Hindu Dharma Newsletter Issue # 8

22nd Jun ‘05

Issue # 8

Dear Friends,

Namaskar,

In this issue, I’ve attempted to explore the complex semantics around “varna”, “jati, caste and class. In addition, I have included a short essay on “Apologies for Historical Wrongs”. Finally, an excerpt on the medicinal property of “haldi” which probably is not “news” to any of you.
As always, let me know if you do NOT wish to receive this OR send a reply with UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject.

Dhanyawaad and Jai Hind,
Shantanu
hindu_dharma@yahoo.com

***********************************

APOLOGIES FOR HISTORICAL WRONGS

No doubt several of you must have read with some bemusement the continuing series of Japanese “apologies” over their behaviour and colonial aggression in Asia during the early years of this century (See for example: http://www.time.com/time/asia/covers/501050425/story.html and http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/article/0,13673,501041129-785416,00.html
I sometimes wonder whether we, as a nation, will ever break out of our lethargy, passiveness and indifference to demand the same of the British and the Muslims.
The case for demanding an apology from the British is more obvious and chronologically more proximate. There have also been numerous, well-documented specific instances of atrocity and cruelties which makes it easy to ask for acts of atonement. Of course, it is another matter that nothing of this sort has ever been attempted. Even when we had the opportunity to do so, our confused and weak leadership failed to do anything. [Browse http://www.rediff.com/news/aug/21jbag.htm]. I quote from a rediff news-story of Aug ’97:
“To avoid any embarrassing situation and sensing trouble, Prime Minister I K Gujral in an interview to The Observer, the British Sunday newspaper, this week revealed that the Indian government had suggested to its British counterpart that it would be better if the queen excluded Amritsar from her itinerary. On Thursday, the prime minister changed his stand and said the queen could now visit any part of India that she liked.” See also a particularly well-written piece on this tragedy, “Jallianwala Bagh revisited”, By Praveen Swamy in Frontline of Nov 1, ’97 at http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl1422/14220500.htm
But some of you may wonder about the reference to Muslims. The most common (but untenable) argument against re-visiting Islamic barbarities is: Should we really be “digging up” things that happened several hundred years ago?
The answer to that has two aspects: One, the wounds caused by these acts have still not healed and two, an apology would be an acceptance of the fact that wrongs were committed and that injustice was done.

In this context, here is a thought provoking excerpt that links apologies, forgiveness and the Ram-Janmabhoomi issue, from Dr Koenraad Elst’s “Ayodhya and After”.

“A gesture, not a compensation
The problem with forgiving is that genuine forgiving can only take place if the committed wrongs are admitted (forgiving someone who doesn’t deplore his act but still thinks it was justified, is tantamount to inviting him to do it again; it is not forgiveness but masochism).
What Hindus are in fact demanding from the Muslim leadership, is an uninhibited recognition of the injustice their forebears have inflicted upon the Hindus. There would be no need for a good-will gesture if there had not been some serious injustice in the past. Such recognition of the past would be implicit in an official Muslim acceptance of the Hindu rights over Ram Janmabhoomi, in fact it would be the most important thing about it.
But this historical recognition is the hardest part of the whole situation. Not even concerning one single contentious place are the Muslim communal leaders willing to openly concede that there was anything wrong with Babar’s behaviour. What is so difficult about such acceptance of past wrongs?
In 1989-90, the Japanese people have, via both their prime minister and their new emperor, openly expressed their regrets over the oppression meted out by them to the Korean people in the half-century before 1945. No one has interrupted them to say that this was a long- forgotten affair, time-barred, sterile raking-up of old quarrels. On the contrary, everybody involved realizes that this little apology is the very real beginning of a new Japanese-Korean understanding and, in the longer run, of a renewed friendship.
What makes it more difficult for the Indian Muslims to make such an apology to the Hindus, than for the Japanese to the Koreans? One reason is probably that the Japanese people do not constitute an ideological unit. The ideology of Japanese supremacy and militarism, which determined Japan’s policies in the decades before 1945, has disappeared and left room for a recognition of the crimes which to a supremacist people seemed justified, but are not considered such any longer.
The new willingness to come to terms with the past has been made possible by a real change in Japan’s dominant ideology. Now, that change does not endanger Japan : a country does not have a permanent ideology, yet it has a kind of permanent identity, independent of ideological fashions.
For the Muslim community, the situation is radically different. The admission of wrongs done in application of the Islamic ideology, would immediately endanger the adherence to that ideology.
…Muslim leaders are afraid that the admission of the systematic wrong done to the Hindus in direct application of unambiguous tenets of Islam, would seriously damage the integrity of the seamless garment of Islam. If you disown the persecution part of history, and implicitly also the persecution part of the doctrine, then where will this disowning stop? A scar on the nose is a scar on the face, and the repudiation of one Islamic doctrine (jihad) is the repudiation of Islam.
The Japanese have remained Japanese even after shedding their supremacist ideology, but will the Muslims, who are defined by their adherence to an ideology, remain Muslims once parts of this ideology are officially discredited? In this sense, openly facing the facts of the persecution part of Muslim history may really endanger the belief in Islam and therefore the very existence of the Muslim community as such.
That is why the Muslim communal leadership will not even consider any formal admission of the bloody past. Their only chance is to depict the Muslim atrocities as aberrations from the true Islamic path of tolerance and peace (as some friends of Islam have been doing). But they are wail aware that this really implies declaring much of the Prophet’s own behaviour to be aberration and un-Islamic, as well as the behaviour of revered Muslim heroes who merely imitated the Prophet’s example and implemented Quranic commandments. So, while many innocent common Muslims would not mind restoring a place of worship to the Hindus, the communal leadership is aware of its larger doctrinal implications, and refuses to give in.
It should be stressed that what Hindus are demanding is not a full compensation, not revenge, not getting even. Getting even would take millions of killings and acts of slave-taking, acts of temple destruction and so on, and that would still not bring the victims of Islamic fanaticism back to life. So, getting even is out of the question. Revenge is still something else. It would include the destruction of the most sacred places of Islam, like the Kaaba. That plan has not been formulated either. The point in this case is merely a symbolic restoration of one or three ancient Hindu sacred places, a formal gesture. Even that, the Muslim leadership is not willing to make, so far…”
***********************************

