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The institution of caste illustrates the spirit of comprehensive synthesis characteristic of the Hindu mind with its faith in the collaboration of races and the cooperation of cultures. Paradoxical as it may seem, the system of caste is the outcome of tolerance and trust. Though it has now degenerated into an instrument of oppression and intolerance, thought it tends to perpetuate inequality and develop the spirit of exclusiveness, these unfortunate effects are not the central motives of the system. If the progressive thinkers of India had the power, as they undoubtedly have the authority, they would transform the institution out of recognition. It is not the evils of the system that I am here concerned with so much as the underlying principles.
Any survey of the castes of the present day will reveal the complex origin of the institution. Castes are of many kinds, tribal, racial, sectarian, occupational. Some are due to migration. When members of an old case migrate to a different part of the country, they become a new caste.
As it is clear from the Sanskrit word varna, caste had originally reference to colour. If we look into the past history of India, we see how the country has been subjected to one race invasion after another. Even at the beginning of her history India was peopled by various racial groups, the dark aboriginal tribes, the sturdy Dravidians, the yellow-skinned Mongols and the blithe, forceful Aryans. Very soon she developed intimate intercourse with the Persians, the Greeks and the Scythians, and some of these settled down in India. No other country in the world has had such racial problems as India.
Regarding the solution of the problem of racial conflicts the different alternatives which present themselves are those of extermination, subordination, identification or harmonisation. The first course has been adopted often in the course of the history of the world. The trail of main is dotted with the graves of countless communities which reached an untimely end. But is there any justification for this violation of human life? Have we any idea of what the world loses when one racial culture is extinguished? It is true that the Red Indians have not made, to all appearance, any contribution to the world’s progress, but have we any clear understanding of their undeveloped possibilities which, in God’s good time, might have come to fruition? Do we know so much of ourselves and the world and God’s purpose as to believe that our civilisation, our institutions and our customs are so immeasurably superior to those of others, not only what others actually possess but what exists in them potentially? We cannot measure beforehand the possibilities of a race. Civilisations are not made in a day, and had the fates been kindlier and we less arrogant in our ignorance, the world, I dare say, would have been richer for the contributions of the Red Indians. Our civilisation is quite recent when compared with the antiquity of man and the differentiation of human types. Some of the ancestors of the Great British people who are now in the vanguard of humanity were not much advanced as depicted by Julius Caesar. Who could understand the great potentialities of the savages of Britain dressed in skins at their religious worship burning men alive to appease their gods? No one acquainted with the ancestors of the Teutons would have anticipated for them their glorious contributions to music and metaphysics. Human potentiality is so great, and our knowledge of fundamental racial differences so little, that the cruel repression and extermination of races is not the part of wisdom. A little understanding of human nature and history will enable us to sympathise with the savage and the primitive, the barbarous and the backward, and help us to see that they also in their imperfect fashions are struggling towards that abiding city which shines in dazzling splendour up the steep and narrow way. Every people, every tribe however little advanced i its stage of development, represents a certain psychic type or pattern. The interests of humanity require that every type should be assisted and educated to its adequate expression and development. No race lives to itself and no race dies to itself. Besides, the backwardness of races is due to environmental conditions, physical, social and cultural. Races show considerable powers of adaptation when an external stimulus is applied to them.
When extermination is impossible, the powerful races of the world adopt the second alternative of subordination. They act on the maxim, spare the slave and smash the rebel. The superior races of the world cannot have a clean conscience if they remember their dealings with the coloured ones on the Congo, in Brazil, in Peking at the time of the Boxer revolution, and in America today. For a man like Lord Milner the British Empire meant the brotherhood of communities of like blood and the mastery of the British race over the non-British dependencies. Civilisation is not the suppression of races less capable of or less advanced in culture by people of higher standing. God does not give us the right to destroy or enslave the weak and the unfit. One race may not be as clever or as strong as another, and yet the highest idealism requires that we should give equality of opportunities even to unequal groups. We must respect the independence of every people and lead the backward ones to a full utilisation of the opportunities of their environment and a development of their distinctive natural characteristics.
Racial fusion on a large scale is an impossibility, if it is to be achieved in a short period of time. For long centuries of social tradition and natural inheritance have produced marked divergencies of temperament, mentality and physique which cannot be destroyed at a stroke. Nor is it necessary to do away with race individualities and differences to solve the race problem. Uniformity is not the meaning of unity.
In dealing with the problem of the conflict of the different racial groups, Hinduism adopted the only safe course of democracy, viz. that each racial group should be allowed to develop the best in it without impeding the progress of others. Every historical group is unique and specific and has an ultimate value, and the highest morality requires that we should respect its individuality. Caste, on its racial side, is the affirmation of the infinite diversity of human groups. Though the Vedic Aryans started their life in India with a rigid and narrow outlook, regarding themselves as a sort of chosen people, they soon became universal in intention and developed an ethical code applicable to the whole of humanity, a manava dharma. Those who tried to bring together different races in India are worshipped as the makers of the Hindu society. Rama used the aboriginal tribes in the work of civilising the South. He brought together the Aryans and the non-Aryans, and so did Krsna and the Buddha.
