The Idea of a Secular, Democratic India

Any liberal, compassionate and freedom-loving individual would be distressed at the condition of India today. The world’s largest democracy, once hailed as an example for the whole of the developing world to emulate, is sliding into the morass of fascistic autocracy (based on Nazi-style religious nationalism) under the Narendra Modi regime. The puzzling fact is that even after performing miserably on all fronts, and getting only 37% of the votes of 60-70% of the total populace who voted, they have become a commanding presence in the parliament and many of the states of the Hindi belt. So much so, that they have dropped all pretense of their “development” agenda and are going ahead aggressively with the Hinduisation of the Indian subcontinent. Attacks on minorities, discriminatory laws against Muslims, and illegal arrests and detentions of all critics of the regime have all become the norm; and all three arms of the democracy (legislative, executive and even the judiciary) seem to be toeing the government line. The Bharatiya Janata Party (Modi’s party), the political wing of the Hindu fundamentalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (or RSS for short), have become so confident that they are talking of ruling India forever and converting it into a Hindu nation – and realists are afraid that their confidence is not entirely misplaced.

Why? Why did the country which began its life as a secular democracy in 1947 slip into this religio-nationalistic madness? How did this fringe group of Hindu fanatics slowly become the mainstream and start controlling the national narrative? Is it because Hindus are essentially fundamentalist, and secularism was just an illusion? Or has something happened in this seventy plus years to push the majority religion more and more on the path to fundamentalism?

Looking at our history and culture, I have decided upon three possible causes for India’s shift to the right. Please note that this is only my personal reading; my opinion is formed based on my observations and reading. I have no claims to scholarship of any kind.

The Essential Religiosity of India vs Political Correctness

I would like to narrate two incidents. One way back in the middle eighties, one earlier this year.

I was living with my parents and had just started on my first job. My sister, eleven years younger to me, was in middle school. One day she had a query: the teacher had asked her to name three festival indigenous to Kerala. What should she write? My mum said – of course, Onam, Vishu and Thiruvathira! These were the three festivals unique to Kerala.

Image Courtesy: Indian Express

The next day, my sis came home angry and frustrated after a fight with her teacher. She had rejected her answer, and asked her to write “Onam, Christmas, Ramzan (meaning Eid-ul-Fitr)”. My sister objected vehemently, saying that the last two were universal and not indigenous to Kerala. The teacher put her foot down. She said she agreed, but unless she wrote like that, no marks would be given – because that was what was “officially” expected!

It was my first brush with political correctness.

Now fast forward to 2020. In one of the WhatsApp groups that I am a member of, someone made an observation that Onam was the only festival of Kerala. I countered, citing Vishu and Thiruvathira once again; the the argument was that they could not be called “festivals of Kerala” because they are not “secular”! I stuck to to my guns, saying that secularism had nothing to do with it. The arguments went back and forth, ultimately with the admin calling me and warning me about “politicising” the group.

Political correctness had struck again.

This is the popular liberal narrative of India – that India is a secular country, that our ethos is one of tolerance (this is echoed by Hindu apologists too) and that there is no predominant “Hindu” culture. I had also subscribed to these popular half-truths at one point of time – until I forced myself to swallow the bitter pill and wake up to reality.

It is true that the concept of an overarching Hinduism – or the “Sanatana Dharma”, as its promoters like to call it – is a myth. However, there is indeed a common cultural thread running across the Indian psyche: and that is deeply religious. What the Vedic religion had done was to assimilate all the varied gods and goddesses spread across the subcontinent under their umbrella. Many of these faiths were at war with one another (so much for tolerance!) but pluralism was the accepted norm. So Hinduism as we know now, rather than being the tolerant monolith it is being touted as, is a potpourri of contradictory believes subsumed under an overarching philosophy. And it is this philosophy which is being used by the advocates of cultural nationalism to advance their fascistic intentions.

Indian Liberals go wrong (as evidenced in the examples I quoted above) in negating this religiosity. They stubbornly hold on to their fantasy of a secular, non-Hindu India, and play into the hands of the right-wingers.

The Twin Cancers of Caste and Patriarchy

Everyone in the world knows what caste is – it is the insidious social system in India which marginalises a huge section of its own people. What most people don’t know (and those who know won’t accept), is that caste does not limit itself to the Hindu upper castes.

I remember seeing a Malayalam movie named Sthanaarthi Saramma (“Candidate Saramma”) in my childhood. It was about two rival candidates for a Panchayat election being in love with each other – Saramma and Johnnie Kutty. What I couldn’t understand was that why their love was frowned upon by the hero’s family – weren’t both Christian? Then my mum told me that Saramma was a “lower caste convert Christian”, from the fisher-folk community, so Johnnie Kutty’s “upper-caste” Christian parents could never accept it. It was the first time that I understood that caste was not limited to Hindus alone.

Image Courtesy: Manorama

Fast forward to 2019, when a Dalit Christian youth, Kevin, was murdered in a case of honour killing – because he had committed the crime of marrying an upper-caste Christian girl. (Unlike movies, life always doesn’t have nice endings to love stories.) Clearly, not much had changed in almost half a century.

Now coming to patriarchy – it’s the fashion to blame it all on the Brahmins (“Smash Brahmin Patriarchy!”) like caste: but again, it’s another half-truth. No doubt Brahmins are patriarchal – but so are almost all other communities (except a few matrilineal societies scattered across the country). And even in those matrilineal societies, men have usurped control to a large extent.

By holding Brahmins and Brahminism responsible for a social ill towards which every community contributes, essential focus is lost.

Minority Communalism

This is a potential landmine. The moment any intellectual addresses this, he is immediately labelled a “sanghi” (a derogatory name for a Hindu fundamentalist) and cast into the outer darkness where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth.

According to the liberal narrative, fundamentalism is present among Muslims, but these are “fringe groups” and the majority is secular. While it is true that a huge majority of Muslims are not fanatics, neither do they call out the actions of the fundamentalists – the fanatics are too strong, and there is real fear. Even more disturbing is the fact that many Islamic organisations who are legitimately operating are, to a large extent, fanatical. They are not fringe groups by any stretch of imagination.

Image Courtesy: DC Books

On July 4, 2010, Professor Joseph had his hand chopped off by Islamic extremists for allegedly insulting the Prophet Mohammed. This happened in broad daylight. Even though all the miscreants have been punished, one can still see comments on social media about the “mistake” committed by the Professor: even though many condemn the extremist action, they also place the professor in the dock.

Similarly, the actions of the Muslim kings of India who looted temples are brushed under the carpet. It is a fact that these kings were not fanatics – rather, they were opportunists, who protected temples under their watch and destroyed those in a neighbouring country. (Tipu Sultan is the prime example.) Instead of highlighting this fact, the liberal narrative paints these conquerors in rosy colours, holding them up as epitomes of secularism – in the process, pissing off Hindus who are not addicted to political correctness.

The Way Forward

To get Indian liberals out of the morass that they themselves have created, and to protect secularism and democracy of our fledgling nation (yes, I consider ourselves pretty young – only 73 years old), we need to do three things.

1. Accept the fact that Hinduism is not all Brahmin propaganda. It has got all of India in it. What has happened is that the Vedic religion has appropriated and standardised it. We must oppose this standardardisation and decentralise our culture.
2. Caste and patriarchy are not just Savarna things. Each caste oppresses the castes below them. And almost all communities oppress their women. There is no easy, one-stop solution to this – this imbroglio has to be unravelled one knot at a time. Education holds the key.
3. Islamic fundamentalism is as dangerous as Hindu fundamentalism. There should be no compromise (not even political soft-pedalling) when faced with it.

It is a slow, hard climb. In the short-term, we are fated to suffer a period of majoritarian autocracy. But if we are ready to face the facts honestly and start acting accordingly, we can build the India the founding fathers had in mind – at least one or two generations down the line.

Little Lost Liberal

I had been a left-winger ever since I became politically aware: but during my college days, I violently broke with the student wing of the Indian Communist Party because of their authoritarian tendencies. That was the time I incidentally discovered Ayn Rand, and became for a while enthused with her theories of absolute freedom. However, I couldn’t fully agree with her on her Social Darwinism, and was convinced that the state should look after the welfare of the poor and destitute. It was only in the 2000’s that I recognised myself for what I was – a left-leaning liberal.

The website https://www.politicalcompass.org/ measures political ideology along two separate, independent axes. The economic (left–right) axis measures one’s opinion of how the economy should be run: “left” is defined as the desire for the economy to be run by a cooperative collective agency (which can mean the state, but can also mean a network of communes) while “right” is defined as the desire for the economy to be left to the devices of competing individuals and organizations. The other axis (authoritarian–libertarian) measures one’s political opinions in a social sense, regarding the amount of personal freedom that one would allow: “libertarianism” is defined as the belief that personal freedom should be maximised while “authoritarianism” is defined as the belief that authority should be obeyed.

They have a test there to check where on the graph one exactly stands: and I found myself somewhere towards the lower left of the bottom-left quadrant. Not surprisingly, most of the liberals are located there: the right-leaning ones, located in the bottom-right quadrant, are called libertarians. The top-left quadrant will find most communists, and the top-right, conservatives of all colour.

Ever since the Soviet Union fell in the 1990’s, the world has shifted significantly to the right. And since the new century dawned, it has significantly shifted to the top-right quadrant. The libertarians are happy just with economic freedom, while the communists are happy with just state power. So in 2020, we see the huge Goliath of the conservative right facing the tiny David of the liberal left – a David, sadly, without his slingshot. And Goliath is winning hands down.

The funny thing is, most of the people taken individually are not really conservatives. They value personal liberty, are willing to live and let live, and would be willing to support people who are worse off than themselves. However, the conservatives are able to sell them their agenda – even when they have been proven wrong – while liberals seem to grope in the dark, trying to get their message across.

Why?

Freedom of Expression

Well, liberals do start out with a disadvantage – they don’t agree much on anything other than liberalism. So to make a cohesive social group out of them is literally equivalent to herding cats. Conservatives on the other hand, are happiest when they are banded together under a religion, or a flag, or a despot. So here we have a small, strong group of single-minded people against a large and heterogeneous multitude. (The irony here is that the Goliath mentioned above is actually very small, when we get down to brass tacks, but incredibly cohesive.) No wonder they are able to hijack the narrative.

It is not very difficult for liberals to convert their seeming disadvantage into an advantage: provided they accept that the only thing they agree on is personal liberty and freedom of expression. They can pretty much disagree on everything else, but freedom to speak one’s mind and be oneself should be non-negotiable. The old dictum, “I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to death your right to say it!” should be the be-all and end-all of liberalism. That should be the war cry.

But sadly, there is that teeny bit of conservatism in all of us which wants to prevent opinions unpalatable to us being aired. So the moment liberals realise that the freedom of expression they laud is applicable to the hated conservatives also, they start tying themselves up in knots making justifications why certain kind of speech and expression is beyond the pale. And in doing so, they fall into the conservative trap.

The Bogey of Political Correctness

Political Correctness is defined by Wikipedia as:

Political correctness (adjectivally: politically correct; commonly abbreviated PC) is a term used to describe language, policies, or measures that are intended to avoid offense or disadvantage to members of particular groups in society. In public discourse and the media, the term is generally used as a pejorative with an implication that these policies are excessive or unwarranted.

Though this sentiment seems laudable at first glance, a deeper reading will show that it effectively prevents free speech – because as Salman Rushdie famously said, without the freedom to offend, it does not exist. As almost any opinion is likely to offend someone, the excessively PC individual is barred from speaking at all.

Now comes a personal experience. I shared the cartoon on the right on my Facebook wall.

It was done without any deep thought – actually making fun of a political party which was uttering platitudes about a controversial decision by the Supreme Court. But things suddenly took a bizarre turn with a couple of my FB friends taking it as a personal insult. Soon, my wall was a virtual battleground: and one person had a meltdown. Two or three people unfriended me, shocked at my callous, “privileged” indifference to the marginalised.

This set me thinking. Apparently, the so-called “liberals” were also as touchy as conservatives when their own pet sacred cows were attacked. Maybe even touchier.

Now fast-forward to October 17, when a teacher was beheaded in France for showing the Charlie Hebdo cartoons satirising the Prophet Mohammed. Quite predictably, most of the free world condemned the incident – and France took a brazen stand, that they would not compromise on their laws regarding freedom of expression based on any provocation. Predictably, there were a lot of arguments, both pro and con, about the issue: most of them healthy.

However, many Indian liberals took an anti-France stance: apparently, insulting Islam in the current scenario was anathema to liberalism, because Islamophobia was rampant all across the world this could be used to target them. What made the argument really bizarre was that some “atheists” argued that criticising other religions do not have the same import, because they were not victimised – as Islam was! This was obviously ridiculous – and many called it out. And one could see golden examples of Orwellian doublespeak falling from the mouths of the guardians of personal freedom in reply. Was this comedy or tragic irony?

