Shyam Charan Shrivastava was an upper class Caste Hindu of the Kayastha clans. His family was from a farm in the Jaalaun region in lower Uttar Pradesh. Thus he is of Landlord stock and had similar attitudes as the ones being critiqued below.
rediff.com: The Rediff Interview/Dr Kancha Ilaiah
January 17, 2000
Dr Ilaiah, 48, says his tirade against Hinduism stems from the inhuman and humiliating caste-ridden conditions in which he was born and brought up. Born in a backward caste family in Andhra Pradesh's Warangal district, he was lucky to get a university education because of the reservation system.
"I am a product of the post-Independence rural caste whom Brahminical forces wanted to destroy. So I will continue to agitate against Hinduism," he says.
In an interview with Senior Associate Editor,George Iype, he explains why he harbours so much anger against Hinduism.
Why are you a ferocious critic of Hinduism?
My criticism has grown out of my experiences and convictions in life. The Hindu religion and the Hindutva movement describe all Sudras, Chandalas and Adivasis as Hindus. That is wrong. I come from an Other Backward Class (OBC) family called the Kurumas. The question is if I am a Hindu, my parents should have known that they were part of a particular religion. But they never knew whether they belonged to the Hindu religion. Hinduism never initiated me or my people into its religion. We do not wear the threads, we cannot become temple priests, we do not have childhood formations like Brahminical children. Moreover, if I belong to Hinduism, I should share the food habits and ritual symbols of that religion. We do not share them also.
So, in your opinion, OBC Hindus do not believe in Hindu religious texts
OBC Hindus cannot believe in the religious texts for various reasons. Take Hindu religious texts like the Rig Veda and Bhagwad Gita. According to these books, the Sudras were born from the feet of God and the Brahmins from the head. So if we were born from the feet, how do we go towards the head, which belongs to the Brahmins?
I believe the Hindu religious texts are not divine. They did not come from God. Brahminical forces deliberately wrote these religious texts showing the entire Sudra community as their feet boys. This is a very dehumanising proposition. And the tragedy is there is no way that we, the lower caste people, can escape from the tyranny of the Brahmins.
Do you hate Hinduism?
Yes, I hate Hinduism. Hinduism is not ours, it is against us. If we have to become Hindus, the Brahmins will have to change the entire religious texts, our food habits, our gods and goddesses and images. I am angry at the Hindu gods.
Why are you angry with Hindu gods?
Look at the images of Hindu gods. They wield weapons. We read that Hindu gods killed our own ancestors. How can I worship the killers as divine? What kind of a religion is it? There are three major religions -- Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. These major religions were constructed by prophets who sacrificed and struggled in life for people's liberation. All these three religions never said that the larger sections of their people were born from the feet of God.
So you do not consider Hinduism a religion?
Is Hinduism a religion of the stature of Buddhism, Islam and Christianity? In my view, Hinduism is not a religion. It is a cult of worshipping certain violent figures. A religion never worships a violent figure. Religion is a very enlightened social force. Religion is a very civilised thing that came into existence. Religion establishes certain agreements and covenants.
Hinduism does not have any divine covenants. Hinduism is a cult of Brahmins, Baniyas and Kshatriyas worshipping violent gods. This cult was constructed against the Sudras, Chandalas and Adivasis. If it is not a cult, but a religion, it should have at least a holy book that gives all people equal rights. Does the Bhagwad Gita give equal rights? In the Bhagwad Gita, God says I have created four Varnas and the Sudra, Chandalas and Adivasis were created to serve the Brahmins. If that is the statement of a God, then I do not consider Hinduism a religion.
What should Hindu religious leaders do to create such an egalitarian relationship?
To begin with, they should sit down with the Sudras to rewrite a true Hindu religious holy book. It should be an egalitarian, spiritual democratic book written by the people's covenants. But again, for that, I think we the Sudras should be allowed to initiate the writing. Because we do not trust the Shankaracharyas and other religious leaders. We do not trust the Brahmin leaders. We cannot trust the sadhus and sanyasis who aregoing naked at the Kumbh Mela. Can we take those people who walk naked as spiritually advanced people?
