Vol. 3 · pages 336–340

323 THE TRIUMPH OF BRAHMANISM All their energy and their education has been spent in maintaining their own privileges against the good of the public. It has been the boast of many Hindu authors that the civilization of India is the most ancient civilization in the world. They will insist that there was no branch of knowledge in which their ancestors were not the pioneers. Open a book like “The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology” by Prof. Benoy Kumar Sarkar, or a book like “The Positive Sciences of the Ancient Hindus” by Dr. Brajendranath Seal one is overwhelmed with data touching upon the knowledge their ancestors had about various scientific subjects. From these books it would appear that the ancient Indians knew astronomy, astrology, biology, chemistry, mathematics, Medicine, minerology. Physics and in the view of the mass of people even aviation. All this may be very true. The important question is now how the ancient Indians discovered these positive sciences. The important question is why did the ancient Indians cease to make any progress in the sciences in which they were the pioneers? This sudden arrest in the progress of science in ancient India is as astounding as it is deplorable. In the scientific world India occupies a position which even if it be first among the primitive is certainly last among the civilized nation. How did it happen that a people who began the work of scientific progress stopped, halted on the way, left in its incohate and incomplete condition ? This is a question that needs to be considered and answered, not what the ancient Indians knew. There is only one answer to the question and it is a very simple answer. In ancient India the Bramhins were the only educated class. They were also the Class which was claiming to be above all others. Buddha disputed their claim for supremacy and declared a war on the Brahmins. The Brahmins acted as an Educated Class—as distinguished from an intellectual class—would act under the circumstances. It abandoned all pursuits and engaged itself in defending the claim of supremacy and the social, economic and political interests of its class. Instead of writing books on Science, the Brahmins undertook to write Smritis. Here is an explanation why the progress of science in India became arrested. Brahmins found it more important and more imperative to write Smritis to repel the Buddhist doctrine of social equality. How many Smritis did the Brahmins write ? Mr. Kane a great authority on the Smriti literature has computed their number to be 128. And what for ? The Smritis are called lawbooks which of course hide their nature. They are really treatises expounding the supremacy of the Brahmins and their rights to special privileges. The defence of Bramhanism was more important than the

324 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES progress of science. Bramhanism not only defended its previleges but set about extending them in a manner that would cover every descent man with shame. The Brahmins started particularly to expand the meaning of certain privileges granted to them by Manu. Manu had given the Bramhins the right to dana, gift. The dana was always intended to be money or chattel. But in course of time the concept of dana was expanded so as to include the gift of a woman which a Brahmin could keep as his mistress or who could be released by the Bramhin on commutation 1 of money payment. Manu designated the Bramhins as Bhu-devas, lords of the Earth. The Bramhins enlarged the scope of this statement and began to claim the right to sexual intercourse with women of other classes. Even queens were not exempt from this claim. Ludovico Di Varthema who came to India as a traveller in about 1502 A.D. records the following about the Brahmins of Calicut: “It is a proper, and the same time pleasant thing to know who these Brahmins are. You must know that they are the chief persons of the faith, as priests are among us. And when the King takes a wife, he selects the most worthy and the most honoured of these Brahamins and makes him sleep the first night with his wife, in order that he may deflower her. ” 2. Similarly Hamilton3 another writer says: “When the Samorin marries, he must not cohabit with his bride till the Nambourie (Nambudari Brahmin), or chief priest, has enjoyed her, and if he pleases, he may have three nights of her company, because the first fruits of her nuptials must be an holy oblation to the god she worships.” In the Bombay Presidency the priests of the Vaishnava sect claimed the right to deflower the women of their sect. This gave rise to the famous Maharaja Libel case brought by the chief priest of the Sect against one Karosondas Mulji in the High Court of Bombay in the year 1869 which shows that the right to claim the benefit of the first night was certainly effective till then. When such a right to sexual cohabitation for the first night could be extended against the generality of the lower classes the Brahmins did not hesitate to extend it. This they did particularly in Malabar. There, Manu designated the Brahmins as Bhu-devas, lords of the earth. The Brahmins enlarged the scope of this statement and began to claim the 1.I remember reading the report of case in which a Brahmin who had taken a married wife as Dana refused to release her even though communication was offered by her husband. 2. “The Travels of Ludovico Di Varthema” (Pub. Hakyt Society) Page 141. Varthema adds Do not imagine that the Brahmin goes willingly to perform this operation. The King is even obliged to pay him four hundred or five hudndred ducats. 3.New Account of the East Indies (1744) Vol. I. page 310.