(The funny thing was that Muslim liberals, on the whole, were arguing for ignoring the cartoons and going on. it was the “woke” Hindu contingent which was up in arms.)

This gave me an insight into how liberals have lost the plot. In seeing themselves as guardians of the underprivileged against conservative attack, they were self-censoring their speech – and what is worse, attacking those liberals who were not willing to do so. So, those people who hold liberal opinions on a number of issues but are not willing to toe the “PC line”, get pushed into the conservative camp by default. (I have seen it happening in India – my next post will be about that.)

So now we have the spectacle of groups of liberals sitting in their own echo chambers, tossing “approved” opinions back and forth, and patting each other on the back. Anyone who has the temerity to question any of them is pushed out into the big, bad world. And the echo chambers keep shrinking.

The only way for liberals to come back into the mainstream is to restore the freedom of speech and expression to the throne from where it has been kicked down from. Yes, it will be difficult. One will have to engage with a lot of people, with a lot of unpalatable opinions. But engagement will create a bridge: and once ideas pass back and forth over it, there will be change.

The art of discourse is a very strong weapon. Something which conservatives, who can only pontificate from a pulpit, do not have a clue about. It is not spectacular and showy: but like a rapier, it will slowly cut through prejudices and bring about revolution – in the minds of people. And that is the only revolution that’s permanent.

Conspiracy Theories

Urban Naxals

The right-wing filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri published a book called Urban Naxals: the Making of Buddha in a Traffic Jam in 2018, in which he put out the nonsense theory that Indian intelligentsia and academia were riddled with covert ultra-leftists bent on overthrowing the state. This was ostensibly the story of the making of his atrociously bad film Buddha in a Traffic Jam (which deservedly bombed at the box-office), which had the same theme as the book – and how, at each step, he was attacked and thwarted by the Maoist intelligentsia permeating all the institutions of India. The premise was silly beyond imagination, but in Narendra Modi’s India where right-wing paranoia ruled the roost, the book was a big hit and began to be taken seriously by a huge chunk of the population. Soon it was linked to Islamic terror, Pakistan, and all kinds of “anti-national” activities, and India was in the grip of a full-scale paranoia.

There was an incident mentioned in the book. On 9th February 2016, some students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) held a protest on their campus against the capital punishment meted out to the 2001 Indian Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, and Kashmiri separatist Maqbool Bhat. Soon after the incident, Kanhaiyya Kumar, Umar Khalid, and various other students were arrested for sedition – the charge being that they shouted a slogan “Bharat ko tukde tukde kar denge” (we will break India into pieces). Later on, it was discovered that they had not and the whole incident had been manipulated. But Agnihotri, in the book, used it to revive a very old conspiracy theory – that of a communist “Deep State” out to destroy the Indian nation-state.

The Deep State

A “Deep State” is defined by Oxford Dictionary as “A body of people, typically influential members of government agencies or the military, believed to be involved in the secret manipulation or control of government policy”. The communist deep state of India is presumably comprised of closet left-wingers, radicalised during the Nehru/ Indira era when India had its long-standing love affair with the Soviet Union. Apparently, this was first propounded by Yuri Bezmenov, a Russian defector to America, in a booklet titled Love Letter to America – which is considered to be the absolute gospel by right-wingers. Any unbiased person reading it, however, would find his arguments to be utterly facile. I read the book and found it to be absolutely hilarious in its outrageous claims. For example:

It did not take me long to discover that our group was engaged in neither “research” nor “counter-propaganda “: behind locked doors we accumulated intelligence from various sources, including Indian informers and agents, regarding virtually EVERY important and politically significant citizen of India – members of Parliament, civil servicemen, military and public figures, media people, businessmen, university professors, radical or otherwise students and writers – in other words EVERYONE instrumental in shaping the PUBLIC OPINION and policies of the nation. Those who were “friendly” and ready to invite the Soviet expansionist policy into their own country were promoted to higher positions of power, affluence and prestige through various operations by KGB-Novosti. -Large groups, of the so-called “progressive and sober-thinking” Indians were on a regular basis, generously supplied with duty-free booze from the embassy stocks. Soviet sympathizers were invited to the USSR for free trips and numerous “international conferences” where they not only received substantial sums of money in the form of “literary awards” or “Nehru Peace and Friendship” prizes, but were also medically treated for VD or hernias acquired in the perpetual “class struggle”against “American imperialism”. Those who refused to be “flexible” and take a voluntary role in this cruel farce were thoroughly character-assassinated in the sensation-hungry media and press.

This means that the Indian government was virtually run by the Soviet Union – perhaps a valid hypothesis during the Nehru era, but unutterably silly in hindsight, looking at the dismal performance of the communist party in India. But it does point to the right-winger’s deep-seated fear of the “Reds”.

Yuri Bezmenov

The significant thing to note here is that I was directed to this book in 2015, when a Hindu right-winger commented on my review of The Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud by Arun Shourie – another book analysing how India’s history has been falsified and subverted by her leftist historians. Narendra Modi had just come to power, and the Hindu right in India was just finding its voice. Even then, it was sure that they clearly had a narrative down pat, linking so many unrelated and unconfirmed narratives into a semi-coherent whole: especially for prejudiced brains seeking exactly such a pattern.

What is a Conspiracy Theory?

Wikipedia says “A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that invokes a conspiracy by sinister and powerful groups, often political in motivation, when other explanations are more probable. The term has a negative connotation, implying that the appeal to a conspiracy is based on prejudice or insufficient evidence.” The world is full of them: This Wikipedia page lists out some of the more prominent ones.

Most conspiracy theories are simply too crazy to take seriously, like aliens gallivanting around in UFOs or alligators making merry in New York sewers. But most of the theories have a political slant, either anti-establishment or pro-establishment: and this political angle does pose problems, as it can be utilised to fuel hatred against a particular group of people – the most famous example being the antisemitic propaganda based on a Zionist conspiracy which fed upon itself for centuries before culminating in the holocaust.

The story of the Jewish conspiracy is still very much alive, especially in Arab and Palestinian minds who have the international bully Israel as a living example. When I was in the Middle East, poisonous books like The International Jew by that famous antisemite industrialist were openly sold in bookshops, and were taken seriously by many people. However, even though antisemitism had been present in Europe for centuries, the book that seem have set it into a movement is the book The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a book written by Sergei Nilus in Russia, which was purportedly the minutes of meeting of the Elders of Zion who met in Russia in the late nineteenth century, and which discussed detailed plans for world domination.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

The theme seems to be destabilisation of the world due to the overthrow of the established order, the rise of the democratic republic which is controlled by Jewish money, which shall collapse at a particular point of time to allow for an international conspiracy of Jews to attain power. The book is so silly and badly written, it would give the intelligent reader a headache. And one can immediately see through the manifestly ridiculous arguments.

This book has been established as a forgery , but when it came out, it was the Bible of Jew-haters. Henry Ford distributed it in America, and it is said to have inspired Hitler. Even now, it garners 4 and 5 star ratings on book sites, mostly from the Arab world. I just did a quick search on Goodreads, and one can find many people who take is as the gospel truth.

Why? If we can answer that question, maybe we will touch the heart of the problem of why conspiracy theories are so attractive.

The Paranoid Universe

We live in a world which we are not ready for yet. Homo Sapiens has centuries of history as a hunting and foraging animal behind us before the cognitive revolution set us on the path to civilisation. Reason grew at a tremendous pace, and we discovered science, the most powerful tool to strike away ruthlessly the illusions that governed us as a species, and point the way to objective truth.

The only thing is, we were not emotionally ready for it. The primitive animal that remains caged within our civilised veneer still lives very much in fear of a world which he cannot control. In this “demon-haunted world” (to borrow from Carl Sagan), all the myths and beliefs which helped him to attain a modicum of the feeling of security were suddenly stripped away. He was like a trapeze artist who suddenly sees the safety net disappear.

We are pattern-seeking animals. We need reasons and explanations. Unfortunately, life or the universe does not have any. They just are. There is no “grand purpose”.

This is unacceptable. So, we create The Matrix.

The Matrix

The Matrix is the 1999 cyberpunk SF movie, where mankind has been immobilised by intelligent machines and all are living a virtual reality. There are a very few humans who are outside this box, and they are the target of the machines, who never want humanity to wake up.

For the conspiracy theorists, this is the world. We are living a lie in a sham universe: reality is the matrix, controlled by the establishment/ Jews/ Muslims/ Marxists – or whoever you are frightened of. The apparent chaos that we face in our daily lives are all orchestrated by those evil entities. Like Neo, the hero of The Matrix, we have to swallow the red pill and wake up to harsh reality.

***

Most conspiracy theories are benign, to be carried on as hobbies by harmless crackpots. But once in a while, the fascist establishment takes it up and uses it to whip up paranoia – and crack down on their critics.

The conspiracy theory of the communist deep state in India was purposefully co-opted by India’s Hindu majoritarian government with an enthusiasm unparalleled. In 2018, it reached its nadir with the arrest of many social activists, who were accused of being urban Naxals plotting the assassination of the Prime Minister and the overthrow of the Indian state.

In 1818, in the battle of Koregaon in the state of Maharashtra, the British army defeated the numerically superior force of Peshwa Baji Rao II with the help of Indian soldiers from the Dalit community of Mahars. It is a matter of pride for Dalits as a victory against their “upper-caste” oppressors: but for the “nationalists”, the celebration of any victory of the “colonial oppressor” is sedition.

in 2018, as Dalits celebrated the 200th anniversary of this battle, stones were pelted on the gathering, which resulted in the death of a young man. This led to Maharashtra-wide protests and attendant violence. The police, in retaliation, made it into a grand conspiracy and arrested five well-known social activists on unbailable warrants based on the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).

They are still in jail. And from then onwards, the conspiracy theory is snowballing like anything. The arrests made under the UAPA are increasing (even those offering the mildest criticism to governmental policies are often booked) but more insidiously, the social narrative is gaining credence that there is a widespread conspiracy among closet Maoists and Muslim terrorists (“Jihadis”) to destabilise and destroy India.

In the age of social media (especially WhatsApp), it’s very easy to spread malicious gossip disguised as fact – especially in a country like India, full of educated illiterates. The interesting thing is how these rumour factories link discredited stories from post-independence era onwards to the latest gossip and create an India-wide conspiracy out of the whole cloth.

According to these conspiracy theorists:

1. Indira Gandhi and family are Muslim/ Christian, having allegiance to an international Islamic/ Christian Conspiracy.
2. India’s Marxists historians have distorted India’s history to hide its glorious Hindu past and whitewash the Mughals, who were all religious maniacs.
3. This is part of a continuing conspiracy against Hinduism, in which Muslims and Maoists are somehow in cahoots.
4. Even with the Hindu Right ruling with a brute majority, using draconian laws indiscriminately, the Hindu religion is under threat.

Now we see how conspiracy theories metamorphose from the realm of the delightfully hilarious to the frighteningly destructive. In the recent years, apart from draconian measures from the government (which are steadily escalating), there has been a marked increase in hate crimes against minorities – to the extent that lynchings are news no more.

As they say – it did not start with the gas chambers.

Auschwitz Concentration Camp

Where We Came From – A Review of “Early Indians” by Tony Joseph

Indians are a people who are always a bit confused about their identity as “Indians” – maybe because the nation itself is a relatively recent construct (not ignoring the mythical “Bharata”) and the regional and caste identities are more strongly embedded. Ever since the West discovered the mystic East, there have been attempts to create an Indian past which is wholly spiritual – based on the mythical, Vedic “Aryan” – by the proponents of the enlightenment. In colonial times, this “Aryan” became an invading race who destroyed the mature Harappan civilisation; the same figure was taken to be the epitome of race purity and became the basis of the toxic Nazi doctrine. And later on, in a reversal of the myth, the invading Aryan became the villain who destroyed the peaceful Dravidian civilisation in the Dalit version of history.

All these are now discounted by serious historians. The widely accepted theory about Indian prehistory is that the Harappan civilisation perished because of a severe drought, and the Indo-Aryan speakers migrated to the Indian subcontinent later on from Central Asia and mixed with the indigenous population. There is, however, a vociferous fringe who staunchly oppose this: they are adamant that there have been no migrations to India at all, and that the Vedic people are the direct descendants of the Harappans. All arguments to the contrary are taken to be part of a “colonialist conspiracy” to undermine Indian culture.

So far, the (hotly disputed!) evidence for the migrations have been mostly archaeological and linguistic. But now, a new tool is available with the scientific community for the analysis of the origin, development, and spread of homo sapiens across the globe: genetics.

Tony Joseph has been writing regularly about how the recent advances in DNA research have been impacting the research into prehistory. Now, he has arranged all his arguments in the form of this highly readable book.

