Worship Orders

Gurukul Lutheran Theological College and Research Centre

Worship Order of the Community Worship

11^th August, 2010. Wednesday

Week’s theme: Affirmation and Celebration of Life

Theme of the day: From the Community of Saints to the Community of Friends

Call to worship

L:     The Earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and all that dwells therein.

All:   We are here to worship God the creator of life, we are not alone.

         We share this life with the heavens and the earth,

         With the waters and the land,

         With trees and grasses,

         With fish, birds, and animals,

         With creatures of every form,

         With the women and men

         With whom we share our dreams of a new earth and new heavens. Amen

Opening prayer

L:      Almighty God our parent, we praise you for gathering us here to worship you, your son and Holy Spirit. Help us to experience your revealing presence in our midst. As we worship you today, we humbly ask you to gift us with a renewed perception of your life eternal. Keep us ever in the joy of celebrating your gift of life to us. We commit each and everyone who participate in this worship into your keeping. Bless and sanctify us that we may reflect the radiance of your life to the world around.

Amen

Hymn 302 (Gurkul Hymnal)

Praise and thanks giving

L.   God, we thank you for the gift of creation and the miracle of life.

      We praise you for the earth; our warm home, for the rays of the sun, land and sea.

      We praise you for the atmosphere where we live, breathe and love.

We thank you for our neighbours; the web of relations and the community of friends, animated by your life energy to find meaning and goodness in all.

We thank you for life nourished in different contexts; for the inherent diversity of your creation and for making each one of us distinct and unique.

      We praise you for all these gifts that grant us life.

Lord we praise and thank you!

Confession

All:    O God Parent of our Friend and Guide Jesus;

         we confess that we have become badly accustomed to death:

         to the death of the soul, to the death on the street,

         to the death through violence in the name of gods and religions-

         to the death before life. Our ears are used to the incessant groaning of creatures and become numb; our hearts have accepted the fact that things cannot be any way different from what it is today. Often times, we find it convenient to withdraw from the scenes of violations on the sanctity of life.

         Thus we become indifferent to life; your invaluable gift.

         Still we claim to be the followers of your son,

         who dared to give out his very life out of his passion for life. Compassionate God forgive us for these our sins, we beseech you through your son Jesus. Amen

Absolution

All:   God our parent, who passionately loves life, forgives our sins and liberates us from the fear of death. May God make our life alive to the extent that it is mutually loved and affirmed amongst us.

Amen

Scripture reading

Matthew 5: 43-48 (Stand)

Reflection

Faith affirmation (stand)

We believe in God our creator and sustainer of our hope of abundant life, who shared the very life-breath with us in the act of creation. Who affirm life through the continuing embodying acts in the history of different people hoods around the globe.

We believe in Jesus our friend, who stooped down from the saintly halo of a rabbi to befriend with the ordinary fisher folk, tax collectors and “sinful” women and men, to inspire in them a love for life before and against death. Who does not point simply to a life without pain in a distant heaven, but heals the sick, frees the captives and forgives the sinners to affirm freed, redeemed life and divine life in this world, in our times and in our midst.

We believe in the life giving spirit of God

Who communicates to the world, the joy of knowledge of God’s love for life in everyday languages and re-enacts the Pentecost in our midst. Who gives us courage to affirm life in the midst of raging powers of death. Who is the source of utopia, dreams and our sense of history that drives our lives forward and adds colors and meaning in plenty. Who broods over life to make it new and full.

We believe in the presence of kingdom in our midst, which is God’ outstretched arms-God’s initiative, offering life in abundance to all living beings on earth. We believe in God’s kingdom as God’s will that life, love and justice reign in history.