SPICES AND THEIR MEDICINAL PROPERTIES

Some of you may recall the incident over “haldi” patent a few years ago (see http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/tur-cn.htm). Now there is growing evidence that some of the most common spices used in traditional Indian cooking may have medicinal properties associated with them.

Here is an interesting study first published in Jan ’05 that examined the properties of “haldi” that may help combat Alzheimers.[From TIME Magazine, Jan12, ’05, “Food for the Brain: Can an ingredient in Indian curry help prevent Alzheimer’s?”, By Bryan Walsh]
“Fans of Indian cuisine know a spicy curry can go straight to the head—and now medical science backs them up. A recent study by researchers at the University of California Los Angeles and the Greater Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Healthcare System concludes that curcumin, the substance that gives the curry spice turmeric its yellow pigment, may help combat Alzheimer’s disease. In India’s ancient Ayurvedic health system, the spice is known as an anti-inflammatory and a cleanser of blood. The same pigment that makes this spice yellow may help prevent Alzheimer’s by breaking up the “plaques” that mark the brains of Alzheimer’s disease patients.

Alzheimer’s researchers became interested in it due to evidence that the prevalence of the neurological disease among the elderly in India may be considerably lower than that in the U.S. In the study, scientists found that elderly lab rats fed curcumin experienced a reduction in the beta-amyloid proteins found in the brains of Alzheimer’s victims. When researchers tested curcumin on human beta-amyloid proteins in a test tube, the chemical blocked the proteins from forming destructive plaques—meaning that curcumin could be useful for treating Alzheimer’s, and more importantly, for preventing it. Dr. Greg Cole, the lead researcher, hopes that curcumin could be for Alzheimer’s what aspirin has become for heart disease: a simple, safe and affordable preventative.

New Delhi-based restaurant consultant J. Inder Singh Kalra, who has touted the holistic value of Indian food on his TV cooking show for years, hopes such news will instruct younger Indians, who have been turning to unhealthy Western food. “It’s the great tragedy of this country,” says Kalra, “that we won’t value our own culture unless it comes back to us from the West.”
The study findings were published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.”
***********************************

VARNA AND JATIS: THE NEED FOR CLARITY IN INTELLECTUAL DEBATE

Recently, I came across this piece in the International Herald Tribune [“An International spotlight on the caste system”, Sunanda K Datta-Ray, 13th May ‘05] mentioning that the United Nation Commission on Human Rights has recently appointed two special rapporteurs to examine the caste system and to specify a set of guidelines for policy and governance purposes.
The article by respected columnist, Sunanda Datta-Ray made the same error that Indian social commentators (particularly those writing in English) commonly make i.e. a literal interpretation of the Sanskrit term “varna” to mean “colour”. To quote, the UN will examine the “abominations of what has been called the world’s oldest color bar – the Sanskrit word for caste being varna, or color (sic)”
I thought this was an excellent excuse to examine the whole issue (and confusion) around caste, class, race, varna, jati and related terms.

