Hygiene, Quarantine, Braahman, Untouchablity, Women, Traditions

We had just seen a dance practice session at a secluded residential ashram-like dance school, and Bob had tried my patience by constantly asking questions in either loud whispers or worse. Since we were sitting just about five feet away from the dancers it was rude to say the least.


I am not sure if he is making a point - the very first time I met him, I had remarked about a woman rudely instructing me to not make a noise when I was arranging my bags so they wouldn't fall (and make far more clatter) during a western classical music concert at a venue that was quite colonial in atmosphere, but then I had done that rearranging and the sight ruffling of plastic during the break, and that woman had assumed as many do that wearing a Indian clothes amounts to being uncivil or at least unaware of codes of western behaviour. I had not protested to her, but subsequently there was not one moment of quiet - one of her own sort had brought small children to the concert and there had been constant conversation and some crying.


If it were not India such behaviour would be severely frowned upon, and they would not be allowed to perhaps enter the concert venue. But the authorities in that place were colonial in mentality and so did not protest someone bringing small children and no one had told them to go out when the last hour or so was totally disturbed by the noise of children. And in India we do not treat children as unwanted nuisance at concerts or theatre or cinema or weddings - any happy occasion in fact, so none of us thought it was anything but natural.


Bob, however, had heard my relating the story and laughing about it when I told someone, and had pompously remonstrated about how one should behave at a concert. I had been more miffed - those who introduced us must have informed him about our common background and so I had not protested - oh, I know the rules, I have attended so many concerts at Harvard and so many at Symphony Hall, and so forth. It had been clear it was colonial mindset at work - telling the natives (of India - just a thought, do they think of themselves as "natives" when we visit Europe as tourists or as higher level working visitors or even reside there as emigrants?) how to behave at the level of their (by which they usually mean higher) code.


So that conversation had been left unfinished and this time at the dance session he was being as rude and noisy as possible with not a minute left where he was not commenting or asking us to explain, and I was uncertain if he was doing it to bring us to how this behaviour is bad or if he was being his natural self and did not think an Indian dance session was important enough to override the desire of a westerner to talk incessantly. At any rate I had managed by either ignoring and not looking or at most giving a nod once in about fifteen minutes or going "Hmm" or a short gesture and so on.


But perhaps he was determined to insult, provoke, whatever, and I had simply not understood it yet. For when subsequently we sat to lunch, two of us with him and his neighbour - she being quiet, civil, understanding far more than speaking throughout our acquaintance - he went for an unforeseen attack. We were proceeding to eat and he asked - do any Braahmans take jobs cleaning toilets at IBM or would they be forbidden by their religion?


Fortunately that question was as stupid as it can get, and easy to answer in five hundred different ways even without being rude. I asked him how often he had cleaned toilets for anyone, other than possibly changing his son's diapers. He was honest - he had never changed his son's diapers.


I was a little surprised, since he lives in U.S. and is of European ancestry, as is his wife. It is usually much publicised how they "help" their wives and so on (which by definition amounts to saying that these are women's jobs, which is not so subtly keeping women yoked to the caste that does all this work) and he had never - never? - diapered his son?


I asked how he expected anyone to do it for anyone else if he could not even bring himself to do it for his one and only son, and how did he think anyone else would feel differently about such work.


It is not that women love to do it for anyone, including children - but if women don't do it for their own or any children obviously no one might; and someone has to do it for infants, so women do it. That children are part of their own bodies before birth makes a connection that might make the pull stronger and the work easier to comprehend, but that is not to say it is what anyone aspires to, much less a male priest. And women are not without caste, so a Braahman woman doing it does not have her lose caste. For that matter one might have to do it for a relative who is sick, too; and whether a man takes care of a patient or a woman does, it does not amount to loss of caste.


(Obviously what one could ask and I did not, since the answer is obvious, is if any priests of any other religion do clean toilets as just another worker in a general role, other than monks sharing work at the monastery they live in; I doubt they change diapers for orphans however much orphanages need various services, and I doubt that such work is done by higher level appointees such as cardinals or even bishops, even if to set an example, very often or publicly.)


