Are the Untouchables capable of being reincarnated into a ‘higher’ caste? Please explain your answer.
Answers
Answer:
Untouchable. Most of the world assumes that something - Mahatma Gandhi, modernization, progressive legislation - has solved this ancient Indian problem or reduced it to marginal significance. There has been some progress, but for each of the past several years, official figures on violent attacks against Untouchables have routinely exceeded 10,000 cases. Indian human rights workers report that most cases go unrecorded.
Explanation:
In a climate of increasing mistrust and widening social distance between upper castes and Dalits [Untouchables], the latter are subjected to continual harassment, being refused work, denied milk and newspapers in the villages. In central Gujarat, in southern parts of Mehasana district and in areas around Ahmedabad, Dalit landless labourers are being replaced by Bhil tribals of Panchmahal
Answer:
Untouchable. Most of the world assumes that something - Mahatma Gandhi, modernization, progressive legislation - has solved this ancient Indian problem or reduced it to marginal significance. There has been some progress, but for each of the past several years, official figures on violent attacks against Untouchables have routinely exceeded 10,000 cases. Indian human rights workers report that most cases go unrecorded.
Violence is only the most conspicuous form of repression. The following description of Gujarat state, the scene of Mahatma Gandhi's early work, summarizes a situation that has become increasingly common in many parts of India.
In a climate of increasing mistrust and widening social distance between upper castes and Dalits [Untouchables], the latter are subjected to continual harassment, being refused work, denied milk and newspapers in the villages. In central Gujarat, in southern parts of Mehasana district and in areas around Ahmedabad, Dalit landless labourers are being replaced by Bhil tribals of Panchmahal. With growing awareness among the Dalits and the demand for statutory wages...the offensive against them has assumed serious proportions. According to official statistics, last year on average one Dalit was murdered in Gujarat every fortnight. Anyone familiar with rural Gujarat will realize this is a gross underestimate, as most murders of Dalits by high caste landlords are passed off as "accidents".
There are over 100 million Untouchables, more than the combined populations of France and the United Kingdom. Within India, however, they are a vulnerable minority; 15 % nationwide, with only a few areas in which the figure rises above 25 %. They are themselves divided by caste and by India's many languages, facts that make cooperative efforts on their own behalf difficult. Some have expressed their rebellion against the values of the dominant Hindu society by conversion to other religions - Sikh, Christian, Buddhist, Muslim - a move that rarely improves the way they are treated by the dominant society and often deprives them of what little protection the laws afford those who remain Hindus.
Untouchability as a religiously legitimated practice attached to certain hereditary Indian castes was well established by 100 B.C. Hindu religious texts rationalized untouchability with reference to karma and rebirth; one was born into an Untouchable caste because of the accumulation of heinous sins in previous births.
Theories of modern villagers are often more hazy, but belief in the innately and legitimately inferior status of Untouchables is no less strong; similar attitudes often surface among sophisticated urbanites. During recent riots against special access rules for Untouchables to professional schools, a leading sociologist wrote angrily of cases in which qualified Untouchable applicants to medical schools were told to go back to being sweepers.
The cultural denigration of Untouchables has long had important economic implications. Untouchability, like racism in the Western world, has served to rationalize and maintain a vast pool of cheap labor. It has also limited competition for those goods and positions that have defined power and prestige, whatever these have been over the years - land, the priesthood, modern white-collar professions. In protesting their status. Untouchables challenge the high degree of self-interest and deeply ingrained social beliefs that permeate Hindu society. Increasingly, the Untouchables have insisted on rising above this institution.
A number of factors produced this challenge. Colonialism brought with it a limited exposure to more egalitarian values. Pre-Independence maneuvers between the British and a variety of Indian groups sometimes led to competitive efforts to woo Untouchable allegiance in ways that further encouraged Untouchables to redefine their perceptions of self and society. Mahatma Gandhi's reform movement, which introduced the term Harijan (children of God), is the best known, but autonomous self-respect movements that developed within the Untouchable communities may well have had a more lasting impact. Certainly the change of values among Untouchables has far outrun change in the dominant society.