JAT-PAT-TODAK MANDAL OF LAHORE-XXI
What are your
chances of success ? Social reforms fall into different species. There is a
species of reform, which does not relate to the religious notion of people but
is purely secular in character. There is also a species of reform, which
relates to the religious notions of people. Of such a species of reform, there
are two varieties. In one, the reform accords with the principles of the
religion and merely invites people, who have departed from it, to revert to
them and to follow them. The second is a reform which not only touches the
religious principles but is diametrically opposed to those principles and
invites people to depart from and to discard their authority and to act
contrary to those principles. Caste is the natural outcome of certain religious
beliefs which have the sanction of the Shastras,
which are believed to contain the command of divinely inspired sages who were
endowed with a supernatural wisdom and whose commands, therefore, cannot be
disobeyed without committing sin. The destruction of Caste is a reform which
falls under the third category. To ask people to give up Caste is to ask them
to go contrary to their fundamental religious notions. It is obvious that the
first and second species of reform are easy. But the third is a stupendous
task, well nigh impossible. The Hindus hold to the sacredness of the social
order. Caste has a divine basis. You must therefore destroy the sacredness and
divinity with which Caste has become invested. In the last analysis, this means
you must destroy the authority of the Shastras
and the Vedas.
I have
emphasized this question of the ways and means of destroying Caste, because I
think that knowing the proper ways and means is more important than knowing the
ideal. If you do not know the real ways and means, all your shots are sure to
be misfires. If my analysis is correct then your task is herculean. You alone
can say whether you are capable of achieving it.
Speaking for
myself, I see the task to be well nigh impossible. Perhaps you would like to
know why I think so. Out of the many reasons, which have led me to take this
view, I will mention some, which I regard much important. One of these reasons
is the attitude of hostility, which the Brahmins have shown towards this question.
The Brahmins form the vanguard of the movement for political reform and in some
cases also of economic reform. But they are not to be found even as camp
followers in the army raised to break down the barricades of Caste. Is there
any hope of the Brahmins ever taking up a lead in the future in this matter? I
say no. You may ask why ? You may argue that there is no reason why Brahmins
should continue to shun social reform. You may argue that the Brahmins know
that the bane of Hindu Society is Caste and as an enlightened class could not
be expected to be indifferent to its consequences. You may argue that there are
secular Brahmins and priestly Brahmins and if the latter do not take up the
cudgels on behalf of those who want to break Caste, the former will. All this
of course sounds very plausible. But in all this it is forgotten that the break
up of the Caste system is bound to affect adversely the Brahmin Caste. Having
regard to this, is it reasonable to expect that the Brahmins will ever consent
to lead a movement the ultimate result of which is to destroy the power and
prestige of the Brahmin Caste ? Is it reasonable to expect the secular Brahmins
to take part in a movement directed against the priestly Brahmins ? In my
judgment, it is useless to make a distinction between the secular Brahmins and
priestly Brahmins. Both are kith and kin. They are two arms of the same body
and one bound to fight for the existence of the other. In this connection, I am
reminded of some very pregnant remarks made by Prof. Dicey in his English Constitution. Speaking of the
actual limitation on the legislative supremacy of Parliament, Dicey says :
" The actual exercise of authority by any sovereign whatever, and notably
by Parliament, is bounded or controlled by two limitations. Of these the one is
an external, and the other is an internal limitation. The external limit to the
real power of a sovereign consists in the possibility or certainty that his
subjects or a large number of them will disobey or resist his laws. . . The
internal limit to the exercise of sovereignty arises from the nature of the
sovereign power itself. Even a despot exercises his powers in accordance with
his character, which is itself moulded by the circumstance under which he
lives, including under that head the moral feelings of the time and the society
to which he belongs. The Sultan could not, if he would, change the religion of
the Mohammedan world, but even if he could do so, it is in the very highest
degree improbable that the head of Mohammedanism should wish to overthrow the
religion of Mohammed ; the internal check on the exercise of the Sultan's power
is at least as strong as the external limitation. People sometimes ask the idle
question, why the Pope does not introduce this or that reform? The true answer
is that a revolutionist is not the kind of man who becomes a Pope and that a
man who becomes a Pope has no wish to be a revolutionist." I think, these
remarks apply equally to the Brahmins of India and one can say with equal truth
that if a man who becomes a Pope has no wish to become a revolutionary, a man
who is born a Brahmin has much less desire to become a revolutionary. Indeed,
to expect a Brahmin to be a revolutionary in matters of social reform is as
idle as to expect the British Parliament, as was said by Leslie Stephen, to
pass an Act requiring all blue-eyed babies to be murdered.
