it sanctions graded inequality.

A fourth powerful example is the story of Ekalavya from the Mahabharata. Denied instruction by Dronacharya because of his birth, Ekalavya trains himself in archery before a clay image of the guru. When his talent threatens the Kshatriya monopoly, he is compelled to sever his thumb as guru dakshina. In Dalit-Bahujan discourse, Ekalavya has become a paradigmatic figure of merit thwarted by caste privilege. His mutilation is read as an allegory of exclusion from knowledge systems, an allegory that resonates in contemporary debates on education, institutional gatekeeping, and social mobility. The story’s clarity makes it difficult to dismiss: it names the wound and locates responsibility.

Fifth, the most systematic critique of scriptural authority in modern India came from B. R. Ambedkar. In Riddles in Hinduism, Ambedkar subjected revered deities and narratives to rational and ethical scrutiny, exposing contradictions and moral failures in the epics and Puranas. His interrogation of religious figures was not an exercise in inversion but in demolition; he refused the presumption that tradition is beyond question. Crucially, Ambedkar did not stop at reinterpretation. His turn to Navayana Buddhism in 1956 marked a decisive break, an effort to build new ethical and institutional foundations rather than endlessly contest old ones.

Taken together, these examples illustrate a spectrum of cultural politics. Some reinterpretations, like those of Shambuka and Ekalavya, and Ambedkar’s broader critique and deconstruction of religious texts, directly confront narratives that naturalise caste hierarchy. They target explicit moments where scripture disciplines the lower orders. In these cases, counter-reading is not decorative; it exposes the theological underpinnings of social exclusion.

Others, however, raise more complicated strategic questions.

The reimagining of Bali as a subaltern sovereign and the reframing of Holika Dahan as ritualised conquest are imaginative and often emotionally compelling. They assert dignity and refuse demonisation. Yet their political effects are less determinate. Both operate within the symbolic universe of the Puranas; both depend on reversing moral valence rather than escaping the frame.

In the case of Holi especially, there is an additional difficulty. The festival today is an expansive cultural production, embedded in neighbourhood ritual, cinema, advertising, and state spectacle. A radical reinterpretation of Holika may carry intellectual force, but it can easily be absorbed as background noise amid colour and commerce. Unlike the Shambuka episode, which directly encodes punishment for caste transgression, or the Ekalavya episode, which lays bare the calculated demand that the caste-oppressed mutilate their own talent to preserve upper-caste monopoly, the Holika narrative does not transparently legislate varna order. The critique risks appearing as hostility to festivity rather than confrontation with power.

This does not mean such reinterpretations are futile. Cultural humiliation leaves deep scars, and symbolic reclamation can be a form of healing. But strategy matters. If the goal is to dismantle caste hierarchy, one must ask where myth is doing active political work and where it functions more as inherited folklore.

There is also a broader transformation to consider. While many ritual and religious practices historically emerged within caste society, contemporary caste power often operates through bureaucratic, economic, and institutional channels: land relations, educational access, employment networks, labour dynamics, and matrimonial markets. Myth may provide background justification, but its influence can be epiphenomenal in daily governance. To focus on narrative inversion risks neglecting the material sites of domination within these festivities themselves.

The contrast with projects that build alternative institutions is instructive. Ambedkar’s embrace of Navayana Buddhism was not merely theological; it created new commemorations and community infrastructures. Similarly, congregational traditions around figures such as Guru Ravidas and Kabir have sustained distinct devotional and organisational forms that dilute Brahminical mediation. These moves shift the terrain from reinterpretation to reconstruction.

What, then, might be a way forward?

Perhaps the task is not to abandon mythological critique but to discriminate among its targets. Where stories explicitly justify hierarchy, as in Shambuka’s execution or Ekalavya’s mutilation, they warrant sustained confrontation. Where reinterpretation risks dissolving into aesthetic dissent, intellectual energy might be better directed elsewhere. At the same time, there may be ways to sharpen even the more tentative critiques. Rather than attacking Holi as a whole, one might ask how contemporary celebrations reproduce social exclusion: who organises, who participates safely, and whose labour sustains the spectacle. The argument would then hit more obvious instances of power, connecting cultural practice to present structures rather than ancient allegory.

Holi will continue to blaze and bloom each year. The question is not whether to celebrate or abstain, which caste Hindus will continue to do, but how to think and intervene. If anti-caste politics is to colour the future differently, it must decide when to contest the inherited story, when to build new ones, and when to move beyond the story altogether.

 

Divya Jadhav is a student of literature and politics.