Of course, I went on to say, today the job with toilets being western style and equipment being different might be taken by someone who does need it economically and done for such period of time until he finds another more pleasant job. But there would be no need to publicise the fact, (unless one wished to make political mileage and take advantage of that -) and no danger of his being shunned by his family or community, either, for this, since the two factors - economic need as well as the cleaner nature of work today - are understood.


That discussion ended there that day. But it is hard to get over the fact that he would choose to introduce the topic in such an unpleasant way - talking about cleaning toilets when sitting for lunch - and with such a stupid question, something so vindictive and yet so easy to answer. Which was more important - the vindictive nature of the question, and asking it at such an inappropriate time, or was he only stupid on the whole? It is difficult to say.


Several people had in past of course asked about caste and the one time someone specifically brought up the question of untouchability it was a French visitor in Pondicherry who had been sent by someone we knew specifically to talk to me about such matter. At that time we were visited by another friend of long - we had been friends since almost childhood - with family and the two children had listened to the conversation, and I don't know how much she - the visitor - had comprehended but it was the children that had benefited, or so I hope - I had talked to her but it was just as much directed at them. (They had been eager to participate and to be good kids, and so had offered her the snacks bought for them, expecting she would demur or ask them to share; later they were much surprised and dismayed she had finished the whole plate and remarked on it, and I had cautioned them against repeating that without consulting me - I had had no intention of offering food, a drink of hot coffee was what I had offered and could have added cold water or cold drink. It was the classic gap between western and Indian sensibilities.) And really that too was only the nth time for the topic being discussed, having had more than a dozen occasions in U.S. while living there.


I had had occasion to think about it explicitly even though we were not brought up with such traditions and had never asked what caste anyone was and never think of it even now, and it is not possible to know just by looking so it was not a part of our bringing up or awareness. The reason I had had to think of it was an incident that seemed casual but led to clearing much in way of perception. It had happened not too long before the visit mentioned above.


While getting into a cycle rickshaw - when you are without capital there is little other way of transport sometimes - after shopping one night I had too many bags and I had lost control of one containing tomatoes. they had not only fallen to the ground and rolled out of the bag, they had rolled a bit away into a side of the road. I was going to let them go, but before I could say anything various men working around had rushed to collect them for me and handed them over.


It would have been extremely rude to refuse, although the men did not look too clean; so I had thanked them genuinely for their courtesy (and meant it too), while thinking "I can throw them away later, at home, when no one would be hurt by doing that" and come home. But when at home I thought about it, it became clear that it was a matter of having seen it, what if that had happened before I purchased them?


Ok, so I would learn and wash them well as usual and get on with it - since I not only did not know what they went through before, but also I did and do eat out, and there is no question of asking what caste is the cook or the waiter when one eats out. So really very few have kept any caste today and most people are fine with it. They manage to be good and clean both in spite of modern life and our culture or tradition evolves to adapt and better, ever.


But it goes much further than that. One can wash tomatoes, but not even most food, and certainly not money if it is paper - that passes through all hands, and if you do touch money you don't know who else has, and have to assume everyone has done so, even if you don't see it. It is not possible to always take fresh bank notes and give them and take no change back, so there - there goes untouchability. It is gone, finished, quite some time ago.


I related all that, and whether the French visitor comprehended or not, I am glad the children were there, listening, all ears. Later recently I told the same tomato story to some other people and they agreed whole heartedly.


Bob on the other hand questioned the small wayside food stalls not using chemicals for cleaning tables - I informed him that most old traditional cleaning involved cleaning with earth for hands, with hot ashes for dishes and so forth. And that chemicals are not necessarily ultimately better. But I wonder if he understood that his concern and recoil from the stall was not far from his treating them as untouchable.


Untouchability has everything to do with hygiene, quarantine, and so forth. When we do it - did it - you see it as strange and when you do it you do not see it the same way, that difference has more to do with colonial mentality than anything else. When you do not drink ordinary water in tropics that we do, when you question sanitation at a wayside stall, that is no different than if we do so. When you stick to five star luxury and bottled coke and expect chemicals to spray-clean your table at a small wayside stall, it is you practicing a little untouchability and also environmental hazards for a land that is not yours.


