There is no taint of untouchability, says Atri, when a person is touched by an untouchable in a temple, during religious processions, sacrifices, festivals, and marriages (verse 249). Śātātapa avers that there is no dosha (lapse) in touching untouchables on the public road, in a religious procession or in a public fight, or when the whole village is struck by calamity. Brihaspati concurs that there is no error, and hence no prayascitta (penance) if one comes in contact with untouchables at a sacred place, in marriage and religious processions, in battle, or when the town or village is on fire. The Nityācārapaddhati affirms that one need not bathe on coming in contact with chandalas and pukkasas if they stand near a temple of Vishnu and have come to worship Vishnu.
The Smrtyarthāsara acknowledges untouchables entering temples. Indeed, the evidence from religious literature suggests that so-called untouchables were not excluded from worship. When Yajnavalkya I.93 or Gautama IV.20 say the chandala is outside dharma, it only meant he was excluded from Vedic rites such as the upanayana (sacred thread), and not that he was prohibited from reverencing Hindu deities or released from adherence to the Hindu moral code. He could worship murtis of Vishnu. The Nirnayasindhu cites the Devipurana authorizing antyajas to build a Bhairava temple. In south India, Tiruppana Alvar hailed from the depressed classes and Nammalvar was a Vellala.
P.V. Kane asserts that the early smritis mention only four varnas; there was no fifth varna and modern references to untouchability violate smriti tradition (History of Dharmaśāstra, Vol. II, Pt. I). Both Panini and Patanjali included chandalas and mrtapas in the shudra varna. Angiras also regarded chandalas as shudras. It was society, for reasons historians must decide, that began differentiating between shudras and castes like candalas, and added a growing number of castes to a list of ‘untouchables;’ the sastras do not legitimize these practices.
Given this explicit inclusion of all castes within the fold of dharma and temple worship, it is unfortunate that the ugly face of Hindu arrogance has risen, for the second time in two years, in Orissa’s Kendrapara district. In July 2004, over a hundred Dalits of Badanka village threatened to convert to Christianity in frustration at upper castes excluding them from the village temple. Bajrang Dal activists had then rushed to bridge the caste divide, but their intervention clearly failed to yield lasting dividends.
Hence the shameful standoff spanning several days, in November 2006, as Dalits were denied entry inside the Kendrapara Jagannath temple owned by the erstwhile royal family. Right-thinking citizens are perturbed over the silence of the Shankaracharyas and the Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha. In a communication to concerned Hindus, VHP president Ashok Singhal claims that volunteers led by Swami Laxmananand Saraswati visited the spot and their efforts led to the demolition of the walls with peepholes for darshan by Dalits and the creation of an environment in which all members of society could enjoy equal rights to darshan.
I do not wish to contest Mr. Singhal’s claims, but all news reports have credited the remedial measures taken in Kendrapara to the district administration. There is no mention of any spiritual leader visiting the site; attempts to elicit guidance from the Puri Shankaracharya in the matter of Dalit entry in the temple met with stony silence for days. I at least have not seen any positive statement from the Puri matham. Mr. Singhal has expressed surprise at the Kendrapara incident because he was under the impression that Jagannath temples are open to all Hindus irrespective of class, creed, and gender, as is the case in Puri.
His surprise is a timely warning of the need for eternal vigilance in preserving and upholding the inclusive spirit of the sanatana dharma. A new social evil in the form of upper caste cussedness vis-à-vis those considered lower in the social scale must be recognized and nipped in the bud. Besides Jagannath, there have been incidents at Shrinathji and at Sulia in Rajasthan.
Kendrapara deserves serious attention because the Dalits, led by the same Ashok Mallick who threatened conversion to Christianity two years ago, have now threatened to convert to Buddhism. Many Hindus suffer from the delusion that conversion to the Dhamma is a safe outlet as it keeps Dalits within the Hindu fold. Actually, Gautama’s path has always had a tendency to depart from fundamental Indic traditions. Prof. Arvind Sharma says Ashoka made Buddhism ancient India’s only state-sponsored dharma; moreover, he used the resources of a Hindu kingdom to propagate this faith in his own realms and even abroad.
This is a sharp reversal of the Hindu tradition that the dharma of the people is the rajadharma of the ruler, a custom that goes back to at least the Ramayana era, and is the reason for Rama’s forsaking Sita. More pertinently, Prof. Sharma says, in the modern era, the Buddhism of Babasaheb Ambedkar departs from Buddha’s advice to not renounce one’s natal religion in order to follow his path. At Yevala in 1935, Ambedkar said he was born a Hindu but would not die a Hindu, and in his famous speech at Nagpur on 15 October 1956, he asserted he was “renouncing” the Hindu religion.
The significance of this statement must not be underestimated. Unlike in the ancient period when Buddhists comprised a community of monks and survived with State and mercantile patronage, Ambedkar single-handedly created a Buddhist laity in India; that too, a community with animosities towards Hindu society. This laity increasingly borrows its rhetoric from missionaries and the financial sources of its activism are questionable. It is a soft underbelly of Hindu society; we ignore its potential danger at our own peril.
The core of Hindu dharma lies in a hierarchy of values, not a hierarchy of castes; the varna system rests on this premise. This is also the basis of the apparent tension between the inclusive embrace of the tradition and it’s apparently exclusivist aspects. The bottom line, however, is upholding dharma. Those who deny the religious rights of Dalits are at par with the asuras who hindered the sacrifices of devas and rishis. Dharma involves defeating asuric tendencies within ourselves; Hindu leaders cannot afford to be silent spectators to Dalit exclusion from temples.
The Pioneer, 9 January 2007