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Gandhi
and Brahmins
 " Do you think you will gain anything by becoming non-Hindus,
he told them, do not think you will gain anything by abusing, Brahmins or
burning their homes. “Who were Tilak, Gokhale, Ranade and Agarkar?” he asked
them. They were Brahmins, they were in the forefront of every nationalist
struggle, they served the cause of non-Brahmins at the greatest cost to
themselves, it is in many cases through the work of Brahmins that the
non-Brahmins have been made aware of their rights, he told them. It
is the Brahmins who exert for the uplift of the depressed classes, more than
anybody else. Lokmanya Tilak is revered by all classes for his services to the
country. The late Mr. Gokhale, Mr. Ranade and the Hon’ble Mr. Sastri have all
done splendid work for the regeneration of the backward classes. You complain of
the Brahmin bureaucracy. But let us compare it with the
British bureaucracy. The latter follow the ‘divide and rule policy’ and
maintains its authority by the power of the sword, whereas, the
Brahmins have never restored to the force of arms and they have established
their superiority by sheer force of their intellect, self-sacrifice, and
penance. I appeal to my non-Brahmins brethren not to hate the Brahmin and not to
be victims of the snares of the bureaucracy…”
(source:
The
Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi vol. 20 p. 144).
Watch
video - Brahmins
in
India
have become a minority
“By indulging in violent contempt of a community which has
produced men like Ramdas, Tulsidas, Ranade, Tilak and others,” he told the
non-Brahmins, “it is impossible that you can rise.” By
looking to the British for help you will sink deeper into slavery.
"
(source: The
Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi volume 18.page 448-49).
“I have not a shadow of doubts,” he declared,
“that Hinduism owes its all to the great traditions that the Brahmins have
left for Hinduism. They have left a legacy for India, for which every nation, no
matter to what varna he may belong owes a deep gratitude. Having studied the
history of almost every religion in the world it is my settled conviction that
there is no class in the world that has accepted poverty and self-effacement as
its lot. "
(source: The
Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi volume 19 p. 546).
Contrast Gandhiji’s counsel with
the fulminations of our Communists and our
Columnist and their Western
counterparts.
***
Poverty
and Brahmins in India
Poverty knows no
caste. Many Brahmins eke out a living cleaning
toilets, pulling rickshaws.
Not all Brahmins are
successful technocrats or bureaucrats. Across the country the poor among
the upper-most Hindu caste have to eke out a miserable existence like
the rest of humanity's economically deprived.
Forty of Sulabh's
toilet cleaners are Brahmins, most of them from
Bihar
. Says Kashinath Jha, a maintenance engineer at Sulabh: "This is
largely because of the abject poverty in
Bihar
." The Brahmin sanitation staff are from what is believed to be a
large Brahmin migrant labour population in
Delhi
consisting of rickshaw-pullers, coolies and vegetable vendors.
Kamlesh Chaudhary,
one of the Brahmin sanitation workers at Sulabh's toilet complex inside
Azadpur vegetable market in
Delhi
, says: "Our income from farming is meagre as the region where we
come from is prone to floods and drought. Most people like us leave in
search of jobs and come to the cities." Jha left home in Samastipur
and joined Sulabh six years ago after he heard of it from one of his
relatives, another Brahmin, who also works for the NGO. Kamlesh and
others like him earn Rs 2,500 per month. Since they are provided food
and lodging, they save enough money to send back home. This, they say,
is more than what they can earn working as casual labourers.
Ramesh
Jha, a Brahmin from Darbhanga in
Bihar
, is also an employee at Sulabh. He came to
Delhi
seven years ago but had to struggle. "I worked at a factory in
Wazirpur for two months. I was paid Rs 1,200 a month and I found it very
difficult to survive." Ramesh then switched to Sulabh after a
chance meeting with one of its employees and is currently employed at
the second toilet complex inside the Azadpur mandi. Doesn't the nature
of his work upset him? "I have never had second thoughts about
working at Sulabh. Why should I? I am not stealing or committing any
crime. I have to earn my living and I am doing that here with my hard
work," he says.