When the aboriginal tribes and others accepted the Hindu standpoint they did not surrender their own individuality but modified it as well as the Hindu spirit which they absorbed. The change is as much in the new group form as in the old ideal. The tribes were admitted into the larger life of Hinduism with the opportunities and the responsibilities which that life gave them, the opportunities to share in the intellectual and cultural life of the Hindus and the responsibilities of contributing to its thoughts, its moral advancement and its spiritual worth – in short, to all that makes a nation’s life. Each group dealt with the Hindu ideas in its own characteristic way. We need not overrate the stagnation of the aboriginal tribes. They were also raised above the welter of savagery and imbued with the spirit of gentleness. Sheltered on the same soil, bound together by common interests, evolving under the influence of common psychic and moral surroundings, the different component tribes not only improved in their level but became adapted to each other in spite of diversity of origin. Mr Valentine Chirol remarks: “The supple and subtle forces of Hinduism had already in prehistory times welded together the discordant beliefs and customs of a vast variety of races into a comprehensive fabric sufficiently elastic to shelter most of the indigenous populations of India, and sufficiently rigid to secure the Aryan Hindu ascendance.”
Indiscriminate racial amalgamation was not encouraged by the Hindu thinkers. The Hindu scriptures recognised the rules about food and marriage which the different communities were practising. What we regard as the lower castes have their own taboos and customs, laws and beliefs which they have created for themselves in the course of ages. Every member of the group enters into the possession of the inheritance bequeathed. It is the law of use and won’t that distinguishes one group from its neighbours. Caste is really custom. Crude and false as the customs and beliefs of others may seem to us, we cannot deny that they help the community adopting them to live at peace itself and in harmony with others. It is a point of social honour for every member to marry within his own caste, and a “low” caste woman would refuse to marry one outside her caste, even if he were from a “higher” one.
Though the Hindu theory of caste does not favour the indiscriminate crossing of men and women, interbreeding has been practised, largely unconsciously, and the essential differences of tribes were modified. Purely anthropological groups are found only among primitive and savage peoples, and not in the societies which play a part in the march of humanity. There has been a general infusion of foreign blood into the Hindu race, and within the race itself there has been a steady flow of blood from the Brahmin to the Candala. The inter-mixture of blood has been carefully regulated by means of anuloma and pratiloma marriages, though the tendency to indiscriminate crossing was not encouraged. While Manu recommends marriages of members of the same caste (savarna) he tolerates marriages of men with women of the “lower castes” (anuloma). Though he does not justify pratiloma marriages, i.e. marriages of women of the “higher” castes with men of the “lower”, he describes the various progeny of such marriages. While they were not regarded as proper there is no doubt that they prevailed. Castes of a mixed type have been formed in order to regularise the position of groups originally proceeding from marriages forbidden or discountenanced by custom or law but condoned after a time. Some of the groups which are today regarded as “untouchable” are said to have arisen by indiscriminate crossing.
While we are dealing with this question, it may be observed that the Hindu system did not condemn all crossing as mischievous. When the stocks are of nearly the same level, crossing is highly beneficial. The deplorable example of the Eurasians is frequently quoted, but then the two stocks happen to be widely different. Besides, the circumstances which accompany their birth and training will damage the best of men. The white man who seduces an Indian nearly always abandons her when she becomes a mother, and the child coming into the world as the product of irregular mating, badly nourished and much despised, grows up generally in conditions which are not very desirable. Not only inheritance but environment also counts.
Yet the principle of savarna marriages is not unsound. It is a difficult question to decide whether the influence of heredity is so great as to justify savarna marriages only. The question of nature versus nurture is still hotly debated. Democrats are quite certain that it is not blue blood or inherited traits that make for the superiority of the upper classes. The Hindu view, however, has the support of ancient Greek thought and modern science. The Greeks believed in heredity and actually developed a theory of race betterment by the weeding out of inferior strains and the multiplication of the superior ones. As early as the sixth century BC the Greek poet Theognis of Megara wrote, “We look for rams and asses and stallions of good stock, and one believes that good will come from good; yet a good man minds not to wed the evil daughter of an evil sire … Marvel not that stock of our folk is tarnished, for the good is mingling with the base.” We are all familiar with Plato’s views of biological selection as the best method of race improvement. Aristotle also believed that the state should encourage the increase of superior types. There has been during the eighteenth century and increasing insistence on the natural equality of men. Adopting the views of Locke and Rousseau, the thinkers of French and American declarations on human rights, Buckle held that men were moulded by their environments as so much soft clay. Modern science, however, holds that this view exaggerates the influence of the environment. Progress does not depend on a mere change of surroundings. Darwin’s teaching that evolution proceeds by heredity was taken up by Galton and biologists like Weismann and De Vries, and the science of eugenics rests today on somewhat safe and sound foundations. The marvellous potency of the germ-plasm is shown by carefully isolating and protecting it against external influences when it steadily follows its predetermined course. Even when interfered with, it tends to overcome the opposition and resume its normal course. Every cell of our body contains tiny chromosomes, which practically determine our being, height and weight, form and colour, nervous organisation and vital energy, temperament and intelligence. Half the number of chromosomes in every cell of our body comes from the father and half from the mother, and they transmit to us most faithfully the qualities of our parents. Any stupidity or insanity of our parents, grandparents or great-grandparents will be transmitted to our children and our children’s children. The Hindu thinkers, perhaps through a lucky intuition or an empirical generalisation, assumed the fact of heredity and encouraged marriages among those who are of approximately the same type and quality. If a member of a first-class family marries another of poor antecedents the good inheritance of the one is debased by the bad inheritance of the other, with the result that the child starts life with a heavy handicap. If the parents are about the same class the child would be practically the equal of the parents. Blood tells. We cannot make genius out of mediocrity or good ability out of inborn stupidity by all the aids of the environment.
