Marriage

            Marriage is as important in our families as it is in Hindu families. But in form and content it is different from that of Brahmin-Baniya marriages. For us, marriage is a human and a worldly affairs that performs the human functions of production and procreation. This is clear from a proverb that our people use very frequently: janta leenidee panta Pandadi ('without the couple, how can there be a crop?'). For Hindus, marriage is a sacred ritual divorced from all kinds of productive activity even notionally. Even in procreation the main intention is to produce a son who can pave the father's way to heaven. Holding the talagooru  (a water pot carried in front of a dead body) and performing the shraadha  (the last rites) are not simply rituals done at the instance of the priest who visits the household only on such occasions as marriage and death, they are part of the very making of a brahminical Hindu self. The situation is not the same in Dalitbahujan families.

                In Kurumaa families, marriage is contracted with the involvement of the whole caste. Neither kanya shulkam  (bride price) nor varakatnam  (groom price) play an important role. Of Course, child marriage has, over a period of time, become part of the marriage system. But the story of Beerappa indicates that love marriage was the caste norm of the Kurumaas. It was to preserve  that norms of love marriage that he fought battles with his maternal uncle. However these caste societies have also degenerated and love marriage has gone out of existence even among them. Love marriage no longer exists as an accepted form. The common practice has degenerated to the level of child marriage. But a careful observation of instruments that each caste uses on the occasion of marriage indicates that production is the focal point. In the marriage laggam  (main part of the marriage ceremony) they use rice, turmeric, and so on (which are also used by any 'upper' castes) but at the same time they also use wool, wool spun into thread, scissors and leaves from different trees. If it is an agrarian family, agricultural tools play a symbolic role in the marriage ceremony.

THE PRIEST AND THE PEOPLE

            The priest comes into contact with the Dalibahujans only on such occasions as marriage and death. And then he comes not to educate them about the spirit that he visualizes as embodied in God; not to talk in a language that people can understand. No mantra he recites is understood by anyone present there—not a word. A priest who treats his subjects as part of his religion must explain the relationship between the divinity and the people, make them conscious about the spirit of the divine. But during that brief contact between them and the priest the people do not feel that he had come to educate them. Each mantra that he murmurs is in a language that none around can understand. The people do not know whether the priest is calling on the divine spirits to bless the couple or curse them. But the end-product of that brief encounter between the priest and the people is that the priest acquires wealth. There are two words that every priest uses at the end of every mantra—the first is 'samarpayaami' and the second, 'swaaha'. The first word means one must give away all that one has, and the second means one ought to eat it all up. Who is it that gets to eat—the priests themselves. Every marriage ends up in a quarrel between the priest and the people over his material demands at the marriage. He takes rice, vegetables, tamarind, dry coconut, cashew nuts and finally paanbiida from poor people who have never eaten cashew nuts or paanbida in their lives. The priest is still not satisfied. He must also be given a specified amount of money. He does not take into account the economic conditions of the marriage party. On the contrary, he demands that their economic conditions must measure up to his demands. In these families on that marriage day the problem is not dowry but dakshina.  The dakshina operates as danda  (cane; force). By inviting the priest they do not invite pleasure, but invite a pain—a terrible pain at that.

                The people sitting or standing around the marriage pandal might be thin, pale looking and emaciated. Many of them would have been starving for quite some time before the marriage day. Their clothes might have been in tatters for years and years but on that marriage day either by raising loans or by spending what they had saved by pulling paise and paise together, they buy some new clothes for themselves. Even on their 'well-dressed' occasion the priest looks abnormally different from them. His overgrown belly, his unexercised muscles hanging from his bones, his oily skin, his clean-shaven head (the barber can touch him only while shaving and never again) all must be seen to be believed. The Dalitbahujans celebrating the marriage look as if their blood has been siphoned into the priest's body. This can happen not merely because they live in a structure called caste in homogeneous Hinduism. This happens because the priest treats them as the 'outsiders' of his religion. He does not' treat them as 'children of that God' in whom he believes. He believes and treats them as outsiders because the audiences of his mantras are his enemies. In his view they are objects from whom dakshina can be extracted. In his view they are the dogs that need to be taught obedience—and a perpetual obedience at that.

