The advent of foreigners in South India had produced drastic and revolutionary changes in the political and economic life of the people but in relative terms the social life remained unaffected. This was because of the unusual caste culture that grew within each community here. When the British assumed political ascendancy in the South, the society was as feudal and caste-ridden as it was in the days of the medieval kingdoms.
The system of government and social mechanism were marked by feudalism in its worst form which reduced most of the people to the conditions of hewers of wood and drawers of water of their lords. The lower castes that formed the majority of the population were subjected to untold social and economic restraints, all flowing from caste inferiority.
In fact every Hindu Government was directed and led by a strong Brahmin minority, giving a highly orthodox theocratic character to the rule. For instance the Parasurama tradition was so alive in Canara and Kerala that the Brahmins could enjoy there, to the exclusion of other classes, supreme rights in the social and economic spheres. Sudras were believed to have been created, according to that tradition, to serve the Brahmins and all land a gift made over to them by Parasurama.
As a result of the special rights granted to the upper castes in their hierarchical order of merit, the Hindu society functioned as a feudal organization. Its balance functioning required a dead-weight of caste inferiors to be permanently put at its base-board. Even though the system worked smoothly for centuries, its incidence on the life and fortunes of these lower classes was intensely harsh.
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The burden of appeasing the superior castes and supplying their needs without requital and the heaviness of the oppressive freight of these feudal obligations aggravated in progressive order when the caste groupings descended to the extremity in merit, so much so that those at the bottom of the society were made to bear the entire burden of the upper layers.
At the level people had only obligations to perform and no rights to claim. Only on the absolute and unqualified inequality of castes of orthodox Hindu order could thrive. Untouchability and unapproachability were the main channels through which inequities flowed.
In order to under-score the pervasiveness of these social evils, it will suffice if we note that even the life of the so called upper castes was regulated by some sort of untouchability taboos. Pollution was observed even between the different sub-castes within the Brahmin community. A Tamil Brahmin by touch caused pollution in Nambudiri and a Nayar to the Tamil Brahmin.
Under the British rule lower castes were given the freedom to act as they chose but they did not try to emancipate themselves from the fetters of caste; rather they allowed themselves to be grounded by these chains.
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As Dr. Cornish, the compiler of Madras Census Report (1909) said, “So far from caste distinction dying out, there probably was never a time when the great bulk of the people of southern India were so pertinacious in the assertion of the respectability and dignity of their castes” as they had been of late years.
In fact caste changed its 3hapc or colour in a thousand years of its existence. The conditions of the 19th century Hindu society in the South were typically the same as those of the 10th or 11th centuries. With reference to the Varna-oriented-society that existed in 1834, James Forbes wrote, “the laws, manners and customs are the same at this day as they were some thousand years ago.”
Information’s supplied by the records of the last and the present centuries, accounts of the European witnesses, institutions and traditions a foot-all corroborate the facts provided by the ancient and medieval sources regarding the caste culture of the people in general and status and lack of civil rights of the lower castes in particular.
Not even the positive right to live was recognised in their case; they lived almost negatively on sufferance of the hands of the feudal lords, their caste superiors. They were not treated as human beings endowed with the spark of inviolable soul and mind susceptible to pain and pleasure, and intellect capable of thinking, loving, hating and avenging their wrongs.
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The destinies of these people were fixed for them and their stations allocated by a small minority of Brahmins. That status was certainly not of ordinary human beings but of the lowest of living creatures. Even in the first quarter of the 20th century this condition of caste continued to exist.
This is well exemplified by the following dialogue between Gandhiji and a band of orthodox Savarna oppositionists who objected to throwing open of the roads round the Vaikkam temple of the use of the untouchable classes on whose behalf the India National Congress volunteers had conducted a massive Satyagraha campaign in 1924-25.
I would like you to take up this point of mine that even though a particular road may be considered to be a private road so long as ordinarily we allow human beings to pass through that road, I say that it is wrong on our part to prevent as single person from passing through that road simply because he is born in a particular caste.
They are no suspicious characters or enemies; I can understand if you prohibit them from passing through those roads in such cases. If they obstruct, or if they are dacoits or robbers or drunkards or dissolute people, I can understand the objection. But I cannot understand an objection based merely on the ground of birth. That is one point, and I would like to hear your answer to that point.
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Mr. Indanthuruthi Nambiatiri (leaders of oppositions): Does Mahatmaji believe in the divinity of the Hindu Sastras?
Gandhi: Yes
Nambiatiri: Does Mahatmaji believe in the Law of karma?
Gandhi: Yes
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Nambiatiri: Does he believe in re-incarnation?
Gandhi: Yes
Nambiatiri: According to our faith, according to our Achara, we believe that they are born in the unapproachable caste by their bad karma in their previous birth. We have been enjoined by our kerala Achara to treat them in this manner; we consider for that matter, that these people are worse than dacoits or robbers.
Gandhi: I would like to know the reason why you should treat them worse than dacoits and drunkards.
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Nambiatiri: In the case of the robbers and the drunkards there may be some means of getting rid of those people by aid of law. But in the case of these people there is no such means.
Gandhi: They do not want to sit on these roads; they do not want to obstruct passage; they only want to pass over them.
