The caste system was another major target of attack for the social reform movement. The Hindus were at this time divided into numerous castes (jatis).
The caste into which a man was born determined large areas of his life. It determined whom he would marry and with whom he would dine.
It largely determined his profession as also his social loyalties. Moreover, the castes were carefully graded into a hierarchy of status. At the bottom of the ladder came the untouchables or scheduled castes as they came to be called later, who formed about 20 per cent of the Hindu population.
The untouchables suffered from numerous severe disabilities and restrictions, which of course varied from place to place. Their touch was considered impure and was a source of pollution. In some parts of the country, particularly in the south, their very shadow was to be avoided, so that they had to move away if a brahmin was seen or heard coming.
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An untouchable’s dresses, food, place of residence, all were carefully regulated. He could not draw water from wells and tanks used by the higher castes; he could do so only from wells and tanks specially reserved for untouchables. Where no such well or tank existed, he had to drink dirty water from ponds and irrigation canals.
He could not enter the Hindu temples or study the shastras. Often his children could not attend a school in which the children of caste Hindus studied.
Public services such as the police and the army were closed to him. The untouchables were forced to take up menial and other such jobs which were considered ‘unclean,’ for example, scavenging, shoe-making, removing dead bodies, skinning dead animals, tanning hides and skins. Usually denied ownership of land, many of them worked even as tenants-at-will and field labourers.
The caste system was an evil in another respect. Not only was it humiliating and inhuman and based on the anti-democratic principle of inequality by birth, it was also a cause of social disintegration. It splintered people into numerous groups.
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In modern times it became a major obstacle in the growth of a united national feeling and the spread of democracy. It may also be noted that caste consciousness particularly with regard to marriage prevailed also among Muslims, Christians and Sikhs, who practiced untouchability though in a less virulent form.
British rule released many forces which gradually undermined ‘his caste system. The introduction of modern industries, railways Modern commerce and industry opened new fields of economic activity to all.
For example, a Brahmin or upper-caste merchant could hardly miss the opportunity of trading in skins or shoes, nor would he agree to deny himself the opportunity of becoming a doctor or a soldier.
Free sale of land upset the caste balance in many villages the close connection between caste and vocation could hardly continue in a modern industrial society in which the profit motive was increasingly becoming dominant.
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In matters of administration, the British introduced equality before law, took away the judicial functions of caste panchayats and gradually opened the doors of administrative services to all castes. Moreover, the new educational system was wholly secular and therefore basically opposed to caste distinctions and the caste outlook.
As modern democratic and rationalist ideas spread among Indians, they began to raise their voice against the caste system. The Brahmo Samaj, the Prarthana Samaj, the Arya Samaj, the Ramakrishna Mission, the Theosophists, the Social Conference and nearly all the great reformers of the nineteenth century attacked it.
Even though many of them defended the system of the four varnas, they were critical of the caste (jati) system. In particular, they condemned the inhuman practice of untouchability.
They also realised that national unity and national progress in political, social and economic fields could not be achieved so long as millions were deprived of their right to live with dignity and honour.
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The growth of the national movement played a significant role in weakening the caste system. The national movement was opposed to all those institutions which tended to divide the Indian people. Common participation in public demonstrations, giant public meetings and satyagraha struggles weakened caste consciousness. In any case those who were fighting for freedom from foreign rule in the name of liberty and equality could hardly support the caste system which was totally opposed to these principles. Thus, from the beginning, the Indian National Congress and in fact the entire national movement opposed caste privileges and fought for equal civic rights and equal freedom for the development of the individual without distinctions of caste, sex or religion.
All his life Gandhiji kept the abolition of untouchability at the forefront of his public activities. In 1932, he founded the All India Harijan Sangh for this purpose.
His campaign for the “root and branch removal of untouchability” was based on the grounds of humanism and reason. He argued that there was no sanction for untouchability in the Hindu shastras.
But, if any shastra approved of untouchability, it should be ignored for it would then be going against human dignity. Truth, he said, could not be confined within the covers of a book.
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Since the middle of the nineteenth century, numerous individuals and organisations worked to spread education among the untouchables (or depressed classes and scheduled castes as they came to be called later), to open the doors of schools and temples to them, to enable them to use public wells and tanks, and to remove other social disabilities and distinctions from which they suffered.
As education and awakening spread, the lower castes themselves. Began to stir. They became conscious of their basic human rights and began to rise in defence of these rights. They gradually built up a powerful movement against the traditional oppression by the higher castes.
In Maharashtra, in the second half of the nineteenth century, lyotiba Phule, born in a lower-caste family, led a lifelong movement against Brahmanical religious authority as part of his struggle against upper-caste domination. He regarded modern education as the most important weapon for the liberation of the lower castes.
He was the first to open several schools for girls of the lower castes. Dr B.R. Ambedkar, who belonged to one of the scheduled castes, devoted his entire life to fighting against caste tyranny. He organised the All India Scheduled Castes Federation for the purpose.
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Several other scheduled caste leaders founded the All India Depressed Classes Association. In Kerala, Sri Narayan Guru organised a lifelong struggle against the caste system. He coined the famous slogan: “One religion, one caste and one God for mankind.”
In south India, the non-brahmins organised during the 1920s the Self-Respect Movement to fight the disabilities which brahmins had imposed upon them.
Numerous satyagraha movements were organised all over India jointly by the upper and depressed castes against the ban on the latter’s entry into temples and other such restrictions.
The struggle against untouchability could not, however, be fully successful under alien rule. The foreign government was afraid of fusing the hostility of the orthodox sections of society. Only the government of a free India could undertake a radical reform of society.
Moreover, the problem of social uplift was closely related to the problem of political and economic uplift. For example, economic progress was essential for raising the social status of the depressed castes; so also were the spread of education and political rights. This was fully recognised by the Indian leaders. Dr Ambedkar, for example, said:
Nobody can remove your grievance as well as you can and you cannot remove these unless you get political power into your hands we must have a government in which men in power will not be afraid to amend the social and economic code of life which the dictates of justice and expediency so urgently call for.
This role the British Government will never be able to play. It is only a government which is of the people, for the people and by the people; in other words, it is only the Swaraj Government that, will make it possible.
The Constitution of 1950 has provided the legal framework for the final abolition of untouchability. It has declared that “untouchability’ is abolished and its practice in any form is forbidden.
The endorsement of any disability arising out of ‘untouchability’ shall be an offence punishable in accordance with law.” The Constitution further forbids any restrictions on the use of wells, tanks and bathing ghats, or on access to shops, restaurants, hotels and cinemas.
Furthermore, one of the Directive Principles that it has laid down for the guidance of the government says: “The State shall strive to promote the welfare of the people by securing and protecting as effectively as it may a social order in which justice, social, economic and political, shall inform all the institutions of the national life.”
The struggle against the evils of the caste system, however, still remains an urgent task before the Indian people, especially in the rural areas.