|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Untouchable Saints:
An Indian Phenomenon
People seek meaning in their teaching in keeping with the contingencies of contemporary times. The only thing that remains common to the saints has been, for many centuries, their core teaching: love, affection and submission. Bhakti is the key word here, yet their common followers, especially the upper castes, while singing paeans to Bhakti, ensure that they do not show much love for their untouchable brethren. Such irony is visible even in the travails of the saints themselves. Among such saints are the protagonists of the current volume: Nandanar and Tirupan Alvar in the south, Chokhamela and his family from Maharashtra, comprising Soyrabai, Karmamela, Nirmala and Banka, and Ravidas from the north. Contemporary scholars presume the oral tradition concerning them and their songs to be the "authentic voices of untouchables". It is worth retelling simply to remind our larger society of the grave disabilities that were heaped by the brahminical order on so many of our countrymen in the name of untouchability. Prejudiced opinions were created. Vilification of entire population was common. Damning them for being non-meritorious was justified as natural and no amount of contrary evidence would enable the brahminical order to change its opinion, unless they were forced to change through the order of the boot, much as is happening today through democratic pressures. Our radical friends, many of them from untouchable castes and more militant in their search of an egalitarian society, even denied any importance to many of these Bhakti saints. The saints were far too forgiving for contemporary tastes. Therefore, the essays in this volume are even more important for having documented, quite competently, the lives and creations of these saints. Vincentnathan shows how the untouchables of Tamil Nadu tell the legend of Nandanar to establish that they are capable of a religiosity superior to that of caste Hindus and that their lowly position is a consequence of the unfair restrictions placed on them by caste Hindus. Prentiss recounts the version of the Nandanar legend where, when the upper castes deny Nandanar, Shiva himself bestows the sacred thread on him and absorbs Nandanar into his own body in the form of the flowing scarf that we see even today in the south Indian statues of the dancing Nataraj. Mokashi-Punekar introduces us to the story of Chokhamela and his family. Belonging to a community of devotees called the varkaris. Devotee of the God Vithhal of Pandharpur, affectionately known as Vithoba, Chokhamela repeatedly referred to his being of the Mahar caste. His poetry, praising the Lord is popular even to this day and sung by the people of all castes. Yet, it was only after Sane Guruji, Maharashtrian reformer, sat on a fast in protest against the Brahmins of Pandharpur in 1947 that the Untouchables were allowed inside the temple. V. L. Manjul’s eyewitness account of how that temple was opened is collected in this volume. Despite so much abuse, Chokhamela continued to sing songs of joy and devotion. For that peculiarity the more militant of untouchables in contemporary Maharashtra, wedded to an aggressive idea of egalitarianism, ignore Chokhamela. Lochtefeld and Schaller, in their essays, collect the various versions of the life story of Ravidas and the satire and rhetoric in his poetry. Just for the large amount of not-readily-available information that this volume contains, the curious reader could use this as a source book and then cry and be ashamed in equal measure for the indignities that the brahminical order has heaped over centuries on others in the name of merit.
|
Saints