Nambiatiri: It is the passing that is more difficult to grant. That is precisely what I want to understand-how this mere passage of an individual will result in becoming an obstruction worse than a robber or a dacoit.
Gandhi: That is our faith. We believe that he is born in that caste according to his karma in his previous birth.
Nambiatiri: They must have done worse action in their past birth to have been punished like this.
Gandhi: Let us grant that. But I ask who is to punish them-we animal beings?
Nambiatiri: In worldly matters, it is man who punishes man for wrongs done by him. We believe it is the ordinance of God to have them punished by having them born in this caste.
Gandhi: True, true let divinity punish them; but how can human beings punish them?
Nambiatiri: God acts through man. Similarly as a punishment these people are in the unapproachable caste.
M.K. Raman Pillai: May I ask Mahatmaji whether there is not a class mentioned in the Hindu Sastras who are called the polluted classes?
Gandhi: There is a class called Chandalas?
M.K. Raman Pillai: May I further ask whether Mahatmaji believes in births and rebirths?
Gandhi: Oh, Yes.
M.K. Raman Pillai: If so may I not believe that these Chandalas whom we say Panchamas or Ezhavas are born in that section on account of their past karma?
Gandhi: It is the fruit of his own past action. I admit that, but Hinduism does not teach you to consider one man low and another man high.
M.K. Raman Pillai: But we know that a man who has been born in a particular caste enjoys certain privileges and undergoes certain disabilities. We say that he is put to those difficulties on account of those past karma. If that is my belief according to my religion may I not be allowed to shun him as a human being?
Gandhi: If you speak as a human being and not as a Hindu, then I will have to give reasons.
M.K. Raman Pillai: The untouchables allowed us to remove ourselves away or perhaps we drove them away. But that was with their permission. They will thus admit that they are a class who ought to be driven away. They had their customs which wanted him to remove to a distance from us. Anyhow I want to have this privilege that the temples which are enjoyed exclusively by a class should be allowed to be enjoyed even now by that class.
This clearly indicates that the orthodox caste Hindus considered their outcaste brethren as a class of despised, degraded, sub-human being, who had no right to claim equality with them who were required to be segregated and treated as condemned as they were created to be punished for their sins of a previous birth, and that caste-Hindus were appointed agents of God to chastise and castigate them.
These dominant groups also implicitly believed, that these miserable to exterior caste men were a continuing nuisance and were permitted to remain on earth only because they could not be got rid of by the aid of law. That, again, implies that, had the upper castes been armed with sufficient authority, they would have effectively eliminated those who had dared to oppose them or come in their way of life. If this was the attitude of the orthodox savannas at the end of the first quarter of the 20th century, one can well imagine how dark the days of the avarnas in the preceding centuries were.
All through the historical period, we find these people being subjected to the process of merciless elimination, when feudal lords and barons with their retainers-an instrument of oppression par excellence-had wielded the power of life and death over the hapless populace. Political authority and social power were blended in the symbol of chieftaincy and this combined authority was often expressed in the cruelest way through various feudal institutions and imposts. Human life had no worth or value and decapitation was carried out with the ease of boys plucking pods.
On the slightest provocation and often at the despotic whim of those in authority, people were cut down. Forbes wrote: “If a Nair accidentally meets a Pooleah on his way, he cuts him down with as little ceremony as we should destroy a noxious animal.” In some places all powers both executive and judicial were delegated for a fixed period to local caste-men by the sovereign. This institution styled Thalavettiparothiam or authority obtained by decapitation was an office ten?
Me for five years during which its bearer was invested with supreme despotic powers with his jurisdiction on the expiry of the five years the man’s head was cut off and thrown up in the air amongst a large concourse of villagers each of whom vied with the other in trying to catch it in its course down. He who succeeded was nominated to the post for the next five years. The very nature of the institution bespeaks of its cruelty and incivility.
The risk inherent in the office must have certainly made its incumbent a source of terror for the community and an object of worshipful obedience. A head to be chopped off by the feudal lord at the end of the five years tenure cannot be expected to tolerate the heads who were either rivals or enemies of the higher castes; naturally they might have been preyed upon by these head chopper’s liverymen. It seems to be a sole preserve of the upper Nayar cluster, for it was impossible at that time that a non-caste men was ever authorised to kill delinquent Nayars.
Outcastes being more prone to unlawful activities, probably it must have fallen on them more severely. Although we do not have authentic records it may be presumed that this institution must have served well as “a means of getting rid of those people by the aid of law”. Instances of innocent people having been mercilessly persecuted and grounded on account of their being born in low castes are numerous in the history of Hindu kingdoms of South India. Even under the British rule they were victims of the misinterpreted agamic rules.
In keeping up ceremonial observances and caste distinctions, in invoking traditions and customs to regulate social life, south India was more bigoted and reactionary than north India; and strangely enough, of all places in south India, Kerala, particularly Travancore and Cochin took the sin of pride in the matter of extending the limits of caste pollution to inapproachability and even unseeability. On this account says L.S.S. O’ Malley, “If no other, Madras (now Chennai) may be said to deserve the name of the benighted Presidency” which is often applied to it.