Amen

Intercession

L. Maili is one of the thousands Nepali girls trafficked to India for sex-trade. Maili too had to end up in the notorious red street called Kamathipura as the other numerous hapless Nepali girls do. In her case she was deceived by one of her neighbours whom she knew well from her childhood days. She was traveling from Nepal to India in search of better medical treatment for her child infected with pneumonia. She was eventually deceived and sold for 50,000 Indian rupees by her neighbour to a broker at Kamathipura. At the brothel it was all like a nightmare. First she was severed from her child and was beaten left and right to agree to the demands of the brothel owner. At last she had to yield to lead the indescribably horrendous life in the brothel, because of her love for her life and also to save the life of her child. She was fed only once in a day in the brothel and was allowed to have a shower only once in a week. Stabbing and cigarette burns were the order of the days. Her ordeal in the brothel continued until a humanitarian aid agency called Maiti Nepal, led by the bold Nepalese woman Anuradha Koirala came to her rescue. Maiti in Nepalese means, the mother’s home. Maiti rescued thousands of Nepalese girls from the brothels of Kamathipura by creating a network between human rights activists, police, advocacy groups and the victims. Many of the rescued girls were not accepted back to their respective families, because of the stigma associated with their betrayal and the life at the brothal. Hence Maiti was organizing an alternate home for these betrayed girls to feel that they are wanted and their lives are worth living. Many of the girls are tested positive for HIV/AIDS and are treated at the Maiti homes. One of the encouraging thing we see in the approach of Maiti in the fight against this evil is that they are not allowing the victims to remain in that state for ever. They are transformed into courageous activists in the caring ambience of the Maiti homes. Maili along with many other girls help in checking the trafficking by guarding the border check posts between India and Nepal, helping in raiding the brothels and even counseling the trapped girls to motivate them to come out of their captivity. Thus creating a community of friends, who support each other in their attempts to find meaning for their earthly existence.

Let us pray for the victims of sex-trafficking in India and Nepal. Let us also remember the programmes intended to liberate these girls from their captivity. Let us remember Maiti Nepal and similar agencies and activists like Anuradha Koirala, who dare to risk their lives in the passion for life.

 Let us pray for our community, our teachers, non-teaching staff and all the students.

Lord’s Prayer (in vernacular)

Benediction

L.   May the blessing of the God of peace and justice be with us;

      May the blessing of the Son who wipes the tears of the world’s suffering be with us;

      And may the blessing of the Spirit who inspires us to reconciliation and hope be with us;

      from now into eternity.

Amen

Worship Orders

Gurukul Lutheran Theological College, Chennai-10

Second Semester Opening Day

Order for Sunday evening worship-7^th November 2010

Theme: God of the Living

Call to worship

Opening prayer

God of the living, we are here to worship you along with all the living realities in the world which you have created. God we remember that when we join your other creations to worship you, we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses. Jesus, the pioneer and the perfecter of our faith help us to endure the crosses disregarding its shame, thinking always that you have taken the seat at the right hand of the throne of God. Inspire us with your life renewing spirit to think about the glory beyond the death experiences of our daily life, as we continue to worship you in truth and spirit. Amen

Opening hymn: Immortal, invisible God only… All Stand

Praise and thanks giving 

Confession

Lord we often assumed that human life is inherently and naturally eternal, but we forgot to understand that our faith responses to the revelation of your love make our lives eternal. We were too much focused on the salvific efficiency of your sacrifice on the cross, but we seldom theologised the resurrection. We meditated quite often on the blood you shed on the cross, but we failed to mediate very often on your resurrected body. Our affinity to scientific rationality made us hesitant to respect the mystery of life. The discourses on resurrection were for us naïve and boundary markers, which we used to distinguish ourselves from the rest. Lord help us with our unbelief so that we may have the glimpses of your life eternal and the life after this temporal life.

Absolution

C. God forgives us; forgive others; forgive yourself. Amen

Scripture reading: Luke 20: 27-38

Hymn (No 378 My faith looks up to thee…) All Stand

Reflection: 

Faith Affirmation-Apostles’ Creed  All Stand

Offertory (Hymn Jesus lover of my soul…) All stand

Intercession

Lord’s prayer (in vernacular) All Stand

Benediction

Finally, beloved, hold on to whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing and whatever is commendable in God’s sight. Keep on doing things that make your lives eternal and the God of peace will be with you now and ever.

Amen

Closing Hymn (No.188  Lord dismiss us…)

Bible Study

From the Community of Saints to the Community of Friends

Prayer

Gracious parent God,

We thank you for your word which is indeed the light for our paths. Guide us with the counsel of your spirit as we meditate upon your word. In Jesus’ name we pray.