Not
just in
Delhi
. In Benares, Mumbai, Chennai and
Jammu
the plight of the poor Brahmin is the same. Poverty obviously knows no
caste.
(source:
For
Work Is Worship -
By Anuradha
Raman & Debarshi Dasgupta Outlook
June 4, 2007). Watch
video - Brahmins
in
India
have become a minority
Debunkcing the
Myth: Dalits and Indigenous System of Educaiton
Dharampal's
book (The
Beautiful Tree) has effectively debunked
the myth that Dalits had no place in the indigenous system of education.
Sir Thomas Munro, Governor of Madras, ordered a mammoth survey in June 1822,
whereby the district collectors furnished the caste-wise division of students in
four categories, viz., Brahmins, Vysyas (Vaishyas), Shoodras (Shudras) and other
castes (broadly the modern scheduled castes). While the percentages of the
different castes varied in each district, the results were revealing to the
extent that they showed an impressive presence of the so-called lower castes in
the school system.
Thus, in Vizagapatam, Brahmins and Vaishyas together accounted for 47% of the
students, Shudras comprised 21% and the other castes (scheduled) were 20%; the
remaining 12% were Muslims. In Tinnevelly, Brahmins were 21.8% of the total
number of students, Shudras were 31.2% and other castes 38.4% (by no means a low
figure). In South Arcot, Shudras and other castes together comprised more than
84% of the students!
In the realm of higher education as well, there were regional variations.
Brahmins appear to have dominated in the Andhra and Tamil Nadu regions, but in
the Malabar area, theology and law were Brahmin preserves, but astronomy and
medicine were dominated by Shudras and other castes. Thus, of a total of 808
students in astronomy, only 78 were Brahmins, while 195 were Shudras and 510
belonged to the other castes (scheduled). In medicine, out of a total of 194
students, only 31 were Brahmins, 59 were Shudras and 100 belonged to the other
castes. Even subjects like metaphysics and ethics that we generally associate
with Brahmin supremacy, were dominated by the other castes (62) as opposed to
merely 56 Brahmin students. It bears mentioning that this higher education was
in the form of private tuition (or education at home), and to that extent also
reflects the near equal economic power of the concerned groups.
As a concerned reader informed me, the ‘Survey of
Indigenous Education in the Province of Bombay (1820-1830)’ showed
that Brahmins were only 30% of the total students there. What is more, when
William Adam surveyed Bengal and Bihar, he found that Brahmins and Kayasthas
together comprised less than 40% of the total students, and that forty castes
like Tanti, Teli, Napit, Sadgop, Tamli etc. were well represented in the student
body. The Adam report mentions that in Burdwan district, while native schools
had 674 students from the lowest thirty castes, the 13 missionary schools in the
district together had only 86 students from those castes. Coming to teachers,
Kayasthas triumphed with about 50% of the jobs and there were only six Chandal
teachers; but Rajputs, Kshatriyas and Chattris (Khatris) together had only five
teachers.
Even Dalit intellectuals have questioned what the
British meant when they spoke of ‘education’ and ‘learning’. Dr. D.R.
Nagaraj, a leading Dalit leader of Karnataka, wrote that it was the British,
particularly Lord Wellesley,
who declared the Vedantic Hinduism of the Brahmins of Benares and Navadweep as
“the standard Hinduism,” because they realized that the vitality of the
Hindu dharma of the lower castes was a threat to the empire.
Fort William College, founded by Wellesley in 1800, played a major role
in investing Vedantic learning with a prominence it probably hadn't had for
centuries. In the process, the cultural heritage of the lower castes was
successfully marginalized, and this remains an enduring legacy of colonialism.
Examining Dharampal's “Indian science and technology in the eighteenth
century,” Nagaraj observed that most of the native
skills and technologies that perished as a result of British policies were those
of the Dalit and artisan castes. This
effectively debunks the fiction of Hindu-hating secularists that the so-called
lower castes made no contribution to India's cultural heritage and needed
deliverance from wily Brahmins.