In the introduction, he writes:

There is a reason why this book could have been written only now, and not earlier. It is because our understanding of deep history has changed dramatically in the last five years or so. Large stretches of our prehistory are being rewritten as we speak, based on analysis of DNA extracted from individuals who lived thousands or tens of thousands of years ago. Many ‘facts’ that we took for granted have been proved wrong, and many questions left dangling in the air as historians, archaeologists and anthropologists argued it out among themselves have been given convincing new answers — thanks to the recently acquired ability of genetic scientists to successfully extract DNA from ancient fossils and then sequence it to understand all that bound people together, or distinguished them from each other. If technology had not matured to the level it has, scientists would not have been able to make the discoveries they are making today. And if it were not for their latest findings, our prehistory would have remained as vague and contentious as earlier and this book would not have been written.

So how exactly does DNA put paid to the debate? Well, without going into the technicalities (it is all detailed in the book), let me try to explain in plain terms how this whole thing works.

All the genetic code that makes us what we are are packed into twenty-three pairs of chromosomes that we all carry in the nuclei of our cells, plus the mitochondrial DNA or the mtDNA that stays outside. This is called a person’s genome. In the twenty-three pairs, one of each pair inherited from each parent, exactly one pair – the sex chromosomes – will differ. If the type is XX, the person will be female, and if the type is XY, the person will be male. The Y-chromosome is passed relatively unchanged from male parent to male progeny, while the mtDNA is passed on without change from the female parent to both male and female progeny: but it gets further transmitted only through the female line. Thus, the mapping of these two over the human population spread across the globe helps us to get a genetic map of the world’s population. And since there are minor mutations to both the Y-chromosome and mtDNA that get accumulated over time, it provides us with the genetic history of the changes over time, too – combined with the DNA analysis of skeletal remains.

(This is super-condensation, and hence, a bit simplistic. Detailed and reliable info is available in many places, especially on the net.)

Aided with this technology of DNA analysis, the following is the timeline of India’s population during prehistoric times.

1. 70,000 years ago – Homo Sapiens starts move out of Africa, where they originated.
2. 65,000 years ago – The “Out of Africa” (OoA) contingent reach the Indian subcontinent, where they meet other archaic human species, whom they must have subdued and subsumed in their spread all the way across South Asia to Australia.
3. 45,000 to 20,000 years ago – The First Indians, descendants of the OoA group, start using Microlithic technology and spread across India.
4. 7000 to 3000 BCE – Migration of Iranian agriculturists from the Zagros region to South Asia leads to their mixing with the descendants of the First Indians. These people create the Harappan civilisation which exists from 5500 to 1300 BCE, through the Early, Mature and Late Harappan Eras, until it dies off most probably due to a massive drought. The Harappans migrate towards the south.
5. 2100 to 1000 BCE – Pastoralists from the Kazakh Steppe, the famed “Aryans” of legend, migrate into the Indian subcontinent, mixing with the Harappans. Thus we have two main DNA mixes that is found in India today: those of the Iranian agriculturists + the First Indians, called the Ancient South Indian (ASI) group; and Iranian agriculturists + the First Indians + the Central Asian Pastoralists, called the Ancient North Indian (ANI) group. They were called Dravidians and Aryans in the past.

(There was some migration from China as well, especially in the North East.)

Now the million-dollar question: how does one say that the migration happened in one direction, that is, towards India? Why can’t it be the other way round, as the Out of India adherents claim? The author presents the following arguments against this:

1. The Indo-Aryan languages which spread across most of Europe and Asia could conceivably have gone from India. However, if such a thing happened, the genetic footprints of the First Indians – the people who came originally out of Africa and settled in the subcontinent 65,000 years ago – should be seen across the populations of Europe. This is conspicuous by its absence.
2. The horse, which is the prime animal in the Vedic religion, is absent in the Harappan culture – which is strange if the Vedic culture directly follows from it. Also, there are no vestiges of the Vedic deities anywhere in Harappa. (There are a multitude of other factors that the author points out – I am only highlighting a few prominent ones.)
3. The Dravidian languages, the roots of which are markedly different from the Indo-Aryan ones, has strong connections to Elamite, the language of the Iranian agriculturists, at its roots. It has borrowings from Sanskrit too and vice versa – this points to the intermixing of language at later stages.

   (Once again, I am over-simplifying for brevity. There are a lot many other arguments quoted by the author, many of them raised by more than one historian/ archaeologist/ linguist from across the world. “Out of India” theory holds sway, it seems, with very few reputed scholars.)
   
   In conclusion, the author says:

The best way we can define ourselves is as a multi-source civilization, not a single-source one, drawing its cultural impulses, its traditions and its practices from a variety of heredities and migration histories. The Out of Africa migrants, the fearless pioneering explorers who reached this land around sixty-five millennia ago and whose lineages still form the bedrock of our population; those who arrived from west Asia and contributed to the agricultural revolution and the building of the Harappan Civilization which then became the crucible for new practices, concepts and the Dravidian languages that enrich much of our culture today; those who came from east Asia, bringing with them new languages and plants and farming techniques; and those who migrated here from central Asia, carrying an early version of what would become a great language, Sanskrit, and all its associated beliefs and practices that have reshaped our society in fundamental ways; and those who came even later seeking refuge or for conquest or for trade, and then chose to stay — all have mingled and contributed to this civilization we call Indian. We are all Indians. And we are all migrants.

This, I like.

This is an extremely readable book on a fascinating subject, and will whet your appetite for more research.

This Feminine Nature

Last Saturday, we had our monthly book club meeting where one member quoted from a book of local farmer lore: about how the earth was not farmed for a certain period of time when it was considered to be menstruating! I immediately remembered a piece of lore of the Kerala fisher-folk I had heard years back.

In Kerala, we have Saturday something called “chaakara”, when fish come to the surface in great numbers and the fishermen have a fine time just scooping up the fish in large numbers. The interesting thing is that for some days before this, the sea turns red: and the fishermen don’t venture out. Kadalamma (“Mother Sea”) is supposed to be having her periods.

What we are seeing here is a variant of the almost universal mythical theme of equating nature – prakruthi – with Woman. And since myth is almost always written by men, the woman becomes the passive object – the “eternal feminine”. Before we go into the politics of this, however, I would like to look at this concept in a bit more detail.

The Myth of Ahalya

The Samkhya Philosophy posits the evolution of the universe, and its continued existence, on the interaction of the active principle (purusha – “male”) with passive principle (prakruthi – “nature”). (A week ago, I witnessed a play by a group from Pondicherry based on this theme, composed entirely of scenes of male-female fusion – some of them violent – without any dialogue. It seems that this concept still holds sway even among progressives.) In the Vedic religion, the woman is continuously referred to as the “field” and the man as the “sower”. And reading a book on the knightly quest for the Holy Grail by Joseph Campbell, I find this:

Because of the tendency to anthropomorphize—a tendency characteristic of ignorant peoples—the feminine earth notion takes definite form, finally, of a goddess, and the masculine fertilizing principle takes shape in a vigorous god. The union of god and goddess, it is thought, results in the abundant fertility of nature.

I immediately thought of Indra – the rain deity of the early Aryans who held sway in the Vedic religion before the trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Siva took over – who is indeed a vigorous (and oversexed) god like the Greek Zeus. Indra used to run after women, rather in the vein of Zeus: and in the context of the current topic, the myth of Ahalya is instructive.

Ahalya being released from her curse – painting by Raja Ravi Varma

Ahalya was the wife of the sage Gautama, who was desired by Indra. Once when the sage went out, Indra assumed his form and seduced her. Gautama came to know of this deceit, and cursed Ahalya into a stone (and according to one version I heard, cursed Indra with a thousand penises – however, these have been sanitised into eyes subsequently). Ahalya was imprisoned her rock form until Rama came and set her free, in Treta Yuga.

 

One analysis of the myth is provided by Prof. Leelavati in the introduction a book about the “Pancha Kanyas”, the five distinguished women of Indian myth. She sees Ahalya as the untilled field (A – Halya: “not-ploughed”) and Gautama as the sun (Gau – Tama: “earth-warmer”): Indra, as rain, fertilises it. So shorn of all moralistic preaching, this could be a very ancient myth of a people, slowly moving into an agrarian mode of life from one of hunting and gathering. The act of seduction here is thus desirable, as it is what produces life. (Maybe, after Indra fell from grace with the advent of the Trinity, the roles were reversed and he was cast as villain. But note that the sun turns the untilled field into rock – a symbol for barrenness – until Rama, the hero from the Sun Dynasty, comes and changes her back into her fertile form, as one of the tasks in his Hero’s Journey.)

The Earth Mother

The earth in her feminine form is also mother and goddess (Bhumi). Rama’s consort Sita is not born from a human womb but a furrow in the field, as her father, King Janaka (“creator”), ploughs it. A rather odd occupation for a king, unless we see him as a version of the grain king: the dying and reviving god who is synonymous with the harvest (the myth of Maveli in Kerala is another version). Here, however, instead of the king, it is his daughter who symbolises the grain – and at the end of the epic Ramayana, Sita, spurned by Rama, calls upon her mother and is swallowed by the earth.

Sita swallowed up by the Earth – painting by Raja Ravi Varma

The two wives of Vishnu, the God who sleeps on the thousand-header cosmic snake and dreams up the whole of human existence has his head in the lap of Lakshmi, the Goddess of Prosperity and his feet in the lap of Bhumi, the Earth Goddess.

Pupul Jayakar in her book The Earth Mother has compiled different variants of this archetype from across many primitive cultures in India.

All these have convinced me that the concept of nature as feminine predates the patriarchal culture. What has changed as man took over the reins of society was how the feminine was viewed. Instead of a bountiful mother, sometimes nurturing and sometimes punishing but always protective, she became a passive field: a place for the male to “sow his seed” and reap the harvest. The holy mystery of menstruation became a sort of social taboo (as seen in its most virulent form in the recent Sabarimala agitation). Man was in the job of “husbanding” the environment, not being part of it.

Seeing nature as feminine need not be related to the objectification of women. It could be with a feeling of reverence, as women were revered in primitive societies as the people who were responsible for the continuance of the race. The worship of earth (and as an extension of it, nature) may be just what the doctor ordered in these days of rampant and suicidal environmental destruction.

Samudra Vasane Devi, Paravata Stana Mandale;

Vishnu-patnim Namastubhyam Paada Sparsham Kshamasva Me…

(O Goddess! Having the ocean as Her garments and mountains as Her breasts, who is the consort of Lord Vishnu, I bow to You; please forgive me for touching You with my feet.)

The Year 2018 – A Bookish Retrospective

 

It was a year of exceptionally heavy and eminently satisfactory reading, when even the books I one-starred served a purpose.

Non-Fiction

The year was almost equally split between fiction and non-fiction, with fiction having the slight edge. Of the non-fiction ones, the outstanding reads were Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond, a history book which actually looks at the whys and not only the hows; and Being Reshma, the horrifying yet uplifting memoir of an acid attack survivor. Another book which repays attention is by another brave girl, Payel Bhattacharya, who is fighting a desperate battle against VHL syndrome, a rare and life-threatening genetic disease. Her book, The warrior princess, is not exactly award material: but she definitely is. I know her personally, and her pluck.

India is slowly sliding into fascism, in a classical example of the “boiled frog” syndrome. To understand this drift towards the right, I read a lot of books from various genres: politics, history and reportage. These being from the whole range of the political spectrum, there were some I abhorred, the explicity right-wing ones: but I had to bite the bullet and forge ahead, as they were required reading to obtain a first-hand peek into the brain of the Hindu right-wingers.

The most famous (and IMO, the most poisonous) among them is V.D. Savarkar, whose book Hindutva is the core of the philosophy of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), India’s answer to the Nazi party. This year, I read his even more obnoxious Six glorious epochs of Indian history, in which he advocates the ethnic cleansing of Muslim men and the wholesale enslavement of Muslim women. This sentiment of “de-Islamising” India is echoed by Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, who was the second supremo of the RSS, in his book We Or Our Nationhood Defined.

Savarkar’s disciple and friend, Nathuram Godse, murdered Gandhi in 1948. His justification for doing so is set out in his deposition before the court, finally declassified: I read that too, to understand the spread of the right-wing cancer into the Indian psyche. (There are still people in India who consider Godse a hero. Need I say more?). Interestingly, Savarkar was implicated in the Gandhi murder and just escaped by the skin of his teeth: the history of which is set forth in Savarkar and Hindutva ; The Godse Connection by A.G. Noorani.

Fascism has deep roots in the falsification of history. The creation of a fictitious super race or a mythical homeland is part and parcel of all fascist philosophies and Hindutva is no different: but here, the country already exists and they only have to imagine a “golden past”, dismissing all mainline historical research and filling the vacuum with their kooky mix of mythology and legend. Such an exercise is Rajiv Malhotra’s Breaking India: Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines, where this guy with a right-wing agenda and no background in history tries to overturn widely accepted theories of Indian history – viz. the migration of Aryans into the subcontinent. He even denies that the Dravidian language exists! The ignoramus has no valid arguments, other than it’s all a conspiracy theory by “leftist historians”.