It does not, however, mean that nature is all and nurture is nothing. The kind of nurture depends on the group and its type. So long as we had the caste system, both nature and nurture cooperated. There is such a thing as social heredity. Each successive generation acquires by conscious effort the social acquisitions of the groups.
If we want to prevent the suicide of the social order, some restrictions have to be observed with regard to marital relations. Marriages should be, not necessarily in one’s own caste but among members of approximately the same level of culture and social development. For castes also degenerate. As sons are expected to follow the calling of their fathers, superior individuals are not allowed to grow higher than the groups, and the inferior ones are not allowed to sink lower into their proper scale. Caste, as it is, has not made room for high-born incompetents and low-born talents. While every attempt should be made to energise the weak and the lowly by education and moral suasion, indiscriminate marriage relations do not seem to be always desirable.
Without creating great racial disturbances the Hindu spirit brought about a gradual racial harmony. The synthesis of caste started as a social organisation of different ethnic types. There is no doubt that there are many animists who have not been assimilated by Hinduism. When Hindu India lost its independence its work of assimilation and reform stopped, though the present day Hindu leaders are slowly realising their responsibilities towards them.
Caste was the answer of Hinduism to the forces pressing on it from outside. It was the instrument by which Hinduism civilised the different tribes it took in. Any group of people appearing exclusive in any sense is a caste. Whenever a group represents a type of caste arises. If a heresy is born in the bosom of the mother faith and if it spreads and produces a new type, a new caste arises. The Hindu Society has differentiated as many types as can be reasonably differentiated, and is prepared to accept new ones as they arise. It stands for the ordered complexity, the harmonised multiplicity, the many in one which is the clue to the structure of the universe.
Today many brilliant writers are warning us of a world-conflict of races. The rise of racial self-consciousness is a peculiar phenomenon of our times. The coloured peoples are clamouring rightly for a share in the control of the world. Those who are politically subject are demanding political freedom. The conflict between emigration and immigration countries is highly acute. When the weak, the ignorant and the slothful races were wiped out or subordinated, it was argued in defence of this method that the savage races and the primitive peoples could not expect to remain undisturbed in their habitat, for the world cannot afford to let fields lie fallow and ore remain undug, and if the chance occupants of resourceful areas are too feeble and sluggish to develop them, their displacement by people who can redeem the waste places is necessary and right. The mere fact that in the chance wanderings of the race, a particular tribe happened to pitch its tent on a diamond field or an oil-well whose existence it had not guessed and whose use it had not understood, does not give that tribe an exclusive claim to its possession. No country belongs to itself. The needs of the world are the paramount consideration. But this argument is not applied to the present conditions. While the pressure of population draws masses of men from their countries to seek employment elsewhere, and while there are immense underpopulated areas requiring intelligent labour for the development of their resources, the adjustments are not allowed to take place. America, Australia, South Africa, etc, are forbidden lands to the coloured people. Latin America is very sparsely populated, and might easily contain ten times its present number and increase its production to an almost unlimited extent. There are territories which thirst for population and others which are overflowing with it, and yet pride of race and love of power are overriding all considerations of abstract justice and economic necessity. It is not my purpose here to deal with the practical difficulties in the way of an easy solution of the racial problem. They are great, but they can be solved only by the consciousness of the earth as one great family and an endeavour to express this reality in all our relationships. We must work for a world in which all races can blend and mingle, each retaining its special characteristics and developing whatever is best in it. Very early in the history of Hinduism, the caste distinctions came to mean the various stratifications into which the Hindu society settled. The confusion between the tribal and the occupational is the cause of the perpetuation of the old exclusiveness of the tribal customs in the still stringent rules which govern the constitution of each caste. Caste on its social side is a product of human organisation and not a mystery of divine appointment. It is an attempt to regulate society with a view to actual differences and ideal unity. The first reference to it is in the Purusa Sukta, where the different sections of society are regarded as the limbs of the great self. Human society is an organic whole, the parts of which are naturally dependent in such a way that each part in fulfilling its distinctive function conditions the fulfilment of function by the rest, and is in turn conditioned by the fulfilment of its function by the rest. In this sense the whole is present in each part, while each part is indispensable to the whole. Every society consists of groups working for the fulfilment of the wants of the society. As the different groups work for a common end they are bound by a sense of unity and social brotherhood. The cultural and the spiritual, the military and the political, the economic classes and the unskilled workers constitute the four-fold caste organisation. The different functions of the human life were clearly separated and their specific and complementary character was recognised. Each caste has it social purpose and function, its own code and tradition. It is a close corporation equipped with a certain traditional and independent organisation, observing certain usages regarding food and marriage. Each group is free to pursue it own aims free from interference by others. The functions of the different castes were regarded as equally important to the well-being of the whole. The serenity of the teacher, the heroism of the warrior, the honesty of the business man, and the patience and energy of the worker all contribute to the social growth. Each has its own perfection.
