Untouchability and Mahatma Gandhi's perspective

¶ … Untouchability" Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi was an adamant opponent of the Hindu Caste system, and most notably the inclusion of nearly 40 million human beings in a category known as "untouchable." Despite Gandhi's pious nature as a devout Hindu he was willing to denounce this aspect of Hinduism and challenge it as something that was entirely man made, rather than a real aspect of the faith and its scripture, Shastras. According to his article Untouchability, he was willing to say that, "if untouchability is an integral ppart of Hinduism, the latter is a spent bullet." (Gahndi 84) He stresses that as a devout Hindu, he does not stress this lightly as he stresses that he, "accepts Truth as God." (84) in so doing Gandhi is then obligated to claim that he is; "declined to believe that it has been handed down to us from immemorial times." (84) What he means by this is that he believes that untouchability can be completely divorced from the faith and that indeed it must in order to eradicate it from the culture and in turn save the faith and the nation of India from certain death. His stress is that the issue of untouchability must be removed from the heart of the individual and the community by stressing that every, "touchable Hindu driving untouchability from his heart, going through a complete change of heart." (84)

When looking at Gandhi's argument that untouchability was a man made concept Gandhi's arguments are supported by some experts who track the colonial desire of understanding through labeling and classification foreign cultures. Charsley's 1996 work titled Untouchability: What's in a Name? traces the colonial interest of Sir Herbert Risley to the concept and name given to the castes but most notably the untouchable title given to the poorest of the region. The expert traces through the work of Charsley the stratified observational styling of the British colonial regional managers as they reported back to Risley about the "caste" systems in their various precincts. What they found according to Charsley was notably not at all universal and in fact carried a significant amount of variation and practice among the varied regions of India but in an attempt to "classify" in the same manner a natural scientists defines new species and can therefore catalog it and make generalizations about it Risley watered down the reality to classify. In short what he did was take a culture which had normal and natural variety in succes and wealth, based upon opportunity as well as privilege (i.e. inheritance) and named stratifications to simplify it for the benefit of outsiders. In so doing he assigned the lowest caste the title "untouchable" which has forever followed the poor to the depths of human depravity and allowed the culture to adopt the title and use it in an opportunistic manner. All of these musings (as Gandhi suspected and alluded to) occurred within the late 1800s into the early 1900s, a far cry from the immemorial traditions of the Hindu faith. In a sense Risley and his cronies, finding no name for the lowest caste that suited the needs of the classification system simply applied an adjective to describe the manner in which those above the "dirty" poor looked upon and treated the poor. This can be attested to by the fact that the names for all the other castes are derived from a position, title or class name that many among the class level held, while the untouchables were not all one thing, except poor and poorly treated by the higher classes.

Charsley 1) Observationally, and as an outsider there is not really a populous in human history that did and does not have some form of class system, that defined the haves and the have not's and stresses their differences in subtle and overt cultural norms. In the case of the multicultural India these classes became an opportunistic system of classification that became synonymous and associated with the faith, mainly because the highest and most venerated class just happened (at that time in history) to be the priestly class of the Brahman.

In the context of a multicultural India this message stresses that the faith cannot step forward in an attempt to learn to tolerate and even celebrate its real cultural diversity unless it systematically removes the biases of its own faith, which stifles and strangles a large part of its own population. Gandhi goes further to stress that the idea and practice of untouchability is man made and therefore the responsibility of man to eradicate. He stresses that the nature of the sin is opportunistically associated with accepting exclusivity and superiority for the sake of individual betterment. He cultivates this idea by then pointing out its even greater evil, as it has been guised as a fact of faith, "It is bad enough when dictated by selfish motives to consider ourselves high and other people low. Bit it is not only worse but a double wrong when we tack religion to an evil like untouchability." (84) in fact there is clear proof of this from cultures all over the world, where class systems exists (though not titled caste systems) that oppress some over others. In fact this evolution can be seen in every faith and culture in and around India and elsewhere. It is simply the codification and looking glass nature of the caste system that has made the system identifiable and perpetuated it. In a work that is remarkably generalizing though informative Ninian, provides the reader with a very brief overview of how the "caste" system exists in the multicultural areas of India as well as all the regional areas and nations that surround it, though he likens the caste system (as it is practiced by other faiths and cultures) to the influence of India it is also relatively strong proof that castes or classes are an opportunistic aspect of culture, practiced in some areas in very extreme manners but existing in all. (Ninian 186) Can it not be said that the British themselves practice a class system (especially during the colonial era) that subjugated some while venerating others and that this system most notably the aristocratic bias allowed some to succeed while others (often born to it) were forever subjugated by lack of wealth and opportunity? Did the British, and all colonial powers not practice public acts of shaming of those they thought were lesser than themselves? The only difference being that economics altered this reality during a period when the merchant classes had at least a modicum of success in upward mobility somewhat divorcing the system from a priestly class or a born class, which gave the system an only slightly more secular slant as did the fact that the culture had constant strife over the dominant faith (though still Christian) rather than allowing only one faith to dominate the whole of the bureaucratic culture permanently.

When Gandhi furthers his argument against untouchability he classifies the caste as the purest/godliest, but also the weakest members of society. He states that the purpose of faith and God is to defend the weak, rather than further suppressing them through false systems of man. He gives the caste a title; "Harijan means "a man of God." All religions of the world describe God preeminently as the Friend of the friendless. Help of the helpless, and Protector of the weak. The rest of the world apart, in India who can be more friendless, helpless or weaker that the forty million or more Hindus of India who are classified as "untouchable?" (85) Though Gandhi meant to stress that this caste should be protected and to some degree uplifted or at the very least equalized, the term eventually became synonymous with weakness and has since been labeled pejorative. In fact it is argued by many who fall into this caste category and their external proponents that attaching a word to the caste that implies that they are in some way weak and in need of protection is as damaging as suppressing their successes. (85)