It always comes as a surprise to most westerners that Braahmans are not only poor in general (- majority, as in well over seventy percent, are poor -); but are, at the very most, middle class by Indian standards, with hardly ten percent above that some forty years ago; and that latter - but in all likelihood not former - has only changed due to factors of today's world with emigration, IT, and science education leading to careers in fields other than traditional.


Not only that, traditional requirement was precisely that Braahmans cannot ask much less demand money for services of priestly or teaching, and there was little else they were allowed to do while being Braahmans. One could choose to be out of it by doing other work of course. That would be for good, though. The possibility of Braahman doing any other work and actually earning began with the social reforms initiated within the Braahman community by some people and some went on to do well, paving way for others.


But one question no one asks or points at is - why is it assumed there was two categories, high and low, with a barrier and nothing else in between? That is as far from true as to assume that people - humans - are either black or white. In case of the black and white few described as black are black and no one is white, humans can be pale but white, no, not living and healthy ones anyway. Truth is there is ever colour of skin from dark to light, with some cream or gold and some rose thrown in, and there is a whole continuous spectrum. That is true for occupations as well. And as for castes there is every possible level in between since it is really classified occupations of traditional sort, that is ancestral. And castes are not races, much less nations (- that is a ridiculous idea propagated for the sole purpose of dividing India by those who would kill, and be scavengers for the carcass of, the nation that is India -) but are an integral part of the whole society, loosely divided in four major groups along lines of ancient occupations.


People of other religions - other than European - would proudly say, we do not restrict anyone from being a preacher; but I have never understood why anyone would wish to be a Braahman with the traditional restrictions and the inevitable poverty and worry; and in the modern world who cares?


What is really important is - do you allow everyone to be rich, to be king? We did, in ancient Indian tradition. Both of those took qualification, different ones appropriate to the aspired goal, as does being a keeper of knowledge. One was required to have the qualification irrespective of genealogy to be accepted and respected in position of any of above, or of any working in any crafts.


A bad carpenter or a lousy builder can destroy your house, and a bad cook might just kill you. Few see what is disastrous with a bad teacher, or a million good teachers made unable by social restrictions to teach mathematics or physics or even language properly. Until it is a bit late, and a generation at least suffers from the consequences of such policies. As U.S. is now, with the result of policies of sixties to eighties resulting in lack of respect for academic achievements and for teachers then, and consequent lack of academic proficiencies today.


It is money and power that most people hanker after, and in fact most societies do revere those over others. So it is a bit hypocrisy, a bit fraudulous to go "in our religion anyone can be priest" because when most people look around what they would rather be is rich and powerful - and it is not clear those paths are open; while it is those who cannot do much towards the more common goals that are taken to be good enough for priesthood, and few are of true vocation, capable of knowledge, but if knowledge is not understood it is seen as freedom to not work. And that leads to resentment of a Braahman giving that privilege to his son.


But no one asks why money and power is inherited - it is taken as natural that a father leaves money to son(s) and the no one ever questions even the consequent poverty or lack of power of bereaved or otherwise wife and daughters, much less why the old man did not leave it to all orphans or all youth. It is his earning, it is reasoned, and his will to dispose it, and questions don't arise unless he does in fact disfranchise his sons; then they declare him crazy,senile, and go to court. So there is a very strong tradition of line of inheritance of money and power through sons and it is well understood, assumed, any other mode questioned and fought for.

So it seems that questions arise about Braahman tradition because either it is assumed that anyone could be just as accomplished if only given the knowledge for free, and there is nothing to priesthood (although there is violent opposition to women priests in other religions, and we assume that women might know a lot or all of what is there to know - and in fact women do teach young, and often were able to correct young students even in old days) - but what is understood generally by everyone is what is then assumed to pass from father to son. Money, power, are understood and commonly fought for all world over if an outsider aspires.


Fact is even in our oldest tradition it is far from assumed that brain is not required for most other work - but teaching anyone is at the discretion of the teacher, with no enforcing authority either way, as far as we are concerned. This applies to all teaching and apprenticeship, so that for example a carpenter could teach a son of a weaver - but this being a village system and sons inheriting father's business, as well as helping him from the son's childhood to the father's old age, it did not make much sense for a carpenter to train a weaver's son, and so the system of son inheriting father's business naturally took the direction of occupations being fixed for generations, which was not prescribed necessarily. No one protests against such examples though - it is only Braahman teaching his own sort (not just his own sons) that is questioned since it is assumed it is a matter of very little requirement of knowledge or skill and license to free livelihood - which it is very far from being true.


