By Ken and Visakha Kawasaki
India is the world's largest democracy, but more than half a century after independence, its entrenched caste system aggravates persistent economic troubles and makes a travesty of the ideals of justice and equality.
What are the origins of the caste system? Nearly a thousand years before Buddha's birth, nomads speaking an early form of Sanskrit entered the Indian subcontinent from the north-west, probably through what is now Afghanistan, slowly spreading down through the Punjab into north-central India. They settled into villages and merged with the local population
In this caste-bound society, there were some homeless dropouts called samanas who played little or no part in the economy as either producers or consumers. They devoted themselves to the search for religious truth, but they did not follow the prevailing religious orthodoxy, the Brahminical religion based on the Vedas. They were highly individualistic and engaged in a variety of practices. Most samanas were celibate wanderers, without families or other social ties. They could travel freely even from kingdom to kingdom. Being respected by all levels of society, they were given food and hospitality. Some were teachers, arguing their philosophies of materialism, nihilism, determinism, and eternalism. Listening to such debates was actually a popular form of entertainment. Many samanas sought to develop psychic powers. Some were naked and unbathed, others wore loin clothes and bathed 3 times daily. Some followed bizarre rules and practices.
From these forest wanderers came new strains of mysticism as well as the organized religions of Buddhism and Jainism. The culture wars of the first millennium B.C. set the Brahminical tradition against the samanic one. The samanic faiths were almost as pluralistic as today, but what they had in common was their refusal to accept the authority of the Vedas and the Brahmins. Buddhism became the most influential of these samanic religions. Prince Siddharttha, who later became Buddha, was born into the ksatriya caste.
Buddhist literature provides us with a major source of information about Brahminism and Buddha himself frequently ridiculed the Brahmins as greedy to consume the animals, including cows, they slaughtered in their sacrifices.
Buddha was no mere reformer of Brahminism as some claim. He lived, taught, and died as a non-Vedic and non-Brahminical religious teacher. Nowhere did he ever acknowledge any indebtedness to the existing religious beliefs and practices. Buddha considered himself as initiating a rational religious method, as opening a new path. He was frequently condemned, criticized, and insulted by noted teachers and sects of the Vedic-Brahminic tradition.
Buddha turned Brahminism on its head. In the Upanisads, karma or action, was dependent upon ritual, caste and status and its quality was dependent upon context. What was right for a person of one caste to do could very easily be wrong for a person of another caste. Buddha declared kamma (the term in Pali) to be purely an ethical matter of thought, word, or deed. According to him, the quality of any action, good or bad, virtuous or evil, depended upon the intention behind it. Kamma was the same for all, regardless of who did it. Buddha taught that one was not noble by birth, but by one's thought, word, and deed. Noble intentions led to noble speech and actions, and nobility made one a Brahmin, regardless of parentage.
The society of these settlers was stratified into hereditary status groups for whom it was usually taboo to inter-marry (inter-caste marriage). Within these groups, or castes, each man had a place in society and a function to fulfill, with its own duties and rights. The duty of the Brahmin was to teach and sacrifice. The duty of the Ksatriya was to protect the people. The duty of the Vyshya was to breed cattle, to farm, trade and lend money. The importance of duty in this society can be seen in the epigram, "It is better to do one's own duty badly than another's well," which was later elaborated in the Bhagavad Gita. The duty of the Sudra, or untouchable, was only to serve the 3 higher castes. Sudras had to eat the remnants of their master's food and to wear his cast-off clothing. Sudras could be expelled or slain at will. A Brahmin killing a Sudra performed the same penance as for killing a dog or a cat. Sudras were not allowed to hear or to repeat the Vedic scriptures. One sub-group of untouchables was the Candala. Candalas were not allowed to live in an Aryan village, but had to dwell in special quarters outside the boundaries. Their main task was the carrying and cremation of corpses. They also served as executioners of criminals. Candalas were required to dress in garments of corpses they had cremated, to eat their food from broken vessels, and to wear only iron ornaments. No man of higher castes might have any but the most distant relations with a Candala on pain of losing his religious purity and falling to the Candala's level.
According to Brahmins, Brahma, the creator-god, had sacrificed himself, and it was his sacrifice that sustained the cosmos. Brahmins claimed to be "gods on earth" and appropriated for themselves the right to officiate in the sacrificial cult they brought with them. Brahmins practiced domestic rituals for themselves, but they also served the ruling caste by performing public rituals.
Buddha denied all authority to the Brahmins and their scriptures. Brahminical rites-indeed, all rites and rituals-were useless and pointless. Buddha condemned animal sacrifices, preaching the doctrine of ahimsa, non-violence, which, because of its association with Mahatma Gandhi, has often been mistaken for a Hindu principle.
Buddha refuted the idea of an omnipotent creator-god by demonstrating that the universe develops according to laws of causation. He denied the existence of a cosmic soul, further demonstrating that man has neither soul nor enduring self. Buddha never used Sanskrit, the language of the Brahmins, but taught in the vernacular Magadhi, which was later arranged into Pali. The Sangha was open to all, both men and women, regardless of caste. Although members of the untouchable castes were often forbidden entry into Brahmin temples, Buddhist monks taught them freely and ordained those who wished to enter the Sangha, where members were ranked only by seniority. In a number of Jatakas, Buddha described previous births when he had been born as a Candala.