The prime accused is, of course, Romila Thapar, whose left-of-centre views seem to irk these bigots. Her book The Past As Present: Forging Contemporary Identities Through History is the perfect antidote to idiots such as Malhotra; her erudition and balanced voice as she analyses how the present is affected by the past makes it clear why the right wants to rewrite Indian history at all costs. The same theme is explored further in On Nationalism, of which she is one of the contributors: about how a false national identity based on a “Hindu” past is created.

Did I mention conspiracy theories? Well, the one to end all of them that is currently the rage in India is the one about “Urban Naxals” – a sort of “deep state” akin to the one imagined in the USA in the McCarthy era. Urban Naxals, written by the right-wing filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri, is responsible for creating this tag which has been taken up enthusiastically by the powers that be. These are incidentally imagined left-wing “moles”, hidden among the intelligentsia, who support the Maoist subversives in India’s so-called Red Corridor. Agnihotri’s book is a classic case of right-wing paranoia, short on facts and long on insinuations – yet dangerous all the same. I could see McCarthy’s ghost being revived in India, especially after I read the pamphlet The Time of the Toad by Dalton Trumbo, one of the famous Hollywood Ten. (BTW, anyone interested in Maoists in India should read Hello, Bastar – The Untold Story of India’s Maoist Movement by the award-winning journalist Rahul Pandita – another excellent read from the year under review.)

 

Again coming back to politics, I read The Hanging of Afzal Guru and the Strange Case of the Attack on the Indian Parliament, a collection of essays by various left-wing and liberal writers who raise the disturbing possibility that Afzal Guru, the alleged mastermind behind the 2001 attack on the Indian parliament and who was subsequently executed, might in reality may have been innocent. Compellingly written, this book gives ample substance to the argument that there may have been a miscarriage of justice. Similarly, eminent journalist Barkha Dutt’s collection of reports on the chronic ills plaguing India (This Unquiet Land) and Mother, Where’s My Country?: Looking for Light in the Darkness of Manipur, by another journalist Anubha Bhonsle about Manipur were also disturbing yet enlightening reads.

Moving on from politics to religion, I read two books which have tried to remove the mask of piety from the facade of the modern-day saint Mother Teresa: The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice by Christopher Hitchens and Mother Teresa The Untold Story by Dr. Aroup Chatterjee. The first one was polemical and entertaining; the second, balanced and a bit dry. However, both of them present a strong case against this Catholic icon.

I love to read the views of non-Hindus on Hinduism: Wendy Doniger’s On Hinduism was an interesting read. This lady is roundly reviled by the Hindu right, but there is nothing in her views that denigrate the religion: it just does not conform to their idea of a fictitious monolithic faith, that’s all. Similarly, Prof. D. N. Jha’s book, The Myth of the Holy Cow had also invited the wrath of the Hindutva gang because he tears apart the lie that the cow has always been a sacred animal to Hindus: with textual and archaeological evidence, he proves that the Vedic Indians positively revelled in cow meat. It is a wonder that the author survived, because so many rationalists who tried to cleanse the Indian psyche such as Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare, M. M. Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh were murdered by Hindu right-wingers. I read one book by Pansare, Who was Shivaji about the great Maratha leader Shivaji, where he argues that contrary to popular belief, Shivaji was really a people’s ruler and not “protector of cows and Brahmins”.

As part of my decision to explore Indian culture, I started my Sanskrit reading project last year. I read through the Manusmriti and the Bhagavad Gita in the original. Manusmriti is a toxic document, patriarchal and racist; the Bhagavad Gita contains some great mythic imagery, but it also is tainted with caste and gender prejudice. I have blogged my reviews of both the texts (here and here).

Continuing in the same vein, I read Dance Of Shiva by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, a book recommended by the famous mythologist Joseph Campbell as required reading. However, the book is terribly dated and carries a lot of the misconceptions of the early Indologists. I also read The Flight of the Wild Gander: Explorations in the Mythological Dimension ― Selected Essays 1944–1968 by Campbell himself – as always, a pure pleasure to read.

On to other subjects now.

I read three books by Bill Bryson – two travelogues and a book on language. I liked one travelogue (The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America), the other one, not so much (Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe) and loved the book on English (The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way), written in his quirky style with weird factoids peppered all along. And speaking of English, I loved Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss too – being the spelling Nazi that I am.

Other non-fiction books of note: The Brain: The Story of You by David Eagleman, How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World by Francis Wheen, The New Adventures of Socrates: An Extravagance by Manny Rayner (thanks for gifting me the book, Manny!) and Two in the Bush by Gerald Durrel. Akkarmashi, the autobiography of Dalit Indian which I read in its Malayalam translation was also a poignant read.

That is it for the non-fiction. Onward to fiction now!

Fiction

I would like to call this the year of reading the classics. I decided to stop buying books temporarily and finish off the ones languishing on my shelves – and it paid rich dividends.

Most definitely, the top fiction read of the year was All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. It reminds one that book doesn’t have to be fat and full of dense prose to be profound. This slim volume hits like a sledgehammer: the futility of war is laid out in spare and even humorous prose. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich also had the same effect, but to a lesser degree.

The Woman in Black by Susan Hill is all it’s hyped up to be. Frightening and literary at the same time, this horror story will stay with one a long time after one closes the book.

Another book which blew me away, with its mixture of humour and pathos, is Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday. I read it without any expectations, and was pulled into the tale. A hilarious look at the cockeyed world of projects in the Middle East, carried out with only political intent and no thought of scientific feasibility.

Once one gets past the opaqueness of impressionist writing, one can swim with the tide and enjoy it. This fact was proven to me once again by Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, a true classic.

Angela Carter got me again with Nights at the Circus. Such a magnificent writer! Sadly, she passed away too soon…

Lolita! Read it finally… the book is well-written, and the prose is extremely powerful, but I couldn’t bring myself to wholeheartedly ‘like’ it – because the subject matter was so repugnant.

Also, finally managed to climb all the way to The Castle, after a few aborted attempts, unlike Franz Kafka’s protagonist. Disturbing and frustrating, he may be – but Kafka is certainly compelling.

And I must not forget to mention Collected Stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez – the idol of my youth, still the most magical writer I have ever read.

Other books of note I enjoyed: Jazz by Toni Morrison, The Famished Road by Ben Okri, Selected Stories by Jerome K. Jerome, The Country Girls by Edna O’Brien, The Secret History by Donna Tartt, What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller, Small Island by Andrea Levy, The Reader by Bernhard Schlink, Mystic River by Dennis Lehane, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg and I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith.

The big disappointment of the year was The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy. It seems years of writing only political essays have blunted her pen. This book read like a political essay disguised as a novel.

Coming to genre fiction:

Whodunits

Salvation of a Saint by Keigo Higashimo and Original Sin by P. D. James: both passably good mysteries but not mind-bending. The authors have written better ones.

SF and Fantasy

The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin, my first experience of SF by a non-European author, was a qualified success: strong on science, a trifle weak on fiction.

The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham – an SF classic, but unfortunately has not aged well.

Un Lun Dun by China Mieville: typical Mieville stuff, with drawings by himself. Enjoyable dark fantasy for Young Adults.

Northern Lights by Philip Pullman – a much-touted fantasy classic. It has fantastic world-building and an engaging story-line. But I felt the author let the reader down a bit at the end.

Horror

I had become a fan of Basil Copper after reading his terrifying story The Janissaries of Emillion. So it was with some anticipation that I read volumes two and three of his collected works (Darkness, Mist And Shadow: Volume 2: The Collected Macabre Tales Of Basil Copper and Darkness, Mist & Shadows – Volume 3 pb ). However, I was sorely disappointed. Maybe Volume 1 is better.

The Song of the Lord

If someone asks a devout Hindu what his most sacred religious text is, you more likely than not to get the answer: “The Bhagavad Gita”. This short Sanskrit text is purportedly a discourse given by Lord Krishna to Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, when he was assailed by self-doubt at the moment of going into battle against his kith and kin. Though it is an exhortation to the warrior to carry out his duty and fight regardless of consequences, it is supposed to contain the kernel of the Indian philosophy of life, death, rebirth and the attainment of everlasting bliss.

The Bhagavad Gita –roughly meaning “the Lord’s discourse on the philosophy of the Brahman” – is largely an unread text. Most learned people know a few verses which are quoted time and again, and which are considered to be its heart. I was also guilty of this, until lately, when I got this bee in my bonnet about reading up on all of India’s ancient literature in the original. Armed with my high school Sanskrit and a dictionary, I set forth on this quest.

The Manusmriti was the text I first attacked, for the reasons I have explained in my blog (here on these pages). I decided that the Gita should be next, as a text which had formed part of my outlook on life. I was fed up of second-hand observations and wanted to hear it directly from the horse’s mouth, as it were.

I know that many say that such a “deep” philosophy cannot be understood by untrained minds, and a guru is required on such a journey. I appreciate their argument, and plan to read a few of the famous commentaries. But in my opinion, reading the original is the mandatory first step.

The Setting

The Bhagavad Gita is set within the Mahabharata , the world’s largest epic. The Kauravas and the Pandavas, cousins disputing the throne of the kingdom of Hastinapura, have decided to go to war. Arjuna, the great Pandava warrior asks his friend and charioteer Krishna to steer his chariot to the middle of the opposing armies, to survey the forces arrayed against him. But on seeing all his relatives ready for battle, Arjuna’s nerve fails him on the contemplation of the enormity of the task ahead – nothing short of the murder of near and dear! He throws down his weapon in disgust and says that he won’t fight. Better to die than rule over a kingdom obtained through bloodshed and fratricide!

This is when Krishna begins his long-winded discourse to take apart Arjuna’s seemingly noble arguments. And this is what the Bhagavad Gita such a controversial text: it argues for himsa as part of warrior’s noble duty, and rejects ahimsa as moral cowardice. This is in direct opposition to the Buddhist doctrine that was prevalent in India at that time, and it is why many scholars see it as a Brahminical attempt to strike at the root of Buddhism. But then, one has to take into account the fact that Gandhi, perhaps the greatest proponent of ahimsa that ever lived, took the Gita to heart!

We don’t hear the discourse first hand. Sanjaya, the minister of the blind king Dhritarashtra who is the ruler of Hastinapura, has been gifted with long range vision so that he can see the battle and report it to his sovereign. It is through him that we hear what transpires between Arjuna and Krishna.

The Discourse

The Gita is divided into eighteen short (by Indian standards!) chapters. They are:

1. Arjuna Vishada Yoga (The Yoga of Arjuna’s Grief), where the warrior develops cold feet and throws down his weapons. This chapter also introduces the situation.
2. Sankhya Yoga (The Yoga of Sankhya) which establishes the basic tenets of the discourse – the inevitability of birth and death in the universe, and the merit of action without attachment.
3. Karma Yoga (The Yoga of Action), where the merits of attachment without action is further extolled. Here, all action is identified as coming from the Yajna (Vedic sacrifice), and Krishna makes the first statements indicating that he is more than what he purports to be.
4. Jnana Vibhaga Yoga (The Yoga of Wisdom) in which the correct actions are mentioned, and the ways to obtain detachment from action; also total renunciation. Krishna reveals himself as the returning messiah.
5. Sanyasa Yoga (The Yoga of Renunciation), where the fruits of total renunciation are enumerated. This is the classic description of Indian asceticism as per the Upanishads.
6. Adhyatma Yoga (The Yoga of Spirituality) where the methods of attaining Nirvana are elaborated.
7. Jnana Yoga (The Yoga of Knowledge): Here, Krishna reveals himself as the supreme lord; as the Brahman itself.
8. Akshara Brahma Yoga (The Yoga of the Indestructible Brahman), where Krishna explains the method to escape from the cycle of birth and death by knowing the Brahman (which is he himself).
9. Raja Vidya Raja Guhya Yoga (The Yoga of the Royal Secret), in which the worship of Krishna, as the eternal truth, even in different forms, is explained as the only way to moksha (release).
10. Vibhuti Yoga (The Yoga of Supreme Power), which is basically an extension of the previous two chapters. Krishna declares himself as encompassing everything within the space-time continuum.
11. Vishwaroopa Darshana Yoga (The Yoga of the Vision of the Universal form). This, according to me, is the crux of the document. Krishna takes the form of all-consuming time, terrible in his fiery visage. This is the peg on which the previous chapters hang.
12. Bhakti Yoga (The Yoga of Devotion), where Krishna extols devotion to him, even without enlightenment, as a possible path to release.
13. Kshetra Kshterajna Vibhaga Yoga (The Yoga of the Field and Knower of the Field), where the relationship between the field (the body) and the knower of the field (the soul) is explained with respect to the attainment of release.
14. Guna Thraya Vibhaga Yoga (The Yoga of the Separation of the Three Qualities). According to Indian concept, all things are comprised of three qualities: Sattva (purity), Rajas (passion) and Tamas (darkness) – corresponding to good, middling and bad. This chapter expounds on how to enhance purity.
15. Purushottama Yoga (The Yoga of the Perfect One), which explains the concept of Krishna as Purushottama, the perfect one. Here the duality of Purusha and Prakruti are also explored.
16. Devaasura Vibhaga Yoga (The Yoga of the Division between Devas and Asuras). A curious chapter. After talking about going beyond all dualities in the previous chapters, here the divine is separated from the demoniacal.
17. Shraddhathraya Vibhaga Yoga (The Yoga of the Division of the Threefold Faith). Again, this is a departure from the previous chapters. Here the “correct” way of worshipping and sacrificing is expounded.
18. Moksha Sanyasa Yoga (The Yoga of Liberation through Renunciation), in which action and renunciation are merged, and there is a sort of summary of the previous chapters. However, what is important here is, action is clearly linked to the caste of the actor, something which was not evident in the previous chapters – and Krishna declares himself the ONLY god, rather like the God of the Abrahamic faiths.

