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Caste and democracy
WE FEAR our correspondent who has criticised on another page the consistency of our views on caste, has hardly taken any trouble to understand the real drift of our articles. His attitude seems to be that we must be either entirely for caste as it at present exists or entirely against the institution and condemn it root and branch in the style of the ordinary unthinking social reformer. Because on the one hand we protested against the ignorant abuse of the institution often indulged in simply because it is different in form and spirit from European institutions, and on the other hand emphasised the perversions of its form and spirit and the necessity of its transformation in the pure spirit of Hinduism, our correspondent imagines that we are inconsistent and guilty of adopting successively two different and incompatible attitudes. Our position is perfectly clear and straightforward. Caste was originally an arrangement for the distribution of functions in society, just as much as class in Europe, but the principle on which the distribution was based in India was peculiar to this country. The civilisation of Europe has always been preponderatingly material and the division of classes was material in its principles and material in its objects, but our civilisation has always been preponderatingly spiritual and moral, and caste division in India had a spiritual object and a spiritual and moral basis. The division of classes in Europe had its root in a distribution of powers and rights and developed and still develops through a struggle of conflicting interests; its aim was merely the organisation of society for its own sake and mainly indeed for its economic convenience. The division of castes in India was conceived as a distribution of duties. A man’s caste depended on his dharma, his spiritual, moral and practical duties, and his dharma depended on his svabhāva, his temperament and inborn nature. A Brahmin was a Brahmin not by mere birth, but because he discharged the duty of preserving the spiritual and intellectual
Page-536 elevation of the race, and he had to cultivate the spiritual temperament and acquire the spiritual training which could alone qualify him for the task. The Kshatriya was a Kshatriya not merely because he was the son of warriors and princes, but because he discharged the duty of protecting the country and preserving the high courage and manhood of the nation, and he had to cultivate the princely temperament and acquire the strong and lofty Samurai training which alone fitted him for his duties. So it was with the Vaishya whose function was to amass wealth for the race and the Sudra who discharged the humbler duties of service without which the other castes could not perform their share of labour for the common good. This was what we meant when we said that caste was a socialistic institution. No doubt there was a gradation of social respect which placed the function of the Brahmin at the summit and the function of the Sudra at the base, but this inequality was accidental, external, vyavahãrika. Essentially there was, between the devout Brahmin and the devout Sudra, no inequality in the single virãt purusa of which each was a necessary part. Chokha Mela, the Maratha Pariah, became the Guru of Brahmins proud of their caste purity; the Chandala taught Shankaracharya: for the Brahman was revealed in the body of the Pariah and in the Chandala there was the utter presence of Shiva the Almighty. Heredity entered into caste divisions, and in the light of the conclusions of modern knowledge who shall say erroneously? But it entered into it as a subordinate element. For Hindu civilisation being spiritual based its institutions on spiritual and moral foundations and subordinated the material elements and material considerations. Caste therefore was not only an institution which ought to be immune from the cheap second-hand denunciations so long in fashion, but a supreme necessity without which Hindu civilisation could not have developed its distinctive character or worked out its unique mission. But to recognise this is not to debar ourselves from pointing out its later perversions and desiring its transformation. It is the nature of human institutions to degenerate, to lose their vitality, and decay, and the first sign of decay is the loss of flexibility and oblivion of the essential spirit in which they were conceived. The
Page-537 spirit is permanent, the body changes; and a body which refuses to change must die. The spirit expresses itself in many ways while itself remaining essentially the same, but the body must change to suit its changing environments if it wishes to live. There is no doubt that the institution of caste degenerated. It ceased to be determined by spiritual qualifications which, once essential, have now come to be subordinate and even immaterial and is determined by the purely material tests of occupation and birth. By this change it has set itself against the fundamental tendency of Hinduism which is to insist on the spiritual and subordinate the material and thus lost most of its meaning. The spirit of caste arrogance, exclusiveness and superiority came to dominate it instead of the spirit of duty, and the change weakened the nation and helped to reduce us to our present condition. It is these perversions which we wish to see set right. The institution must transform itself so as to fulfil its essential and permanent object under the changed conditions of modern times. If it refuses to change, it will become a mere social survival and crumble to pieces. If