All these Brahmins in the name of the Kumbh Mela are walking naked before the nation. I am terrified seeing the naked sadhus taking outprocessions. The sight is inhuman. Is it an enlightened religion? It is these VHP leaders and sadhus who are parading naked who want to take a decision whether the Ram Mandir should be built at the Babri mosque site.
This is the greatest tragedy of India.
If you are against everything in Hinduism, how would do you describe the religion?
Hinduism is basically a spiritual fascist cult. It does not give rights to the lower castes. If the Brahmins want us to become Hindus, they should respect our food, culture and language. Why do Hindu leaders say only vegetarianism is divine? Why do Hindu leaders say prayers should be only in Sanskrit? Why can't I pray in Telugu? Hindutva leader Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi is spending Rs 200 crore to establish Sanskrit schools across the country. Whom will he teach Sanskrit?
Let me tell you the statistics. Nearly 90 per cent of Brahmin students in the country are in English medium convent schools. They are sending their children to Christian schools and at the same time attacking Christian missionaries. Why should low caste Hindus learn Sanskrit? Having mastered Sanskrit, do we get the rights to control temples? What then are your struggles for?
Our struggle is to have our own religious rights. When we are not Hindus, don't we have the right to embrace any other religions that gives equality? Why are the Brahmins attacking Christianity and Islam? Because there is a possibility that during this era of globalisation, global religions like Christianity and Islam can firmly establish themselves in India. For spirituality and religion, there are no borders. If tomorrow, Hinduism gets established in Europe, will anybody stop it?
So when Christianity and Islam are here, why are the Brahmins objecting? Because they fear that the Sudras, Chandalas and Adivasis may get empowered with the new English education that the Christians are giving to our people. That is why they are attacking Christians these days. This is the grotesque conspiracy that Brahminical forces sitting and ruling us from Delhi under Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L K Advani and Arun Shourie have.
Why?
Brahmins are basically Aryans who came from outside. They brought the cow along with them. They were eating the flesh of cows. But they began worshipping the cow as a sacred animal after Buddha took up a campaign saying stop killing animals. Then they said the cow is a sacred animal and it is in the Constitution.
Look at the reality. Eighty per cent of the milk in India comes from buffaloes. Buffaloes are the native Indian animals, but they do not have any rights to be protected in the Constitution. Because the buffalo is a Dravidian animal, whereas the cow is an Aryan animal. The buffalo is a black animal and we are black people. We low caste people represent the rights of the buffaloes. Cows cannot be sacred and buffaloes cannot be devilish and yet India can become modern. It is not just possible. All Brahmins in India have been consumers in the history of India. They were never the producers. So, this has to be debated.
Are Hindu leaders ready for a debate with you on the points you have raised?
No, they are not ready for a debate. Even the Brahmins in the Communist and liberal parties are not ready for a debate. The people in the press are not ready for a debate. Because all these structures are headed by Brahmins. The question is inconvenient to all of them.
Human Rights Watch
III. THE CONTEXT OF CASTE VIOLENCE
The constitution has merely prescribed, but has not given any description of the ground reality. We can make a dent only if we recognise the fact that the caste system is a major source, indeed an obnoxious one, of human rights violations.
— R. M. Pal, "The Caste System and Human Rights Violations"17
With little land of their own to cultivate, Dalit men, women, and children numbering in the tens of millions work as agricultural laborers for a few kilograms of rice or Rs. 15 to Rs. 35 (US$0.38 to $0.88) a day. Most live on the brink of destitution, barely able to feed their families and unable to send their children to school or break away from cycles of debt
bondage that are passed on from generation to generation. At the end of day they return to a hut in their Dalit colony with no electricity, kilometers away from the nearest water source, and segregated from all non-Dalits, known as caste Hindus. They are forbidden by caste Hindus to enter places of worship, to draw water from public wells, or to wear shoes in caste Hindu presence. They are made to dig the village graves, dispose of dead animals, clean human waste with their bare hands, and to wash and use separate tea tumblers at neighborhood tea stalls, all because—due to their caste status—they are deemed polluting and therefore "untouchable." Any attempt to defy the social order is met with violence or economic retaliation.