For close to a millennium, Buddhism and Hinduism, the latter an organized form of Brahminism, were the main contenders in the cultural and social life of the subcontinent. Buddhism spread and became a worldwide religion, but, after a series of catastrophic Muslim invasions and conquests, Hinduism emerged supreme within India. The caste system survived and became even more rigid over the centuries.
When the Untouchable movement began in the 19th century, some militants rejected their identity as Hindus and saw an alternative in Buddhism. Pandit Iyothee Thass, a Tamil, argued that Tamils were originally Buddhists. Brahmananda Reddy organized a small Buddhist movement in Andhra Pradesh. There were also several brilliant upper caste intellectuals, such as Dharmananda Kosambi, who identified themselves with Buddhism.
During the struggle for Indian Independence, two leaders, Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, claimed to be the champion of the Untouchables. Mahatma Gandhi called them 'Harijan', a preposterous euphemism which means "Children of God". Gandhi espoused the need for guaranteeing certain rights to the Untouchables.
Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, who was born in 1891 into the untouchable Mahar caste of Maharashtra. At a time when less than 1% of his caste was literate, Dr. Ambedkar obtained a Ph.D. from Columbia University in New York and a D.Sc. from the University of London. He coined the term 'Dalit' or "broken people" which is now in common parlance. His earliest efforts involved establishing a Dalit movement in Maharashtra by founding newspapers, holding conferences, forming political parties, and opening colleges to promote the education and welfare of Dalits. In the 1930s, as a delegate at London Roundtable Conferences, he argued that Dalits were a minority entitled to their own electorate. He also led campaigns for religious rights for Dalits, including lifting prohibitions on allowing Dalits to enter Hindu temples. He was named the Minister for Law in first Nehru cabinet in independent India and served as chairman of the drafting committee for the Constitution.
Untouchability was abolished under India's Constitution in 1950, and certain rights and quotas are reserved for the "scheduled classes," mainly due to the efforts of Dr. Ambedkar. This has not in any way, however, led to the elimination of discrimination of Untouchables. The practice remains very much a part of rural India. Newspaper accounts of attacks on Untouchables are commonplace.
Dr. Ambedkar believed that Hinduism itself, because it was so tightly identified with the caste system, was the major cause of oppression. Gandhi, on the other hand, sought to improve the lot of Untouchables within the framework of Hinduism. In debates with Gandhi in the 1930s, Dr. Ambedkar put forth the challenge that if all Hindu scriptures that supported caste were thoroughly renounced, he could continue to call himself a Hindu. If they were left in place, then he could not. He saw the need for a religion that would provide the spiritual and moral basis for equality as an integral part of these struggles.
In 1935, Dr. Ambedkar made the bold pronouncement, "I was born a Hindu, and I had no choice about that. But I will not die a Hindu!" This sent a tremor throughout much of India. For the next 20 years, leaders of other major religions, mainly Muslim and Christian, tried to lure him. During this time, Dr. Ambedkar investigated these other religions to discover which offered Dalits the most advantage and protection.
By 1956, he had reached his decision. On the full-moon day of October in that year, in a public ceremony in Nagpur, he led 500,000 Dalits in taking precepts and accepting Buddhism as their new faith. The precepts were administered by the Arakanese monk, Ven. U Chandramani.
Dr. Ambedkar clearly explained why he preferred Buddhism to all other alternatives. Primarily, he found 3 principles in Buddhism which no other religion offered. Buddhism teaches wisdom, as against superstition and supernaturalism; love and compassion in relations with others; and complete equality. Considering Marxism, Dr. Ambedkar recognized that the communist movement had shaken the religious systems of many countries, but he did not see that it had provided a solution. Not only failing to eliminate poverty, Marxism, he said, used poverty as an excuse for sacrificing human freedom. Dr. Ambedkar said that Buddhism teaches social, intellectual, economic and political freedom--equality not only between man and man but also between man and woman.
Dr. Ambedkar felt it was necessary to preserve Buddhism in India and to protect it from corruption by Hinduism. He exhorted his followers to swear not to regard Vishnu, Shiva, Rama, Krishna, or any of the other Hindu deities as gods nor to worship them. He denounced as malicious propaganda the Hindu claim that Buddha was the incarnation of Vishnu. Dr. Ambedkar vowed never to perform any Hindu ceremony or to offer food to Brahmins. He promised never to act against the tenets of Buddhism. Following his example, new Buddhists proclaim their belief in the equality of all people.
Since Dr. Ambedkar's renunciation of Hinduism, millions of Dalits have followed suit and taken refuge in Buddhism. According to the 1990 census there were 6.4 million Buddhists in India. 5 million of these were in Maharashtra, the remainder includes traditional Buddhist populations in the hill areas of northeast India and high Himalayan valleys, as well as Tibetan refugees. This was a 35.9% increase since 1981, making Buddhism the 5th largest religious group in the country. New Buddhist communities have experienced significant social changes, including a marked decline in alcoholism, a simplification of marriage ceremonies, the abolition of ruinous marriage expenses, a greater emphasis on education, and a heightened sense of identity and self-worth.
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