Amen

Greetings to one and all in the name of our friend and saviour Jesus of Nazareth! When I thought of preaching the sermon on a difficult theme like loving our enemies I thought of starting it with a very concrete picture of it from our Indian situation. And as my search continued I came across an article written by Arundhati Roy, the renowned writer and brave activist, which appeared in one of the issues of the news magazine Outlook dated 29^th march, 2010. The article titled “Walking with the Comrades” is a thrilling narration of her befriending encounter with the members of the armed resistant movement in the central India, usually named as the Naxal threat or the Maoist rebellion. Her journey into the jungles of Dantewada the epicenter of the so called Maoist movement in the state of Chhattisgarh was much risky at the same time much rewarding as a great learning experience. Her journey to the meeting with the greatest “internal security threat of India started at Raipur” the capital city of the state. She was informed to be greeted by somebody from the group at Jagadalpur bus stand the district headquarters to which Dantewada belongs. The understanding conveyed on a type written note to identify the meeter was that the person will have a cap, Hindi Outlook magazine and bananas in his hands. And the Password: “Namashkar Guruji.” She was well in time for her appointment, waiting with the camera, red tika on the forehead and a small coconut in her hand, the features suggested for her easy identification by the group. And after some time there appeared a young boy and asked her whether she is the person going in. There was no greeting “namaskar guruji” as it was expected. The boy took out a note out of his pocket and extended it to Roy; it said “Outlook nahin mila” (couldn’t find outlook). And the bananas; the poor boy said he ate them as he got hungry. What a sarcastic yet thoughtful way of presenting the greatest security threat of India. Who are these people, whom we name along with the popular media, the government, the politicians and the police as the Maoists, the greatest security threat and the enemies of the country, to be exterminated without considering any other option of interacting with these people. They are none other than the ordinary villagers as we see in the pictures projected on the screen. Arundhati says the predominant thoughts of their minds are not about war and killing, and they are not nihilists either as we often think of them, but they are people who are very passionate about the life in their tribal dwellings. In her few days life within the jungle, she depicts how inspiring and refreshing the general ambience of the jungle of Dantakaranya was, which was full of activities to sustain life, a life threatened to be extinguished by the mega mining projects. Arundhati puts up reasons why she supports this movement even though it has a lot of violent repercussions. She says, “I am not supporting violence. But I am also completely against contemptuous atrocities."  What about the possibility of a Gandhian way of protest? Her answer to the guardians of peace goes like this, “Gandhian way of opposition needs an audience, which is absent here. People have debated long before choosing this form of struggle." She is much against severing the present struggles with the history of resistance of the tribals of central India that even predates Mao. She would like to link it with the history of the Ho, the Oraon, the Kols, the Santhals, the Mundas and the Gonds tribes, who have rebelled several times in history against the British, against the zamindars and moneylenders over their contemptuous treatment of the tribal people.

The rebellions were cruelly crushed, many thousands killed, still the killing goes on, but the people were never conquered.  The Language of genocide the media, the police and even the church leaders use like “Maoist infested”, reflects our lack of sensitivity and uncritical animosity, suggesting any infestation should be terminated. What made Arundhati to swim against the current of a consensual political opinion that, the Maoists in Dantewada and elsewhere have to be finished with. I think, in short spell, it is because of a very genuine passion for life.

Why did Jesus expect something impossible from us? That is to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us. Some say it is to drive us into despair by proving how incapable we are of satisfying God’s righteous demands. Was it a strategy then, like many of our mission strategies are, to win over our opponents, who hates and persecutes us? Or was it a humanitarian ideal meant to be used often in rhetoric, but seldom or never in practice? All these are improbable wild guesses for those who know who Jesus was. If it is so, how should this be interpreted in situations where we find our life is threatened by terrorism, extremism, communalism and so on?

The socio-religious life in Palestine in Jesus’ time was acted out in different complex planes. There were devout Jews, who stuck on to the Torah in all occasions of disaster and crises. They were expecting a retaliation on the enemies of the religion as God in God’s perfect justice is not going to spare the enemies. Even the perfection of the God was, for them very much related to the strict judgement God is going to unleash upon the evil doers. They too find their perfection only when they deal strictly with the enemies of their religion. There were people who were declared ceremonially unclean and they stood outside the perfect observances of the perfect religion. The tax collectors were despised by the loyal Jewish population because of their unpatriotic job and their constant contact with the Gentiles. The gentiles were ascribed with a sort of essential imperfectness, as they were not ritually perfect, as they could not fulfill the demands of the torah in their day to day lives. Thus the first century Jewish religious leadership indulged in a sense of perfection, which they could not find in persons with belongingness to any other cultural and religious communities. They were a community of saints with very limited contacts with a world of imperfect beings out side.