And for all that any individual was always free to teach anyone else, which was inherent in the old ashram system of school. Even now this is how music is taught, in the traditional way, at least it was until a half century or so ago, with the aspiring music student living with the family of the maestro and doing chores and learning at all hours until he is declared finished in the mastro's opinion as an accomplished musician, and allowed to perform solo. If someone teaching another displeased others they were as free to express their opinion as the person who was free to carry on nevertheless, but this at the most resulted in breaking social contacts if that.


Even an excommunication which is the worst that could happen would only keep one out of one caste, not out of the whole society. And long before Europe touched Indian soil there were Braahmans who did break tradition in more than one way, and opened floodgates of knowledge to society s well as consorting with others in matter of food - which is as far as it gets without changing one's own caste, while risking it.


And that is only about knowledge - as far as being spiritual goes there is no restriction on who gets to renounce the worldly life and be a monk, you can and be on your own whoever you are. You can do it too while not leaving the world behind and many, many did too.


But it is not as if western traditions are of uncontrolled access to knowledge, quite to the contrary; the whole inquisition horror was about control of knowledge and keeping it from people. Renaissance happened because Arabs and Jews and Greeks and so forth had gone on to preserve knowledge with copied and conserved manuscripts, which were sought out and burned in hundreds of thousands by inquisition in more than one place, but were not lost totally, and were in fact recovered.


If inheritance of knowledge is to be questioned why not first strike down inheritance of money, business, power of all sorts? Because most people do understand the latter, is why! Imagine demanding a share of the crown of any royal today in the world - even today - or propaganda against any wealthy person or people for not giving it all away for free.


Knowledge in Braahman tradition is seen to be but really is not free meal, it is hard work of a less understood sort - it is not about copying manuscripts and memorising alone, that is the least of it, though those are hard work too - and responsibility, with little reward to expect in life, except worry about where to find way to support to children. the one right and duty combined about giving knowledge is to choose the right one as recipient - and is that not true even in modern world with universities?


Do people get into Harvard just for asking? Oxford, Cambridge, Berkeley, Stanford, ... any of them?


The question is not if our traditional knowledge is comparable - the question is if anyone teaching privately (or conducting priestly duties) does not have the same rights and privileges, of choosing whom one teaches (or serves in any capacity) and if so why has there been a persecution of Braahman tradition to the exclusion of any other? Was it only, or chiefly, colonial occupation by various powers for a millenium, using a false weapon to strike at the head of the nation?


As for untouchability, which is what we are hit with most often - we never thought to ask, how do you conduct waste disposal? Today a lot of things have changed where there is plumbing, waste disposal does not generally need human agency, and bathing is easier. When there was no plumbing what did Europe do, in towns? Empty the slop bucket straight out of the window onto the road below, or in the basement and leave it there, are a few of the answers!


In fact even churches were separate for common people and for gentry - a fact not publicised often. It is obvious if one considers how difficult it was for common people to keep clean, when cold made it all but impossible to bathe or wash clothes often. But those considerations are of hygiene, you would say. What do you think untouchability is?


When U.S., Australia and other such nations do not allow food from other countries including India, it is called rules, unquestioned, and understood it is about contamination (- although it is about official profit makers just as much, since the same objects are available from same sources for higher prices in the same countries -), and not opposed, much less attacked.


When U.K. does not allow various live objects or such within the country, it is quarantine, necessary for national health.


When one visits a sick person there are rules for health, either yours or the patients' or both. Breath or touch might conduct disease, and so they are forbidden for the duration. And it is well known and publicised that when westerners visit India they do not drink our water, even - is that not untouchability? Or is it only good sense, for hygiene? Where do you draw the line, is it about whether we do it, or you do the exact same?


Due to the prejudices (needed to protect your own false claim to superiority) west has never really tried to see with open eyes, question it without having made up mind first, and so on. If they had it would be clear that untouchability is about hygiene concerns in a tropical, pre-industrial, pre-plumbing society.


