WHY I AM NOT A HINDU

            I was not born a Hindu for the simple reason that my parents did not know that they were Hindus. This does not mean that I was born as a Muslim, a Christian, a Buddhist, a Sikh or a Parsee. My illiterate parents, who lived in a remote South Indian Village, did not know that they belong to any religion at all. People belong to a religion only when they know that they are part of the people who worship that God, when they go to those temples and take part in the rituals and festivals of that religion. My parents had only one identity and that was their caste: they were Kurumaas. Their festivals were local, their God and Goddesses were local, and sometimes these were even specific to one village. No centralized religious symbols existed for them. This does not mean they were tribals. My ancestors took to life on the plains about 500 years ago. They were integrated into the village economy, paid taxes to the village panchayat or to the state administration in whichever form the administration required. As long as they were shepherds, they paid the tax in the form of pullara (levy for sheep-breeding). In the years before I was born, they shifted the occupation from sheep-breeding to agriculture and paid land rent to the local landlord and to the tehesil office. Even in my childhood I remember my parents paying taxes both for sheep-breeding and for cultivating the land. But they never paid a religion tax, something which all feudal religions normally demand. Not only that, they never went to a temple in which they could meet villagers belonging to all castes. In fact, there was no temple where all the village people could meet on a regular basis.

                This does not mean that my family alone was excluded from the religious process because it was a family that could be ignored or neglected. Not so. Far two generations my ancestors had been the caste heads. My mother and her mother-in-law (that is, my grand mother) were members of a leading family of the Kurumaa caste. In the village economy, Kurumaas, Gollas, Goudaas, Kapuus, Shalaas, Chakaalies, Mangalies and Maadigaas, formed the majority in terms of numbers. The entire village economy was governed by the daily operations of these castes.

 CULTURAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE HINDUS AND US

            Let me now narrate how my childhood experiences were shaped. The social structure in which I first became conscious of the world around me was a Kurumaa social structure. My playmates, friends, and of course relatives, all belonged to the Kurumaa caste. Occasionally the friendship circle extended to Goudaa boys and Kaapu boys. We were friends because we were all part of the cattle-breeding youth. We took the cattle to the field and then began playing Chirragone  (our cricket), gooleelu  (a game with marbles), dongaata  (a hide-and seek game), and so on. Surprisingly, whenever a Goudaa friend came to my house he would eat with us, but sit slightly apart; when we went to Kaapu homes their parents would give us food but make us sit a little distance away. While eating we were not supposed to touch each other. But later we could play together and drink together from the rivers and streams. If we had carried our mid-day food to the cattle field, we sometimes attempted to touch each other's food, but suddenly the rules that our parents had fixed would make their appearance: we would speak insultingly of each others' castes and revert to eating separately. Within moments, however, we were together again.

                Agriculture being a collective activity of the village, the cows, bulls and buffaloes were commonly owned as properly of many castes. This was perhaps a meeting ground for the village economy. Thus when we went along with cattle, social life on the cattle ground became an inter-caste affair. But as we grew up, this life we had in common and the shared consciousness began splitting even in terms of production relations. My Kurumaa friends and I withdrew from common cattle-tending activities and were trained in sheep breeding, which is a specific occupation of Kurumaas and Gollaas alone. At the same time, my Goudaa friends were drawn into their toddy tapping and Kaapu friends into plough driving.

THE CASTE TRAINING OF BOYS AND GIRLS

Each one of us was supposed to pick up the language of our particular caste. I was introduced to the specific language of sheep and sheep-rearing tasks. I was taught the different names of the sheep—bolli gorre, pulla gorre, nalla gorre, and so on. I learnt about the diseases that the sheep were afflicted with, how a delivery should be 'midwifed', how young ones should be handled, which was the best green grass for rearing the sheep. Goats required special treatment as they were to be fed with tree leaves (goats do not eat grass). We learnt what herbal medicine should be applied when diseases attack sheep and goats. If the diseases were nerve-based ones, we learnt how to touch the sheep with a hot iron rod at the relevant place. One of the most difficult and expert tasks was shearing the wool from the sheep's body. The scissors had to be handled with such care that they cut close but did not cut the skin of the sheep. All this was part of the expertise of a sheep-rarer, and we were carefully educated in all these tasks.