Jesus’ life and practices in Galilee challenged this notion of perfection of the cultic leadership in a very bold way. Jesus redefines the whole concepts of God, religion, love and enemy on the basis of a new organic vision of life, which was his faith response to the ethical exigencies of the time. The Matthean Jesus defines the religion as simply as the love of God and the neighbour, the fundamental ethical practice on which all other relationships depend. For Jesus love is not something to be grasped as a utilitarian principle, where it benefits the person who loves because he pleases the person whom he loves. But for Jesus love is our positive and creative openness to life in all its varying forms. In other words it is the passion for life. Some one has to start seeing his/her enemy in the light of life. Jesus further tells that the act of loving your enemies make you the children of God. To become a child of God is to participate in the divine nature. Here Jesus draws the picture of God, which is not based on God’s abstract moral perfection, but on concrete indiscriminate goodness. When God is thought as a moral perfection, God appears to withdraw from the sinful worldly affairs, but when God is thought as indiscriminate goodness, God appears to involve very actively in the material world to share life with all without any reservation. This is the difference that Jesus intends to make that by conceiving God as indiscriminate goodness, he conceives a religion which is indiscriminately good and by doing that he expects the followers of that religion to be indiscriminate goodness.

I know I cannot stop my homily here, without addressing one more probing question. Does indiscriminate goodness mean a humble submission to all the injustices we face? The scripture portion read to us today is the culmination of Jesus’ admonition starts in verse 38. Most difficult verse comes in verse 39, that is, turn your left cheek to the person strikes you on your right one. For Jesus turning the other cheek was an act of symbolic resistance whereby some one invites the striker for other respectful means of interactions than the present contemptuous one.  Differences usually frighten us, we fear that we may not be able to manage the differences. For the Jews whatever things not conforming to their religious practices and cultic values were irreconcilable and hence their enemies. But Jesus never seemed to have frightened by the differences and always thought of them as reconcilable, which he encountered in his mission. When he was put in situations to encounter people like the Syro-Phoenician woman, he could really avoid the temptation of dealing contemptuously with them. Jesus’ initial words affirming the Jewish ethnocentrism was a slap on the woman’s face and she turns the other cheek by saying that there are other respectful ways of interactions that are possible between them. He was transformed by her faith to see in her the perfection of the perfect God, which he proclaimed in public without any hesitation. He stoops down from the halo of a Jewish Rabbi to be a friend and companion of ordinary people like her. The tribals in Dantewada by offering their bodies to be blown up by the sophisticated weapons of the Indian military invites the governments and the public for interactions which may really affirm the sanctity of their life in the tribal dwellings.

The church by analyzing her missionary experience of the past is today overwhelmed by the feeling that what we need to do at this juncture is not a missionary practice, which recruits people to the club of saints by considering their respective cultures as worthless. But what we need to do today is to create communities of friends which transcend all human made divisions existing amidst us on the basis of caste, gender, religion and cultures. Friends, as Christian ministers undergoing training in a theological college our responsibility is to take initiatives for creating communities of friends where the differences of the people are reconciled, but never cancelled. We can definitely start it here from this college. Let us open our clenched fists and release all the thoughts of self righteousness and get engulfed by the vision of divine life, which throbs in every living being. Let the love for life prompt us to endeavour this precarious yet meaningful mission in our times.

Amen

 (Sermon done at Gurukul Chapel on 11th August, 2010.)

meditation and practices of cross

Meditating the Cross to Equip the Practices of Cross

We all yearn for a saintly life. We all love to be remembered as saints. But what does it mean to be a saint in a Christian way of understanding. Both biblically and ecclesiastically viewing at the issue, one should say saintliness in the Christian sense involves “Christ likeliness.” “Christ likeliness” points to the likeliness to his cross. Therefore it is the cross of Christ, which forms the ultimate criteria for the assessment of saintliness.

Unless it apprehends the pain of the negative Christian theology cannot be realistic and liberating (Moltmann, Crucified God, 1974).

 It makes hope more concrete and adds to the power of resistance, power of its visions to actions. In Christianity the cross is the inner criterion for everything.

Cross as Identity-Involvement Dilemma

Moltmann speaks about two crises in the life of the Christians especially the Christian theologians that come up when we engage in developing a theology of cross. They are the “crisis of relevance” and the “crisis of identity.” These crises are complementary. When a church and its theology attempt to be more relevant to a particular context its identity may start facing crisis (here identity is understood as the fixed essence of something). The more they try to assert their identity through their traditional dogmas and moral vision they become more irrelevant. Therefore he says this crisis can be more accurately described as the “identity-involvement dilemma.” Because the involvement of the church that makes its faith relevant always challenges the conventional identity of the church. If put other words, we could say that it is its oversensitivity to its identity that prevents the church from having meaningful involvements as disciples.