(Note: The chapter names are from the Annie Besant/ Bhagvan Das translation. The Gita Press has slightly different chapter names. What I understand is that in the original Gita, chapters are not titled.)

The Philosophy

(Please note that what follows is my interpretation of the Bhagavad Gita’s philosophy. I am not a Sanskrit scholar, neither am I an expert in Upanishadic thought, so my interpretation might not match those of the scholars and the ascetics. I am open to counterviews.)

We live in a universe of inevitability, where “life eats life”, as Joseph Campbell puts it neatly. In this world, it is impossible to live without acting: and it is inevitable that all actions will not be beneficial to all. So how to cope? One method is to run away to a secluded place, and meditate upon the absolute: and thus gain freedom from this phenomenal world of birth, death and rebirth. This is the way of the Indian rishis and the Buddha – pierce the veil of illusion (maya), reach the still centre of existence, where there is ‘Nirvana’ (“no wind”) and be at one with the eternal. In Buddhism, this is the knowledge of one’s nonexistence – the ‘anatman’ – while in Hinduism, it is the dissolution of the individual self with the Brahman, the universal self, or the SELF, which permeates all of creation. Take your pick.

This may, however, be a tad difficult for a person engaged in the world. I still remember an incident. On the erstwhile Joseph Campbell Foundation discussion fora, an American GI posed a problem. He was against the war in Iraq, but as a soldier, he was duty-bound to fight; and if he quit his job, his family would starve. How to tackle this situation without going mad? It is exactly this question that is being answered through Karma Yoga: act, but without attachment. As said by Krishna in what is perhaps the most famous verse in the Gita:

You have control only over your karma, and never on its fruits: You are not the cause of its fruits; let not you be attached to non-karma.

That is: just do it, what you have to – do not worry about the fruits (that is, the result, reward or consequence). Do your karma without attachment. While acting in the world, lead your mind on the path of renunciation. Act in the world, without being of it.

This is almost in sync with the Taoist concept of Wu Wei:

One of Taoism’s most important concepts is Wu Wei, which is sometimes translated as “non-doing” or “non-action.” A better way to think of it, however, is as a paradoxical “Action of non-action.” Wu Wei refers to the cultivation of a state of being in which our actions are quite effortlessly in alignment with the ebb and flow of the elemental cycles of the natural world. It is a kind of “going with the flow” that is characterized by great ease and awareness, in which — without even trying — we’re able to respond perfectly to whatever situations arise.

From ThoughtCo

I also relate this concept to a story, again narrated by Joseph Campbell. It was during his series of interviews with Bill Moyers on the PBS Series, ‘The Power of Myth’:

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: …Let me tell you one story here, of a samurai warrior, a Japanese warrior, who had the duty to avenge the murder of his overlord. And he actually, after some time, found and cornered the man who had murdered his overlord. And he was about to deal with him with his samurai sword, when this man in the corner, in the passion of terror, spat in his face. And the samurai sheathed the sword and walked away. Why did he do that?

BILL MOYERS: Why?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Because he was made angry, and if he had killed that man then, it would have been a personal act, of another kind of act, that’s not what he had come to do.

Like Octavio Paz said in In Light of India, Krishna does not give Arjuna a way to save the world: he gives him a way to save himself.

The Myth

Of course, much of the Gita’s attraction lies on the character of Krishna – how he grows from Arjuna’s friend to the eternal Brahman, the be-all and end-all of all creation. As Krishna himself repeatedly says, he is EVERYTHING: the sacrifice, the sacrifice, the sacrificial fire, and the deity who consumes the sacrifice. Krishna’s stature grows slowly from chapter 3 onwards till chapter 11, when he shows his “Vishwa-roopa”, or the Universal Form: to see which, Arjuna cannot use his ordinary vision but must be bestowed with second sight.

As Sanjaya, witnessing this at second hand says: “It is bright as a thousand suns.”  And here’s the awestruck Arjuna gushing about it:

Arjuna said:

My dear Lord Krsna, I see assembled together in Your body all the demigods and various other living entities. I see Brahma sitting on the lotus flower as well as Lord Siva and many sages and divine serpents.

O Lord of the universe, I see in Your universal body many, many forms-bellies, mouths, eyes-expanded without limit. There is no end, there is no beginning, and there is no middle to all this.

Your form, adorned with various crowns, clubs and discs, is difficult to see because of its glaring effulgence, which is fiery and immeasurable like the sun.

You are the supreme primal objective; You are the best in all the universes; You are inexhaustible, and You are the oldest; You are the maintainer of religion, the eternal Personality of Godhead.

You are the origin without beginning, middle or end. You have numberless arms, and the sun and moon are among Your great unlimited eyes. By Your own radiance You are heating this entire universe.

Although You are one, You are spread throughout the sky and the planets and all space between. O great one, as I behold this terrible form, I see that all the planetary systems are perplexed.

All the demigods are surrendering and entering into You. They are very much afraid, and with folded hands they are singing the Vedic hymns.

The different manifestations of Lord Siva, the Adityas, the Vasus, the Sadhyas, the Visvadevas, the two Asvins, the Maruts, the forefathers and the Gandharvas, the Yaksas, Asuras, and all perfected demigods are beholding You in wonder.

O mighty-armed one, all the planets with their demigods are disturbed at seeing Your many faces, eyes, arms, bellies and legs and Your terrible teeth, and as they are disturbed, so am I.

O all-pervading Visnu, I can no longer maintain my equilibrium. Seeing Your radiant colors fill the skies and beholding Your eyes and mouths, I am afraid.

O Lord of lords, O refuge of the worlds, please be gracious to me. I cannot keep my balance seeing thus Your blazing deathlike faces and awful teeth. In all directions I am bewildered…

(Translations from Bhagavad Gita As It Is)

Translations can never capture the beauty of the original: in Sanskrit, the verses I quoted above simply roll of the tongue and one can almost imagine the majesty of a vision that cannot be described through words or colours. As Campbell says in ‘Creative Mythology’: “The best things cannot be told, the second best are misunderstood.”

It is only by envisioning Krishna as the whole of space-time itself, can one understand how his teaching passed to Arjuna. From this moment onwards, he is no longer just the friend who is doing a favour by driving Arjuna’s chariot: he is the godhead that resides within the psyche. (I have explored this concept here.) And as such, he is not only discoursing to Arjuna – what we see is the process of enlightenment, the realisation of “thou art that”, taking place.

The Politics

The Bhagavad Gita is a controversial document. It has been seen as an attempt by the Vedic religion to unseat Buddhism, which was gaining tremendous ground in India, and reinstate the caste system.  Is this charge true? Looking at the Gita dispassionately, one has to say that the charge does have some merit.

Throughout the text, one can see references to “varna sankara” (the mixing of castes), and the undesirable outcomes arising out of it – in fact, Arjuna’s original worry about killing his kith and kin is that it will destroy the dynasty and give rise to caste-mixing! Also, time and again Krishna tells Arjuna to do his duty as a Kshatriya.

All the imagery about sacrifices and oblations are Vedic in origin – and also the curious chapter 16, where Devas and Asuras are specifically mentioned, in contrast to the egalitarian teaching elsewhere, smacks of Vedic dualism. And the origin of Karma is specifically linked to the sacrifice and Prajapati, the first man of the Vedas.

Apart from all these, the following verses specifically advocate the promotion of caste.

9. 32 O Partha, those who take shelter in Me, though they be of born of wombs of sin (papa-yonaya) -women, vaisyas as well as sudras -can approach the supreme destination.

(This concept of lesser and greater wombs, in relation to the birth-death-rebirth cycle, occur in many places.)

18.41 Brahmanas, ksatriyas, vaisyas and sudras are distinguished by their qualities of work, O chastiser of the enemy, in accordance with the modes of nature.

18. 42 Peacefulness, self-control, austerity, purity, tolerance, honesty, wisdom, knowledge, and religiousness-these are the qualities by which the brahmanas work.

18.43 Heroism, power, determination, resourcefulness, courage in battle, generosity, and leadership are the qualities of work for the ksatriyas.

18.44 Farming, cattle raising and business are the qualities of work for the vaisyas, and for the sudras there is labour and service to others.

18.47 It is better to engage in one’s own occupation, even though one may perform it imperfectly, than to accept another’s occupation and perform it perfectly. Prescribed duties, according to one’s nature, are never affected by sinful reactions.

18.48 Every endeavour is covered by some sort of fault, just as fire is covered by smoke. Therefore one should not give up the work which is born of his nature, O son of Kunti, even if such work is full of fault.

So it is clear – karma means carrying out one’s caste duties, and those ONLY.

Also, in this chapter, the Krishna who said earlier that “many people worship me in many different forms: ultimately they all come to me” changes tack and becomes as inflexible as the Levantine God.

18.66 Abandon all varieties of religion and just surrender unto only Me. I shall deliver you from all sinful reaction. Do not fear.

So there is no doubt about the intention here – it is the promotion of the status quo. However, the sharp difference between the first part and the last gives credence to the conjecture that the Gita may have been bowdlerised. The high philosophy and the dazzling imagery of the first part cannot descend to this level of preaching logically.

The Bhagavad Gita and Me

The question, as a reader, is: what do I take away from this text? I am an atheist: and even though the Brahman as a concept is intriguing, I am not a fan of speculative metaphysics. But the concept of nishkama karma (action without attachment) has always appealed to me in my chosen professional field – that of engineering.

I interpret it like this. My job is to do as perfect a job of engineering as I can, to see that the product of my effort is the best I can make it. That is, the perfection of the job I do is its own reward – I should not be bothered about the end result, or the rewards I am going to obtain. I can tell you that I have tried to follow this path throughout my career and it has paid rich dividends.

Not exactly Karma Yoga as preached by Krishna, but near enough… for Kali Yuga!

The Monstrous Feminine

Durga

The festival of Navaratri – the ‘Nine Sacred Nights of the Goddess’ – has begun. All over India, the Goddess Durga will be worshipped for these nine days and nights. In Bengal, where it is the main state festival, it culminates with the immersion of hundreds of Durga idols in the sea.

Durga took birth to kill the buffalo-demon Mahishasura. She is an avatar of Shakti, the feminine power that pervades the universe. The Hindu trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva join together to get Shakti to incarnate herself as Durga, as the demon was undefeatable otherwise. Ten-armed with a weapon in each, riding a lion, she went on to meet the demon in battle. The demon fell in love with the goddess and asked her to marry him; enraged by his audacity, Durga slew him.

Durga (literally ‘impassable’) must be a version of the Mother Goddess, who according to most mythographers, predated the male gods. What is interesting is that in India, one of the most patriarchal societies you can imagine, the goddess still commands respect – sometimes even more than her male counterparts. But however, Indians have succeeded in deifying her, putting her on a pedestal, and going about their patriarchal lives quite comfortably: subjugating and abusing women to their heart’s content while extolling her as a goddess.

I find this motif of the fearsome divinity – which I call the monstrous feminine, the bogeyman that has lurked in the dark corners of Indian myth since time immemorial – ever present as an undercurrent in our popular myth and culture. As goddess, she is Durga and Kali, with her insatiable appetite for blood; she is present as the various rakshasis (demonesses) such as Tataka and Surpanakha in the Indian epics; and in my own homeland of Kerala, she used colour my childhood nightmares as the yakshi, the fearsome wood-sprite that ate men alive.