The rules of caste bring about an adjustment of the different groups in society. The Brahmins were allowed freedom and leisure to develop the spiritual ideals and broadcast them. They were freed from the cares of existence, as gifts to them by others were encouraged and even enjoined. They are said to be above class interests and prejudices, and to possess a wide and impartial vision. They are not in bondage to the State, though they are consulted by the State. The State, as one of the groups in society, was essentially military in its organisation. Its specific function was to preserve peace and order, and see to it that the different groups worked in harmony and no confusion of functions arose. The Government was an executive organisation expected to carry out the best interests of the people. The Brahmins, as the advisors of the Government, point out the true interests of society.
The political and economic life of the community is expected to derive its inspiration from the spiritual. This principle saved the State from becoming a mere military despotism. The sovereign power is not identified with the interests of the governing classes but with those of the people at large. While dharma represents the totality of the institutions by which the commonweal is secured and the life of the people is carried on, Government is the political organisation which secures for all the conditions under which the best life can be developed. The State did not include the other institutions, trade guilds, family life, etc, which were allowed freedom to manage their own affairs. It did not interfere with art, science and religion, while it secured the external conditions of peace and liberty necessary for them all. Today, the functions of the State are practically unlimited, and embrace almost the whole of social life.
In spite of its attachment to the principle of non-violence, Hindu society made room for a group dedicated to the use of force, the Ksatriyas. As long as human nature is what it is, as long as society has not reached its highest level, we require the use of force. So long as society has individuals who are hostile to all order and peace, it has to develop controls to check the anti-social elements. These anti-social forces gather together for revolt when the structure of society is shaken by war or internal dissensions. It is a great tribute to the relative soundness of the social structure in Great Britain, in all its strata, that its industrial upheavals, such as the general strike of 1926, which continued for nine days, are marked by little criminality and rowdyism.
The economic group of the Vaisyas were required to suppress greed and realise the moral responsibilities of wealth. Property is looked upon as an instrument of service. In the great days of Hinduism, the possessor of property regarded it as a social trust and undertook the education, the medical relief, the water supply and the amusements of the community. Unfortunately at the present day in almost all parts of the world the strain of money-making has been so great that many people are breaking down under it. Love of wealth is disrupting social life and is tending to the suppression of the spiritual. Wealth has become a means of self-indulgence, and universal greed is the cause of much of the meanness and cruelty which we find in the world. Hinduism has no sympathy with the view that “to mix religion and business is to spoil two good things”. We ought not to banish spiritual values from life.
The unskilled workers and the peasants form the proletariat, the Sudras. These castes are the actual living members of the social body each centred in itself and working alongside one another in cooperation. When a new group is taken into the fold of Hinduism, it is affiliated with one of the four castes. Many of the races from outside were accepted as Ksatriyas. Mr Jackson writes: “Those Indians indeed have a poor opinion of their country’s greatness who do not realise how it has tamed and civilised the nomads of Central Asia, so that wild Turcoman tribes have been transformed into some of the most famous of the Rajput royal races.”
The system of caste insists that the law of social life should not be cold and cruel competition, but harmony and cooperation. Society is not a field of rivalry among individuals. The castes are not allowed to compete with one another. A man born in a particular group is trained to its manner, and will find it extremely hard to adjust himself to a new way. Each main is said to have his own specific nature (svabhava) fitting him for his own specific function (svadharma), and changes of dharma or function are not encouraged. A sudden change of function when the nature is against its proper fulfilment may simply destroy the individuality of the being. We may wish to change or modify our particular mode of being, but we have not the power to effect it. Nature cannot be hurried by our desires. The four castes represent men of thought, men of action, men of feeling, and others in whom none of these is highly developed. Of course, these are the dominant and not the exclusive characters, and there are all sorts of permutations and combinations of them which constitute adulterations (sankara) and mixture (misra-jati). The author of Bhagavadgita believes that the divisions of caste are in accordance with each man’s character and aptitude. Karma is adapted to guna, and our qualities in nature can be altered only gradually. Since we cannot determine in each individual case what the aptitudes of the individuals are, heredity and training are used to fix the calling. Though the functions were regarded as hereditary, exceptions were freely allowed. We can learn even from lowly persons. All people possess all qualities though in different degrees. The Brahmin has in him the possibilities of a warrior. The rsis of old were agriculturists and sometimes warriors too.