Indeed, given the desperate manner in which the British vilified the Brahmin, it
is worth examining what so annoyed them. As early as 1871-72, Sir
John Campbell objected to Brahmins facilitating upward mobility:
“…the Brahmans are always ready to receive all who will submit to them…
The process of manufacturing Rajputs from ambitious aborigines (tribals) goes on
before our eyes.”
 Sir
Alfred Lyall (1796 - 1865) was unhappy and he wrote:
“…more
persons in India become every year Brahmanists than all the converts to all the
other religions in India put together... these teachers address themselves to
every one without distinction of caste or of creed; they preach to low-caste men
and to the aboriginal tribes… in fact, they succeed largely in those ranks of
the population which would lean towards Christianity and Mohammedanism if they
were not drawn into Brahmanism…”
So
much for the British public denunciation of the exclusion practiced by Brahmins!
(source: The Brahmin and the Hindu - By Sandhya Jain -
dailypioneer.com - December 14 2004). Refer
to Take
a look at Slavery - godisimaginary.com.
Also refer to Education
in Pre-British India - Pankaj Goyal.
Role
of Brahmins in Hindu society
Brahminism has been reviled -
indeed, to do so in recent years has assumed the nature of a fad with large
sections of the cosmopolitan intelligentsia - as exploitative and something
degenerate and regressive. But take Brahminism away from Hindu society and you
are left with a body without its soul.
Ever since it came into existence, the
institution of Shankaracharya has functioned as the confluence between grihastha
and sanyasa ashramas. An incredibly subtle, invisible tapestry has been woven
into Hindu social fabric as a result. As vitraagis, a class of people beyond
raag (attachment) - who have upheld virtues like satya (truth), ahimsa
(non-violence), asteya (above stealing), aparigraha (renunciation), and
brahmacharya (devotion to other ethical principles) - Brahmins
have for aeons been considered ideals worth emulating in Hindu society.
They have been the fulcrum of Hindu
social order and upholders of heritage, and this is what makes India a
continuous civilisation. Brahmins have epitomised the Swami-Sanyasi tradition
that has periodically cleansed and purged Hindu society of its ills and
exploitative elements, and though there have been occasions in the past when
their authority has been sought to be undermined, by kings and commoners alike,
the institution has not just survived but emerged more robust than before.
(source:
Crisis
before Brahminism - By Gautam Siddharth - dailypioneer.com - December 5' 2004). Refer
to The
Myth of Saint Thomas and the Mylapore Shiva Temple
Hindu organization condemns discrimination against
Dalit student
A Hindu organisation in the US has
condemned reported discrimination against a Dalit student who was allegedly
victimised for offering prayers in a Hindu temple in India's Andhra Pradesh
state.
Navya
Shastra, which professes spiritual equality of
all Hindus, has also promised financial assistance to Tukaram, 19, to meet his
educational costs.
The boy scored a first class in his intermediate examinations and visited the
village temple of Hanuman to make the traditional coconut offering in Allapur,
Andhra Pradesh. When members of the upper caste community discovered this they
condemned the boy and extorted Rs.500 fine from his apologetic father, Tulsiram.
They also purified the temple by washing it with cow urine and dung so as to
efface the imprints of an "untouchable," according to Vikram Masson,
co-chairman of the organisation. Such community-based discrimination continues
in India despite a constitutional ban and strict legal safeguards against
community discrimination.
"Tukaram must know that others
in the Hindu world strongly condemn such actions," said Jaishree Gopal, the
other co-chairman of the organisation.
"Navya Shastra will award Tukaram a scholarship to help his family with
Tukaram's educational costs and sincerely hopes that the Indian government and
religious leaders will pay more attention to the apartheid in our midst,"
said Gopal.
(source:
Hindu
organization condemns discrimination against Dalit student - newindpress.com
and Hindu
body condemns discrimination against Dalit teenager
- yahoo.com).
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