Kali by Raja Ravi Varma

The she-monsters are always conquered, of course. The yakshis are tamed and imprisoned in trees; the demonesses are killed by mythical heroes; and the goddess is placated by daily rituals and oblations (which used to comprise sacrifices, even human, in yesteryears). But there is always a sense of unease; that the hidden power, the adi-para-shakti (‘primeval pervading power’ – as the infinite form of the goddess is known – will break out of her slumber and take over the world. This is what the male-centric society has always feared: and this fear is reflected in the current aggressive resistance towards many of the feminist movements across the world. As Steve Bannon fears, women may take over the world!

Lilith

I came to know of Lilith rather late in my mythical explorations. She is a part of the Jewish myth which has been expunged from the bible: and her story is extremely interesting because of its feminist overtones.

I have relied upon the Gnosis Archive for the following story:

This potentially blasphemous story has Adam trying to copulate with animals, and finding them unsuitable, asking God for a helpmeet. “God then formed Lilith, the first woman, just as He had formed Adam, except that He used filth and sediment instead of pure dust. From Adam’s union with this demoness, and with another like her named Naamah, Tubal Cain’s sister, sprang Asmodeus and innumerable demons that still plague mankind.”

Lilith by John Collier

This “filthy” woman, however, was rather feisty. She refused to subordinate herself to Adam:

Adam and Lilith never found peace together; for when he wished to lie with her, she took offence at the recumbent posture he demanded. ‘Why must I lie beneath you?’ she asked. ‘I also was made from dust, and am therefore your equal.’ Because Adam tried to compel her obedience by force, Lilith, in a rage, uttered the magic name of God, rose into the air and left him.

The “disobedient” Lilith was, unsurprisingly, punished by God: when she refused to come back, enjoying her free life with lascivious demons on the banks of the Red Sea, God cursed all her children to die. The belief is that she produces one hundred demon children per day, all of whom perish by night.

Lilith is feared as the seducer of sleeping men, the killer of babies and the spirit who causes abortions.

The subtext is clear – the independent woman is the demon, while the subordinate one made from the rib is the perfect helpmeet!

Medusa

Medusa

The monstrous feminine in the Occident, I find perfectly embodied in Medusa. Though not especially marked as “evil” – the Greek myths are rather amoral – she is indeed the antagonist to the male hero, something he must vanquish on his quest. And it is interesting that Medusa is never really defeated face to face: even in death, her eyes can turn one to stone.

***

Here, I find it interesting to compare this metaphor across the traditions of the Levant, the Occident and the Orient. In the Biblical tradition, the monstrous feminine is unambiguously marked as evil and on the side of the devil; in the Occident, she is still frightening, and something to be vanquished, but her moral labelling doesn’t exist; while in the East, she has been deified and assimilated into the masculine myth in a masterful way.

The Tale of Nagavalli

The Malayalam film Manichithrathaazhu released in 1993 was a totally new phenomenon as far Kerala moviegoers were concerned. Shunning the popular themes of comedy, the family drama or the crime thriller (even though the film incorporated elements of all of these genres), it presented a tense psychological thriller with just a touch of the horror, and proved an instant hit. It also became a watershed film in Indian history, as it was remade in Tamil, Kannada, Bengali and Hindi. And it also won the National Award for Shobhana for her portrayal of a girl with split personality.

What was so special about the film? For one, it married the supernatural tale of spirit possession with modern pop psychology; at the same time, it fused the ancient art of sorcery with the science of psychiatry. Even though most of the theories Mohanlal as Dr. Sunny spouts in the film are unadulterated bullshit, they resonated with a populace eager to discover scientific principles in our ‘ancient wisdom’.

But most importantly, it was the character of Nagavalli, the long-dead dancer out for blood revenge on her tormentor, who stole the hearts of people. Shobhana, in a flawless performance, enacted the role of the city girl Ganga who believes that she is Nagavalli, to perfection.

Shobhana in Manichitrathazhu

The story, stated very briefly, runs thus. Ganga and her husband Nakulan are staying in their ancestral home, which is believed to be haunted by the ghost of a Tamil dancer who had been imprisoned and later murdered by the head of the family. Ganga, who has got serious psychological disturbances, starts believing herself to be Nagavalli – and her husband to be her cruel captor. As her madness slowly progresses, the unconventional psychiatrist Dr. Sunny comes up with a unique way to cure her. In collaboration with the sorcerer and tantric expert Pullattuparambil Brahmadattan Namboothiripad, he enacts a ceremony where Ganga, in her Nagavalli avatar, is allowed to behead a dummy of Nakulan in the guise of her antagonist. The act done, she returns to her normal self – the “ghost” is “exorcised”.

Joseph Campbell has said that artists are the myth-makers of the modern-world: and this movie is a perfect example. The character of Nagavalli channels all female monsters hiding in the Indian psyche, as well as the avenging Durga (it is not a coincidence that she gets her sacrifice on Durgashtami, the eighth day of the Navaratri festival, very auspicious to the goddess): but most importantly, she is humoured, tamed and assimilated back into the pliant Ganga who practically worships her husband. And this has been done through an amalgamation of psychoanalysis and Vedic ritual. No wonder the movie was a hit!

***

So there she is, ladies and gentlemen – the monstrous feminine. Always in the background, always underneath the “civilised” facade of the “chaste” woman. Most of us in India, including women who follow tradition, do not prefer to acknowledge her; to accept the fact that the docility of woman comes at a great price to her psyche. And as woman goes through the avatars of Sati, Savitri and Sita, her inner Durga and Kali are chafing at the bit, struggling for release: the symptoms of which struggle are becoming more and more visible, day by day.

Is a new myth in the offing?

Where Women are Forbidden to Tread; or, the Mysteries Behind Menstrual Blood

All Indians, and people who have been following news from India, would know that our Supreme Court is taking far-reaching and, for what is essentially a conservative nation, revolutionary decisions regarding the freedom of the individual. They have been especially incendiary when they touched upon religious taboos. A case in point is the Sabarimala Temple in Kerala, where women of menstruating age have been forbidden entry for decades: a constitution bench of the court struck down the ban as unconstitutional, as it is in violation of the right of men and women to worship equally.

This happened on last Friday (the 28^th of September) and “believers” have not stopped foaming at the mouth. Since they can’t attack the court directly, their venom has been reserved for the leftists and progressives, who they feel, have somehow manipulated the judiciary to bring it about. And counter-measures are discussed in plenty: from the judicial (review petitions) to democratic (peaceful protests) to outright violence against women who plan to visit the shrine.

The left liberal contingent have also not been silent. In the intoxication of the all-too-few victories that come their way, they have trolled the right-wingers mercilessly, making them even more angry – with the result that all media including the social have become the scene of raucous name-calling and disgusting insults. There is no rational debate happening anywhere.

In this context, I came up on the post of a friend of mine on Facebook.  This lady, a feminist and a non-believer, was wondering what all the hullabaloo was about. She said she never wanted to visit the place, and assumed that most non-believers felt the same. And the believers will of course respect the taboo! So this verdict was, in her opinion, a non-starter and she was vehemently protesting people hailing this as a victory for women.

I disagreed with her and told her that even a symbolic win is crucial in the case of women’s rights – and it is especially important in this case. She was not convinced and asked for a lengthier explanation: which is when the idea of this blog post came to me. It would me more convenient for me to express myself here than on an FB post. And I will not be distracted by trolls!

To get to the root of this issue, I think we need to dig really down, all the way down to the bedrock of the human psyche, where myths are born.

The Origins of Myth

There are multiple theories on how myth originated. In J. G. Frazer’s The Golden Bough, myth is seen as a concretisation of ritual – an opinion shared by Robert Graves, as his book The Greek Myths illustrate. Carl Gustav Jung and Joseph Campbell, however, consider myth to be mostly springing up from the collective unconscious of humanity, with the narrative structured around a few key images. There are also theories of myth being the romanticised narration of history.

I was a confirmed Jungian and follower of Joseph Campbell for years. But of late, I have come to believe that myths are made up of all of the above three. There are some primal images (which are relevant very much today in literature and art) which drive our subconscious narrative; there are rituals, passed down across the centuries, which have become our integral part – and there is the history of humankind, enshrined forever as beautiful stories in our myths and fairy tales.

In this context, I think we need to take a look at what Joseph Campbell called “The Four Functions of Myth.”

The Four Functions of Myth

 The Metaphysical Function

 The absolute mystery of life is beyond words and images. To capture this, one uses the myth as a metaphor: that is why most mythical images are absurd if one looks at them from a realistic point of view, but serve as invaluable sources for the mystical and artistic experience. One only has to look at the apparently absurd metaphors in many poems or the seemingly illogical narrative of magical realism to appreciate this.

The Cosmological Function

Before formal science made its appearance, myth tried to explain the world around us, its origins and the physical phenomena that affected our lives. This function has become redundant with the advent of science: but this is where the main tussle between religion and science happens in the modern world.

The Sociological Function

If societies were to survive, they needed to preserve a certain order. This was implemented through myth, by positing a divinely stipulated system. It is my opinion that this is where religion evolved; drawing from the Cosmological Function, rituals were established to preserve society in stasis so that the cosmic order was not violated. Over a period of time, this was taken over by the priests. This has direct bearing on our current issue.

The Pedagogical Function

This, according to Campbell, is the most important function of myth. As a person goes through life, he has to pass through various stages which are exemplified in myth as the “Hero’s Journey”. Closely related to Jung’s theory of individuation, this provides creative guidance in life and art.

Looking at the four functions above, one can see that the second and third functions have become rather redundant in today’s world. Science has taken over the Cosmological Function, while the civil code has taken over the Sociological Function in most democracies. And therein lies the root of the tussle between religion and science.

Most societies in the world are patriarchal, and have some kind of rigid, stratified layers of hierarchy within itself. Unsurprisingly, these are taken as “divinely ordained”, and priests hold the actual reins of power even though administrative power is with the ruling class. In India, this is exemplified in the caste system, with Brahmins calling the shot in almost all social matters, even after seventy years of independence.

This is maintained through the myths about the universe which have nothing to do with knowledge or science. Rather, a worldview which must have been dynamic at the time of its evolution is frozen in permanent stasis. Myths, which started life as vibrant metaphors, become concretised in time and become meaningless images. Yet these are manipulated by the priestly class to hold on to their unofficial power. The standard argument is that “these are beyond science”. (Of course they are, but not as a parallel reality but in the realm of subliminal imagery!)

Now let us have a look at the Sabarimala controversy in this light.

The Mystery of Menstruation

All the rites of passage of a person’s life are shrouded in wonder and mystery: birth, the attainment of puberty, marriage, death… consequently, we have rituals to cover them all.  Of these, the attainment of puberty in women is especially hallowed, since it also involves the discharge of blood: the blood of life, rather than the blood of death.

Kerala is a curious mix of the patriarchal Hindu religion and matriarchal tribal culture, probably because so-called Hinduism reached us very late. So side-by-side with the fiercely patriarchal Nampoothiri Brahmins, we find Nairs and Kshatriyas who even now, consider themselves matrilineal. Alongside “men-only” clubs like Sabarimala, we have festivals like Attukal Pongala where men are not allowed. We have women’s mysteries like Thiruvathira where ladies dance the night away in gay abandon, in celebration of their sexuality.

In earlier days, the girl on first attaining puberty was much feted; almost like a marriage (in fact, it is called thirandu kalyanam, “the puberty marriage”). And during the time of her monthly periods, she was kept separate. This was called theendari suddham – “the special purity of monthly periods”. (“Theendari” is literally derived from the sentence “theendathe iri” in Malayalam, which means “keep your distance”). It is my opinion that this was done out of a feeling of the awe of her power: the power of her uterus which produces the blood of life. During this exceptionally powerful period, men were barred from approaching her as they were interfering with forces beyond their ken.

Then somewhere along the way, the menstruating woman came to be seen as impure. I see this as part of the gradual takeover of myth by patriarchal religion. The woman lost her power along the way, as most of our goddesses were married of to the gods to take on secondary roles. Only a few such as the fearsome Kali could not be subjugated – and the male priests were happy to give her her token due, and preserve rites like the Pongala at Attukal where the officiating priests are, of course, men.

Lord Ayyappan and Celibacy

Ayyappan is an interesting god. Not part of the Vedic pantheon, he has nevertheless been grafted on to it as the son of Shiva and Vishnu in his female form as Mohini (“the temptress”). So Ayyappan is perhaps, the only god to be born of a homosexual union in world mythology.

Like most Indian deities, Ayyappan took birth to kill a demon, the fierce Mahishi. This demoness in the form of a water buffalo, was actually a celestial being under curse (as is the case with most Indian bogeymen), released (attaining “moksha”) by the god’s killing her. Once freed of her demon form, the celestial maiden begged Ayyappan to marry her – however, the celibate god promised to do so only the day when fresh pilgrims stop visiting his shrine at Sabarimala. He established her as his co-deity near the shrine, but they would never be seen together.

(The above story curiously parallels the celibate goddess Durga’s fight with Mahishasura, the buffalo-demon. The same undercurrent of predatory sexuality and celibacy forms the bedrock on which both these tales are built on. They are perhaps the leftovers of our tribal past, before classical Hinduism assimilated the narrative.)

