Roundtable

The Great Betrayal IV - How The Curse Of Hindu Casteism has Corrupted Today’s Punjab -

The Roundtable Open Forum # 140-D

RAJ KUMAR HANS

Continued from yesterday …



PART IV





In the editorial of ‘Khalsa Sewak’ of 7 March 1936, it is acknowledged that Dr. Ambedkar had been writing letters to SGPC but the Committee was not replying with any satisfaction.



It wrote with sarcasm that “With all this the Sikhs are so indifferent that they would not lag behind boasting of their reforms on paper, it is just a show, but in practice not a single step forward has been made.”



The charge was not without substance. All the big talks were just being used for the vested interests of the powerful power brokers. The Khalsa Sewak reported in its 26 March 1936 edition that a conference was organised at village Bham in Gurdaspur district under the aegis of Baba Jeeon Singh Dal where SGPC members had arrived and seventy people were baptised into the Khalsa.



Among several lectures against untouchability, Bhai Teja Singh Akarpuri also spoke forcefully. After the conference, a dalit boy was asked to serve a glass of milk to Teja Singh. He got very angry and said that “I have been insulted for being served milk in a Chuhra’s glass.”



The fellow retorted: “You say something and do something else.”



Teja Singh immediately fled the scene.



The discussion in this section fairly highlights the gravity of the situation among Sikhs as for as the question of untouchability is concerned and even in the moderating twentieth century. It has been a structural malaise whether determined by economy or society; the power relations defined the relations of domination and subjugation.



The command over resources had been so dear to the ‘upper’ castes and classes that they did not want to give any relaxation to the people at their mercy. Demoralising the Dalits by constant insults, humiliations and deprivation ensured almost free labour supply. The Sikh mind was not ready for the egalitarianism to act as an agent of change to thwart its own class interests. So, in the face of mounting pressures in the first half of the twentieth century, half-hearted measures at the level of rhetoric were shown to be taken but in reality the situation remained as grim for Dalits as it was in the nineteenth century.



As ‘caste’ and its resultant inhuman practice ‘untouchability’ have been the cardinal principle of Brahmanical ideology, and the central pillar of Hindu social order, any individual, organisation or ideology questioning it was always seen as the enemy and all efforts were made to quash the challenge.



Barstow put it pithily:



Hinduism, to its wonderfully assimilative character, had thus reabsorbed a good part of Sikhism, as it had absorbed Buddhism before it, notwithstanding that much of these religions is opposed to caste and the supremacy of the Brahmans.



Bhagat Lakshman Singh (1863-1944), a Sikh scholar and intellectual, who was a convert to Sikhism, believed that the Sikh creed was ‘Hinduised’ after the establishment of Sikh rule. The high caste Hindus had made advances for reconciliation with the new power and a compromise was effected by which the Sikhs abandoned their ‘revolutionary programme’.



Sikhism began to lose its distinct identity. He especially talks of the Brahmans’ ‘peculiar aptitude for adapting themselves to changed conditions’. In the days of Buddhism they had become its bhikshus (Buddhist monks) only to leave when Buddhism declined.



In more recent times in our own province, when political power passed into the hands of the Sikhs, they did not find it difficult to discard their temples and idols, their yagyopavit and other paraphernalia, wore kesh [uncut hair] and dastaars (turbans) and became custodians of Sikh places of worship and interpreters of Sikh scriptures.



Khushwant Singh is also objective on this central question:



Sikhism did not succeed in breaking the caste system ... The untouchable converted to Sikhism remained an outcaste for purposes of matrimonial alliances ... and Sikhs of higher castes refused to eat with untouchable Sikhs and in villages separate wells were provided for them.



Within a hundred years of Guru Gobind Singh’s death, ritual in Sikh gurdwaras was almost like that in Hindu temples, and more often than not was presided over by priests who were usually Hindu rather than Sikh. Sikhs began to wear caste marks; Sikh weddings and funerals followed Hindu patterns; ashes of the dead were carried to the Ganges and offerings were made to ancestors.



