Brahmin and Mullah

hariharan #51
Rama is traditionally dark too. A Tulsidas composition has Sita explaining about Rama and Lakshman:

``..Saanvaro se pritam, gore se dewarva..``

(the dark complexioned one is my husband and the light complexioned one is his younger brother)

Reply #: 53

nameless

For your hallucinatory thesis ,i give you PhD. in political science from Bapu Univ of Pashu pathi Nath Maha Vidyalya.

What ? Did you say you never heard of it ??,

Neither have of your name , or how low your E.Q. & I. Q. is is or if have it even.?????????????

The following applied in Kerala (quoting an author from the egroup Indic Traditions) -- posted here even though dost-mittar faced some flak.

-Arun Gupta

In social and political status, the Nayars have long been the ruling nobility of traditional Kerala society, for many centuries at least. The traditional Kings and rulers of Kerala (called `tamburans`) were of Nayar stock; the warriors and landowners included Nayars, Syrian Christians and upper class Muslims. But though these groups had a high social status, their ritual status was low, in the varna hierarchy decided by the brahmins.

Ritually, the Nayars were shudras and the Christians and Muslims were outcastes. However, this did not prevent them from following kshatriya ideals and acquiring Sanskrit learning.

Syrian Christians were very often educated in Sanskrit, and were culturally close to Nayars. The Muslims lived in Malabar (the northern part of Kerala) and I must confess that I know rather less about them, only that they were generally well integrated into the social and political system under the Zamorin (the Hindu king), with some famous warrior nobles among them.

The dominant brahmins were Nambudiris, and they had a curiously paradoxical relationship with the Nayars. Ritually, they treated the Nayars as untouchable shudras; but socially and culturally, they joined together with the Nayars in an intimate partnership of cultivation and learning. They even intermarried with the Nayars: in a special kind of relationship (called `sambandham`), where a brahmin gentleman would have perfectly legitimate children and familial relations with a Nayar lady at her ancestral family home (her `taravad`). Nayars were matrilineal, with the women having sometimes a fair degree of independence; so the children of such a relationship would be Nayars, and the lady was not entirely at a disadvantage. (She had the right to terminate the relationship; and if she wished, she could then marry a Nayar of her choice or enter into another relationship with a brahmin. Though it must be admitted that this right was not always easy to exercise, in the face of family pressure.)

As can be imagined, this kind of relationship -- between a brahmin gentleman and a Nayar `wife` and children whom he must treat as ritually impure -- did have its own kind of problems. It could be very difficult, in some ways even inhuman (for the Nayar lady, the children, and the brahmin father as well). But it did help to make more intimate the relationship between Nayars and brahmins, and to pass knowledge and learning between them.

By at least the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the ruling Nayar nobility was highly educated and cultivated, particularly the kings and princes. Some of the greatest figures in Malayalam literature and scholarship are traditional rajas (like the famous Svati Tirunal in the nineteenth century). Such learned rulers (who remained in power till Indian independence in 1947) teamed up with both brahmins and Christian missionaries to develop vernacular learning in Malayalam and to institute a modern system of education. That is the history behind the high literacy rate in Kerala today (by far the highest in India, according to what I last heard). It is not just a modern phenomenon brought in by recent communist state governments; but has a history that goes back centuries, through the extraordinary learning and cultivation of Nayar rulers who had the ritual status of untouchable shudras.

Thus, it is very misleading to equate the ancient varnashrama system of ideals with the rather narrow and corrupted ritual status that came to be applied by medieval brahmins to jati social groups. According to this narrow ritual status, there are no `true` kshatriyas among the peoples of south India, nor even of Bengal. The only `true` kshatriyas are the Rajput clans of northern India. But this is by no means the whole story, nor the essential one, of how the varnashrama ideals have continued to inspire Hindus, in their social and cultural lives.

To return to the example of the Nayars, their low ritual status meant that it was polluting for a brahmin to touch them. Thus, though a brahmin gentleman could have a family relationship with a Nayar lady and his children by her, he could only visit them at their Nayar home. They could not come to his ancestral home, nor meet his brahmin family. For that would be ritually polluting. And after being with his own Nayar children or their mother, he had to have a bath to cleanse himself ritually; before he could go back to his ancestral home or meet other brahmins or engage in worship or even do many ordinary things that required a normal state of ritual purity. This sounds awful, and I wouldn`t deny that it was. The people who went through this kind of experience do not speak of it kindly. Not at least the people whom I`ve heard or read describing it. It was not for nothing that Swami Vivekananda called Kerala a `madhouse`, in this regard.