The caste idea of vocation as service, with its traditions and spiritual aims, never encouraged the notion of work as a degrading servitude to be done grudgingly and purely from the economic motive. The perfecting of its specific function is the spiritual aim which each vocational group set to itself. The worker has the fulfilment of his being through and in his work. According to the Bhagavadgita, one obtains perfection if one does one’s duty in the proper spirit of non-attachment. The can’t of the preacher who appeals to sus for the dee-sea fishermen on the ground that they daily risk their lives, that other people may have fish for their breakfasts, ignores the effect of the work on the worker. They go to sea not for us and our breakfasts but for the satisfaction of their being. Our convenience is an accident of their labours. Happily the world is so arranged that each man’s good turns out to be the good of others. The loss of artistic vitality has affected much of our industrial population. A building craftsman of the old days had fewer political rights, less pay and less comfort too, but he was more happy as he enjoyed his work. Our workers who enjoy votes will call him a slave simply because he did not go to the ballot-box. But his work was the expression of his life. The worker, whether a mason or a bricklayer, blacksmith or carpenter, was a member of a great cooperative group initiated into the secrets of his craft at an impressionable age. He was dominated by the impulse to create beauty. Specialisation has robbed the worker of pride in craft. Work has not become business, and the worker wants to escape from it and seeks his pleasure outside in cinemas and television. While the social aspirations of the working classes for a fuller life are quite legitimate, there is unfortunately an increasing tendency to interpret welfare in terms of wealth. The claims of materialism are more insistent in the present vision of social betterment. The improvement of human nature is the true goal of all endeavour, though this certainly requires an indispensable minimum of comfort to which the worker is entitled.
We are not face to face with class conflicts. There has grown up an intense class consciousness with elements of suspicion and hatred, envy and jealousy. We are not more content to bring up our children in our own manner of life, but are insisting that all doors must be opened to those equipped with knowledge. The difficulties are due to the fact that some occupations are economically more paying, and all wish to knock at the paying doors. Democracy is so interpreted as to justify not only the very legitimate aspiration to bring about a more equitable distribution of wealth, but also the increasing tendency for a levelling down of all talent. This is not possible. There will always be men of ability who lead and direct, and others who will obey and follow. Brains and character will come to the top, and within the framework of democracy we shall have an aristocracy of direction. It is not true that all men are born equal in every way, and everyone is equally fit to govern the country or till the ground. The functional diversities of workers cannot be suppressed. Every line of development is specific and exclusive. If we wish to pursue one we shall have to turn our attention away from others. While we should remove the oppressive restrictions, dispel the ignorance of the masses, increase their self-respect, and open to them opportunities of higher life, we should not be under the illusion that we can abolish the distinctions of the genius and the fool, the able organiser and the submissive worker. Modern democracies tend to make us all mere “human beings”, but such beings exist nowhere.
India has to face in the near future the perils of industrialism. In factory labour where men are mechanised, where they have little to do with the finished product, and cannot take any pleasure in its production, work is mere labour, and it does not satisfy the soul. If such mechanical work cannot be done by machines, if men have to do it, the less of it they have to do the better for them. The more the work tends to become mechanical and monotonous, the more necessary it is that the worker should have larger leisure and a better equipment for the intelligent use of it. The standard of employment must be raised not merely in wages, but in welfare. Mechanical work should be economically more paying than even that of the artist or the statesman. For in the latter case work is its own reward. In ancient India the highest kind of work, that of preserving the treasures of spiritual knowledge, was the least paid. The Brahmin has no political power or material wealth. I think there is some justice in this arrangement, which shows greater sympathy for those whose work is soul-deadening. We have also to remember that the economic factor is not the most important in a man’s life. A man’s rank is not to be determined by his economic position. Gambling peers are not higher than honest artisans. The exaltation of the economic will lead to a steady degradation of character. Again, we should not forget that the individuals who constitute the nation cannot all pursue the one occupation of political leadership or military power, but will be distributed into many employments, and these will tend to create distinctive habits and sympathies. Though there may be transfers from one group to another, they are not likely to be numerous.
We are not so certain today as were were a century ago that the individualistic conception of society is the last word in social theory. The moral advantages of the spiritual view of society as an organic whole are receiving greater attention. A living community is not a loose federation of competing groups of traders and teachers, bankers and lawyers, farmers and weavers, each competing against all the rest for higher wages and better conditions. If the members of the different groups are to realise their potentialities , they must share a certain community of feeling, a sense of belonging together for good or evil. There is much to be said from this point of view for the system of caste which adheres to the organic view of society and substitutes for the criterion of economic success and expediency a rule of life which is superior to the individual’s interests and desires. Service of one’s fellows is a religious obligation. To repudiate it is impiety.