Now the crux of the problem – Lord Ayyappan’s celibacy. The god is said to be a naishtika brahmachari – ritually celibate – so that the mere presence of nubile women is forbidden at his temple. Therefore, the entry of females between 10 and 50 years of age is not allowed at the shrine. Originally a social taboo, it was enforced by law later on.

This is quite understandable from a mythical viewpoint – many such taboos exist across the world. But current Indian society is in a churn. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, we are on the verge of becoming a really liberal democracy, where social restrictions are the ones that get first get challenged.

As happened with many social taboos of yesteryears, this ban also began to be questioned by women: and not by those who grew up steeped in the myth, but “non-believers” who saw unacceptable shades of gender discrimination. Naturally, this lead to outrage among the believers (women included) – who are these upstart feminists to question our faith? It is a matter of belief, and as such, above the law of the land.

The case ultimately landed in front the Supreme Court who perhaps, ruled in the only way they could. The ban was discriminatory, and as such, it had to go. And it was by no means a cut-and-dried verdict – we must note that the lone woman judge dissented. Apparently, she sided with the many women devotees of Kerala who believed in the taboo.

Why the Judgement is Important

Now we come back to the question my friend asked: why the hell is this important? For believers, no law is required to stay away from the shrine. For the non-believers, it is only a matter of principle, a token feminist victory over patriarchy, providing no real benefit.

We now come to the importance of the mythical metaphor.

If we look at the position of women in Indian society, we see her elevated to the position of goddess in principle and subjugated in practice. Poisonous codes such as the Manusmriti give religious credence to her secondary role. She is seen as a precious possession of man, but a possession all the same. The sacred feminine is a metaphor which has been bent to suit the patriarchal will. And as explained before, the very symbol of her fertility has been transformed into her impurity.

This judgement smashes the patriarchal bias, at the level of ritual. It tells the believers: “Fine! We acknowledge your belief, but when it goes contrary to the Indian constitution, it is unacceptable.” It places the secular constitution of India above centuries-old belief systems.

The Supreme Court has told Indian society in no uncertain terms that the sociological function of myth is no longer relevant in a secular democracy, if it comes into conflict with essential freedoms of the individual like gender equality. That is why this judgement has created a furore among the believers and the rebels that the genuinely irreligious people can never understand. For them, this is much ado about nothing – because the metaphor of menstruation has lost its relevance.

When Gandhiji initiated the march to Dandi, he was using salt as a metaphor to challenge the British hegemony. Here, the entry of women into a temple in the small state of Kerala at the southernmost tip of India, is the metaphor for redrawing the position of women within the Indian society – removing the so-called impurity imprinted upon her by patriarchal society.

(P. S. I am sure that the battle is far from over – our male chauvinist society will try its level best to prevent women from entering the shrine; and they may yet succeed in subverting the judgement. But the important thing is that the blow has been struck.)

The Ghost of Manu

Why I read the Manusmriti

A few months back, there was a debate on Facebook regarding the Manusmriti, the ancient Indian law book which was the basis of Hindu law during the British era, and which substantially influences Hindu attitudes today.  Having read parts of it in translation, I minced no words in denouncing it as a toxic document; whereupon a Hindu apologist took it upon himself to denigrate my views, saying that since I had not read the book in the original Sanskrit, I had no business trashing it. He himself claimed to have read it in the original and claimed that it had been misrepresented. Of course he was gaslighting, but I was in no position to call his bluff. So I decided that the only thing would be to read it in the original.

Armed with my high school Sanskrit and a Sanskrit-Malayalam dictionary, I set out to search for an edition of the book with a translation side-by-side. I chanced upon one immediately on the Internet Archive. Further research shows that it is essentially the same as the George Buhler translation (sans commentary) of the so-called Calcutta manuscript with the commentary of Kulluka, considered one of the authoritative texts by many scholars (though its authenticity had been questioned in postmodern times). Whatever be the case, this was the one in circulation since colonial times, so I decided to go with it.

The attempt here is to understand, from the original verses, what Manu said. However, Manu is a mythical character; and one must assume that the text must have been compiled across the ages by various people, as is the case with most ancient Indian texts. So my analysis here focuses on how this compendium of laws have impacted the Indian society, rather than whether it was officially “prescribed”.

The Influence of Manu on Indian Society

Indian society is caste-ridden and patriarchal. And Manusmriti is an instruction manual on how to implement the above. Throughout its verses, two things are reiterated time and again – the superiority of Brahmins versus the inferiority of the “lower” castes, and the total inconsequentiality of women as human beings. Even with all the internal contradictions, these two ideas stand out.

When I started sharing my reading experience on one of the reader’s groups on FB, a section of the members took fierce exception. It was their contention that as a leftist, I was intentionally maligning Hinduism based on a text that no Hindu follows; that the Manusmriti was a straw man of the left to tarnish the lofty ideals of Hinduism. Against this, my argument was simple. No doubt India contains much lofty thought (as laid out in the Upanishads) and the world’s greatest epics; but Indian society was and is one of the most non-egalitarian systems ever implemented in practice. Hardly a day passes without some report about upper-caste atrocities on Dalits (former “untouchables”), for the crime of willing to stand up to their social superiors. And this apparently enjoys the patronage of the Hindu Right.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the feeder organisation of the ruling BJP, was a staunch supporter of Manu’s laws. They vehemently opposed India’s secular constitution when it was implemented, through the organisational mouthpiece, The Organiser, on 30 November, 1949:

“The worst about the new constitution of Bharat is that there is nothing Bharatiya about it. The drafters of the constitution have incorporated in it elements of British, American, Canadian, Swiss and sundry other constitutions. But there is no trace of ancient Bharatiya constitutional laws, institutions, nomenclature and phraseology in it…in our constitution there is no mention of the unique constitutional development in ancient Bharat. Manu’s Laws were written long before Lycurgus of Sparta or Solon of Persia. To this day his laws as enunciated in the Manusmriti excite the admiration of the world and elicit spontaneous obedience and conformity. But to our constitutional pundits that means nothing.”

The RSS ideologue and the inventor of “Hindutva”, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, was an unashamed apologist for Manu.

“Manusmriti is that scripture which is most worship-able after Vedas for our Hindu Nation and which from ancient times has become the basis of our culture-customs, thought and practice. This book for centuries has codified the spiritual and divine march of our nation. Even today the rules which are followed by crores of Hindus in their lives and practice are based on Manusmriti. Today Manusmriti is Hindu Law”

So the argument that Hindus do not follow Manusmriti do not hold water. They may not have read the text; but most orthodox ones do follow the caste laws as well as keep the patriarchal attitudes. And for the right-wing, it is the Bible.

Onward with the review.

Manu’s Laws

After going through text, I am sceptical whether these can be called “laws” – they seem more to be religious and ritualistic norms to be followed by communities. Since in ancient India, civil society was virtually dictated to by the rules of caste, these may have been followed either in full or part: we have no way of knowing. However, it does inform Indian sensibilities to a great extent today.

Chapter 1

The document comprises twelve chapters, each containing various number of verses. The first chapter is basically a creation myth, somewhat akin to what is mentioned in the Purusha Sukta of the Rig Veda; about an omnipotent being who sacrifices himself to produce the universe. This being, called the Swayambhu (“Self-created”), is Manu himself; and he, in the original form of an egg, splits into two to produce heaven and earth, land and water, male and female, all corporeal and incorporeal beings as well as the mind and the spirit. This chapter is enjoyable and poetic, but one does suspect its presence here is to give mythic legitimacy to the caste hierarchy. The verse produced below which has resulted in most of the anger against this document, is illustrative.

1.31. But for the sake of the prosperity of the worlds he caused the Brahmana, the Kshatriya, the Vaisya, and the Sudra to proceed from his mouth, his arms, his thighs, and his feet.

1.88. To Brahmanas he assigned teaching and studying, sacrificing for their own benefit and for others, giving and accepting (of alms).

1.89. The Kshatriya he commanded to protect the people, to bestow gifts, to offer sacrifices, to study, and to abstain from attaching himself to sensual pleasures;

1.90. The Vaisya to tend cattle, to bestow gifts, to offer sacrifices, to study, to trade, to lend money, and to cultivate land.

1.91. One occupation only the lord prescribed to the Sudra, to serve meekly even these (other) three castes.

The hierarchy is thus established: the supreme being himself creates the castes and assigns their duties. And just in case anyone has a doubt, the superiority of the Brahmin is reiterated later on.

1.96. Of created beings the most excellent are said to be those which are animated; of the animated, those which subsist by intelligence; of the intelligent, mankind; and of men, the Brahmanas;

1.97. Of Brahmanas, the educated; of the educated, the ones who have attained wisdom; of those, those who perform; of the performers, those who know the Brahman.

1.98. The very birth of a Brahmana is an eternal incarnation of the sacred law; for he is born to (fulfil) the sacred law, and becomes one with Brahman.

1.99. A Brahmana, coming into existence, is born as the highest on earth, the lord of all created beings, for the protection of the treasury of the law.

1.100. Whatever exists in the world is the property of the Brahmana; on account of the excellence of his origin the Brahmana is, indeed, entitled to all.

Thus it is very clear that the superiority of the Brahmin is by birth, and not by actions, as claimed by apologists – at least in the Manusmriti. And later he goes on to say that it is the duty of a Brahmin to go forth and teach these laws to everyone, thus endorsing the caste’s supremacy in social justice.

Chapter 2 – 6

These chapters are about the four ashramas of Hindu life: that of the student, called brahmacharya; the householder, called garhastya; the forest-dweller, called vanaprastha; and the ascetic, called sanyasa. It seems it applies mostly only to Brahmins living in northern India called “Aryavarta”, as the other castes are only mentioned in passing.  These chapters detail the rituals people are supposed to follow, and the dire consequences which will happen, if they don’t. It contains some good stuff regarding the respect one should give teachers and parents, the joys of simple vegan living, the need to respect guests, and the respect that must be provided women – spoilt, however, by blatant misogyny, contradictions and just plain silliness.

I really liked the following verses:

2.226. The teacher is the image of Brahman, the father the image of Prajapati (the lord of created beings), the mother the image of the earth, and an (elder) full brother the image of oneself.

2.227. That trouble (and pain) which the parents undergo on the birth of (their) children, cannot be compensated even in a hundred years.

2.228. Let him always do what is agreeable to those (two) and always (what may please) his teacher; when those three are pleased, he obtains all (those rewards which) austerities (yield).

2.229. Obedience towards those three is declared to be the best (form of) austerity; let him not perform other meritorious acts without their permission.

2.230. For they are declared to be the three worlds, they the three (principal) orders, they the three Vedas, and they the three sacred fires.

See here that the mother is also included, as deserving of respect: at odds with Manu’s usual mistrust of women.

But in the self-same chapter we find:

2.213. It is the nature of women to seduce men in this (world); for that reason the wise are never unguarded in (the company of) females.

2.214. For women are able to lead astray in (this) world not only a fool, but even a learned man, and (to make) him a slave of desire and anger.

2.215. One should not sit in a lonely place with one’s mother, sister, or daughter; for the senses are powerful, and master even a learned man.

Similarly, the famous verse which apologists quote, to show how Manu respected women:

3.56. Where women are honoured, there the gods are pleased; but where they are not honoured, no sacred rite yields rewards.

This is followed by a number of verses on the proper upkeep of women, keeping them happy, giving them dresses, jewellery and what-not – because:

3.57. Where the female relations live in grief, the family soon wholly perishes; but that family where they are not unhappy ever prospers.

3.58. The houses on which female relations, not being duly honoured, pronounce a curse, perish completely, as if destroyed by magic.

However, this is all done because:

3.59. Hence men who seek (their own) welfare, should always honour women on holidays and festivals with (gifts of) ornaments, clothes, and (dainty) food.

3.60. In that family, where the husband is pleased with his wife and the wife with her husband, happiness will assuredly be lasting.

3.61. For if the wife is not radiant with beauty, she will not attract her husband; but if she has no attractions for him, no children will be born.

Misogyny strikes again! Women, it seems, are honoured only as baby-producing machines. And it continues:

5.147. By a girl, by a young woman, or even by an aged one, nothing must be done independently, even in her own house.

5.148. In childhood a female must be subject to her father, in youth to her husband, when her lord is dead to her sons; a woman must never be independent.

5.149. She must not seek to separate herself from her father, husband, or sons; by leaving them she would make both (her own and her husband’s) families contemptible.

5.150. She must always be cheerful, clever in (the management of her) household affairs, careful in cleaning her utensils, and economical in expenditure.

5.151. Him to whom her father may give her, or her brother with the father’s permission, she shall obey as long as he lives, and when he is dead, she must not insult (his memory).

