Vol. 3 · pages 126–130

113 THE HINDU SOCIAL ORDER : ITS ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES Every member must follow the trade assigned to the class to which he belongs. It leaves no scope for individual choice, individual inclination. An individual under the Hindu social order is bound to the profession of his ancestor. It is an inexorable law from which he cannot escape. The principle does not stop with fixity of occupation. It grades the several occupations in terms of respectability. This is what Manu says:— “X. 80. Among the several occupations for gaining a livelihood the most commendable respectively for the Brahmans, Kshatriyas and the Vaishyas are the teaching of the Vedas, defending the people and trade. The third principle on which the Hindu social order is founded is the fixation of people within their respective classes. There is nothing strange or peculiar in the fact that the Hindu social order recognizes classes. There are classes everywhere and no society is without them. Families, cliques, clubs, political parries, nay communities, gangs engaged in criminal conspiracies, business corporations which prey upon the public are to be found in all societies in all parts of the world. Even a free social order will not be able to get rid of the classes. What a free social order aims to do is to prevent isolation and exclusiveness being regarded by the classes as an ideal to be followed. For so long as the classes do not practise isolation and exlusiveness they are only non-social in their relations towards one another. Isolation and exclusiveness make them anti-social and inimical towards one another. Isolation makes for rigidity of class consciousness, for institutionalizing social life and for the dominance of selfish ideals within the classes. Isolation makes life static, continues the separation into a privileged and underprivileged, masters and servants. Not so much the existence of classes as the spirit of isolation and exlusiveness which is inimical with a free social order. What a free social order endeavours to do is to maintain all channels of social endosmosis. This is possible only when the classes are free to share in an extensive number of common interests, undertakings and expenses, have a large number of values in common, when there is a free play back and forth, when they have an equable opportunity to receive and to take from others. Such social contacts must and does dissolve custom, makes for an alert and expanding mental life and not only occasion but demand reconstruction of mental attitudes. What is striking about the Hindu social order is its ban on free inter-change and inter-course between different classes of Hindu society. There is a bar against inter-dining and inter-marriage. But Manu goes to the length of interdicting ordinary social intercourse. Says Manu:

114 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES IV. 244. “He, who seeks to preserve an exalted rank, must constantly form connections with the highest and best families, but avoid the worst and the meanest. IV. 245. Since a priest, who connects himself with the best and the highest of men, avoiding the lowest and worst, attains eminence; but sinks by an opposite conduct, to the class of the servile. IV. 79. Not let him tarry even under the shade of the same tree with outcaste for the great crimes, nor with Chandalas, nor with Puccasas, nor with idiots, nor with man proud of wealth, nor with washermen and other vile persons, nor with Antyevasins.” The Hindu social order is opposed to fraternity. It does not admit the principle of equality. Far from recognising equality it makes inequality its official doctrine. What about liberty? So far as choice of occupation goes, there is none. Everyone has his occupation determined for him. Only thing left to do is to carry it on. As to freedom of speech it exists. But it exists only for those who are in favour of the social order. The freedom is not the freedom of liberalism which was expressed by Voltaire when he said “I wholly disapprove of what you say and will defend to the death your right to say it. “This is clear from what Manu has to say about Logic and dialectics. “IV. 29-30. No guest must stay in his house without being honoured according to his ability, with a seat, food, a couch, water, or roots and fruits. Let him not honour even by a greeting heretics, men who follow forbidden occupations, men who live like cats, rogues, logicians (arguing against the Veda) and those who live like herons. II. 10. But by Sruti (Revelation) is meant the Vedas and by Smriti (tradition) the Institutes of the sacred law; those two must not be called into question in any matter, since from those two the sacred law shone forth. II. 11. Every twice-born man, who, relying on the Institutes of dialectics, treats with contempt those two sources (of the law), must be cast out by the virtuous as an atheist and a scorner of the Veda. II. 12. The Veda, the sacred tradition, the customs of virtuous men, and one’s own pleasure, they declare to be visibly the fourfold means of defining the sacred law.” The reasons for this are made manifest by Manu who says: II. 6. “The whole Veda is the (first) source of the sacred law, next the tradition and the virtuous conduct of those who know the (Veda further) also the customs of holy men, and (finally) self-satisfaction :