it transforms itself, it will yet play a great part in the fulfilment of civilisation. Our correspondent accuses us of attempting to corrupt society with the intrusion of the European idea of Socialism. Socialism is not an European idea, it is essentially Asiatic and especially Indian. What is called Socialism in Europe is the old Asiatic attempt to effect a permanent solution of the economic problem of society which will give man leisure and peace to develop undisturbed his higher self. Without Socialism democracy would remain a tendency that never reached its fulfilment, a rule of the masses by a small aristocratic or monied class with the consent and votes of the masses, or a tyranny of the artisan classes over the rest. Socialistic democracy is the only true democracy, for without it we cannot get the equalised and harmonised distribution of functions, each part of the community existing for the good of all and not struggling for its own separate interests, which will give humanity as a whole the necessary conditions in which it can turn its best energies to its higher development. To realise those conditions is also the aim of Hindu civilisation and the original intention of caste. The fulfilment of Hinduism is
Page-538 the fulfilment of the highest tendencies of human civilisation and it must include in its sweep the most vital impulses of modern life. It will include democracy and Socialism also, purifying them, raising them above the excessive stress on the economic adjustments which are the means, and teaching them to fix their eyes more constantly and clearly on the moral, intellectual and spiritual perfection of mankind which is the end. Bande Mataram, September 22, 1907
The Englishman is ever predicting new horrors for the agitators. The agitator in the Press has been taken in hand, the present law is being tried to intimidate him into silence and as its inadequacy in this respect is being increasingly felt the coming winter will be taken advantage of to convert its present elasticity into a cast-iron rigidity. It will then crush the agitators at a single blow and the bureaucracy will have a merry time of it. In the meantime political considerations are expected to do the duty of the amended law. The present deficiency in quality is to be made up by an extensive enforcement of the law against all the miscreants. Prosecutions have already been instituted against all the seditious newspapers, and this ill-tongued messenger of the bureaucracy has brought us the latest news that seditious speakers will shortly meet with their deserts. The College Square and the Beadon Square must not be allowed to blow the pestilential seditious winds and the mild bracing air of the Pax Britannica should again form their healthy atmosphere. The prisoners’ dock in the Police Court is now, we hear, to be occupied by guests from those quarters. The speakers are justly envious of the hospitality which is being lavished on the writers and as the Englishman now assures us of an impartial treatment, let no one complain of any partiality of British justice. Bande Mataram, September 23, 1907
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The Nation to hand has some pertinent observations as to the true meaning of free speech. Its interpretation of free speech clearly shows that we are content with mere shadows and that we exhaust our energies in clamouring for so-called rights and privileges which when analysed prove to be mere shams that cannot at all satisfy people who are in the least serious about them. Unless politics were a mere pastime or a means of making name and fame with us we would have never deluded ourselves with the belief that we possess any political rights and privileges under an alien bureaucracy. The bureaucracy never makes any secret of the fact that its policy will always be to safeguard its own supremacy. Popular rights and such a supremacy go ill together. Right means a power which has some sort of sanction behind it and as a power it can never be tolerated by another power always over-anxious for its existence and supremacy. The power of the state is never afraid of the power of the citizen in free democratic countries because there the objects pursued by both are identical. But this cannot be the case in a subject country where the so-called state interferes for its own benefit or the pretended benefit of the people under its assumed tutelage. But no people with any pretension to self-respect and intelligence can consent to be dictated to by a small governing body whether foreign or of the country as to what conduces to their real interests. This is where the necessity of free speech comes as an essential requisite for promoting and guarding the true well-being of the people. Free speech should therefore be not only an unfettered expression of the ideas of the people as to what alone will do them good but should also be recognised as a force by the executive body. The Nation explains the true meaning of free speech in the following words: —
"Free speech in any liberal and statesmanlike sense of the term means something more than the right of a subject people to perorate in vain in a free Press, to hold public meetings, and to record its hopeless aspirations at unrecognised congresses.
Page-540 It means, if we are sincere, the provision of facilities for the focusing and expression of public opinion."
Judged by this standard our crying in the wilderness with the full risk of being run in whenever the bureaucracy chooses is only aimless and dangerous prattle. Bande Mataram, September 24, 1907
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