Some of you
will say that it is a matter of small concern whether the Brahmins come forward
to lead the movement against Caste or whether they do not. To take this view is
in my judgment to ignore the part played by the intellectual class in the
community. Whether you accept the theory of the great man as the maker of
history or whether you do not, this much you will have to concede that in every
country the intellectual class is the most influential class, if not the
governing class. The intellectual class is the class which can foresee, it is
the class which can advise and give lead. In no country does the mass of the
people live the life of intelligent thought and action. It is largely imitative
and follows the intellectual class. There is no exaggeration in saying that the
entire destiny of a country depends upon its intellectual class. If the
intellectual class is honest, independent and disinterested it can be trusted
to take the initiative and give a proper lead when a crisis arises. It is true
that intellect by itself is no virtue. It is only a means and the use of means
depends upon the ends which an intellectual person pursues. An intellectual man
can be a good man but he can easily be a rogue. Similarly an intellectual class
may be a band of high-souled persons, ready to help, ready to emancipate erring
humanity or it may easily be a gang of crooks or a body of advocates of a
narrow clique from which it draws its support. You may think it a pity that the
intellectual class in India is simply another name for the Brahmin caste. You
may regret that the two are one.; that the existence of the intellectual class
should be bound with one single caste, that this intellectual class should
share the interest and the aspirations of that Brahmin caste, which has
regarded itself the custodian of the interest of that caste, rather than of the
interests of the country. All this may be very regrettable. But the fact remains,
that the Brahmins form the intellectual class of the Hindus. It is not only an
intellectual class but it is a class which is held in great reverence by the
rest of the Hindus. The Hindus are taught that the Brahmins are Bhudevas (Gods on earth) vernanam brahmnam guruh ! : The Hindus are taught that
Brahmins alone can be their teachers. Manu says, "If it be asked how it
should be with respect to points of the Dharma which have not been specially
mentioned, the answer is that which Brahmins who are Shishthas propound shall
doubtless have legal force." :
anamnateshu dharmehu katham
syaditi chedbhveta !
yam shishta brahnam bruyuh sa dharmah syadashnkitah !!
When such an
intellectual class, which holds the rest of the community in its grip, is opposed
to the reform of Caste, the chances of success in a movement for the break-up
of the Caste system appear to me very, very remote.
The second
reason, why I say the task is impossible, will be clear if you will bear in
mind that the Caste system has two aspects. In one of its aspects, it divides
men into separate communities. In its second aspect, it places these
communities in a graded order one above the other in social status. Each caste
takes its pride and its consolation in the fact that in the scale of castes it
is above some other caste. As an outward mark of this gradation, there is also
a gradation of social and religious rights technically spoken of an Ashta-dhikaras
and Sanskaras.
The higher the grade of a caste, the greater the number of these rights and the
lower the grade, the lesser their number. Now this gradation, this scaling of
castes, makes it impossible to organise a common front against the Caste
System. If a caste claims the right to inter-dine
and inter-marry with another caste placed above
it, it is frozen, instantly it is told by mischief-mongers, and there are many
Brahmins amongst such mischief-mongers, that it will have to concede inter-dining and inter-marriage
with castes below it ! All are slaves of the Caste
System. But all the slaves are not equal in status. To excite the proletariat
to bring about an economic revolution, Karl Marx told them : " You have nothing to lose except your chains."
But the artful way in which the social and religious rights are distributed
among the different castes whereby some have more
and some have less, makes the slogan of Karl Marx quite useless to excite the
Hindus against the Caste System. Castes form a graded system of sovereignties,
high and low, which are jealous of their status and which know that if a
general dissolution came, some of them stand to lose
more of their prestige and power than others do. You cannot, therefore, have a
general mobilization of the Hindus, to use a military expression, for an attack
on the Caste System.
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