5.154. Though destitute of virtue, or seeking pleasure (elsewhere), or devoid of good qualities, (yet) a husband must be constantly worshipped as a god by a faithful wife.

5.155. No sacrifice, no vow, no fast must be performed by women apart (from their husbands); if a wife obeys her husband, she will for that (reason alone) be exalted in heaven.

Even after the death of the husband, the widow is to remain faithful to his memory.

5.156. A faithful wife, who desires to dwell (after death) with her husband, must never do anything that might displease him who took her hand, whether he be alive or dead.

5.157. At her pleasure let her emaciate her body by (living on) pure flowers, roots, and fruit; but she must never even mention the name of another man after her husband has died.

5.158. Until death let her be patient (of hardships), self-controlled, and chaste, and strive (to fulfil) that most excellent duty which (is prescribed) for wives who have one husband only.

The man can, of course, remarry!

5.168. Having thus, at the funeral, given the sacred fires to his wife who dies before him, he may marry again, and again kindle (the fires).

—

I will not dwell further on these chapters. They are not “laws”, but rather, rituals and social etiquette Brahmins are supposed to follow. I guess the elaborate rituals of Brahmins for all ceremonies stem from this text, though being a non-Brahmin, I can’t say for sure.

I seriously doubt whether anyone would be able to follow the austerities prescribed for vanaprastha and sanyasa – I think they must have been practised rarely, if at all.

I will close my review of these chapters with one blatant contradiction which strengthens my belief that this text must have been edited across the years.

5.48. Meat can never be obtained without injury to living creatures, and injury to sentient beings is detrimental to (the attainment of) heavenly bliss; let him therefore shun (the use of) meat.

5.52. There is no greater sinner than that (man) who, though not worshipping the gods or the manes, seeks to increase (the bulk of) his own flesh by the flesh of other (beings).

Good stuff, isn’t it? Bolsters our idea of Hinduism as an essentially pacifist and refined religion. But then, we find this immediately afterwards…

5.56. There is no sin in eating meat, in (drinking) spirituous liquor, and in carnal intercourse, for that is the natural way of created beings, but abstention brings great rewards.

A person cannot have such a change of mind in the space of four verses!

Chapter 7 – 8

These chapters enumerate the duty of kings – and here we do find something akin to the “laws” that all of us familiar with: about civil disputes and criminal proceedings. These chapters are quite detailed in how a king must settle land and domestic disputes; how much fines and levies he should impose; what punishments, corporal and otherwise, he must mete out. The instructions are as exhaustive and dry as a modern-day law manual.

The king is supposed to rule by an iron hand: the famed “danda-neethi” where fear of punishment ensures a just society. Manu writes:

7.18. Punishment alone governs all created beings, punishment alone protects them, punishment watches over them while they sleep; the wise declare punishment (to be identical with) the law.

7.22. The whole world is kept in order by punishment, for a guiltless man is hard to find; through fear of punishment the whole world yields the enjoyments (which it owes).

The king is also supposed to be brave and warlike, and always ready to fight.  He should always be steadfast in battle.

7.103. Of him who is always ready to strike, the whole world stands in awe; let him therefore make all creatures subject to himself even by the employment of force.

Even though he wants the king to be a tough disciplinarian and warmonger, Manu wants him to stay away from all vices, be fair in battle, and never oppress his people.

7.111. That king who through folly rashly oppresses his kingdom, (will), together with his relatives, ere long be deprived of his life and of his kingdom.

7.112. As the lives of living creatures are destroyed by tormenting their bodies, even so the lives of kings are destroyed by their oppressing their kingdoms.

7.144. The highest duty of a Kshatriya is to protect his subjects, for the king who enjoys the rewards, just mentioned, is bound to (discharge that) duty.

So much for the good stuff. But throughout these instructions to royalty, one thing is reiterated again and again – Brahmins are the best among creation and they have to get preferential treatment, and must be protected at all times. Those who go against them must be dealt with very severely.

7.88. Not to turn back in battle, to protect the people, to honour the Brahmanas, is the best means for a king to secure happiness.

8.267. A Kshatriya, having defamed a Brahmana, shall be fined one hundred (panas); a Vaisya one hundred and fifty or two hundred; a Sudra shall suffer corporal punishment.

8.268. A Brahmana shall be fined fifty (panas) for defaming a Kshatriya; in (the case of) a Vaisya the fine shall be twenty-five (panas); in (the case of) a Sudra twelve.

8.270. A once-born man (a Sudra), who insults a twice-born man with gross invective, shall have his tongue cut out; for he is of low origin.

8.271. If he mentions the names and castes (jati) of the (twice-born) with contumely, an iron nail, ten fingers long, shall be thrust red-hot into his mouth.

8.272. If he arrogantly teaches Brahmanas their Dharma, the king shall cause hot oil to be poured into his mouth and into his ears.

8.279. With whatever limb a man of a low caste does hurt to (a man of the three) highest (castes), even that limb shall be cut off; that is the teaching of Manu.

8.280. He who raises his hand or a stick, shall have his hand cut off; he who in anger kicks with his foot, shall have his foot cut off.

8.281. A low-caste man who tries to place himself on the same seat with a man of a high caste, shall be branded on his hip and be banished, or (the king) shall cause his buttock to be gashed.

8.282. If out of arrogance he spits (on a superior), the king shall cause both his lips to be cut off; if he urines (on him), the penis; if he breaks wind (against him), the anus.

8.283. If he lays hold of the hair (of a superior), let the (king) unhesitatingly cut off his hands, likewise (if he takes him) by the feet, the beard, the neck, or the scrotum.

While such are the stringent punishments for “low-caste” people for presuming to go against their betters, it is vastly different in the case of Brahmins.

8.379. Tonsure (of the head) is ordained for a Brahmana (instead of) capital punishment; but (men of) other castes shall suffer capital punishment.

8.380. Let him never slay a Brahmana, though he have committed all (possible) crimes; let him banish such an (offender), leaving all his property (to him) and (his body) unhurt.

8.381. No greater crime is known on earth than slaying a Brahmana; a king, therefore, must not even conceive in his mind the thought of killing a Brahmana.

However, here also Manu surprises with his contradictions. In one place, he says no one is free from punishment and even increases the punishment based on the caste!

8.337. In (a case of) theft the guilt of a Sudra shall be eightfold, that of a Vaisya sixteenfold, that of a Kshatriya two-and-thirtyfold,

8.338. That of a Brahmana sixty-fourfold, or quite a hundredfold, or (even) twice four-and-sixtyfold; (each of them) knowing the nature of the offence.

But there is no doubt about the social level of the Sudra:

8.413. But a Sudra, whether bought or unbought, he may compel to do servile work; for he was created by the Self-existent (Svayambhu) to be the slave of a Brahmana.

8.414. A Sudra, though emancipated by his master, is not released from servitude; since that is innate in him, who can set him free from it?

8.416. A wife, a son, and a slave, these three are declared to have no property; the wealth which they earn is for him to whom they belong.

8.417. A Brahmana may confidently seize the goods of the Sudra; for, as he can have no property, his master may take his possessions.

And the women? They have absolutely no voice in this society; they cannot bear witness; cannot even talk to a male without the charge of adultery being laid on them. They are little more than property. But it is the next chapter, which describes the relationship between man and wife, that wins all awards for misogyny hands down.

Chapter 9

Manu’s concept is that the male is the seed and the female is the field: and her only duty in life is to keep herself pure for receiving and nurturing the seed, and producing a fine (male) offspring worthy of his father. Here are a few verses to give you a flavour of Manu’s idea of “woman”:

9.2. Day and night woman must be kept in dependence by the males (of) their (families), and, if they attach themselves to sensual enjoyments, they must be kept under one’s control.

9.3. Her father protects (her) in childhood, her husband protects (her) in youth, and her sons protect (her) in old age; a woman is never fit for independence.

9.13. Drinking (spirituous liquor), associating with wicked people, separation from the husband, rambling abroad, sleeping (at unseasonable hours), and dwelling in other men’s houses, are the six causes of the ruin of women.

9.14. Women do not care for beauty, nor is their attention fixed on age; (thinking), ‘(It is enough that) he is a man,’ they give themselves to the handsome and to the ugly.

9.15. Through their passion for men, through their mutable temper, through their natural heartlessness, they become disloyal towards their husbands, however carefully they may be guarded in this (world).

9.16. Knowing their disposition, which the Lord of creatures laid in them at the creation, to be such, (every) man should most strenuously exert himself to guard them.

9.17. (When creating them) Manu allotted to women (a love of their) bed, (of their) seat and (of) ornament, impure desires, wrath, dishonesty, malice, and bad conduct.

In all the verses that follow regarding nuptial laws and disputes, the status of the woman as a “baby-machine” is constantly stressed. I have quoted only a few choice ones above.

In the middle of the chapter, once again the sage starts rambling, talking about the duties of the king and how he must never ever cause displeasure to a Brahmin:

 9.313. Let him not, though fallen into the deepest distress, provoke Brahmanas to anger; for they, when angered, could instantly destroy him together with his army and his vehicles.

9.314. Who could escape destruction, when he provokes to anger those (men), by whom the fire was made to consume all things, by whom the (water of the) ocean was made undrinkable, and by whom the moon was made to wane and to increase again?

9.315. Who could prosper, while he injures those (men) who provoked to anger, could create other worlds and other guardians of the world, and deprive the gods of their divine station?

9.316. What man, desirous of life, would injure them to whose support the (three) worlds and the gods ever owe their existence, and whose wealth is the Veda?

9.317. A Brahmana, be he ignorant or learned, is a great divinity, just as the fire, whether carried forth (for the performance of a burnt-oblation) or not carried forth, is a great divinity.

9.318. The brilliant fire is not contaminated even in burial-places, and, when presented with oblations (of butter) at sacrifices, it again increases mightily.

9.319. Thus, though Brahmanas employ themselves in all (sorts of) mean occupations, they must be honoured in every way; for (each of) them is a very great deity.

This theme gets repeated again and again as the text progresses. And let there be no doubt – Brahmins are superior by birth, and not by karma! Though a Brahmin may lose caste due to bad karma, a Sudra will never get into a higher caste – other than in his next birth.

Chapter 10-11

These two chapters delineate the caste duties, and the various punishments one suffers in this world and the next, for not carrying them out, and also the penances for saving oneself: and also, the constant insistence on the excellence of Brahmins. It is quite interesting from another viewpoint, however – here Manu explains the origin of various castes, ostensibly created by the “mixing of the varnas”. It is an exercise in permutation and combination that sets the mind reeling by the time one reaches the second page.  For anyone interested in an enumeration, Dr. Ambedkar does a fine job in Riddles of Hinduism.

What interested me here especially was the description of the so-called “unclean” castes – mostly the forerunners of modern-day Dalits. The following verses were illustrative:

10.51. But the dwellings of Kandalas and Svapakas shall be outside the village, they must be made Apapatras, and their wealth (shall be) dogs and donkeys.

10.52. Their dress (shall be) the garments of the dead, (they shall eat) their food from broken dishes, black iron (shall be) their ornaments, and they must always wander from place to place.

10.53. A man who fulfils a religious duty, shall not seek intercourse with them; their transactions (shall be) among themselves, and their marriages with their equals.

10.54. Their food shall be given to them by others (than an Aryan giver) in a broken dish; at night they shall not walk about in villages and in towns.

10.55. By day they may go about for the purpose of their work, distinguished by marks at the king’s command, and they shall carry out the corpses (of persons) who have no relatives; that is a settled rule.

10.56. By the king’s order they shall always execute the criminals, in accordance with the law, and they shall take for themselves the clothes, the beds, and the ornaments of (such) criminals.

I am reminded here of the “Harijan Bastis” commonly found in North India, a space outside the village the Dalits are supposed to live, and not “pollute” the higher castes who reside there. This seems to be historical justification for their plight.

Chapter 12

The last chapter seems to be an attempt to create a philosophical underpinning to the law-book. It talks about the three “gunas” (qualities) which make up all beings on earth: Sattva, Rajas and Tamas. It also talks about the atman as the “purusha” pervading all beings. But this is “philosophy lite”, as the main aim is to declare the excellence of the Vedas.

12.95. All those traditions (smriti) and those despicable systems of philosophy, which are not based on the Veda, produce no reward after death; for they are declared to be founded on Darkness.

12.96. All those (doctrines), differing from the (Veda), which spring up and (soon) perish, are worthless and false, because they are of modern date.

Conclusion

The Manusmriti may not be a text that has any religious significance for a Hindu: in fact, it may not have been implemented in full or part any time. But in its hidebound casteism, its atrocious treatment of Dalits and women, it mirrors the mind of modern Indian society in practice. One only needs to scan through any Indian newspaper or one’s FB feed – through the stories of atrocities perpetrated on Dalits and women raped and humiliated – to see the ghost of Manu dancing gleefully on our sacred soil.

It is high time we exorcised it.