The dalit voices are more clear and vociferous about ‘caste’ and ‘untouchability’ in Sikhism. Pandit Bakshi Ram who was born in a Balmiki family towards the close of the 19th century recalls in his autobiography how untouchability was rampant and how because of this the dalits could neither seek education nor were acceptable for a public service.



It was only on his father’s approaching the Lahore court that schools were opened for dalits in 1905. He narrates two incidents from his village how the dalit Sikhs were treated by the dominant Jatt Sikhs.



Once, a Rahitia (dalit Sikh) boy on drawing water from the school well was beaten up by the Jatt boys. Another time, when the Rahitia marriage party used the village pond for cleaning their backs in the morning they were thoroughly beaten up by the Jatts.



“Untouchability has become deep-rooted in the Jatt-dominated villages. Isn’t practicing caste and untouchability against gurmat (Gurus’ message)? In fact, the Guru says “Khalsa is my image as I reside in the Khalsa”.



Saying that how after Independence the Jatts have come to completely control the politics and economy in Punjab and oppose the dalits’ demands, he argues:



If Jatt Sikhs demand higher prices for their produce, don’t the labourers have right to demand higher wages? And if the latter struggle for their right the former boycott them. Isn’t it a height of injustice? If Akalis have their morchas (pickets) for their demands, why can’t dalits exercise their right to raise their demands?



Balbir Madhopuri “gives a graphic account of the situation of the Dalit community living on the periphery of the village called ‘Chamarali’ vis-à-vis the interaction with the upper caste ‘Jatt’ community. The scene of the distribution of parshad in the gurdwara made a mockery of all the subtle teachings and the tall claims of the practice of equality among the Sikhs in a Punjab village. The author has exactly reproduced the piercing degrading remarks laced with un-uttered abuses hurled at the low caste children by the Sikh priest.”



Prem Gorkhi, an eminent Punjabi short-story writer, who graduated from a day-labourer to peon to a ‘respectable journalist’, has bitter experiences. He says:



I have seen that if Punjabi writers are intimate friends they also carry deep casteist ideas within ... I have close relations from high to the low ... they respect as well ... I go to everyone’s house, eat and sleep there ... but over taking sides on any vital issue, the cobra within would spread its fangs ... There is no drastic change in the caste situation from what it was a hundred year ago ... only the ways of untouchability have changed. Today if you eat in the same plate, you also kill the same person -- and whom you call dalit today is not a century-old thoughtless, egoless, without identity. He has reached a stage to decide for himself what is of good to him.



Gurnam Aqida, a Punjabi writer, is forthright about the hegemony of Jatts:

Jatts control the organisations and institutions which decide about the fate of society. They dominate the bureaucracy. They have replaced the traditional minstrels, the Mirasis, in the field of singing; the traditional thieves, the Sahnsis; the Jatts have replaced even the famous woman brigand Phoolan Devi in pillages. The Jatts are responsible for dalitism in villages, they are the police officers, professors and principles and even the ruling politicians. So much so, that a crime committed by them becomes an entertainment.



Hazara Ram Bodhi, former General Secretary of Punjab Unit of the Republican Party of India and editor of ‘Bhim Patrika’, says:



Caste discrimination in Punjab is of a dangerous nature. While in other provinces, dalits face physical torture but here torment is psychological. A normal person is reduced to a pigmy because of caste. Psychological oppression is unbearable ... ‘Caste’ is so important now that there are caste-based gurdwaras. Nihangs are different, Ravidasias, Mazhbis and Julaha (weaver) Sikhs are different; the question of inter-marriages in Sikhism does not arise. The minds are full of differences. Even when the sapling of Sikhi was watered by dalit perspiration, they had to carry their own utensils to the gurdwara langar earlier. And if by mistake a dalit would eat in gurdwara utensils, they were purified in fire. Now it is over. But in several gurdwaras dalits cannot cook.



* * * * *



If Sikhism, which was the finest religious force and movement with ideas of emancipation for the downtrodden especially for the outcaste untouchables after Buddhism, was failing in its mission, what alternative courses were open to dalits of Punjab?



