Lastly – The Untouchables

This concept is the most misunderstood concept today and needs to be properly understood in the context of those times.

Persons who worked in what were considered unclean trades or professions such as those working on butchering animals, or working with dead animals, or even dead humans, and those who lacked any skills and were thus compelled to take up tasks no one else would, such as working with ‘night soil’, were definitely at the even lower levels of the social scale as their skill levels and even economic status was the lowest.

However, that was not the real reason that they became actual ‘untouchables’, as it is easily seen that without such people doing what needed to be done, the Society would soon collapse and evidently all the upper Varna’s were aware of the importance of what such individuals did even as they kept them at a distance. The real reason for such distancing was that the people working on such trades or professions lived in greater contact with disease causing bacteria and viruses and over time developed resistance to illnesses caused by such bacteria and viruses. Those living with them too had necessarily to develop such resistance. However, the other sections of the population would not have developed such resistance and would therefore be greatly subject to severe and even fatal consequences if they came into contact with persons carrying the cause of such diseases but who were themselves resistant to the disease. Hence, it was in the interest of such other people, and of their children’s survival, that people in such professions as could cause disease to them, be kept at a distance to avoid infection.

The fear of infection is an established biological survival mechanism that always results in isolating, as far as possible, those people seen as potential disease carriers. This resulted in those resistant to such diseases in the Society, being carriers of the cause of the diseases, being called and treated as ‘untouchable’. Even so some of such people who so desired managed to learn from the so-called upper Jatis and moved elsewhere where their new skills would have offered them acceptance into that Craft’s Jati.

A quick recollection from only a few decades ago when Non-Resident Indians (NRI) sons would visit their own parents and having lost their resistance to common bacteria, and in order to avoid falling victim to illnesses such as diarrhea, cholera and typhoid, would find it necessary to refuse to drink the water their parents drank and call for boiled water. We would not blame such an NRI for in effect treating his own parents and siblings as those he has to be careful of contact with. This could be perceived as a type or level of untouchability? Of course the recent COVID-19 pandemic, and the masks, sanitization and the social distancing it is calling for proves the point.

Then should we really blame those people in such Varna’s or Classes or even in Jati’s or Castes as not having resistance to such illnesses seeking to reduce risk to themselves and their children by insisting on taking precautions. This explains why they sought to keep likely infectors away from them and why water wells, which could easily be contaminated, were kept separate and even where to live restrictions were made, keeping in view factors such as, the wind directions, and flow of surface water.

There is a story of a man in the USA carrying medicine resistant T B bacteria. He was able to live with the disease but his very breath could infect others with this incurable disease, which for most, would be painfully fatal. The U.S. Courts had then ruled that this person would generally be under house arrest at his isolated farm and that he would need to wear a protective mask to go into town or interact with other people. He was threatened with imprisonment in an isolation ward if he did not wear the mask. Would you consider this acceptable? Even hospitals maintain isolation wards to prevent the spread of diseases. Isn’t all this also, a sort of untouchability? Today, under the threat of COVID – 19 pandemic, and other similar epidemics all of us are insisting on wearing masks, maintaining social distance and resorting to frequent sanitizition. Would you call this Untouchability? This only proves the point.

Do remember that even in the
other Varna’s and Classes, similar fear for infections, kept menstruating ladies out of the main house, kitchen and Puja spaces. Clearly evidencing that untouchability was an inevitable consequence of differences in resistance to disease and fear of infection and not just a social stigma as it is called on to be recognized today in a far different context.

In the old days the system was flexible and in case a person was able to pick-up a skill and prove himself, especially elsewhere from his native place, he could advance his Varna. However, from about the middle of the first millennium of the Common Era increasing religiosity destroyed the scientific temperament of the people, when the seas were declared ‘Kala Pani’, crossing which led to ostracism from the offender’s caste, and when women were no longer as respected as earlier, all led to hardening and fossilization of customs, attitudes and rules that denied the earlier flexibility in the system to respond to changing circumstances. Such attitudes were further enhanced by the British when they set about destroying the Indian educational system and replaced it with the English system and destroyed the social fabrics of the community. It is worth noting that at the time the first Public School was set- up in England, in about 1811 CE, there were over 7,32,000 Gurukuls/Schools all across India, which were all soon shut down forcibly by the British, to deny the benefits of education to the Indians and keep them dependent on the British and on the education system they introduced to a few Indians as they found necessary.

Of course, the misfits, the unskilled and those who felt overly persecuted, always had the option to move into the remote Himalayan mountain valleys, or into the forests to try to live off the land by themselves, or join such others who had formed tribal groups therein. It is such people who may be the adivasis or gypsies of today, who then not having access to the knowledge or learning of the Brahmins, soon descended into barbarism / tribalism. History has also, shown us, again and again, that if any isolated population falls to less than about 20,000 to 30,000 people, it would, within a few generations, collapse unless it is constantly added to from outside. Such people could also, live on the fringes of the Society ending up as vagrants, ascetics, wandering minstrels, peddlers, or entertainers and so on.

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