Chapter 17 Tan Dan about outcasting Hindus
Stray couples, excluded from their castes because they have got children, in spite of belonging to different castes, will never start any new castes or communities of their own, at least not in the 20th century. There are a few outcasted individuals and families in many villages of India, but they live like isolated cases with whom nobody keep social contacts. Such persons are considered outcasted by the other villagers and their caste fellows, until they repent officially and pay the fines to their caste panchayat. In some cases they never repent and die outcasted. But such persons are not considered casteless either, in the sense that they are without caste or have lost their caste.
The children born from such parents will not be outcasted for ever. They have the right to be reaccepted into their caste, as soon as they make the atonement to their caste panchayat. Neither they nor their parents have become casteless, in the sense that they have lost their caste identity. People do recognize them as members of their original caste, although they do not keep contact with the outcasted family for the time being.
Every person born as a Hindu has a caste, and will always have a caste in the eyes of other Hindus, whether he is outcasted or not.
No Hindu in western Rajasthan can change his caste, even if he is outcasted Hindus will consider a Hindu a member of the caste in which he has been born, even if he has converted to another religion. In the eyes of other Hindus he will always be a Hindu.
To belong to a Hindu caste is not a matter of religious belief. The person may be an atheist or go to church and read the Bible or follow any other non-Hindu religious act of worshipping, as long as the person concerned follow the caste rules and perform all the customary rites, according to the dictate of the caste panchayat, and as long as the person does not do anything, which the caste panchayat does not allow, such as eating beef. In case he eats beef, he will be outcasted, but he will not loose his caste.
The casteless sweepers, a mistaken belief
Sweepers are not casteless, neither in Rajasthan nor in other parts of India that I have visited. Nevertheless, the myth about the casteless sweepers in India is common in Europe, it seems. There are even indologists who tell that sweepers have no caste. The idea of castelessness might stem from Sanskrit scholars in Europe in the 19th century, more in contact with Sanskrit books written by Brahmins, than with the sweepers. The problem of the sweepers is not that they lack a caste (jati, in Marvari kom), but that they face segregation by other Hindus. That social isolation is still very strong.
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Supplement
The delicate task of giving names to the Bhangi caste
Harijan was an affectionate name of untouchable castes, meaning the 'the people of God'. It was used by Mohandas Gandhi and social reformers of the Congress already in the first half of the 20th century. In the Chelana area of western Rajasthan the name Harijan was only used for Bhangis in the 1970s. There, Harijan became another name of the Bhangi caste. In the Pattikalyana village of the Samalkha area of eastern Haryana the word Harijan was instead used as a name for the three Chamar subcastes of that village. Also in the 1970s. At Pattikalyana the Bhangis were called Balmiki. That name referred to the famous ancient Hindu sage with whom they associated themselves. Valmiki is the name of the Bhangi caste that is most accepted within the caste itself. To have a name with mythic associations is common in India. Is it necessary in the modern world of the 21st century to have such religious connotations? Is it in the field of religion that low ranked castes see their future? Why not adopt a secular approach and realize that caste itself is a big myth. There is just one caste, jati, for all human beings living on this globe. The jati of Homo sapiens, the human species to whom we all belong, because there are no biological barriers to get offspring within that big group of six seven billion individuals. We are human beings, Homo sapiens, and one of the animals species. Other animals such as monkeys and cattle, have their own species, jati. In a biological sense. Bhangis and Brahmins, though, are not different species (jati). Hindu caste barriers for marriage are all artificial, and will fade away, when there is a will for it. It would in the long run be more beneficial for people of the Bhangi caste to increase their knowledge in the field of natural science than in narrow-minded religion, with leaders that try to tie people to outdated beliefs. Myths that scientific findings based on logic and practical experiments have discarded long ago.
Attempts to find better toilets
Mohandas Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi) and after him the Gandhian organizations took a great interest in finding means of providing the villagers with sanitary latrines, but the impact was small. In the Samalkha area of eastern Haryana, the Gandhi Ashram at Pattikalyana village built a line of public toilets for the villagers in the late 1960s. By using these they would not have to squat in the bush at the outskirt of the village for latrine. That well meant welfare scheme did not work at all. The people continued their habit to sit in the bush at the edge of the village, and the toilets were hardly ever used, the villagers told. In 1976 the doors were gone. Some villagers had stolen the doors and used them as fuel wood.
