The dalit in India - caste and social class

Social Research, Spring, 2003 by Sagarika Ghose

Nonetheless, there are qualifications to untouchability. Instances can be found of dalit midwives, local functionaries, and local soothsayers and saints who have been revered by all sections of society. There are also instances of dalits participating in caste Hindu festivals; sections of dalits have also sometimes engaged in upper-caste rituals. (13)

Yet the dalit as pariah played a crucial role in allowing the upper castes a monopoly on education and in certain "pure" trades. Because of the divine sanction for eternal serfdom, the denial of education and thus opportunities for advancement, upper castes were able to successfully eliminate masses of people from the competitive economy that developed under colonial rule (Harrison, 1960).

Reform: From Buddha to Phule to Naicker

   Choo-o, choo-o, na chee! O je chandalini'r jhi!
   Noshto hobe je doi, she kotha jaano na ki?

   (Don't touch her, don't touch her, ugh!
   She's the daughter of a Dalit woman!
   Your yogurt will get spoiled, don't you know?)

   --Song from Rabindranath Tagore's
   Bengali dance drama Chandalika

In Chandalika, Prakriti, a young dalit woman, falls in love with a Buddhist monk, Ananda, who wins her heart by drinking water from her cup, even as she's shunned by the rest of the village. Subsequently, Ananda leaves on pilgrimage and Prakriti is devastated. She forces her mother to use her powers of black magic to bring him back. The witchlike mother brings Ananda back to Parkriti but dies in the process. The grief stricken girl is seen seeking the blessings of Ananda, who encourages her to take to Buddhism to escape the cycle of degradation.

The pollution of Prakriti and her mother is contrasted with the purity of Ananda. The mother, a sensual practitioner of black magic, is revealed as ultimately powerless against the monk. Chandalika is not only a comment on the fate of the Untouchable girl but on the new life promised to dalits by religions like Buddhism.

Indeed, Buddhism is easily the most famous of the innumerable reform movements within Hinduism that have been in progress since the fifth and sixth centuries B.C. The underlying impetus to change the dalit's pariah status was provided by these reform movements and the innumerable voices that have been raised for centuries against orthodox Hindu practices. The ascetic-led Buddhism and Jainism movements developed as alternatives to the ritual-bound and caste-dominated doctrine that Hinduism had become. The ascetic Buddha and Mahavira both sought to create egalitarian faiths based on compassion and simplicity and provided theological foundations for subsequent protests.

The Bhakti movement that emerged in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, exemplified in the cults of popular "saints" like Kabir and Mirabai, tried to negate the power of the brahmin clergy and questioned the brahmin's chief weapon: purity and the power to dispense untouchability.

   It's all one skin and bone,
   one piss and shit,
   one blood, one meat.
   From one drop, a universe.
   Who's a Brahmin? Who's shudra?