As documented throughout this report, the perpetuation of human rights abuses against India's Dalit population is intimately connected to police abuse. Local police officials routinely refuse to register cases against caste Hindus or enforce relevant legislation that protects Dalits. Prejudiced by their own caste and gender biases, or under the thumb of influential landlords and upper-caste politicians, police not only allow caste Hindus to act with impunity but in many cases operate as agents of powerful upper-caste groups to detain Dalits who organize in protest against discrimination and violence, and to punish Dalit villagers because of their suspected support for militant groups.
The laws, however, have benefited very few and, due to a lack of political will, development programs and welfare projects designed to improve economic conditions for Dalits have generally had little effect. Dalits rarely break free from bondage or economic exploitation by upper-caste landowners.
Within the four principal castes, there are thousands of sub-castes, also called jatis, endogamous groups that are further divided along occupational, sectarian, regional and linguistic lines. Collectively all of these are sometimes referred to as "caste Hindus" or those falling within the caste system. The Dalits are described as varna-sankara: they are "outside the system"—so inferior to other castes that they are deemed polluting and therefore "untouchable." Even as outcasts, they themselves are divided into further sub-castes. Although "untouchability" was abolished under Article 17 of the Indian constitution, the practice continues to determine the socio-economic and religious standing of those at the bottom of the caste hierarchy. Whereas the first four varnas are free to choose and change their occupation, Dalits have generally been confined to the occupational structures into which they are born.
The Committee is particularly concerned at reports that people belonging to the scheduled castes and tribes are often prevented from using public wells or from entering cafes or restaurants and that their children are sometimes separated from other children in schools, in violation of article 5 (f) of the Convention.24
As part of village custom, Dalits are made to render free services in times of death, marriage, or any village function. During the Marama village festival in Karnataka state, caste Hindus force Dalits to sacrifice buffalos and drink their blood. They then have to mix the blood with cooked rice and run into the village fields without their chappals (slippers). The cleaning of
the whole village, the digging of graves, the carrying of firewood, and the disposal of dead animals are all tasks that Dalits are made to perform.26
Dalits have responded to ill-treatment by converting, en masse, to Buddhism, Christianity, and sometimes Islam. Once converted, however, many lose access to their scheduled-caste status and the few government privileges assigned to it. Many also find that they are ultimately unable to escape treatment as "untouchables."
Social Boycotts and Retaliatory Violence
Whenever Dalits have tried to organise themselves or assert their rights, there has been a backlash from the feudal lords resulting in mass killings of Dalits, gang rapes, looting and arsoning, etc. of Harijan [Dalit] basties [villages].
— National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes33
Violence Against Dalit Women
As Human Rights Watch was told by a government investigator in Tamil Nadu, "[n]o one practices untouchability when it comes to sex."36 Rape is a common phenomenon in rural areas. Women are raped as part of caste custom or village tradition. According to Dalit activists, Dalit girls have been forced to have sex with the village landlord.37 In rural areas,
"women are induced into prostitution (Devadasi system)..., which [is] forced on them in the name of religion."38 The prevalence of rape in villages contributes to the greater incidence of child marriage in those areas. Early marriage between the ages of ten years and sixteen years persists in large part because of Dalit girls' vulnerability to sexual assault by upper-caste men; once a girl is raped, she becomes unmarriageable. An early marriage also gives parents greater control over the caste into which their children are married.