However, this isn`t the whole story. The Nayars were not essentially confined to their ritualized shudra status. Brahmins may have accorded them that low status, for the special purposes of brahmanical ritual. But for the Nayar nobility themselves, in their own social and cultural lives, they were kshatriyas, and very much so. They followed kshatriya ideals, inspired by the ancient varnashrama system. They had an essential freedom to interpret the ancient ideals in their own way. And they made good use of that freedom, with the active (though sometimes convoluted) collaboration of brahmins, to develop the kingdoms of Travancore and Cochin in a way that compares very favourably with similar parts of India under British administration.

When this freedom of interpretation is taken into account, the old ideas and ideals can be seen in a much more sensible and realistic way.

A second article by the same author.

-Arun Gupta

..the traditional Hindu social system is much misrepresented: in particular by a confusion between `jati` and `varna`. Both words are translated as `caste`, though their meanings are quite different.

Of the jatis, there were and still are an indefinite number. They were social groups into which people are born. Each jati had its own history, which gave it an ethnic flavour of its own. In traditional Hindu society, a person`s jati provided the intimate cultural environment of family life and upbringing. And it also provided a network of community relationships. Through this combination of family culture and communal networking, the jati was -- for its various members -- the effective base from which they conducted their social and worldly affairs. To a fair extent, this remains true of many traditional jatis today.

Unlike the jatis, the number of varnas was essentially fixed. According to ancient tradition, fixed by the authority of the Vedas, there were just four varnas. This was not a plainly historical description, of actual social groups. Nor was it a straightforward code of conduct, to anything like the same extent as the legal and institutional codes that govern a modern society. Instead, the fourfold varnas were a highly mythical set of ideals, which had to be interpreted in very flexible and delicate ways.

The `varna` ideal was tied up with ritual and religion: which makes it easy to target, as providing a divine sanction for the inequality of human beings and the exploitation of lower classes. But the very word `varna` shows that the inequality was considered to be superficial. For `varna` is associated with the root `vri`, which means to `cover` or to `conceal` or `veil`. Thus, the basic sense of `varna` is `covering` or `outward appearance`, and the differentiated varnas are merely outward forms of a fundamental equality that is fully present in each.

Each of the varnas had its own positive ideal, expressing the essential equality that they all share. The brahmana ideal was one of pure character and dedication to sacred knowledge, relinquishing all attachment to power and position. The kshatriya ideal was one of true justice, vigorously implemented through wise statesmanship and skill at arms. The vaishya ideal was one of practical management and wealth creation, to accumulate a store of wealth that provided for the needs of everyone. The shudra ideal was one of faithful service, selflessly surrendered towards those who were fit to be served.

It is of course the shudra ideal that seems most repugnant today. Its imposition upon the lower classes seems nothing but a callous exploitation by their `superiors`. But that wasn`t the only way it worked, in traditional society. In the first place, it placed an obligation to be fit for whatever services were received, and that obligation was meant to be taken very seriously indeed. And, more fundamentally, the upper classes did not merely receive the benefits of service, but owed selfless loyalty themselves to those whom they should serve. Even the most powerful king, or the wisest brahmana, had finally to surrender everything, in service to a divine principle beyond all power and learning. And that divine principle had a habit of manifesting itself in seemingly low and humble forms, to remind those who forgot its fundamental equality.

In fact, the shudra varna represented the ideal of bhakti, with a curiously paradoxical importance in traditional society. On the one hand, it was the way of the poor, the powerless and the uneducated; as they served those with more wealth and power and learning. On the other hand, in its deepest form, it was the highest way for everyone; as all trappings of the world had finally to be surrendered. And that deepest form of bhakti was not excluded from any class, no matter how high or low. Even beneath all the four varnas, the outcastes were paradoxically linked with the sannyasis, who in some ways had the highest status of all.

How were these ideals practised, in the changing circumstances of Indian history? That is a very complex matter, about which there has been far too much rush to judgement, with rather inadequate historical records. There are of course great difficulties with the current writing of Indian history, since it has been so much influenced by foreigners and antagonists who cannot be expected to fully represent the Hindu traditions own view of itself.