Democracy is not the standardising of everyone so as to obliterate all peculiarity. We cannot put our souls in uniform. That would be dictatorship. Democracy requires the equal right of all to the development of such capacity for good as nature has endowed them with. If we believe that every type means something final, incarnating a unique possibility, to destroy a type will be to create a void in the scheme of the world. Democracy should promote all values created by the mind. Each kind of service is equally important for the whole. Society is a living organism, one in origin and purpose though manifold in its operations. There can be no real freedom in any section or class in a society so long as others are in bondage. It is a truly democratic ideal that is uttered in the words, “May all cross safely the difficult places of life, may all see the face of happiness, may all reach that right knowledge, may all rejoice everywhere.” While the system of caste is not a democracy in the pursuit of wealth or happiness, it is a democracy so far as the spiritual values are concerned, for it recognises that every soul has in it something transcendent and incapable of gradations, and it places all beings on a common level regardless of distinctions of rank and status, and insists that every individual must be afforded the opportunity to manifest the unique in him. Economically we are a cooperative concern or brotherhood where we give according to our capacity and take according to our needs. Politically we enjoy equal rights in the sight of law, and these two enable us to attain true spiritual freedom. A just organisation of society will be based on spiritual liberty, political equality and economic fraternity.
In the social order we find that one dominant group invariably subordinates others. Under the feudal constitution of society the exercise of the military function was most esteemed. In modern capitalist organisations wealth dominates. In the Hindu scheme the cultural forms the highest and the economic lowest, for the cultural and the spiritual are ends in themselves and are not pursued for the sake of anything else. The highest in the social hierarchy is the true Brahmin, in whom we find a complete union of opposites, a self-sacrifice which is true freedom, a perfect self-control which is perfect service, absence of personal ambition along with the most intense devotion to the world. The valiant knight, the ksatriya hero, is not the ideal of India, for he has not the vision of the whole. He identifies himself with one part as against another. He has always something opposed to him which he aims at overpowering. The Brahmin sage who sees the whole of life stands above parties and is centred in the whole surveying all manifestations. He would be untrue to himself if he identified himself with one part as against another. If he does not fight it is not because he rejects all fighting as futile, but because he has finished high fights. He has overcome all dissensions between himself and the world and is now at rest. Both Buddha and Christ were tempted by the Evil One, who had to be defeated before they could obtain freedom. Maitri or friendliness to all is the chief quality of the Brahmin and most of us cannot attain to it except by gradual steps. The good fighter is the preliminary to the wise sage. He who fights gallantly as a warrior gains practical insight through the battlefield and becomes mature for the divine peace of wisdom. Courage on the battlefield manifested in giving and receiving wounds, in dealing death and frankly meeting it, is praised by Aristotle and many militarists. The willingness to sacrifice one’s life is the mark of the superior person. Courage becomes the chief virtue of the Ksatriya, but this type is not the highest, for Ksatriya valour, however sublimated, is the expression of the primitive in us. We shall have wars and soldiers so long as the brute in us is untamed. Even highly civilised men become brutal at times. The tendency to cruelty is repressed in them rather than outgrown.
In those awful moments of life when the soul stands facing a great wrong and is torn with anguish and indignation the Ksatriya exclaims: “Now you shan’t do that; I’ll kill you,” and the true Brahmin will say, “Do not do that; I would rather die.” The higher the man, the fewer are his rights and the more numerous his duties.
While the dreamer wishes to see his ideals realised immediately and entirely, the Hindu code insists on a gradual transformation. It takes note of the laws and conditions of reality. The misguided idealist is shocked by the imperfections of man, is exasperated by the slow progress achieved, attributes to all his own enthusiasm for ideals, dreams short cuts to the millennium, and thus joins the forces of revolt. The State looks upon him as a danger to society. By protesting against the checks and controls he leaves society open to the assaults of anarchy. The wise plan is to keep our fee on earth and our eyes steady on the starts. Ideals have to be realised through the common clay of human nature, of which the high and the low, the wise and the foolish are made. If all men were wise, life would be a simple task; but as men are attempting to be wise with varying degrees of success, the problems of human life have the character they possess. The Hindu thinkers distinguish between the less evolved in whom the powers of self-analysis and self-direction have not arisen, and the more evolved or the twice-born who were graded into the three classes of Brahmin, Ksatriya and Vaisya. The different castes represent members at different stages on the road to self-realisation. However lowly a man may be, he can raise himself sooner or later by the normal process of evolution to the highest level and obtain freedom from the vicissitudes of time. Room and time are found for each to take his natural level, and everyone who shows a tendency to rise is lifted to the level of his highest capacity.
Distinctions soon began to be made among the different occupations, and the privileges and restrictions caused the degradation of some groups. Whenever the hierarchical conception tended to endanger the spiritual status and equality of the different classes, protests were uttered. All irrational snobbery was denounced. An artisan is as much a civilised man as a warrior. In the early days of the human race, it is said, there were no class distinctions, since all are born from the Supreme. According to the Sruti, the fishermen, the slaves and the gamblers are all divine. The Bhagavata makes out that there is only one class even as there is only one God. Manu says that all men are born unregenerate (sudra) by the first or psychical birth, but become regenerate (dvija) by the second or spiritual birth. Caste is a question of character. “One becomes a Brahmin by his deeds not by his family or birth; even a Candala is a Brahmin if he is of pure character.” Some of the great rsis worshipped by the Brahmins are half-castes and hybrids. Vasistha was born of a prostitute, Vyasa of a fisher-woman, Parasara of a Candala girl. Conduct counts and not birth. So far as the attainment of perfection is concerned, even the “low” castes can attain as much as the “high”. Krsna says in the Bhagavadgita, “Those who take refuge in me even of inferior birth, women and Sudras, they also attain the highest state.” The outcasts who have devotion are entitled to get the saving knowledge through the name of God; women, Sudras and degraded Brahmins are entitled to get it through the Tantras.” The passion for perfection burns with as keen a flame in the destitute as well as the opulent, the weak as well as the strong. Love is not the possession of a class; nor is imaginative piety a commodity to be bought in markets. Social distinctions disappear so far as these gifts go.