And it was not restricted to one caste versus another, which of course ought to be better understood - you cannot expect someone working with dead animals to make leather-work objects, for example, in old days, to be clean and bathed, or punish them for being unclean either; but castes whose work did not involve unclean work were expected to keep clean, bathed, wearing fresh washed cotton - white for men, almost always - and this was since early morning. Being unwashed was to lose standing - belief in or preference of one deity or another was a personal matter of level of comprehension.


Untouchability was not restricted to certain castes either, not even outside Braahman families. Since it was a matter of hygiene there were several level of temporary untouchability, and those are followed by many even though caste untouchability might have vanished. Which it has to when there is paper money - no one can refuse to touch money or to boil it for sake of rules and so there cannot be any more question of untouchable castes.


But the other, within a home or within Braahman community sort of untouchability is what makes it even more clear what it is about. For instance rules exist about touching someone performing worship, even if you have bathed and are in fact Braahman or even the priest's own son, if you are not officiating. Rules exist about what Braahman can touch within one's own home before bath and after.

Rules exist about all sorts of things, and especially about women.


Women of your own family were untouchable at certain times - obviously including certain period around childbirth and during menstruation, and other such restrictions exist involving married men or women touching some things before bathing any day. It is about hygiene and it benefits the temporarily untouchable women often - since there is very little work one is allowed to do one rests of necessity, with much needed relief. And if no other woman is present to do it, men of the family simply have to perform the normally women's duties, including cooking, and fetching water if needed as it used to be, washing clothes (not of the women) and more. Needless to say not touching women those days gave more freedom and relief to those objects of untouchability - they could not be hit for example.


My grandmother, one who brought us up until I was ten, and one more year for the little ones, was married at eight - rather late for those days - but she was educated, not merely in reading and writing which was more common even traditionally (it was and still is for families to decide on many matters, and that is why very often many do go far ahead of ambient norms) but even more.


Our grandfather, who died when my mother was less than a year old, was quite strict in traditional rules and was moreover much older, in his forties at the wedding, and quite a terror, having been an unusually different achiever. He went far from home to make his fortune at a job and returned with money to buy an orchard, and probably had to deal with cleansing for having been abroad, since who knows what unclean practices and so forth exists? He ran a household of grown up sons, their wives and children, from his first marriage; my grandmother was a mother in law as soon as she married, to young women elder to her in years; but having seniority had to conduct herself accordingly and was responsible for the household. And she carried it all admirably too. Feeding and looking after the huge household including servants at home and at the orchard was only part of it.


He disapproved of women, especially his wife, reading - since it would take her away from some housework she could do instead. (This view is far from uncommon even today when it is a must even socially to educate a daughter and have a wife who earns.) Since work is never really over in home in non industrial society, and can always be found even in modern ones, this makes it difficult for women to find time for themselves, for relaxing, or intellectual growth or whatever. My grandmother however was of sharp intelligence, and found a chink in the whole system - the chink was in fact an integral part of the old system! Today the system is not followed, and so women have no respite in most places from housework, any day, any time.


She would read, freely and openly, non stop, when she was temporarily untouchable - and there was precious little he could do other than shout, standing outside her room at those times! She ignored him, secure in the knowledge he couldn't possibly enter the room much less touch her or take away whatever it was she read. She was one of the most well read people I knew, and not the only exception to women of her sort, there were many. As for him, he was not a base, vindictive sort, so she knew he would not remember it later and beat her after three or four days, when she was no longer untouchable.


In another story involving a household with the head of the family demanding rules be complied with strictly, there was one rule that had to be bent a little - that involving washing everything that entered the house before it entered the house, and the head of the family often roared about the rule not being complied with. So one day the women decided to do exactly as he demanded, and applied the rule to groceries, including sugar, salt, and spices. Needless to say he - finally - understood and did not give them a hard time any more.


Yet, for all that, women did not and do not require a priest for every occasion, although one might be asked if the household so wished, whether every day conducting worship in the little temple in the household, or small and private or even big social ceremonies of religious nature involving welcoming a bride, inviting another woman or women for some special occasions of festive nature, celebrations of pregnancy, childbirth, naming the child, and so forth. Some occasions have more than one part, half being conducted by women and others by one or more priests. Men do not have a monopoly on our tradition even of spiritual or religious functional nature, even Braahman men. Some are rights of women.








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JG