For that self-view of Hindu history, we have two main sources: (1) the largely mythical and imaginative stories that are told by medieval and ancient texts and works of art; and (2) the fast growing chronicling of history by Hindus in the last century and a half.

The mythical stories are actually quite frank and in that sense realistic about the abuses and the paradoxes of Hindu social and cultural ideals, particularly the caste system. This makes it all the easier for detractors to paint an awful picture of caste iniquity throughout history, but I have come to be less and less convinced by it. The very frankness of admitting the problems gives me an opposite sense of enduring social and cultural strength, in the face of great difficulties. As teachers like Vivekananda and the late Kanci Shankaracarya keep pointing out, it is through the varnashrama and jati systems that the tradition was built up and has been kept so richly alive, through such a long and varied history.

What I`ve come across in the last hundred and fifty years of more plainly recorded history also gives me the same sense of strength, continuing far more essentially from the old tradition than being artificially constructed by importing and imitating from the west.



For those who would ask me to back up that general impression with more details, I`ve posted an article, `Traditional Hindu Society`, in the file section of this group

[which I will post next]

The third article I want to post is rather long, will do so later. Here is a URL to a different article in the meantime.

http://www.infinityfoundation.com/ECITmythicalframeset.htm

-Arun Gupta

From The Indian Express today:


Pre-summit mood is pro-summit

By Prakash Nanda

IF the pre-summit mood in Pakistan is so optimistic these days, it is mainly due to a perceptible change in the average Pakistani mindset about India. Be it in Lahore, or Peshawar, or Islamabad, or Karachi, the general impression that this writer gathered during a just concluded visit to Pakistan is unmistakably clear. Pakistanis, like never before, realise that they have to live with India, not against it. Their stand on the so-called core issue of Kashmir is much more ‘flexible’ than anytime in the past. And their aversion towards conducting trade and commerce with India is much more diluted than ever before. Gone is the craze of projecting Pakistan as a ‘West Asian state’. Instead, Pakistanis are being increasingly convinced that their destiny lies within the subcontinent of South Asia.

Of course, the ranks of the ‘jehadis’ and fundamentalists in the country have swollen in recent years. However, they are still not strong enough to give one the impression in the streets and homes in Pakistan that the country cannot co-exist with India. More Pakistani men may now be growing beard. Similarly, more Pakistani women may have abandoned ‘sari’ in favour of ‘salwar-kameez’. But at the same time, almost all the Indian TV channels have now a dominating presence in Pakistani homes as never before. In fact, from 8.30 p.m. to 10.30 p.m. every weekday the Pakistani families are literally hooked to Kaun Banega Crorepati, Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki and Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi.

In what would have been considered heretical a few years ago, many Pakistanis are now openly challenging in newspaper columns the country’s education system that has been injecting in the young minds the elements of anti-Indianism. ‘The ideology of Pakistan’ as taught to the students, sportsmen and bureaucrats is nothing except anti-India by using such phrases as ‘Hindu mentality’ and ‘devious Indian psyche’. Therefore, social scientists like Dr Inayatullah of Islamabad are now talking of the desirability of the Indian and Pakistani historians to write common textbooks.

Discerning Pakistanis are now pointing out how the anti-Hindu militant chauvinists have proved to be Frankenstein monsters who could turn against their creators any moment. Small wonder that General Musharraf has just launched a campaign against the war cries of the ‘irresponsible religious leaders’ who have undermined the country’s economic growth and distorted Pakistan’s image in the international community.

The growing perception is that Pakistan has not won the covert war in Kashmir, but its economy has been sacrificed considerably in the process. Very few responsible Pakistanis are now talking seriously of Islamabad’s traditional position of the implementation of the 1948 UN resolution. The catchword now is ‘flexibility’. In fact, it is just a new trend among the Pakistani scholars to see merits of other options on Kashmir that could maintain the territorial status quo of India and Pakistan with little modifications. Advocating a step-by-step approach, they want India to cooperate with Pakistan at the moment in working out a framework by which India’s military presence in Kashmir could be brought down to the pre-1989 level, Kashmiris’ fundamental rights could be restored, and above all, a mechanism is devised to facilitate the people on both sides of the line of control to visit each other, preferably through a bus service between Srinagar and Muzaffarbad.

The business circles would like the politics of the subcontinent not to dictate its economics. They are particularly keen on the over-land gasline from Iran to India through Pakistan.

