Annihilation of Caste: The Annotated Critical Edition (28 page)

m
Mahatma Hans Raj was among the first wave of a young, new generation of educated Hindus joining the Arya Samaj. Later he became the principal of the Dayanand Anglo-Vedic College, Lahore, over which he presided from 1888 to 1911. Gokal Chand Narang belonged to the DAV (College) faction of the Arya Samaj and acquired influence alongside the rich landowner, Raja Narendra Nath, in the Legislative Assembly opposed to the encroachment of the Congress in the Punjab. For a history of the Arya Samaj and its leaders, see Kenneth W. Jones (1976).

n
Har Bhagwan’s full name, according to the journal
The Atheist
(March–April 1974), was Har Bhagwan Sethi. He may have given up his (Bania) caste surname owing to his membership of the Jat-Pat Todak Mandal; he served as its secretary at one time. As an associate of Sant Ram, he was “closely associated with the abolition of caste distinctions”. He died in 1976 at the age of eight-one in Delhi, having emigrated after partition from Lahore like Sant Ram. Notably, Har Bhagwan was the publisher of Swami Dharmateertha’s
The Menace of Hindu Imperialism
(1941). Dharmateertha, born Parameswara Menon, a Nair from Kerala, came under the influence of Sree Narayana Guru (1856–1928), the pioneering anticaste social reformer who preached the message of “one caste, one religion, one god”. In 1937, Dharmateertha led “the life of a wandering sannyasin and spread the Guru’s social message of castelessness and social egalitarianism across the sub-continent” (Aloysius 2004, 19). Aloysius cites Ambedkar’s words on this work in the blurb of the new edition: “This book is written from a point of view which I appreciate very much. I am myself writing a book in which I have touched many of the points which I find are dealt with in this book. The book therefore was a very welcome thing to me.” After touring much of North India, Dharmateertha settled down in Lahore for five years (1941–6) at Har Bhagwan’s house, and as a member of the Indian Social Congress met and held discussions with Jinnah, Ambedkar and the Sikh leader Master Tara Singh. In a short account in
The Atheist
(1974), Har Bhagwan says that after moving to Delhi he founded the Jat-Pat Todak Samata Sangh (Association for Equality Without Caste) which was soon renamed Avarnodaya Samata Sangh (Association for the Advancement of Casteless People).

o
On 13–14 April 1936, Ambedkar attended the Sikh Prachar Conference in Amritsar (50 km from Lahore). In his address he extolled the principle of equality within the Sikh community and alluded to the possibility of converting to Sikhism. Zelliot (2013, 162) writes: “There is an unverified story that Ambedkar spoke to a Sikh group at this time, asking them if they were willing to allow inter-marriage between Sikhs and new converts, and the Sikhs responded in the affirmative.” For an analysis of why Ambedkar gave up on Sikhism, see Puri (2003, 2698), who says: “After participating in the Sikh Missionary Conference at Amritsar in April, Ambedkar sent his son, Yashwant Rao, and nephew to the Golden Temple in May, where they stayed for one month and a half, to observe the situation and meet with leaders of the community.” Puri argues that perhaps the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) feared that “after six crore (60 million) untouchables became Sikhs” the clout of dominant-caste Jats in the SGPC and the gurdwaras would be undermined.

p
This must be seen in the light of the statement Ambedkar had made on 13 October 1935 at the Yeola Depressed Classes conference: “I had the misfortune of being born with the stigma of an Untouchable. However, it is not my fault; but I will not die a Hindu, for this is in my power” (Zelliot 2013, 147). The conference was attended by ten thousand people, a conglomeration of Mahar panchayats and delegates from Hyderabad and the Central Provinces. “The conference included an instruction to stop temple entry movements and an exhortation to cease fruitless attempts to gain status on Hindu terms” (Zelliot 2013, 148). Sant Ram (1963/2008, 137) writes, “One of the reasons for my inviting Dr Ambedkar was that in matters we can’t convince him with logic, we would convince him in love by appealing to his heart.” Ambedkar’s insistence on including in his address a detailed section on the destruction of the Hindu religion signalled the likelihood of failure if the Mandal insisted on trying to win him over to the cause of religious reform. At the same time, members of the Mandal’s welcome committee were threatened with a black-flag protest if Ambedkar were to preside over the meeting, and this made Sant Ram unsure of endearing Ambedkar to the cause. Ambedkar’s address at the Sikh Prachar Conference, Amritsar, in April 1936 would have further disoriented the Jat-Pat Todak Mandal, a point Ambedkar makes in his final letter to the Mandal (203).

q
Sant Ram (1963/2008, 119), in his autobiography, lists the following past presidents of the Mandal’s annual conferences in Lahore from a 1939 report of the Mandal: Swami Shraddhanand, Motilal Nehru, Raja Narendra Nath, Bhai Parmanand, Rameshwari Nehru, Swami Sarvadanand, Sir Hari Singh Gaur, Sri Satyananda Stokes, Sri Ramananda Chatterjee, Sri Harkishan Lal, Barrister Dr Gokul Chand, Barrister Dr N.B. Khare of Nagpur, Swami Satyanand and Dr Kalyandas Desai.

Friends, I am really sorry for the members of the
Jat-Pat Todak Mandal who have so very kindly invited me to preside over this conference. I am sure they will be asked many questions for having selected me as the president. The Mandal will be asked to explain as to why it has imported a man from Bombay to preside over a function which is held in Lahore. I believe the Mandal could easily have found someone better qualified than myself to preside on the occasion. I have criticised the Hindus. I have questioned the authority of the Mahatma whom they revere. They hate me. To them I am a snake in their garden. The Mandal will no doubt be asked by the politically minded Hindus to explain why it has called me to fill this place of honour. It is an act of great daring. I shall not be surprised if some political Hindus regard it as an insult. This selection of mine certainly cannot please the ordinary religiously minded Hindus.