325 THE TRIUMPH OF BRAHMANISM right of promiscuous sexual intercourse with the women folk of the other Classes. This happened particularly in Malabar. There 1 “The Brahman castes follow the Makatyam System that is the system by which the child belongs to its father’s family. They contract, within their own caste regular marriages, with all the ordinary legal and religious sanctions and incidents. But the Brahmin men are also in the habit of entering into Sambandhan-Unions with women of the lower castes.” This is not all. Observe further what the writer has to say: “Neither party to a Sambadhan Unions becomes thereby a member of the other family; and the offspring of the Union belong to their mothers tharwad (family) and have no sort of claim, so far as the law goes, to a share of their father’s property or to maintenance therefrom.” Speaking of the origin of this practice the author of the Gazetteer observes that the origin of this institution: “ Is found in the claim of the Bhu-devas ” or “ Earth Gods” (that the Brahmanas) and on a lower plain of the Kshatriyas or the ruling classes, to the first fruits of lower Caste Womanhood, a right akin to the medieval droit de Seigneurie.” It is an understatement to say that it is only a right to first fruits as the ‘right to the first night’ was called in the middle ages in Europe. It is more than that. It is a general right of the Brahmin against the lower caste to claim any woman of that class for mere prostitution, for the mere satisfaction of sexual appetite, without burdening the Brahmin to any of the obligations of marriage. Such were the rights which the Brahmins the spiritual precepts claimed against the laity!! The Borgese Popes have been run down in history as the most debauched race of spiritual preceptors who ascended the throne of Peter. One wonders whether they were really worse than the Brahmins of India. A purely intellectual Class, free to consider general good and having no interest of a class to consider, such as the one contemplated by Buddha is not to be had anywhere. For the limitations resulting from property on the freedom of intellect of the elite have not been generally recognized until very recently. But this want of an intellectual class has been made good in other countries by the fact that in those countries each Strata of Society has its educated class. There is safety, if no definite guidance, in the multiplicity of views expressed by different educated classes drawn from different strata of society. In such a multiplicity of views there is no danger of Society being misguided or 1 Gazetteer of Malabar and Anjengo District by Mr. C. A. Innes Vol. I. p. 95

326 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES misdirected by the views of one single educated class drawn from one single class of society and which is naturally bound to place the interest of its class before the interests of the country. By the change made by Brahmanism India ceased to have safe and sure guidance of an intellectual class. But what is worse is that the Hindus lost the safety and security which other, peoples have and which arises from the multiplicity of views expressed by various educated classes drawn from different strata of Society. By the denial of education to the Shudras, by diverting the Kshatrryas to military persuits, and the Vaishyas to trade and by reserving education to themselves the Brahmins alone could become the educated class—free to misdirect and misguide the whole society. By converting Varna into Caste they declared that mere birth was a real and final measure of the worth of a man. Caste and Graded inequality made disunity and discord a matter of course. All this disfigurement of the original Varna system would have been tolerable if it had remained a mere matter of social practice. But Brahmanism was not content to leave the matter there. It wanted to give the Chaturvarna in its changed and perverted form the force of law. This new Chaturvarna the making of Brahmanism occupies in the Manu Smriti as the Law of Persons and the Law of Family. Nobody can make a mistake about it. Manu made it an offence for a person of a lower Caste to arrogate to himself the status of a higher Caste or to pass off as a member of the higher Caste. X. 96. A man of low caste who through covetousness lives by the occupations of a higher one, the king shall deprive of his property and banish. XI. 56. Falsely attributing to oneself high birth, giving information to the king (regarding a crime), and falsely accusing one’s teacher, (are offences) equal to slaying a Brahmana. Here there are two offences, General Impersonation (X. 96) and impersonation by the Shudra (XI 56). Note also the punishments how severe they are. For the first the punishment is confiscation of property and banishment. For the second the punishment is the same as the punishment for causing the death of a Brahmin. The offence of personation is not unknown in modern jurisprudence and the Indian Penal Code recognizes it in section 419. But what is the punishment the Indian Penal Code prescribes for cheating by personation? Fine, and if imprisonment, then 3 years or both. Manu must be turning in his grave to find the British Government make so light of his law of Caste.

327 THE TRIUMPH OF BRAHMANISM Manu next proceeds to direct the king that he should execute this law. In the first place he appeals to the King in the name of his pious duty: VIII. 172. By preventing the confusion of Castes…………..the power of the King grows, and he prospers in this world and after death. Manu perhaps knows that the law relating to the confusion of Varna may not be quite agreeable to the conscience of the king and he avoids enforcement. Consequently Manu tells the King how in the matter of the execution of the laws the King should act: VIII. 177. Therefore let the King not heeding his own likes and dislikes behave exactly like Yama. i.e. he should be as impartial as Yama the Judge of the Dead. Manu however does not wish to leave the matter to the King as a mere matter of pious duty. Manu makes it a matter of obligation upon the King. Accordingly Manu lays down as a matter of obligation that: VIII. 410. The King should order a Vaishya to trade to lend money, to cultivate the land, or to lend cattle, and the Shudra to serve the twice born Caste. Again Manu reverts to the subject and say: VIII 418. The King should carefully compel Vaishyas and Sudras to perform the work (prescribed) for them; for if these two castes swerved from their duties they would throw this whole world into confusion. What if the Kings do not act up to this obligation. This law of Chaturvarna is so supreme in the eyes of Manu that Manu will not allow himself to be thwarted by a King who will not keep his obligation to maintain this law. Boldly Manu forges a new law that such a king shall be disposed. One can imagine how dear Chaturvarna was to Manu and to Brahmanism. As I have said the Chaturvarna of the Vedic system was better than caste system was not very favourable to the creation of a Society which could be regarded as one single whole possessing the Unity of the ideal society. By its very theory the Chaturvarna has given birth to four classes. These four classes were far from friendly. Often they were quarreling and their quarrels were so bitter that they cannot but be designated as Class wars. All the same this old Chaturvarna had two saving features which Brahminism most selfishly removed. Firstly there was no isolation among the Varnas. Intermarriage and interdining the two strongest bonds for unity had full play. There was no room for the different Varnas to develop that anti-social feeling which destroys the very basis of Society. While the Kshatriyas fought against the Brahmins and the Brahmins fought against the Kshatriyas there were