However, will all this optimism be sustained under the regime of President Pervez Musharraf, the author of Kargil war? ‘‘Yes’’, say the thinking Pakistanis. For them, General Musharraf alone has the capacity to lead them on the road to reconciliation with India at Agra, as he wants to perpetuate the military’s legacy in the Pakistani polity. The theory is that if the Lahore Declaration in 1999 and the Shimla agreement in 1972 could not ensure peace, it was because these were brokered by the civilian prime ministers and the military did not like them to earn credits. The situation, this time, is different.

macgupta,

Your posts are interesting though your intent remains unclear.

``In fact, the shudra varna represented the ideal of bhakti, with a curiously paradoxical importance in traditional society. On the one hand, it was the way of the poor, the powerless and the uneducated; as they served those with more wealth and power and learning. On the other hand, in its deepest form, it was the highest way for everyone; as all trappings of the world had finally to be surrendered. And that deepest form of bhakti was not excluded from any class, no matter how high or low. Even beneath all the four varnas, the outcastes were paradoxically linked with the sannyasis, who in some ways had the highest status of all.``

Only two words. Absolutely disgusting.

``As teachers like Vivekananda and the late Kanci Shankaracarya keep pointing out...``

Vivekananda and the sankaracharya were both brahmins. You macgupta are a bania (no disrespect meant). Being beneficiaries of the caste system (call it what you will - jati,varna,whatever)...what entitles you to speak on behalf of the people left holding the dirty end of the stick???

You`ll agree perhaps that YOUR words carry no weight at all. Let a shudra or untouchable say how good the caste system is, how he`s polishing his bhakti by surrendering his belongings and his pride...that would be very acceptable.

The kerala example is also flawed. Are there no other hindu castes in kerala other than Nayars and Namboodiris? Please let us know in detail why Vivekananda called kerala a madhouse?

regards,

sadna # 52

Sadhnaji, thanks for the story. Very Interesting.

Ylh may have the last laugh. When we all are collecting social security here, he might be getting 21 gun salutes. He has good instincts to know how to impress the people who will matter to him. We, and our lectures on good manners, will not get him to where he wants to go.

Regards.

Dear author :

``...India is tied at a fundamental level to Brahminism and the Hindu religion, and that no matter how secular it purports to be, stories such as the Ramayan are still taken as literal truth in this day and age.``

``Again today we see, with the BJP in power, the rise of this Brahmin-style pattern of thinking. Where the religion becomes the ultimate authority and the religious figures become the ultimate diviners of that authority.``

Whoa, all this from just watching tape 2 of Ramayan? What I thought was a generally substandard production, turns out to be a most incisive commentary on Indian polity! Whaddaya know...

And now that you have aroused my curiosity, I am hungry for more. I`d love to know what you thought of certain choice segments of that hilarious religious comedy. I was just a kid then, but I remember even now we all used to count the days to Sunday when we`d get to watch another edition of the mysterious and comical exploits of Rama and company complete with cardboard mukuts, glue-on smiles and women who seemed to do nothing but weep, sometimes for weeks on end. It was a riot. We just loved Ravan`s handlebar moustache and Hanuman`s mile-long tail. Many muslim kids in my neighbourhood used to tack paper tails to their shorts and jump down a crumbling wall shouting ``Jai Shree Ram``, all day. It was more fun than a truckload of Manoj Comics and Lotepote.

So wont you enlighten us with an exposition of certain Ramayan arcana? In particular I`d like to know :

a) Dashrath has trouble procreating for many years. Then suddenly his wives are pregnant from the use of a fruit that Vashisht(?) supplied. Why was Dashrath so dumb? What does this tell about the IQ of current BJP politicians?

b) Sugriva plots to usurp his brother`s raj and rani. Clarify its significance vis-a-vis filial affiliation in BJP brahmins.

c) Why do arrows and assorted weapons take several minutes to traverse the battlefield, only to be met head on by equally stately arrows from the other side? What does this say about the quality of Indian defense equipment? Also, isnt this the final proof, if ever one was needed, that NMD is an ancient brahminical plot?

d) This one was the most puzzling when I was a kid, and I still dont get it - help! How can any human being, even if he was Lord Ram, continue to smile accurately and unchangingly for 55 weeks?

Any help is appreciated.

xxabbu

re: xxabbu # 63

LOL

re: anarayan # 61

Gupta, on this I will have to agree with anarayan. To all those who suffered terribly under the oppessive system of caste, any effort to `explain` caste is deeply offensive, even when the analytical objective is quite the opposite.