115 THE HINDU SOCIAL ORDER : ITS ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES II. 7. Whatever law has been ordained for any (person) by Manu; that has been fully declared in the Veda; for that (sage was) omniscient.” In this freedom there is not freedom for dialecticians, no freedom for logicians to criticise the social order which means there is no freedom at all. What about liberty of action ? In the sense of effective choice, there is no room for it in the Hindu social order. The Hindu social order leaves no choice to the individual. It fixes his occupation. It fixes his status. All that remains for the individual to do is to conform himself to these regulations. The same must be said with regard to political liberty. The Hindu social order does not recognise the necessity of a representative government composed of the representatives chosen by the people. Representative Government rests on the belief that people must be governed by law and law can be made only by the representative of the people. The Hindu social order recognises the first part of this thesis which says that people must be governed by law. But it denies the second part of the thesis which says that law can be made only by the representatives chosen by the people. The tenets of the Hindu social order is that the law by which people are to be governed is already made and is to be found in the Vedas. Nobody has a right to add to and subtract from it. That being so, a representative assembly of the people is unnecessary. Political liberty which is liberty to frame laws and to make and unmake Government is futility for which there is no place in the Hindu social order. To sum up, the Hindu social order is an order based on classes and not on individual. It is an order in which classes are graded one above the other. It is an order in which the status and functions of the classes are determined and fixed. The Hindu social order is a rigid order. No matter what changes take place in the relative position of an individual his social status as a member of the class he is born in relation to another person belonging to another class shall in no way be affected. The first shall never become the last. The last shall never become the first. zz

CHAPTER 3 The Hindu Social Order: Its Unique Features So far the discussions were confined to describing the essentials of the Hindu social order. Besides its essentials, the Hindu social order has some unique features. These unique features are as important as the essentials. No study of the Hindu social order which does not make any reference to them can be regraded as complete or accurate. What are these special features ? The special features of the Hindu social order are three in number. Of these three, the most striking is the worship of the superman. In this respect the Hindu social order is nothing but Nietzsche’s Gospel put in action. Nietzsche himself never claimed any originality for his theory of the superman. He admitted and avowed that he borrowed it from the Manu Smriti. In his treatise, called Anti-Christ this is what Nietzsche said:— “After all, the question is, to what end are falsehoods perpetrated ? The fact that, in Christianity,’ Holy’ ends are entirely absent, constitutes my objection to the means it employs. Its ends are only bad ends; the poisoning, the calumination and the denial of life, the contempt of the body, the degradation and self-pollution of man by virtue of the contempt of sin,— consequently its means are bad as well. My feelings are quite the reverse when I read the law book of Manu, an incomparably intellectual and superior work, which it would be a sin against the spirit even to mention in the same breath with the Bible. You will guess immediately why it has a genuine philosophy behind it. In it, not merely an evil smelling Jewish distillation of Rabbinism and superstition—it gives something to chew even to the most fastidious psychologist. And, not to forget the most important point of all, it is fundamentally different from the very kind of Bible; by means of it the noble classes, the philosophers and the warriors guard and guide the masses; it is replete with noble values, it is filled with a feeling of

117 THE HINDU SOCIAL ORDER : ITS UNIQUE FEATURES perfection with saying yea to life, triumphant sense of well-being in regard to itself and to life,—the Sun shines upon the whole book. All those things which Christianity smothers with its bottomless vulgarity; procreation, women, marriage are here treated with earnestness, with reverence, with love and confidence. How can one possibly place in the hands of children and women, a book that contains those vile words;’ to avoid fornication let every man have his wife, let every woman have her own husband….. It is better to marry than to burn. And is it decent to be a Christian so long as the very origin of man is Christianised—that is to say, befouled, by the idea of the immaculate conception.” Nietzsche never got any respectful or serious hearing in his own country. In his own words, he was ‘sometimes defied as the philosopher of the aristocracy and squiarchy, sometimes hooted at, sometimes pitied and sometimes boycotted as an inhuman being.’ Nietzsche’s philosophy had become identified with will to power, will to violence and denial of spiritual values, sacrifice, servility to and debasement of the common man in the interest of the Superman. His philosophy with these high spots had created a feeling of loathsomeness and horror in the minds of the people of his own generation. He was utterly neglected if not shunned and Nietzsche himself took comfort by placing himself among the ‘posthumous men’. He foresaw for himself a remote public, centuries after his own time to appreciate him. Here too Nietzsche was destined to be disappointed. Instead of there being any appreciation of his philosophy the lapse of time has only augmented the horror and loathing which people of his generation felt for Nietzsche. Having regard to the vile nature of Nietzsche’s philosophy some people may not be ready to believe that the Hindu social order is based on the worship of the Superman. Let the Manu Smriti speak on this point. This is what Manu says with regard to the position of the Brahmin in the Hindu social order. I. 93. “As the Brahmana sprang from Prajapati’s (i.e. God’s) mouth, as he was first-born, and as he possesses the Veda, he is by right the Lord of this whole creation.” I. 94. “For the self-existent (Swayambhu) i.e. God having performed austerities, produced him first from his own mouth, in order that the offerings might be conveyed to the Gods and Manes and that this universe might be preserved.” I. 95. “What created being can surpass him, through whose mouth the Gods continually consume the sacrificial viands and the Manes the offerings to the dead.”