                In the relationship between the priest and the people there is no spirituality at all. The subjects in this relationship are not treated as those whose 'eyes must be opened to see the light of God' but are treated as those whose eyes have to be plucked out lest they perceive the conspiracy between the man called priest and his God. To put it in simple terms, the relationship between the priest and the people on all such occasions when he comes in contact with them, is the relationship between exploiter and exploited. It is worse than that of a feudal lord and a serf, or a capitalist and a worker. The feudal lord and the capitalist speak in a language that the serf and the worker can understand. The physical survival of serfs becomes the feudal lord's own interest because their daily alienated labour keeps the exploiter's surplus growing. Between the Hindu priest and the Dalibahujan masses even that concern is not there.

                The inhuman relationship that exists between priest and people does not end only in economic exploitation. It has a much deeper social dimension. While keeping the people soulless, spiritless, unrelated in any form to that God in whom the priest has enormous faith, he structures their social behaviour in a very communicable language. While he recites every word of the mantra in an incomprehensible Sanskrit, he tells them what to do and how to satisfy that God in relation to himself. He asks them to produce article after article. He asks them to sit, stand and walk seven steps around that burning fire. They do not know the meaning of all this, even today, despite the Hindutva movement which claims that all Dalitbahujans are Hindus. And yet generation after generation this has continued. The marriage ceremony ends when all who are present touch the feet of the priest: a brazenly shameful act. It is not a voluntary act. It is a subtly manipulated, coercive act. The whole of Dalitbahujan society is coerced to behave in accordance with the wishes of the priest. If anyone revolts against that act of touching his feet, the priest incites the elders standing around, demanding that they mend the ways of such rebellious persons. The incitement is couched in the language of sin and rebellion, described as a sing against God. The elders are made to feel that sense of sin, and are in turn made to force the youth, even if they are rebellious, to mend their ways. The whole community is thus made subservient, timid and fearful.

                The married life of the Dalibahujan is not like that of the Hindu grhastaas (householders). The three words that the priests make the Dalitbahujans repeat at the time of the marriage, in a language that they do not understand, ardheecha, kaameecha, dharmeecha—do not mean anything to them in practice. As I said earlier, marriage for the Dalitbahujans is a coming together of a man and a woman for the production of food, goods and commodities and also for the procreation of the human species.

PRODUCTION

            A Dalitbahujan couple rises every morning at koodikuuta  (cock-crow). The man enters directly into his agrarian tasks, the woman begins immediately on her household activities. Bath and prayer have no place in their lives at that juncture. The man has to feed his cattle and clean the cattleshed. A Kurumaa man hardly sleeps at home. Wherever the herd of sheep sleeps, that is his living place. Early in the morning he gets up, separates his own sheep from the general herd. Next, he release the younger ones from the podhi (an enclosure where the young sheep are kept) and takes them to their mother to be suckled. Then they examine the diseased cattle or sheep and apply medicines. A Goudaa gets up and straightaway puts on his toddy-climbing clothes and goes to the toddy tree rows. He knows his toddy trees by name as the shepherd knows his sheep or goats by name and as the peasants know their cows, bulls and buffaloes by name. The Goudaa climbs his first tree at sunrise. He is the one who gets to see the beauty of nature at sunrise from the tallest tree. Poised at the top, he skillfully chooses the point at which he makes the first cut to his gela (a projection on the toddy tree from where the toddy is tapped). It is not the time now to take the toddy that has accumulated in the kallumuntha  ( a small pot in which the toddy is tapped). It is the time to check that the toddy drops flow from the gela without impediment. The Maalas or Maadigaas rise from their beds and begin either to clean and cure skins or prepare the leather for shoe-making. In the majority of cases, they then go to their master's fields to cut the crop or to bundle it up.