Finding solutions within the religious paradigm, one course that was tried with great success was the Aad Dharam movement in 1920s. Asserting that dalits and adivasis were the original inhabitants of the subcontinent, it drew its inspiration from Valmiki, Ravidas, Kabir and Namdev.



The movement aimed at securing a respectable place for dalits through cultural transformation, spiritual regeneration and political assertion, rather than seeking patronage from above.



Its founder, Mangoo Ram Mugowalia’s appeal that the Dalits were the real inhabitants of this land made an enormous psychological impact on the untouchables of Punjab. The appeal inspired them to come out of their slumber and fight for their freedom and liberty. It laid stress on distinct Dalit identity independent of Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims and Christians.



Within a short time it became a Dalit mass struggle for their separate Dalit identity. In the 1931 Census, 418,789 dalits recorded themselves as Aad Dharmis. Though after Independence it slowly petered down but its success lies in the fact that those who continued identifying themselves as Aad Dharmis have made far greater progress in all fields as compared to those dalits who continued following the established religions, including Sikhism.



The non-religious course open to the emancipation was a socialist revolution. The communists had a few successful movements in Punjab since 1920s but never addressed the dalit question explicitly. The only exception happens to be young revolutionary Bhagat Singh who wrote a lengthy article “Achhut da Sawaal” [The Question of Untouchability] in 1928 when he was 20 years’ old.



Pointing at the current competition between different religions to pull the untouchable in their respective folds for just political ends and vested interests, he gives a clarion call to dalits to unite:



We clearly say, ‘Rise!’ O real servants and brothers -- otherwise called untouchable -- Rise. See, your history. You were the real army of Guru Gobind Singh. Shivaji became unforgotten because of you. Your sacrifices are written in golden letters ... You stand on your feet by organising yourself and challenge the entire social set-up. Then see who would deny your rights. Don’t become others’ fodder and don’t look up to others ... You are the root of the country, the real power. Rise! O sleeping lions; start rebellion or social revolution.



But we hardly see Bhagat Singh’s approach followed after him. Assuming that the end of class rule would automatically resolve the cultural issues, the communists failed to see the significance and relevance of caste and untouchability. Even the best dalit poets and activists in the Naxalite movements had to undergo the casteist insults as we found in the pages above.



It is beyond doubt that Sikhism emerged as an emancipator for the lowest of the low. Guru Nanak, the First Master, was clear on this as he says:



neechan andar neech jati / neechi hun ati neech

Nanak tin ke sang sath / vadian siyon kya rees

jithe neech sanmalian / tithe nadr teri bakhshish



"I am the lowest of the low castes; low, absolutely low;

I am with the lowest in companionship, not with the so-called high.

Blessing of God is where the lowly are cared for."



The same spirit was maintained by his successors and we have seen above how dalits came to play an important role in Guru Gobind Singh’s battles and throughout the eighteenth century till they came to be once again subjugated and excluded economically, socially, politically and even religiously in the nineteenth century.



The Sikh Religion carried a great promise and succeeded in igniting dalits’ imaginations and aspirations in practice but with the rise of Jatts as an political and economic power, the powerful emancipatory message of the Gurus have come to be drowned, and it looks beyond recovery as far as dalits are concerned.



What dalits of Punjab gained in religion, socially they lost it in the long run because of denial of their participation in the economic power by the dominant castes. But despite this setback with diminishing returns in the last 150 years, the Sikh dalits have not ceased to entertain hope in the religion.



As slowly they improve their life conditions they are ready to reclaim their lost past, the past when they enjoyed social equality and dignified space in the religious institutions.



This aspiration is best voiced by Naranjan Arifi, the dalit Sikh historian:



Only those people can construct their histories who remember their history. In other words, those who forget their history cannot create history. It is rightly said; if you want to kill a people destroy their history. This is what has been done to Ranghretas … The two-volume work is intended to raise the psychological strength and self-respect among all the inheritors of Sikhism …





CONCLUDED





THE ROUNDTABLE OPEN FORUM # 140-D



We invite your comments on the issues raised in this four-part article, which has concluded today.









[Extract from ‘Dalits and the Emancipatory Sikh Religion’. Courtesy: Dalit. Edited for sikhchic.com]



January 22, 2015







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