It is the same as in the case of slavery.

PS: I fully understand the urge Hindus may have to at least `explain` caste system when they are confronted by ignorant people who do not see the same problems that bedeveil their own traditions under slightly different guises. Yet, I would rather that all of us - Hindus, Muslims, and others - rise above our traditional moral limitations, see human beings as human beings, and move forward together toward a better future.

re harimau #40

`You tell me the name one single individual of minority religion in Pakistan who has reached the ranks of a Supreme Court justice`

Not to take away from the main thrust of your argument(which I do generally agree with), Pakistan`s first Chief Justice, A R Cornelius, was a Christian who migrated from what became the Indian Union; the late Dorab Patel, a Parsi, served on the Sindh High Court and later on the Supreme Court. Currently, Justice Rana Bhagwandas serves on the Supreme Court, I believe. Also, the late J N Mondol became the first speaker of the Pakistan Constituent Assembly.

Pardesi #62
Hope you didnot take my post #52 as a defence of anyone namely ylh on this board. On the contrary, the difference between empty gestures stemming from personal malice worn on one`s sleeve, on the one hand and the noisy rituals of genuine political activism on the other, is clear to ME, at least.

In student life, often this difference is slightly blurred, but ylh`s self-described actions donot qualify as anything but malice .

Bapuji, I am glad that you have recognised it for what it is....and that is precisely what the post is trying say about the the whole indo-pak affair. It is illusory and at times addictively hall....indeed the recent articles and interacts on this board increasingly lead me to beleive...that there is very little by way of real ideas and that we are increasingly being driven by an addiction, which causes a paucity of good useful ideas relevant to the 140million, but generates a plethora of useless analyses which doesnot solve the here and now.

being nameless - is a recognition of the that I come from nowhere am nobody am voiceless and nobody before me and after me much like a true human being. I do not carry baggage (ideological, lineage or otherwise) with which people can hand bag me .....

MacGupta 65 and 61,

I have to agree with narayan and eklavya, specifically regarding the effect of caste system in kerala. matrilineal system was a devise for the hign catse to retain the assets, only the eldest of the brahmin `married` all the other brothers had this `quasi marriage` which effectively denied them any inherirance as they were `legally` bas/ta/rds. Attempting to rationalise the caste system is self defeating while as a keralite I celebrate the way we have defeated the caste system theough institutional changes.

In the seventies we made an untouchable, remeber he is not the low catse, he is lower than the low caste, the chief priest of the `holiest` temple at Guruvayoor, the high caste brahmins had to receive the offerenigs from him, thorugh land reforms all of the brahmin wealth is gone, through the caste based reservation system we have ensured the education of the low caste, and to top it all up, to call an untouchable by his traditional name like pulayan, cheruman etc has been declared a cognisable offence, that is the untouchable has to just go and complain and it is up to the police to ccharge the offender and investigate. The low caste has to be called only the name that gandhi has given them `Harijan``.

In conclusion what is to be proud of is the changes we have brought about and we continue to bring to anull the bad past, not a reinterpretation to show how just the caste system was. No it was bad and change it we will.

This comes back to the pak question, the educated like the ylh, tahmed, godot and the like, underestimate the importance of institutional changes, they talk of implementation difficulties and become apologists for honour killing and the blasphemy laws. Coming form kerala, the stupidity of the pak educated is unforgivable in terms of their inaction to bring about any institutional changes.

regards

jay

anarayan -- unless I stand for election and gather some votes, nothing entitles me to speak for anyone but myself.

Sorry if you found the articles I posted unpalatable. Nevertheless, we have to examine the past. Stalin is directly responsible for 20 million or so deaths in the Soviet Union; but that should not stop one from studying the other things he did. And some people in India still honor Stalin -- is not one of ex-Tamil Nadu CM and DMK leader Karunanidhi`s sons named Stalin ? Why do you not say ``Absolutely disgusting`` to that ?

To remove the caste system, you have to attack it intelligently, and to do that you have to understand it. If you attack a mythical beast, you will get nowhere.

Regarding the other castes of Kerala, the third article that I was going to post dealt with that. As such, I will not post it, you can join the IndicTraditions group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/indictraditions) if you are interested. ( In any case, as far as I know, the author of the articles I posted is not of Indian origin.)

-Arun Gupta