                In these families what they must do every morning is not decided by them but by their masters. The woman in these families get up and go to the master's cattlesheds to clean them, or to sweep the surroundings of the master's houses—but certainly not to sweep the inside of the house. They rush back home only to find empty cooking pots waiting to be washed, hungry children waiting for some food. They do not have time to think about God or prayer. After that the women cook some ambali  (a sort of porridge), the food of the poor where even the one curry as it is made in a Kurumaa or a Goudaa house does not exist. Hence they cook some liquid stuff to swallow. The woman must rush because they must reach the working point in the fields much before the dawn breaks. All Dalitbahujan men and women must do this. Their work never starts with a morning prayer or a cold water bath. The Surya-vandanam  (morning prayer) that the Hindu does never finds a place in their day's timetable.

                A Hindu—a Brahmin, Baniya or Kshatriya—on the other hand, gets up to take a cold water bath and then still clad in wet clothes picks up his book—the Gita—and begins to relate to God. He or she asks God for the day's food, the day's gyana (Knowledge) and the day's sheela  (character). God for them is a stud-bull than can produce everything. All difficult and delicate tasks can be taken care of by him. The priest, therefore, leaves everything to him.

            A Dalitbahujan woman gets up from her bed and picks up her water pot, fetches water for cooking, sweeps the house and waakili  (the open place in front of the house), clean the cattleshed (if there is one), lights the hearth, pours out the kuraadu water, and puts on the cooking pot. She then struggles hard to light the hearth that cooks the day's food. Unlike the Hindu woman, she does not think about God before entering the kitchen, and does not think about maintaining the purity of madi. For a Hindu woman, this is a precondition before she can make the palahaaram  (breakfast). For a Dalitbahujan woman cooking is a mundane activity, meant to feed the human body and keep it going, whereas for a Hindu, God is central even to the kitchen. A Dalitbahujan woman cooks some rice or jawar and a curry. If there is some buttermilk to add to it that day, it goes down better. The notion of God and the notion of religion do not figure in the cooking. A Hindu woman's cooking takes place primarily in the name of God. There is palahaaram, paayasam (sweet rice) a dozen curries, daddoojanam  (curd rice fried in oil), pulihoora  (sour rice), saambar  (dal and tamarind mixture), rasam  (vegetable liquid), with perugannam  (curd rice) to end the eating process. All these are prepared with care and caution as food that is offered to God. But where does the concept of prasaadam  (food offered to God) exist in our homes? The number of items of that godly food can be seen in any modern 'Brahmin' hotel that serves a taalibhoojanam  (plate meal). It is the God's duty to digest all these and also look after the health of the eaters. God must save them for overeating and from the diseases caused by the fatty food. It is for this reason that all cooking activity begins with prayer, and eating activity begins with prayer. The relationship between God and priest here becomes a friendly relationship between God and glutton. But the situation in the Dalitbahujan castes is totally different.

FEMALE AND MALE DOMAINS

In Kurumaa, Golla, Goudaa, Maalaa, or Maadigaa and other castes, the man does the work that is defined as 'male' work and the woman does the work that is defined as 'female' work. For example, in Kurumaa families going along with sheep, herding them, cutting the wool, milking the animals, are all male tasks. The women make the thread out of wool and attend to many other tasks that convert wool into blankets. By the time the crop comes into their hands, by the time the sheep delivers, by the time toddy is brought down, by the time the shoes are ready in these communities, both man and woman can claim that both of them have contributed to its making—and for the professions' making itself. For the Hindu woman on the other hand, cooking, maintaining the house, procreating are all done in the name of maintaining the house, procreating are all done in the name of God and man. They cannot claim to be contributors to their respective professions—whether of priesthood or of business. Their existence is subsumed into their husbands' existence.