How were the girls being educated or brought up? Whether they were my sisters or others, the pattern of training was the same. The elder girls were taught, even as they turned three, how to handled a younger brother or sister. Holding a three-month-old baby requires skill and care, more so when the arms are those of a three-year-old girl. This was the most important help that the mother needed when she left home for sheep-related activities or agrarian work, early in the morning. Mothers would also teach them how to powder chillies, husk the paddy, sweep the home and clean the eating bowls.

Besides this, a Kurumaa woman teaches her daughter how to separate the wool from the thorns that stick to it and to prepare it for thread-making (taadu wadakadam). All these tasks are extremely skilled. By the age of twelve or thirteen (by the time she has reached puberty) a Kurumaa girl is supposed to know the basics of cooking. She begins with lighting the hearth and learning to handle it. A Kurumaa hearth consists of three stones with an extension on one side. On this extension stands a port, known as a vothu, on which water is kept boiling. It requires a special skill not to upset or crack the vothu while cooking on the main hearth. Kurumaa girls also learn how to manage the kuraadu which is an important part of Kurumaa cooking (as it is of all other Dalitbahujan castes). A Kurumaa kuraadu consists of ganji (starch), drained from cooked rice and then left to ferment slightly until it gives out a mild sour smell. While cooking rice or jawar, the kuraadu is invariably used as the liquid (yesaru). Kuraadu is considered good for health; in addition, it drives a way evil spirits from the food. Every girls is initiated into these skills at an early age. First of all, handling pots that are vulnerable to breaking requires care and cultivated skills. The only activity that was not taught to our girls, which an urban girl might have to learn today, was washing clothes. This is because washing was the washerman/woman's task. A girl born in a Chakaali (washerman) family learns all these activities in addition to learning how to wash various kinds of clothes.

                The girls of these families are also taught, at an young age, how to seed the furrow by carefully dropping seed after seed. They are taught how to weed and even out extra growth in the crop; they learn how to plant with bent backs, moving backwards in the muddy land. Quite a lot of explanations by the adults go into the teaching of these activities to the young ones. Invariably there are experts in each activity who acquires a name for themselves. Young people are proud to emulate such experts.

SEXUAL MORES

  Sexual behaviour and mores are also taught as part of family and peer group life. A girl listens to older women talking to each other in groups about 'disciplined behaviour and mores are also taught as part of family and peer group life. A girl listens to older women talking to each other in groups about 'disciplined' women and 'undisciplined' women; their sexual life-styles, their relations with husbands and others. A father does not hesitate to talk in front of his children about his approach to life or his relations with other women. More important that the father's is the mother's approach towards the children. A dalibahujan mother trains her children as a hen trains the chickens. She takes the children along with her to the fields, and sets them very small tasks in the field. While walking to the fields she often shares her problems with the children, particularly with the girls. It is not unconventional for her to talk to them about every aspect of her life.

                If any Dalitbahujan woman has a relationship with a man who is not her husband, the relationship does not remain a secret. The entire waada discusses it. Even the children of that family come to know about it. Particularly when the father and mother quarrel, every aspect of life becomes public. No quarrel hides inside the house. For the children the house is a place of pleasure and of pain but it is all in the open. Male children learn about women and about sex in the company of their friends, in the cattle- rearing grounds or sheep-feeding fields. All kind of sexual trials take place in the fields. The 'bad' and 'good' of life are learnt at quite an early stage. Each one of these practices are discussed in terms of its mortality and immorality. But this morality and immortality is not based on a divine order or divine edict. It is discussed in terms of the harmony of the families.