While we are all entitled to perfection, different people are allowed to use the methods which have come down to them through their own group forms. The three upper castes are entitled to obtain perfection through the performance of Vedic sacrifices which the fourth is not allowed to do. Upanayana or initiation ceremony and Vedic study were denied to them. Society was perhaps anxious to preserve its useful members from losing their heads over them. Saving knowledge can be gained apart from Vedic study and rights. Samkara allows that Sudras like Suta and Vidura obtained the highest knowledge by virtue of their previous life. Through a study of the Epics and the Puranas, through meditation (japa), fasting (upavasa), and worship of God (puja) one can attain the Supreme. Every man from the simple fact of his manhood (purusamatra sambandhibhih) is capable of reaching perfection.
The struggle for equality has been with us from the beginning of India’s history. We have one evidence of it in the feud between Vasistha, the pillar of orthodoxy and the enemy of all innovation, and Visvamitra, the leader of the progressives and the champion of freedom and liberty. While the conservative Vasistha wanted the Vedic religion to be confined solely to the Aryans, Visvamitra tried to universalise it. The movement of the Upanisads was in spirit a democratic one. Buddhism, as is well known, undermines all hierarchical ideas. Samkara’s philosophy was essentially democratic, and Ramanuja honoured members of the Sudra and the Pancama classes as Alvars.
The Vedic rule of life was confined to the people who developed under the stimulus of experience recorded in the Vedas. Its form are singularly well marked in type, and those of others were sufficiently unlike them to justify a distinction. Each group was allowed to work out its life unfettered by alien ideas which might confuse or obliterate its aim. But soon these special forms were regarded as a sort of spiritual monopoly, and ideas of superiority and inferiority developed. The institution of case came into being for the development of society, and the welfare of society today demands a breaking down of all suspicion of monopoly. With the general levelling up there will be a greater democratisation of the ideals. In the golden age only the Brahmins practised austerities, in the second both Brahmins and Ksatriyas, in the third the three upper classes, and in the fourth all the four classes. In other words, the Hindu scriptures should be thrown open at the present day to all people irrespective of their caste or sex.
To draw this brief exposition to an end, it may perhaps be useful to give a resume of the central spirit of Hinduism and its application to the problems of religion and society.
We see that the Hindu recognises one supreme spirit, though different names are given to it. In his social economy he has many castes, but one society. In the population there are many races and tribes, but all are bound together by one common spirit. Though many forms of marriage are permitted, there is only one ideal aimed at. There is a unity of purpose underlying the multitudinous ramifications.
The world which is a perpetual flow is not all subjection to law and tendency to perfection indicate that it is based on a spiritual reality which is not exhausted in any particular object or group of objects. God is in the world, though not as the world. His creative activity is not confined to the significant stages in the evolutionary process. He does not merely intervene to create life or consciousness, but is working continuously. There is no dualism of the natural and the supernatural. The spiritual is an emergent of the natural in which it is rooted. The Hindu spirit is that attitude towards life which regards the endless variety of the visible and the temporal word as sustained and supported by the invisible and eternal spirit.
Evil, error and ugliness are not ultimate. Evil has reference to the distance which good has to traverse. Ugliness is half-way to beauty. Error is a stage on the road to truth. They have all to be outgrown. No view is so utterly erroneous, no man is so absolutely evil as to deserve complete castigation. If one human soul fails to reach its divine destiny, to that extent the universe is a failure. As every soul is unlike all others in the world, the destruction of even the most wicked soul will create a void in God’s scheme. There is no Hell, for that means there is a place where God is not, and there are sins which exceed his love. If the infinite love of God is not a myth, universal salvation is a certainty. But until it is achieved, we shall have error and imperfection. In a continuously evolving universe evil and error are inevitable, though they are gradually diminishing.
In religion, Hinduism takes its stand on a life of spirit, and affirms that the theological expressions of religious experience are bound to be varied. One metaphor succeeds another in the history of theology until God is felt as the central reality in the life of man and the world. Hinduism repudiates the belief resulting from a dualistic attitude that the plants in my garden are of God, while those in my neighbour’s are weeds planted by the Devil which we should destroy at any cost. On the principle that the best is not the enemy of the good, Hinduism accepts all forms of belief and lifts them to a higher level. The cure for error is not the stake of the cudgel, not force or persecution, but the quiet diffusion of light.