                In this society, the man is abnormally strong and the woman is abnormally weak. For example, a peasant woman can at times move out of her traditional role of seeding and weeding to plough the land: a Kurumaa woman can become a sheep-breeder in the absence of the man. A Brahmin woman, however, can never become a priest. A Dalitbahujan woman within her caste/class existence is very much a political being, a social being and an economic being. Whereas, a Brahmin woman is not. The Dalitbahujan castes have a philosophy in performing productive work which is distinctly different from the Hindu's philosophy. It is not a divine philosophy. It is a mundane, human philosophy. It does not belong to the 'other world' and 'other life' but deals with this world. Its everyday life belongs to the present janma  (life). The philosophy is taught right from our childhood, and it seeps into the making of our beings. Our whole philosophy is expressed in one sentence which can be understood, not only by these communities but also by the Brahmins and the Baniyas. But they do not want to take it seriously. In fact they do not even want to hear it. For them it is the unmentionable; that which should not be spoken or heard because their own philosophy is couched in divine terms and it is quite the opposite of Dalitbahujan philosophy. There is a simple sentence that repeatedly expresses the philosophy of Dalitbahujans. That simple sentence is rekkaaditeegani bukkaadadu  ('unless the hand works the mouth cannot eat'). This philosophical sentence is not speaking in terms of the hand that holds the bow and arrow as Rama did, or the hand that holds the chakram  as Vishnu and Krishna did. It speaks about the hand that holds the plough to furrow the land and the hand that holds the seeds to seed those furrows and the hand that ensures that the plants grow out of those furrows and nurses them till they yield fruits.

BANIYA (BUSINESS FAMILY) ECONOMY

In every village there are a small number of Baniya families. They are known as koomaties  or shahukars.  In the Baniya families, ritualistic formations are more or less like those of the Brahmin families. These families are distinctly different from our families. In spiritual terms the Baniyas relate to the Brahmins. The formation of the consciousness of their children is absolutely identical—the stories that they are told, the life-styles that they have to acquire, are very similar to those of a Brahmin child. A Baniya male child like a Brahmin male child has to undergo an upanayana and a Baniya girl has to learn to cook as many items as a Brahmin child, and that too in madi purity. In their narratives the dominant story is that of Kubeera, who is a God who eats a lot, who is a plunderer and a stingy preserver of wealth. After marriage—child marriage is much prevalent in these families—a Baniya is supposed to establish a business, the art of which is taught right from childhood.

                A Baniya is a seated divine-intellectual whose contact with people is daily and hourly. His house must be centrally located so that masses can easily come and go; in that house he establishes a structured shop which provides the mechanism for buying and selling. He buys grain, pulses, vegetables, everything that the masses produce, and he sells them clothes, oils, spices and also grain and pulses. In other words he is a collector and a distributor of goods, grain, pulses, salt, oil, and so on. Unlike the priest he prefers to meet the Dalitbahujan sellers and buyers one by one—not in groups—because he has to communicate to them in a language they can understand. He cannot speak in Sanskrit as the priest does for the simple reason that the market transactions must take place in a language that the people can understand. His aim is that people—one by one—should be manipulated in a language communication; yet he must also ensure that the manipulation should not be apparent to the collective consciousness of the masses.

            A Baniya woman is distinctly different from the whole mass of village women as much as the Brahmin woman is. But at the same time a Brahmin woman is different from a Baniya woman in two ways. While a Brahmin woman is an expert only in divine cooking, the Baniya woman is a part of the home-centred business. She establishes a skilfull rapport with the Dalibahujan womenfolk to lure them into their own shop. She deals with them one by one so that her manipulations are not understood by the masses and so that they never become a part of mass consciousness. She is as skilful a manipulator of female customers as her husband is of male customers. The lies they tell, the deceitful mechanism that they evolve, over a period of time, establishes a particular system of Hindu market. The establishment of Hindu market relations has several specific forms. A non-Hindu (feudal or capitalist) market, particularly in the West, is a standardized market. A businessman or a businesswoman does not have to tell lies about the purchase price, and a lie will not become part of the surplus. But a Hindu Baniya market presupposes a lie to be part of its sacred form as well as its business culture. A Baniya is said to be within his Hindu morality—in spite of the fact that he misleads his customers and tells lies about his margins of profit. He will retain his Hindu morality even if he under weighs while selling and overweighs while buying. He will be within his Hindu morality even if he over-rates the quality of the commodity he sells, or under-rates the quality while buying. A Baniya is extremely Hinduistic. Even the prices of commodities or grain and pulse changes based on the caste of the customer. For example, for the same grain a Maadigaa gets paid less than a Reddy gets. While buying from the Baniya, the lower the caste of the customer, the higher would be the price, and while selling it would be the opposite. In any village market, all roads lead to one place—the shahukar's shop.

