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| Purge caste out of Hindu society | | | Khushwant Singh
Why don't the great champions of Hinduism look within their hearts and find out why so many are disenchanted by their pretensions of piety?
Recent incidents of violence and vandalism against Christians and their churches deserve to be condemned unreservedly. They have blackened the face of India and ruined the reputation of Hindus being the most religiously tolerant people in the world. At the same time, we must take a closer look at people who convert from one faith to another.
To start with, these days, there are no forced conversions anywhere in the world. Those who assert that the poor, innocent and ignorant of India are being forced to accept Christianity are blatant liars. A few, educated and well-to-do people convert to another faith when they do not find solace in the faith of their ancestors.
There are also people who convert to the faith of those they wish to marry. However, the largest number of converts come from communities discriminated against. The outstanding example was that of Dalit leader Bhimrao Ambedkar who led his Mahar community to embrace Buddhism because they were discriminated against by upper caste Hindus. This is also true of over 90 per cent of Indian Muslims whose ancestors being lower caste embraced Islam which gave them equal status. That gives lie to the slander that Islam made converts by the sword.
Bringing hope
An equally large number of people converted out of gratitude. They were neglected, ignorant and poor. When strangers came to look after them, opened schools and hospitals for them, healed them and helped them to stand on their own feet, to hold their heads high, they felt grateful towards their benefactors. Most of them were Christian missionaries who worked in remote villages and brought hope to the lives of people there.
To this day, Christian missionaries run the best schools, colleges and hospitals in our country. They are inexpensive and free of corruption. They get converts because of the sense of gratitude they generate. Can this be called forcible conversion? Why don’t the great champions of Hinduism look within their hearts and find out why so many are disenchanted by their pretensions of piety? Let them first set their own houses in order, purge the caste system out of Hindu society and welcome with open arms all those who wish to join them. No one will then convert from Hinduism to another religion.
The Indian Chew
Niccolao Manucci of Venice came to India as a boy of 14 in 1655 and spent the rest of his life in the country. After living in Delhi, Agra and Goa, practising as a self-taught doctor, he returned to Pondicherry where he died in 1717.
On his first journey from Surat to Agra, Manucci was much intrigued by Indians’ favourite indulgence. He wrote: “Among other things, I was much surprised to see that almost everybody was spitting something red as blood. I imagined it must be due to some complaint of the country, or that their teeth had become broken. I asked an English lady what was the matter, and whether it was the practice in this country for the inhabitants to have their teeth extracted.
She answered that it was not any disease, but a certain aromatic leaf called paan or betel. She ordered some leaves to be brought, ate some herself and gave me some to eat. Having taken them, my head swam to such an extent that I feared I was dying. It caused me to fall down; I lost my colour, and endured agonies; but she poured into my mouth a little salt, and brought me to my senses...
Betel, or paan, is a leaf similar to the ivy-leaf...it is eaten by everybody in India. They chew it along with arecas, which physicians call Avelans Indicas, and a little katha, which is the dried juice of a certain plant that grows in India. Smearing the betel leaf with a little of the katha, they chew them together, which makes the lips scarlet and gives a pleasant scent. It happens with the eaters of betel, as to those accustomed to take tobacco, that they are unable to refrain from taking it many times a day. Thus the women of India, whose principal business is to tell stories and eat betel, are unable to remain many minutes without having it in their mouths.
It is an exceedingly common practice in India to offer betel leaf by way of politeness, chiefly among the great men, who, when anyone pays them a visit, offer betel at the time or leaving as mark of goodwill, and of the estimation in which they hold the person who is visiting them. It would be great piece of rudeness to refuse it.” |
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