In practical religion, Hinduism recognises that there are those who wish to see God face to face, others who delight in the endeavour to know the truth of it all. Some find peace in action, others in non-action. A comprehensive religion guides each along his path to the common goal, as all woo the same goddess though with different gifts. We must not give supreme and sole importance to our speciality. Perfection can be attained as a celibate, or a householder, or an achorite. A rigid uniform outlook is wrong. The saintliness of the holy man does not render the steadfastness of the devoted wife or the simple innocence of the child superfluous. The perfection of every type is divine. “Whatsoever is glorious, good, beautiful and mighty, understand that it goes forth from out of a fragment of my splendour.”
The law of Karma tells us that the individual life is not a term, but a series. Fresh opportunities will be open to us until we reach the end of the journey. The historical forms we assume will depend on our work in the past. Heaven and Hell are higher and lower stages in one continuous movement. They are not external to the experiencing individuals. Purification is by means of purgation. The wages of sin is suffering. We need not regard sin as original and virtue as vicarious. We should do our duty in that state of life to which we happen to be called. Most of us have not a free hand in selection our vocation. Freedom consists in making the best of what we have, our parentage, our physical nature and mental gifts. Every kind of capacity, every form of vocation, if rightly used, will lead us to the centre.
While the ideal of monogamy is held up as the best means for a complete mental and spiritual as well as physical understanding between husband and wife, other forms were permitted in view of the conditions of people with different ideals and interests, habits and desires. A happy marriage requires to be made by slow steps and with much patient effort. If incompatibility of temper is enough to justify divorce, many of us will be divorced. While women’s functions are distinguished from those of men, there is no suggestion of their inferiority.
While caste has resulted in much evil, there are some sound principles underlying it. Our attitude to those whom we are pleased to call primitive must be one of sympathy. The task of the civilised is to respect and foster the live impulses of backward communities and not destroy them. Society is an organism of different grades, and human activities differ in kind and significance. But each of them is of value so long as it serves the common end. Every type has its own nature which should be followed. No one can be at the same time a perfect saint, a perfect artist, and a perfect philosopher. Every definite type is limited by boundaries which deprive it of other possibilities. The worker should realise his potentialities through his work, and should perform it in a spirit of service to the common weal. Work is craftsmanship and service. Our class conflicts are due to the fact that a warm living sense of unity does not bind together the different groups.
These are some of the central principles of the Hindu faith. If Hinduism lives today, it is due to them, but it lives so little. Listlessness reigns now where life was once like a bubbling spring. We are today drifting, not advancing, waiting for the future to turn up. There is a lack of vitality, a spiritual flagging. Owing to our political vicissitudes, we ignored the law of growth. In the great days of Hindu civilisation it was quick with life, crossing the seas, planting colonies, teaching the world as well as learning from it. In sciences and arts, in trade and commerce it was not behind the most advanced nations of the world till the middle of this millennium. Today we seem to be afraid of ourselves, and are therefore clinging to the shell of our religion for self-preservation. The envelope by which we try to protect life checks its expansion. The bark which protects the interior of a tree must be as living as that which it contains. It must not stifle the tree’s growth, but must expand in response to the inner compulsion. An institution appropriate and wholesome for one stage of human development becomes inadequate and even dangerous when another stage has been reached. The cry of conservatism “It has always been thus” ignores the fundamentals of the theory of relativity in philosophy and practice, in taste and morals, in politics and society, of which the ancient Hindus had a clear grasp. The notion that in India time has stood still for uncounted centuries, and nought has been changed since the primeval sea dried up, is altogether wrong. While there has been continuity with the past, there has also been progress. The Upanisads are products of a perfectly spiritual movement which implicitly superseded the cruder ceremonial religion of the Vedas. When the movement of the Upanisads became lost in dogmatic controversies, when the fever of disputes and dialectics lulled the free spirit of religion, Buddhism called upon the people to adhere to the simplicity of truth and the majesty of the moral law. About the same period, when canonical culture and useless learning made religion inhuman scholasticism, and filled those learned in this difficult trifling with ridiculous pride, the Bhagavadgita opened the gates of heaven to all those who are pure in heart. When the ritualists succeeded in imprisoning the living faith in rigid creeds, the true prophets of the spirit, the Saiva and the Vaisnava saints, and the theologians like Samkara and Ramanuja, summoned the people to the worship of the living God. The influence of Madhva and Caitanya, Basava and Ramananda, Kabir and Nanak is inconsiderable. There has been no such thing as a uniform stationary unalterable Hinduism whether in point of belief or practice. Hinduism is a movement, not a position; a process, not a result; a growing tradition, not a fixed revelation. Its past history encourages us to believe that it will be found equal to any emergency that the future may throw up, whether in the field of thought or of history.
After a long winter of some centuries, we are today in one of the creative periods of Hinduism. We are beginning to look upon our ancient faith with fresh eyes. We feel that our society is in a condition of unstable equilibrium. There is much wood that is dead and diseased that has to be cleared away. Leaders of Hindu thought and practice are convinced that the times require, not a surrender of the basic principles of Hinduism, but a restatement of them with special reference to the needs of a more complex and mobile social order. Such an attempt will only be the repetition of a process which has occurred a number of times in the history of Hinduism. The work of readjustment is in progress. Growth is slow when roots are deep. But those who light a little candle in the darkness will help to make the whole sky aflame.