Dalit women are also raped as a form of retaliation. Women of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes are raped as part of an effort by upper-caste leaders to suppress movements to demand payment of minimum wages, to settle sharecropping disputes, or to reclaim lost land. They are raped by members of the upper caste, by landlords, and by the police in pursuit of their male relatives.
The "landlords" wanted to reassert their feudal tyranny over the poor who have started becoming more vocal and by attacking the most vulnerable, women and children, they sent a clear message that they would not allow anyone to disturb the social structure... Women were raped and hacked. The huts and small houses in which the victims took shelter were burnt down. The shrill cries failed to draw the attention of the police posted a kilometre and a half away because their food came from the landlords' houses.42
Title: Terrorism in India during the freedom struggle.
Subject: TERRORISM -- India
Source: Historian, Spring93, Vol. 55 Issue 3, p469, 14p, 1bw
Author: Heehs, Peter
ISSN: 0018-2370
In his writings and speeches Aurobindo Ghose proposed what has been called a "religion of nationalism," where nationalism was regarded as not only high and noble but divinely ordained.
Like most Bengali groups, Barin Ghose's secret society was small, urban-based, and made up almost entirely of young Hindus of the bhadralok (respectable) class. Of the thirty-six members for whom adequate records exist, thirty-two belonged to the three castes that make up the Bengali bhadralok.
Ghose came by his conviction of divine leadership not through the profession of Hinduism as a creed but through the practice of yoga, a spiritual discipline also practiced by other Extremists and revolutionaries. Leaders as well as the rank and file were strongly influenced by such Hindu scriptures as the Bhagavad Gita and the Devi Mahatmyam but usually did not approach these texts as orthodox believers. Many young Bengalis, including some future terrorists, were influenced by the teachings of Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902). Revolutionary (and later Comintern leader) M. N. Roy was impressed by Vivekananda's insistence on self-reliance and "man-making," not the fundamentally spiritual content of his message.[9]
Two people connected with the rise of revolutionary activity in Bengal did have some contact with Russian anarchists. Margaret Noble, an Irish disciple of Vivekananda, whom he renamed Sister Nivedita, corresponded with one such anarchist, Peter Kropotkin, and later met him in London.
The outbreak of World War I led revolutionaries to hope that they could obtain military assistance from Germany. They did get some money, but the only significant attempt to smuggle weapons into India ended in disaster.
Ghose came by his conviction of divine leadership not through the profession of Hinduism as a creed but through the practice of yoga, a spiritual discipline also practiced by other Extremists and revolutionaries. Leaders as well as the rank and file were strongly influenced by such Hindu scriptures as the Bhagavad Gita and the Devi Mahatmyam but usually did not approach these texts as orthodox believers. Many young Bengalis, including some future terrorists, were influenced by the teachings of Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902). Revolutionary (and later Comintern leader) M. N. Roy was impressed by Vivekananda's insistence on self-reliance and "man-making," not the fundamentally spiritual content of his message.[9]
Title: Memory and India's identity crisis.
Subject: INDIA -- Social conditions
Source: World & I, May94, Vol. 9 Issue 5, p430, 8p, 4bw
Author: Smith, Brian K.
ISSN: 0887-9346
This kind of wordplay is unappreciated by the 100 million Muslims who, at the time of the partition of the formerly British colony into Muslim Pakistan and secular India, cast their lot with the latter. Although Muslims share the same culture and languages with Hindus and have lived in India for centuries, they now find themselves labeled "foreigners." Bal Thackeray, the leader of the radical Shiv Sena (God's Army), which was behind much of the violence directed at Muslims during the Bombay riots of January 1993, has declared that Muslims must be expelled from the "Hindu motherland." In a well-publicized interview, Thackeray, an admirer of Adolf Hitler, compared India's Muslims to the Jews in Nazi Germany: 'Have they behaved like the Jews in Nazi Germany? If so, there is nothing wrong if they are treated as Jews were in Germany."