                This does not mean that specific caste-based producers do not have their own specific markets. They do have these. For example, there are some caste-related markets where the buyers and sellers operate outside the Hindu Baniya market. In most parts of India the Baniya refuses to buy anything that is a non-Hindu commodity. Selling and buying cattle and beef is non-Hindu; sell-in and buying sheep and mutton is non-Hindu; selling and buying fish is non-Hindu; selling and buying toddy is non-Hindu; and finally, selling and buying leather-related commodities is non-Hindu. Thus the chappal, a baareda (a leather belt that is hung around the neck of a bull) and a vaarena  (leather thongs) are non-Hindu commodities, and the selling and buying of these are part of the work of Dalitbahujan markets. So these markets are handled be individuals coming from Dalitbahujan castes, Muslims or Christians. These markets operate outside the principle of divinity—they are 'secular' markets. As the sacred ethos is absent here, the quotations, and so on, are straightforward, the market terms are communicable.

                Sometimes the seller sympathizes with the buyer if his/her economic condition is known to higher. Payment becomes possible in installments. In other words socially, economically and philosophically the sellers and buyers relate to each other in these non-Hindu markets. This does not mean the influence of Baniya market principles is totally invisible here. The shahukar sets an example even for these market relations. But the significant difference lies in the way people relate to each other socially and philosophically. Perhaps, this could be one of the reasons why the non-Hindu, Dalitbahujan market dealers do not become visibly rich. His/her life-style rarely becomes significantly different from those of the masses.

Are the man-woman relations of Dalitbahujan families and Hindu families the same? In my view there is a categorical difference. The marital life of every couple is based on the couple's respective childhood formations. But the significant difference between Dalitbahujans and Hindus in the context begins with an absolutely opposite approach to the concept of kama  (sexual love). In both kind of families, at the time of marriage the priest talks about kaameecha.  For a Dalitbahujan couple and a Brahmin or a Baniya couple, the concept may appear to be strange in the beginning. There is an essential difference also in the practical and philosophical points of view. Indeed there is a paradox in the experiences and education of persons born in the two families. The Dalitbahujan couple would have heard about sexual desire from the experiences of parents, relations and friends. But in the narratives of Dalitbahujan Gods and Goddesses description of kama are totally absent. They know nothing about the personal lives of Pochamma, Maisamma, Maramma, Potaraju, Mallaiah, and others. Each one of these Goddesses and Gods has a narrative. Even young people relate to these Goddesses and Gods but nowhere in those narratives does love appear as desire. The Brahmin-Baniyas impose a ban on sexual discourse at the human plane. The strict restriction imposed on women's mobility cuts down the interaction between men and women. It also cuts down the interaction between 'upper' caste and Dalitbahujan women. So the pleasures missing in the social plane in day-to-day living are sought to be derived from divine sexual experiences. To understand such paradoxes one should understand the sexuality of the Hindu Goddesses and Gods.

                The stories of Hindu Gods and Goddesses are full of descriptions of sexual encounters. The most powerful narrative exists in the form of Goddess and God relations among Hindu men and women. Krishna and Radha, Varudhini and Pravarakya, Shankara and Parvathi are well-known examples. But the most powerful story is that of Radha and Krishna. The most restrictive brahminical families not only permit young girls to worship Krishna who is a patriarchal sexist God but also to love him; a girl can invite him to bestow his love on her. He is carved into all sorts of poses and postures, colours, and costumes. Many Hindu texts, the Bhagavad Gita is an exception, are full of such narratives. The most powerful text that influences Hindu thought in terms of man-woman relations is Vatsyayana's Kamastura. But for the leisure available at the disposal of brahminical families and the atmosphere in which they live, sixty-four forms of sexual expression could not  have been possible. This life was projected as divine and hence even the Hindu temples become the places where Vatasyayana's sixty-four forms are part of the sculpture.