CASTE LANGUAGES

Caste language is structured by its own grammar. It is a flexible and alert grammar, designed for production-based communication. Though it has developed without the help of writing, it is no less sophisticated than 'standard' brahmnical Telugu. Children's experience of language begins with fixing the names of things—birds, animals, trees, insects, everything that is around them. Every tree, every insect, every living and non-living being bears a name. Many of these things do not have words for them in 'standard' Brahminical language. Brahminical language does not understand our ways of making-up new names., These names are not taught through the written word but are orally repeated in communication that is used-based.

Each caste is rooted in its productive process and its language is structured around that production. The Kurumaas have their own language as do the Lambadaas, the Erukalaas or the Koyaas. The Kurumaas not only know about the sheep-goats, trees, plants, and so on, they know the names of every instrument used in wool making and blanked-weaving. A Goudaa knows the names of a whole range of instruments, skills and activities that are required for toddy-tapping. The specialization that one acquires in communicating these caste occupational task is as much or more sophisticated than that possessed by a Brahmin who utters the several names of his Gods while reciting a mantra. What is ironical is that the recitation of several names of one God or many Gods is construed as wisdom, whereas knowing the language of production and the names of productive tools is not recognized as knowledge. The Brahmins have defined knowledge in their own image. But the fact still remains that each caste has built a treasure house of its own knowledge and its own vocabulary. Each caste has built its own special consciousness. As individuals we acquire a consciousness of ourselves, our environment, our production and procreation. This consciousness has nothing to do with organized religion. Further, language here is a social instrument of communication and of the expression of that particular consciousness.

OUR GODS AND CONSCIOUSNESS

What further separated a Hindu from us was the nature of the consciousness of the other world, the divine and the spiritual. For children from our caste, Jeja  (the concept of God) is introduced in the form of the moon. As children grow up, they also get acquainted with Pochamma, Polimeramma, Kattamaisamma, Kaatamaraju, Potaraju and other deities. Among Dalibahujans, there is no concept of a temple in a definite place or form. Goddesses and Gods live in all forms and in all shapes and in different places. Every Dalibahujan child learns at an early age about these Goddesses and Gods. The children are part of the caste congregations that take place during festivals such as Bonaalu, Chinna Panduga, Pedda Panduga, and so on. Every Dalitbahujan child learns at an early age that smallpox comes because Pochamma is angry. The rains are late because Polimeramma is angry. The village tank gets filled or does not get filled on the sympathies of Kattamaisamma. Thieves steal crops because Potaraju is angry. For Kurumaas whether sheep and goats will prosper depends on the attitude of Beerappa, a caste-specific God.

                Thus there are common village Dalibahujan Gods and Goddesses and caste-specific Gods and Goddesses. Of course, for us the spirit exists, the atma (soul) exists, dead people come back to re-live in our own surroundings in the form of ghosts if they have not been fed well while they were alive. But there is no swarga (heaven) and there is no naraka (hell). All the dead live together somewhere in the skies. This consciousness has not yet taken the shape of an organized religion. The Dalitbahujan spirit in its essence is a non-Hindu spirit because the Hindu patriarchal Gods do not exist among us at all.

                We knew nothing of Brahma, Vishnu or Eswara until we entered school. When we first heard about these figures they were as strange to us as Allah or Jehova or Jesus were. Even the name of Buddha, about whom we later learnt of as a mobilizer of Dalibahujans against brahminical ritualism, was not known to us.