The battle for India's past is also being waged in classrooms of the elementary and high schools. Textbooks in states controlled by the BJP have been rewritten to glorify the "Hindu past" and excoriate the policies of the "Muslim invaders." In the Indian version of "linguistic cleansing,' cities and other geographical locales with nonHindu names have been given new designations more in keeping with the fundamentalist vision of the country: Delhi has become "Indraprasth," Lucknow is "Lakshmanpuri," and the Arabian and Indian oceans are now "Sindbu Sagar" and "Ganga Sagar" respectively.
India's current self-identity pivots on how it understands its past, and that past is undergoing reevaluation. How this young nation-state conceives of, or reconceives, its own history will determine whether India will survive as the world's largest secular democracy or enter the new millennium as the newest, and by far the most populous, of the world's theocracies.
The Week; India's No. 1 Weekly News Magazine
MATTS OF CRIME
Murder, rape and arms smuggling are a way of life for the sadhus of the matts in Ayodhya and Bihar.
KANHAIYA BHELARI in Ayodhya and Patna
Nov 23, 1997
Tradition binds them to austerity, but opulence is their way. They are sworn to celibacy, but marry they do and have children. Attaining salvation is their ultimate goal, but for property they aim. In politicians they trust and on criminals they rely. They are the mahants (head priests) and sadhus of the thousands of matts in Ayodhya and other parts of eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
The matts, there are no fewer than 8,000 in Ayodhya and about 7,000 in Bihar, are an industry by themselves, with some like the Gorakhpur Temple in Uttar Pradesh raking in offerings worth Rs 50,000 each day. And the mahants live it up. According to local reports, about 200 mahants in Ayodhya have cars including Maruti 1000 and Ford; 25 have jeeps and around a thousand have two-wheelers. Colour TVs, refrigerators and telephones are passe in mahants' homes. "The mahants of Ayodhya are enjoying a luxurious life, unlike the sadhuswe read about in our religious texts," said Raghubar Sharan, a local journalist of the Hindi daily, Dainik Jagaran. And many of them in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have criminal cases against them. Savour this:
The matts are hot property, literally. It would seem that starting a matt is the easiest thing to do. Invite a mahant of one of the big matts to the building one wants made into a matt. He places idols of gods, Ram, Sita, Laxman or any other, and pronounces it a matt! The person who owns the place becomes its mahant, with disciples there for the picking.
Title: A different kind of guru.
Subject: MANGALWADI, Vishal -- Interviews; DEMOCRACY -- India
Source: Christianity Today, 01/12/98, Vol. 42 Issue 1, p42, 2p, 1bw
Author: Aikman, David
Abstract: Presents an interview with Vishal Mangalwadi, India's foremost Christian intellectual, about the failure of India's experiment in democracy. Information on Mangalwadi's education and works; Mangalwadi's views on India's democratic future; How Mangalwadi became a Christian; Status of democracy in India.
AN: 88588
ISSN: 0009-5753
Mangalwadi was interviewed for CHRISTIANITY [today by former Time magazine senior correspondent and the author of Hope: The Heart's Great Quest (Servant 1995) David Aikman.
Despite all kinds of problems, India has somehow managed to keep its democracy functioning for half a century. Why are you so pessimistic about India's democratic future?
For all practical purposes, democracy (as an ideal) is finished. There is hardly anyone who would fight for democracy now. It continues because there is no consensus on what to replace it with. Essentially, the days in which we are living resemble the end of the Mogul era (1707-57) when the British Empire began in India. The human-rights violations in India are pretty terrible. A Punjabi superintendent of police not long ago committed suicide because it was about to be revealed that he had actually killed up to 3,000 people.
But what about the popular image outside India of Gandhian nonviolence and India's democratic ways?
Gandhi in the movie is fictionalized. Even Mrs. [Indira] Gandhi, the prime minister who suspended democratic freedoms during 1975-77, said, "We wrote the constitution, and we can change everything in it." She and others considered knowable moral law as an absurd thing that liberal democracies believed in, not realizing that the system worked as well as it did in America because of the impact of the pulpit on the habits of ordinary people. Human rights may seem "natural," but Mrs. Gandhi said that human rights are what the state gives.