                The man-woman relationship in Dalitbahujan families is markedly different. The sexual relationship has never been projected into an art form. This does not mean they do not sing songs based on love stories. They sing the love stories of people around them. The narrative is basically secular. Yet another big difference between the family life of the Hindus and the Dalitbahujan castes is that the Hindus make sex a leisure-bound divine activity whereas among the Dalitbahujans, family life is a part of production. For them leisure and holiday are unknown. In certain castes interaction between wife and husband is often momentary. For example, in Kurumaa families during the day, the man would go into forests along with the sheep or the goats and in the night he would usually sleep with the herd. The woman would perform all the family tasks. She would do the purchasing, look after the children. If there were no wool-related work, she would take on agrarian tasks in order to add to the income. In all those operations she would deal with civil society alone. Thus in those families the whole life-process give little scope for divinity and pleasure. The man would meet his wife sometimes near midnight and go back to his herd.

FREEDOM AMONG DALITBAHUJAN COUPLES

            A consciousness that gives more importance to nature than to sacred beings is always stronger. It is a consciousness that constructs its own kind of character. This character is different from that moulded by the fear of external agencies. The Dalitbahujans of India are the only people on the globe who, while living in a civil society, have lived outside the defined structures of all religions. Take, for example, their marriage contract. It is basically a human contract. It is governed by the rights guaranteed to women within the framework of the broad system of patriarchy. A situation of disrespect to each other's rights can result in breaking that contract and will result in divorce. If after divorce the woman or the man comes across another possible partner, either by way of parental arrangement or because of her/his own initiative, such individuals have the right to enter into another contract. Because of these inherently assured rights, a wife does not have to treat her husband as a God. A Dalitbahujan woman does not have to perform padapuja (worshipping the husband's feet) to her husband either in the morning or in the evening. She does not have to address her husband in the way she would address a superior. In a situation of dispute, word  in response to word, and abuse for abuse is the socially visible norm. Patriarchy as a system does exist among Dalitbahujans, yet in this sense it is considerably more democratic.

                A Dalitbahujan coupled may also aspire for a son but for entirely different reasons as compared to the Hindus. As I said earlier, among the Dalitbahujans the son is not a divine gift to take the father to heaven. A son in their view is a relatively more productive force. This view itself is based on an unscientific understanding, which is governed by human limitations and also conditioned by the process of their development. The Dalitbahujan personality hangs between materialism and spiritualism, whereas the Hindu personality is made out of decadent spiritualism. In this decadent spiritualism, marriage, market, manhood and womanhood are structured in irrational forms. Hindu values mould individuals who cannot tolerate the spiritual equality of others. In its day-to-day operations a Hindu family does not run on a human plane. It is a divinely-animated collective affair. It has established institutional structures that do not reflect a spiritual system that can draw more and more human beings into it. Dalitbahujan spiritualism on the contrary is non-religious but humane.

                If Hinduism were to establish, even within the spiritual domain, an attractive relationship of humanity, perhaps Hinduism would have become a universal religion earlier than Buddhism, Christianity or Islam. The family structure that it established, instead of attracting fellow human beings, repelled them. It established a market system that created structures that sucked the energy of Dalitbahujan masses who were denied even that notional right to swarga. The Hindus are the only people who converted even spirituality and the promise of redemption in the other world into the private property of only Brahmins, Vaisyas and Kshatriyas. Unfortunately, the 'Sudra upper castes' (like Reddies, Kammas, Velamas in Andhra Pradesh; Marathas, Patels, Jats, Rajputs, Bhumihars in North India) who are emerging slowly as neo-Kshatriyas are moving into the fold of Hindutva both physically and mentally.