THE SOCIAL RELATIONSHIP AND UNTOUCHABILITY OF A BRAHIMIN, BANIYA AND KSHATRIYA

            The language that a Brahmin, Baniya or Kshatriya child learns to speak, all the social relationships that these children were supposed to be picking up as part of Hindu culture, were also alien  to us. I have later learnt and observed that Brahmin child is not taught to go to the field, or to look after the cattle or crops, but is supposed to go to school at an early age. Many of my Brahmin friends have told me that a traditional Brahmin father never touches his children. Child-rearing is essentially a wife's burden. Washing a child is seen as unclean activity and hence it is left to the woman. While the mother looks after the child, does the so-called upper caste father helps in the kitchen? No. The kitchen too is a dirty place, which he should not enter. Thus the brahminical notion of purity and pollution operates even at home. In contrast to our skill based vocabulary they learn words like Veda, Ramayana, Mahabharatha, Purana, and so on. At early age they hear names like Brahma, Vishnu, Rama, Krishna, Lakshmi Saraswathi, Sita and Savithri. Their children are told the stories of these Gods' heroism (mostly killing) and the Goddesses' femininity. Vishnu, for example, is shown to be reclining on a serpent, with Lakshmi at his feet, pressing them.

                Even a Brahmin family might talk about Pochamma, Maisamma or Ellamma, but not with the same respect as they would about Brahma, Vishnu, and Maheswara. For them Pochamma and Maisamma are 'Sudra' Goddesses and supposed to be powerful but in bad negative ways. A Pochamma according to them does not demand the respect that Lakshmi or Saraswathi do, because Lakshmi and Saraswathi are supposed to be ideal wives of ideal husbands, whereas no one knows who Pochamma's husband is, any more than they can name Maisamma's husband. This is the reason why even if a Brahmin invokes the name of Pochamma when there is smallpox in his house, it is only in a derogatory way. No Brahmin or Baniya child bears the name of Pochamma, Maisamma or Ellamma. Whereas in our families Pochamma, Maisamma and Ellamma are revered names and we name our children after these Goddesses. In Dalitbahujan families Pochamma and Maisamma are Goddesses revered in their own capacity. It does not strike an average Dalitbahujan consciousness that these Goddesses do not have husbands and hence need to be spoken of derogatorily. This is because there are many widows in our villages who are highly respected, whose stature is based on their skills at work and their approach towards fellow human beings. I remember many young widows in my village who were the team leaders of agrarian operations as they were the most respected positions.

                Between the people and Pochamma there is no priest. In fact there is no need of a priest at all in the worship of our Gods and Goddesses. Even as children we used to appeal to her to be kind to us so that we would not fall prey to smallpox or fever. As children we never thought that these Gods and Goddesses did not understand our language or that we needed a priest to talk to God in Sanskrit. Like our parents, who appealed to these Gods and Goddesses in our own language, we too appealed to them in our native tongues. We related ourselves to these Goddesses in a variety of ways.

                A Hindu family is hierarchical. Girls must obey boys, children must obey elders. Sex and age are two determining and measuring rods of the status within the family. Children are trained not to get involved in production-related tasks, which Brahmins condemn as  ‘Sudra’ tasks. Similarly their friendship with Dalitbahujan children is censured. 'Upper' castes speak of Dalitbahujans as 'ugly'. 'Sudra' is an abusive word; 'Chandala' is a much more abusive word. 'Upper' caste children are taught to live differently from Dalitbahujan children, just as they are taught to despise and dismiss them. Hindu in humanism becomes part of their early formation; hating others—the Dalibahujans—is a part of their consciousness.

                Discussion of sexual behaviour is a taboo in Hindu families. Mothers are not supposed to talk to daughters about their sexual experiences. The father's atrocities against the mother cannot be discussed in Brahmin or Baniya families. But this is not so in our families. The father abuses the mother right in front of the children and the mother cannot be discussed in Brahmin or Baniya families. But this is not so in our families. The father abuses the mother right in front of the children and the mother will pay back in the same coin then and there. The children are a witness to all that. In Hindu families the father can abuse the mother, but the mother is not supposed to retort.  A wife is supposed to put up with all the atrocities that a husband commits against her; the more a wife puts up with the husband's atrocities the more she is appreciated. In addition, brahminical 'upper' castes teach their children about the need for madi (wearing a wet cloth on one's body to remain 'pure' while cooking). The cooking of food must take place according to ritual modes. Each girl is taught to cook according to the tastes of the male members. A dozen curries must be cooked as part of the Brahmin bhojanam.  Every girl is supposed to know that every Brahmin male's good eating is equivalent to God’s good eating. If there are poor Brahmins and even if they can only afford a few items, those items must be prepared in terms of their relation to God. In these families God and men are equated in many respects. But in our families the situation is very different.