I see the idea of human rights and human dignity as being a peculiarly biblical concept. In Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin, a Catholic Italy a Lutheran Germany an Orthodox Russia succumbed to totalitarianism because of liberal humanist ideas that man can create a utopia. Joseph Campbell [the late renowned scholar of comparative mythology] and Carl Jung were both shocked after they came to India. They realized that the natural law is not natural. The fact is there are consequences to teaching that human beings are nothing but animals. This "truth" destroys the entire basis of civilized political life.
Your name is associated with the fight to stop the practice of widow burning. How did that happen?
In the 1980s, I talked to a German follower of the Hare Krishna movement who was glorifying sati [the traditional Hindu practice of burning widows alive after the deaths of their husbands; while officially outlawed under the British, it is still practiced]. I had never heard a man defend widow burning before. I then wrote a story for the Indian press about how half a million people in one Indian province were lionizing a widow for having submitted to sat': In this case, the out cry forced the prime minister to arrest the family members, but they were acquitted in 1997. I resigned from the Janata party on the issue of widow burning, which some party members approved of. I was then invited to join the party of the lower castes, Bahujan Samah Party (BSP) and organize its wing in our part of the country.
Do you have any hope for democracy in India?
Not without the gospel. The breakdown of liberal democracy and the new fascism of Hinduism is leading them toward a German-style "nationalism." We have religious sects importing planeloads of arms for civil war [a reference to a planeload of arms brought to India by a Hindu sect from Pakistan]. There is enough high-explosive material stored up in every Indian city to blow up all of India.
The Week; India's No. 1 Weekly News Magazine
Age of unreason
Superstition: Bovines are 'divine messengers', women are 'incarnations of goddesses' in lawless rural Bihar
KANHAIAH BHELARI in Patna , Oct 18, 1998
Sadhus in Uttar Pradesh have been anointing mentally disturbed women as incarnations of goddesses. Instant legends have been concocted at will. Thugs of Bundelkhand and eastern UP have colluded with the sadhus to extort money.
The state government has launched an operation, aptly named 'Operation Devi', to free such women from the hands of the thugs. It has arrested 29 sadhus.
Neerja Dixit of Jalaun district, who suffers from psychotic disorder, was declared to be the incarnation of Saraswati last year. On April 5 the police had to shoot two persons dead to rescue her. A month earlier Usha Kumari, 16, of Dhauna Manpura village in Jalaun, was hailed the incarnation of Goddess Guna. A few sadhus forced her to go on a fast to enhance her 'supernatural' powers. That aggravated her mental condition. The police raided the village on the directive of the then CM Mayawati.
Title: Finding God in the jacuzzi.
Subject: OSHO Commune International (Organization)
Source: World Press Review, Sep97, Vol. 44 Issue 9, p40, 1p, 1bw
Author: Deshmukh, Vinita
ISSN: 0195-8895
Buddha got it all wrong, as did the endless procession of saints and gurus who gave up the comforts of home for an encounter with God. New Age gurus are only too happy to pave the road to moksha [salvation] with gold, and if the going gets rough, they'll even provide a limo with a liveried chauffeur.
Kaeed Gandhi, 19, a first-year student, is "heavily into" spirituality. Son of an Abu Dhabi-based industrialist, Gandhi first encountered spirituality in a swimming pool. "I was swimming at the Residency Club, and I met a guy who swam beautifully," he recalls. "We got talking, and I found he was Swami A. Parthasarthy's disciple. He got me interested, and I've been attending his spiritual discourses since then." Gandhi's spiritual inclination hasn't changed his lifestyle in the least. "The inner peace and joy I have attained, in fact, is helping me to seek my pleasures more vivaciously," he insists.