What exactly do these terms mean?

In the words of Andre Beteille, “When one uses the term “caste” in English, one is actually translating two distinct terms in the classical as well as the modern languages of India. The first term is varna and the second is jati. Varna and jati have both been described as caste. They are not unrelated to each other but they are not the same, and it is very important to understand the distinction between the two in order to understand the social logic of caste.. [“Caste, Inequality and Affirmative Action”, André Béteille, International Institute for Labour Studies, Geneva at http://www.ilo.org/public/english/bureau/inst/download/andre.pdf ]

To quote Rajiv Malhotra, “In particular, today’s common views of varna and jati are very narrow, and do not adequately describe Indian society. Jati is not caste, but became so under colonial rule (Dirks did a lot of good research on this). But more problematic is the distortion of Varna, which has become the basis for the whole Dalit conflict. I read far too many works that seem to insist on frozen jati-varna (wherein a whole jati has the same varna, and, furthermore, this varna is said to be unchangeable). But this is an inaccurate picture. I hope …students are given a more nuanced treatment than most South Asianized desis that I have come across on these matters. [“Is Hindutva the Indian Left’s ’Other’? Rajiv Malhotra in Outlook India, 15 Jan ’04, http://india.eu.org/833.html ]

Edmund Weber has written that, “The colonial term ‘caste’ is muddling the two sociological categories meaning completely different social states of affairs: ‘jati’ and ‘varna’. Jati means real working community of birth, marriages, of profession, culture and religion (closer to the widely (mis)understood meaning of caste; varna, however, means the social rank, status, order (closer to class). ”Varna” does not mean the work-sharing assignment of the “jatis”. This has been always an element of the “jatis” themselves. The socio-cultural evaluation of the “jatis”, their ranking place (again, as in class), is expressed by the hierarchical “varna”. [“Ambedkar and the Hindu Culture. Journal of Religious Culture No. 18b (1999)”, Edmund Weber, on the web at http://web.uni-frankfurt.de/irenik/relkultur18b.html ]

Bear in mind that the origin of the word itself suggests the fundamental misunderstanding around the concept of racial purity. The word derives from the Portuguese word casta (also Spanish), feminine of casto which means “pure” from the Latin “castus”.

Also it is worth mentioning that the word “varna” does not directly mean colour. It is in fact derived from the root “vr” which means screen, veil, covering, external appearance. One of its indirect meaning is “appearance”. As appearance however, it does not refer to the colour of the skin of the people, but to the qualities (“guna”) of energies of human nature.
Ignoring the conceptual distinction between “jati” and “varna” (which is sometimes deliberate and ideologically motivated) doesn’t help either a deeper understanding of the origins of the system or serious efforts to combat the distortions that have crept in.

For an excellent analysis of broad categorisation of theories that attempt to explain the caste system, visit “The Origin of Caste” website at http://www.islam4all.com/the_origin_of_caste.htm. It includes excerpts and brief summary from the book “Caste, Class and Race – A Study in Social Dynamics’ By Oliver Cromwell Cox, Ph.D. Professor of Sociology, Lincoln University]
The following excerpt illustrates just how much misunderstanding and confusion has been caused by the extremely narrow interpretation of the term “varna”.

“Probably the most common explanation of the origin of caste is based upon beliefs that the word “varna” means color; hence, caste must have originated in the Aryan’s passion for protecting their light Asiatic color from intermixture with the dark color of the Dravidians. However, as we shall attempt to indicate below, the early literature of the Hindus does not show this to be the case. “
Part of the confusion is simply due to ignorance or mis-understanding of several Sanskrit terms (which sometimes have fairly broad interpretation). In this context, it may be helpful to list a few key points:

• Varna has other meanings in Sanskrit, apart from colour
• The term “Sudra” is not synonymous with “Dravid”
• There is no historical data to suggest that “varna” really symbolized racial antipathy between Aryans and Dravidians
• It is mistaken to assert that caste is invariant and immutable and one is born into it
  There are clear references in the Bhagavad Gita to how “varna” was determined by (“guna”) qualities and (“karma”) efforts. “In sloka (IV.13) Lord Krishna says: “Chaturvarnyma mayaa sristam gunkarma vibhagsah” i.e. four orders of society created by Me according to their Guna (qualities/behaviour) and Karma (profession/work/efforts). Note that there is no reference to “guna” and “karma” of previous life.
• In sloka (XVIII.41) Lord Krishna says “Brahmana Kshatriya visham sudranam cha paramtapa, karmani pravibhaktani svabhavaprabhavaigunaih.” It means people have been grouped into four classes according to their present life karma (profession/work) and svabhava (behaviour). `The division of labour into four categories – Brahman, Ksatriya, Vaishya and Sudra – is also based on the Gunas inherent in peoples’ nature`. Had this division been based on birth, Lord Krishna would have naturally used phrase ‘Janmani pravibhaktani’ in the very shloka (XVIII.41).
• It is not even clear which, if any, skin colour, was considered superior or “preferred” amongst the early Aryo-Dravidians.
  Shri Krishna, for example, is often referred to as the “dark-cloud-faced one” or the “dusky-one” or the “dark-blue-one,” and Lord Rama, the divine hero, is often represented as dark or blue or green.
• The racial theory of caste is empirically inconsistent because before the (caste) system became organized, the population had already became inseparably mixed
  Note that this early amalgamation of population demonstrates that the “varna” system was not rigid & inflexible. In the words of John C Nesfield, “a Bengali Brahman looks like other Bengalis, a Hindustani like other Hindustanis, a Mahratti like other Mahrattis, and so on, which proves that the Brahmans of any given nationality are not of different blood from the rest of their fellow-countrymen”. In reality, Brahmins from different regions resemble the local communities far more (in appearance) than some mythical Aryan “white” race
• The blurring of distinction between “varna” and “jati” may not be entirely blamed on modern interpretation. Apparently even Manu used the term “varna” synonymously with “jati” – which is better defined as the form of existence determined by birth, position, rank or family descent; kind or species

Finally, here are a couple of points to think about. Is it really possible that a system as rigid as the caste order could be built upon skin colour – not even colour as such but by the parentage of the colour groups?
Even if we were to assume for a moment that the caste system originated due to the difference in skin-colour, how does one explain the apparent assumption of “natural superiority” by the Aryans when at the time of the “invasion”, the Dravidians evidently had a higher culture?
All this points to the need of creating awareness about these terms and more research into the origins of the caste system. Until that happens, social commentators, activists and politicians will continue to abuse the terms for their narrow ends.

***********************************

IS THERE ANY HOPE?

Over the past few months, I have been watching with growing dismay and alarm our (usually unilateral) “gestures of friendship” towards a country that still supports a division of India (re. Kashmir) and continues to actively sponsor terrorists across the border.
Last month though, I came across what must be one of the most sickening and disgusting example of our over-zealous and supine attitude towards Pakistan. [See “IITs, IIMs open doors to Pakistan”, by Urmi Goswami in TimesofIndia Online, Apr 20, ’05]
In one stroke, the government is considering two policy reversals. The first, allowing foreign students to study at IITs and IIMs. The second, allowing Pakistani students entry in Indian colleges.
I am struggling to understand how this benefits us – the country, the students at IITs, the institutes themselves – and have failed to see this for anything other than what it is – a dumb, short-sighted measure with an eye on being one-up on the BJP in “bhaichara” and “sadbhavana”.
Incidentally, this would also mean that we, as tax-payers, are now subsidising the education of Pakistanis (bear in mind that the IITs and IIMs are government-funded).
To top it, the government will “consider devising a separate exam for the Pakistani candidates…” – presumably treating them with some “sympathy”.
While we go out of our way to extend such special favours, the Pakistanis refuse to budge on even straightforward requests.
See” Pak not open to Indian companies: Aziz”, which mentions a remark made by Shaukat Aziz (PM of Pakistan) on May 06, ’05 in Kuala Lumpur [See http://www.siliconindia.com/shownewsdata.asp?newsno=28002]

Not one to mince words, Aziz said, “(although) Pakistan…has removed all barriers to foreign investment, Indian companies won’t be welcome until the Kashmir issue is resolved…”. For good measure, he added, “The atmospherics between the two countries are getting better. But the economic relations have to move in tandem with progress on many issues including the core issue of Kashmir”.

To those who still believe that our attitude towards the “friendly neighbour” is one of dealing from a position of strength, I would draw your attention to our official comment/ statement on news reports that a Pakistani Minister had trained and supported Kashmiri terrorists [“Minister “backed” Kashmir rebels”, BBC, Jun 14th ’05, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4092072.stm]

The bland statement read, “It is particularly serious that people directly involved in such activities continue to occupy high positions in Pakistan…Our stand remains that no effective action has been taken by Pakistan to dismantle the infrastructure of support to terrorism on a permanent basis,”.

And yet we continue with our “unilateral” diplomacy. Is there any hope?