MAADIGAAS AND HINDUS

Let us turn to the Maadigaas, whom the Hindutva School claims as part of their religion. My village used to have about 40 Maadiga families who lived adjacent tot he locality of the Goudaas. These two castes had no relations of touching with each other. In my village, I do not recall ever having had a childhood Maadigaa friend. The Maadigaa boys who were younger than me were jeetas  (farm servants). Their family and cultural relations were very similar to ours. But what was different was that from childhood they were taught to be always fearfully obedient, addressing the young and the old of the so-called upper castes as ayya baanchan.  While they were jeetas, at the age of five, they were supposed to look after the cattle and the buffaloes and watch the crops. Their childhood was much toughens than ours. But in certain areas they were far more skilled and intelligent. They knew how to skin dead cattle, convert he skin into soft and smooth leather and transform the leather into farm instruments and shoes. Their skill in playing the dappu (a special percussion instrument) was far beyond that of any one of us. Maadigaa boys and girls were taught, right from childhood, and as a matter of their daily survival, to be humble before the landlord, Brahmin and Koomati.

                The same is true of the Chakaali and Mangali children. At home they live as equals, eating, drinking and smoking together. They are equals from childhood onwards. The father and the mother teach children these things as part of their education. Equality and morality are not two different entities for parents and children. They teach the children that 'they must shiver and shake before the "upper" caste master'. This is not because the Maadigaa, Chakaali and Mangali parents have great respect or real love for the 'upper' caste landlord, the Brahmin or the Baniya, but because there is always the fear of losing their jobs. They will say, 'My son, be careful with that bastard, pretend to be very obedient, otherwise that rascal will hit us in our stomachs.' The child pretends to be obedient as Gandhi pretended to be poor. But a pretence that starts at an early age becomes part of a person's behaviour during a lifetime. Fear of the 'upper' caste dora is gradually internalized. Every Dalibahujan family that teaches children about equality at home also teaches them about hierarchical life in society for the simple reason that otherwise terrible atrocities may follow. Except for the fact that they are made untouchables, except for their appalling economic conditions, the Maadigas are absolutely likely the Kurumaas, the Goudaas and others. There is less religiosity among them than in any other castes. If the Kurumaas, Goudaas, Kapuus and Shalaas have seven or eight Goddesses and Gods, the Maadigaas have one or two. They play the dappu for every occasion, but in a total participatory way they celebrate only the festival of Ellamma who is their kuladevataa  (caste Goddess). For them even hell and heaven do not exist. Each day, earning the food for that day is at the heart of their life struggle. A day without food is hell and a day with food, heaven.

                Among all these castes what was unknown was reading the book, going to the temple, chanting prayers or doing the sandhyaavandanam  (evening worship). The Bhagavad Gita is said to be a Hindu religious text. But that book was not supposed to enter our homes. Not only that, the Hindu religion and its Brahmin wisdom prohibited literacy to all of us. Till modern education and Ambedkar's theory of reservation created a small-educated section among these castes, letter-learning was literally prohibited. This was a sure way of not letting the religious text enter our lives. In addition even the idol or murthy –based, priest or pujari-centred temple was prohibited to the young, the adult and the old from the Dalitbahujan castes. Today, though some 'lower' castes are allowed into temples they can never relate to that God or Goddess.