In some areas public toilets actually used by common people quickly got soiled with faeces. No water for cleaning was a common problem. When water was available, the sewage might get blocked, which made the mess even worse. In spite of all difficulties, schemes for rural private latrines continued in the 1970s. Some voluntary village development organizations helped implementing simple, practical pit toilets for villagers. For example at Phulera and Khandel in the Jaipur district of Rajasthan in the early 1990s. Towards the end of the 20th century there were several well functioning public toilets run at intercity bus stations in north India. Also in Rajasthan. Operated by sweepers of the Bhangi caste.
Tan Dan had a good latrine at his angan with lined underground tanks for accumulating nightsoil. He built it in the 1980s. Before that he had a simple latrine shed of sarkanda reed, two big stone slabs and a deep pit below for the nightsoil. When the latrine was full he closed it. When the compost had become mature soil he planted a papita tree on the top of the old latrine, and that tree-like plant yielded excellent fruit.
The great advantage with the pit latrines compared to the old tarat latrines is the lack of nightsoil to be removed by Bhangi sweepers. The latrine is cleaned with brush and water, that is all. There is no repulsive work of removing shit and put it in piles somewhere. Water toilet does not mean flush toilet, but the use of water kept in pots and buckets.
Building lined pits for water toilets was expensive to the villagers. At Chelana most families still lived in houses without toilets. The morning walk for a shit in the wasteland became longer and longer due to new housing colonies come up, and population growth. More and more squatters.
Some minister said in a speech in 2013 that there were more temples than toilets in Indian villages. Such talk few persons wanted to hear in religious India. The statement was criticized in the massmedia. All the same, it is amazing how many new temples, big and small, are being built in the dynamic rural development areas of Rajasthan and Haryana.
Explanation of some Indian words occurring in this book (Hindi and Marwari)
angan. A walled-in yard in front of a house is called angan in Hindi and chawk in Marvari.
asthi phul. The ash from the dead body of the person cremated. Many villagers of western Rajasthan have the tradition of going to Hardvar for the asthi phul immersion. There are other places, too, but Hardvar seems to be the main centre for the masses of northern India, as for this rite.
bahu. Daughter-in-law. A young married woman is called bahu by all in her husband's family.
gotra. A gotra is an exogamous kinship group of a caste. The endogamous caste consists of a number of gotras, and marriages only take place between persons of different gotras. A family is an exogamous unit in most societies, but in the ancient Egyptian kingdoms the Faraoh ruler married his own sister.
jajman. Cli
ents faithful for generations are called jajmans. A common working relationship between families in feudal Rajasthan.
lakh. One hundred thousand.
mantra. Rhymes which bring luck and prosperity to the client.
mohalla. A residential area of a village where families of the same caste live.
norta. Nine days of mother godess worship. In westernRajasthan done twice a year for Karni, Jagthamba, Baya and similar folk godesses.
odhni. A head cover cloth for women by which she can cover her face to strangers and male senior in-law relatives.
parda. When a woman hide her face from other men, strangers or senior in-law relatives. When they live in seclusion out of sight of strangers.
patvari. Village land accountants. Their records were used for estimating land revenue, which was an important income of the government in the old days, but not after land reforms in the 1950s.
pinda. The Rajasthani villagers call the Brahmins at Hardvar pinda, which means body in their own language, but the Brahmins call themselves panda.
puni. Puni means a good deed (opposite to pap, sinful deeds). It is believed that those who get puni improve their chances for a good living in next life.
roti. Flat round bread cakes baked without yeast on an iron ban.
sarpanch. The chairman and head of the elected village council, the gram panchayat.
thikana. The walled fortress and residence of the village lord in the feudal days.
varna. Varnas are the ancient classes of Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishya, and Shudra into which the thousands of caste groups of today somehow is being fitted. People often talk about these varnas as if they were castes, but they are rather categories of castes.
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Reference
Agarwal, 1979, Rajasthan District Gazetteers
Briggs, G.W. 1920. The religious life of India. The Chamar. Calcutta. 270 pp.
Hutton, J.H. 1963. Caste in India. Its nature, function, and origins. Oxford etc. pp.324.
Singh, M.H., 1990, The castes of Marwar. Census Report of 1891. Jodhpur.
Cover image
A sweeper girl living in the Rajasthan desert region.
Photo: Tan Dan Detha
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That was all for the time being, but Tan Dan has more to tell.
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