The Mandal may be asked to explain why it has disobeyed the shastric injunction in selecting the president. According to the shastras, the
Brahmin is appointed to be the guru for the three varnas.
¹
is a direction of the shastras.
The Mandal therefore knows from whom a Hindu should take his lessons and from whom he should not. The shastras do not permit a Hindu to accept anyone as his guru merely because he is well versed. This is made very clear by
Ramdas,
²
a Brahmin saint from Maharashtra, who is alleged to have inspired Shivaji to establish a Hindu Raj. In his
Dasbodh
, a
socio-politico-religious treatise in Marathi verse, Ramdas asks, addressing the Hindus, can we accept an
antyaja
³
to be our guru because he is a pandit (i.e., learned)? He gives an answer in the negative.

What replies to give to these questions is a matter which I must leave to the Mandal. The Mandal knows best the reasons which led it to travel to Bombay to select a president, to fix upon a man so repugnant to the Hindus, and to descend so low in the scale as to select an antyaja—an Untouchable—to address an audience of the s
avarnas.
⁴
As for myself, you will allow me to say that I have accepted the invitation much against my will, and also against the will of many of my fellow Untouchables. I know that the Hindus are sick of me. I know that I am not a
persona grata
with them. Knowing all this, I have deliberately kept myself away from them. I have no desire to inflict myself upon them. I have been giving expression to my views from my own platform. This has already caused a great deal of heartburn
⁵
and irritation.

I have no desire to ascend the platform of the Hindus, to do within their sight what I have been doing within their hearing. If I am here it is because of your choice and not because of my wish. Yours is a cause of social reform. That
cause has always made an appeal to me, and it is because of this that I felt I ought not to refuse an opportunity of helping the cause—especially when you think that I can help it. Whether what I am going to say today will help you in any way to solve the problem you are grappling with, is for you to judge. All I hope to do is to place before you my views on the problem.

The path of social reform, like the path to heaven (at any rate, in India), is strewn with many difficulties. Social reform in India has few friends and many critics. The critics fall into two distinct classes. One class consists of political reformers, and the other of the socialists.

It was at one time recognised that without
social efficiency,
⁶
no permanent progress in the other fields of activity was
possible; that owing to mischief wrought by evil customs, Hindu society was not in a state of efficiency; and that ceaseless efforts must be made to eradicate these evils. It was due to the recognition of this fact that the birth of the National Congress was accompanied by the foundation of the Social Conference.
⁷
While the Congress was concerned with defining the weak points in the political organisation of the country, the Social Conference was engaged in removing the weak points in the social organisation of Hindu society. For some time the Congress and the Conference worked as two wings of one common activity, and they held their annual sessions in the same pandal.

But soon the two wings developed into two parties, a ‘political reform party’ and a ‘social reform party’, between whom there raged a fierce controversy. The ‘political reform party’ supported the National Congress, and the ‘social reform party’ supported the Social Conference. The two bodies thus became two hostile camps. The point at issue was whether social reform should precede political reform. For a decade the forces were evenly balanced, and the battle was fought without victory to either side.

It was, however, evident that the fortunes of the Social Conference were ebbing fast. The gentlemen who presided over the sessions of the Social Conference lamented that the majority of the educated Hindus were for political advancement and indifferent to social reform; and that
while the number of those who attended the Congress was very large, and the number who did not attend but who sympathised with it was even larger, the number of those who attended the Social Conference was very much smaller.

This indifference—this thinning of its ranks—was soon followed by active hostility from the politicians. Under the leadership of the late Mr Tilak,
⁸
the courtesy with which the Congress allowed the Social Conference the use of its pandal was withdrawn, and the spirit of enmity went to such a pitch that when the Social Conference desired to erect its own pandal, a threat to burn the pandal was held out by its opponents.
⁹
Thus in the course of time the party in favour of political reform won, and the Social Conference vanished and was forgotten.

The speech delivered by Mr
W.C. Bonnerjee
¹⁰
in 1892 at
Allahabad, as president of the eighth session of the Congress, sounds like a funeral oration on the death of the Social Conference, and is so typical of the Congress attitude that I venture to quote from it the following extract. Mr Bonnerjee said:

I have stated the case for political reform as put by Mr Bonnerjee. There were many who were happy that the victory went to the Congress. But those who believe in the importance of social reform may ask, is an argument such as that of Mr Bonnerjee final? Does it prove that the victory went to those who were in the right? Does it prove conclusively that social reform has no bearing on political reform? It will help us to understand the matter if I state the other side of the case. I will draw upon the treatment of the Untouchables for my facts.

Under the rule of the Peshwas in the Maratha country,
¹¹
the
Untouchable was not allowed to use the public streets if a Hindu was coming along, lest he should pollute the Hindu by his shadow. The Untouchable was required to have a black thread either on his wrist or around his neck, as a sign or a mark to prevent the Hindus from getting themselves polluted by his touch by mistake. In Poona, the capital of the Peshwa, the Untouchable was required to carry, strung from his waist, a broom to sweep away from behind himself the dust he trod on, lest a Hindu walking on the same dust should be polluted. In Poona, the Untouchable was required to carry an earthen pot hung around his neck wherever he went—for holding his spit, lest his spit falling on the earth should pollute a Hindu who might unknowingly happen to tread on it.