SCHOOL EDUCATION

  As the first generation in Dalitbahujan history to see a slate and a pencil, we jumped straight out of the jungle into school. Even there, what was there in common between the Hindus and us? The Brahmin-Baniya children are the privileged. They are better dressed and better fed. Though they are born in the same village, the children enter the school with different cultures. Our eating habits are not the same. For all Dalitbahujans good food means meat and fish. We enjoy it, we relish it. For Brahmin-Baniya boys and girls even a discussion about meat and fish makes them feel like vomiting. For Maadigaas and Muslim beef is an item to be relished; though for us it was prohibited, we never hated it as the Brahmin-Baniyas did. These differences are not the differences of individual tastes, they are differences created as part of our upbringing.

                Our schoolteacher's attitude to each one of us depended on his own caste background. If he was a Brahmin he hated us and told us to our faces that it was because of the evil time—because of Kaliyuga, that he was being forced to teach 'Sudras' like us. In his view we were good for nothing. That 'wise' teacher used to think of us as coming from suudari families (families of field hands). Working in the field in his view was dirty and unaesthetic. According to him only mad people would work in dirty, muddy fields. Today we realize it was good that we were muddy. We realize that mud is the birthplace of food and of the working people's ideas.

                But who, according tot he teachers, were the great ones? The children who came from Brahmin, Baniya and of course the 'upper' caste landlord families. These were the 'great' ones. Because they did not do dirty farm work, their faces were cleanly washed, their clothes were cleaner, their hair carefully oiled and combed.  They came to school wearing chappals, whereas those who feed cattle and those who make chappals from the skin of the cattle do not have chappals to wear. These were the reasons why we were ignorant, ugly and unclean. It is not merely the teacher, even 'upper' caste schoolchildren think about Dalitbahujan children that way.

                As we were growing up, stepping into higher classes, the textbooks taught us stories that we had never heard in our families. The stories of Rama and Krishna, poems from the Puranas, the names of two epics called Ramayana  and Mahabharatha  occurred repeatedly. Right from early school up to college, our Telugu textbooks were packed with these Hindu stories. For Brahmin-Baniya students these were their childhood stories, very familiar not only in the story form but in the form of the Gods that they worshipped. Whenever they went to temples with their parents they saw the images of these devataas.  The boys bore the names of these Gods; the girls the names of the Goddesses. I distinctly remember how alien all these names appeared to me. Many of the names were not known in my village. The name of Kalidas was as alien to us as the name of Shakespeare. The only difference was that one appeared in Telugu textbooks while the other appeared in English textbooks. Perhaps for the Brahmin-Baniya students the situation was different. The language of textbooks was not the one that our communities spoke. Even the basic words were different Textbook Telugu was Brahmin Telugu, whereas we were used to a production-based communicative Telugu. In a word, our alienation from the Telugu textbook was more or less the same as it was from the English textbook in terms of language and content. It is not merely a difference of dialect; there is difference in the very language itself.

                To date I have not come across a Telugu textbook which is written in this production-based, communicative language. I have not come across a lesson on Pochamma, Potaraju, kattamaisamma, Kaatamaraju or Beerappa. This is not because these Gods and Goddesses do not have narrative associated with them. Without such narratives they would never have survived for thousands of years among the people. If we listen to Dalitbahujan story-tellers telling these stories, they keep us spellbound. The simple reason is that no writer—and the majority of writers happen to be Brahmins—thought that these stories could be written down so that they could go into school and college textbooks. In their view the very names of our Goddesses and Gods are not worth mentioning.

                No mainstream Telugu poet ever thought that going down to the people's culture means talking about these Goddesses and Gods too. No poet thought that what people talk about, discuss and communicate with each other every day makes poetry. Even poets and writers who were born in these Hindu families and later turned Communist, atheist or rationalist, they too never picked up the contents of our daily lives as their subjects. Ironically even the names of those revolutionary leaders sounded alien to us. For them, Yellaiah, Pullaiah, Buchaiah, Buchamma, Lachamma were names of the other. And the other need never become the subject of their writings or the centre of their narratives.