Gurbani Summary 5

Sita’s Curse, Shambuk’s Silence

Understanding Caste by Gail Omvedt

In this chapter, the author talks about the Hindu (brahminical) identity of India. She says this Hindu identity of India cannot be religious as there are other religions that reside in India and are distinct from Hinduism like Sikhism, Islam, Islam, etc. She says the other identity could that be of its population- The Hindu Civilization- the civilization living beyond Indus as Sindhu is the original pronunciation. She says this identity in itself is egalitarian and anti-Brahmanic as it encompasses diverse races, ethnicities and cultural groups. But today the identity of India is one that has been tailored by the Hindu Nationalist by conflating the pluralistic and territorial definition of Hindu with the religious one which gives dominance to a brahminic core.

She says that the modern debate about the identity of India is much deeper than just the Hindu-Muslim debate. She is of the opinion that this debate is between the upholders of the brahminical patriarchy and the minorities that are the lower class/caste. She says that all that the radical Dalit scholars have asked from the upholders of brahminical Hinduism is that the abandon the Smrutis and Shastras to be welcomed but this has never happened. This demand is evaded on secular grounds and a more political and economic solution is sought for. And therefore despite the continued and never-ending struggles of the minorities the identity of India remains a Brahmanic Hindu one.

This leads the many minority leaders and their followers to despair as they are sure that there is no hope in tradition because the entire literature and mythology is pervaded with Brahmanism. The Shudras and ati-Shudras have entirely been excluded from history and wherever they are mentioned it is to represent the atrocities of the system. She says that the low caste heroes of the Puranas that is Kama, Eklavya and Vidur were probably not as docile and submissive as they are portrayed and that they might have put up a fight against the atrocities of the varna system but they have been silenced by the reinterpretation of the text by the upholders of the Brahmanism.

She then goes on to talk about Sita and that how she warned him against killing the Rakshasas in their own land to which he replies that to protect the caste hierarchy and the promise given to the brahmans of the Dandakaranya forest he has to do what his dharma calls for. She says that there are different interpretations of the Ramayana and they vary from place to place. For example, the Lakshman rekha was only introduced in Tulsidasa’s Ramayana and that one version of Ramayana in UP shows Sita to be a determined woman who after being mistreated by Rama refuses to live with him and gives her twins her fathers name. Thus it becomes impossible to view Ram without the themes of domination, exploitation and patriarchy and they threaten to come forward when the Hindu Nationalists use Ramayana as a picture of Hindu Orthodoxy.

She says that India does not need a Ram Rajya as we don’t have an ‘other’ to fight anymore. She says taking pride in the imaginary victories of the upper caste will not serve any purpose to the Indian society as this idea is a fractured one.