This dilemma can lead us to a withdrawal into a defensive and fearful faith. Here we may seek protection for our faith as our faith is preyed upon by fear. We also seek to protect our God, Christ, doctrine and morality as we feel that they are not capable of protecting themselves. Instead of confidence and freedom, fearfulness and apathy dominates us.

Christ is remembered as crucified because he has attempted to make the faith relevant. It is more clearly a double process of identification; God identifying with the godless in Jesus Christ and human identifying with the crucified Jesus. Cross is a powerful symbol that reflects God’s constructive involvement in the affairs of the world.

What is Cross for us Today

What are the present day crosses in the lives of our people? Are we able to identify those people living under the shadow of the cross?

We read in the Gospels that cross was a locus of Godlessness and horror. 'We have a law, and by that law he ought to die, because he has made himself the Son of God' (John 19.7). jesus screamed reflecting Pslam 22: 1, “Oh God! why did you forsake me?” Even the disciples were fearfully fleeing from it. But for Jesus, cross was also an ultimate locus of resistance. Resisting the hegemonic power of the Roman Empire and the symbolic world it created to sustain that power. Thus cross was projected by Jesus, into the history of the human living, as a powerful symbolic fulcrum around which a new meaning system is built up to affirm the ultimate authority of God over all earthly hegemonic powers.

But what happened to the symbolic energy of cross in the course of the witness of the Church in the world? As Moltmann says, cross nowadays has just become a habit in the lives of the Christians. We put cross in the Church to mark that we are Christians. We wear golden crosses as we are traditional Christians following the practices of our foreparents. All these acts are simply catering to our sense of a rigid identity. Though cross was a historical event that made our understanding of God flexible, it nowadays makes the Christians more rigid and exclusive.

Who put roses on the cross? This question was asked by so many people like Goethe, Nietzsche and Marx. Choang-Seng Song in his book Jesus: the Crucified People raises similar concerns cross being reduced to an object of worship. The draping of the cross with roses has made it a religious thing. Cross originally is not something religious.

Cross as Reality and Cross as Solidarity

While reflecting on cross, we can have different perceptions such as “Cross as a reality” and “cross as solidarity” (Moltmann). Cross is a reality in the lives of a great multitude of people not only in our churches but also in our country. Because of the very experiences of the cross that they bear, they are pushed away to the margins.

There are also people who withdraw themselves to some undisturbed comfort zones. Because, they don’t want to be disturbed by the sights of crosses in the lives of their neighbors. They also want to keep off from any kind of involvements that make their theology of cross relevant for our times. We would say that their cross is “sanitized” from all the horrors and pains associated with the cross of Jesus.

In that sense we could say that cross as marginalization and sufferings at the margins are very much present in our ecclesial life, whereas cross as solidarity with such sufferings is very much missing in that life. They are in a “dishonorable peace” with the powers of the evil and hence made the church less Christian.

For further reflection and meditation

“Church is less “Christian,” because it is losing its Saintliness or Christianness, as it looses its cross from its life.

A church which has lost its Cross is less credible and less attractive.

Then what is the relevance of cross today?

Cross becomes meaningful in the historic contexts!! What is our context and what are our crosses?

Cross for us is a commitment to the original event of incarnation and the cross as its zenith, which is the basis of our faith.

Some of the images of the cross the students of Gurukul presented in their worship evaluation classes were really touching. Someone represented cross with the broken peaces of a plough: pointing the crosses in the lives of Indian farmers inflicted by debts, climate changes globalization. There was the picture of a sprouting cross symbolizing hope for a world haunted by the threats of an early exhaustion. Black cross: representing the struggle of the dalits for centuries. Therefore, new images of crosses that reflect relevant theologies of cross for our times are real need.

The way of Cross

In this second part of the meditation on cross let us have our focus on the way of cross. The way of cross is nothing but the road of discipleship. Discipleship is more precisely Orthodoxy (right beliefs) following orthopraxy (right practices).

Discipleship is all about following Jesus and following very much involves cross-bearing. In the medieval church suffering was thought of as bringing honor to the persons who voluntarily suffer. Thus it was celebrated. It happens in the tradition of mysticism of cross. But suffering and rejection promised in the discipleship is a unique combination. Constant rejection in suffering makes it dishonorable. It is not that easy to be in dishonorable suffering for long. The truth is that discipleship involves this dishonorable suffering. Jesus asks John and James to be part of this dishonorable suffering to be his true disciples and also to be part of his glory in resurrection. Paul speaks about this dishonorable suffering of the disciples as he himself experienced it every moment of his life as a disciple. Paul’s sufferings are not his choice, but something comes to his life as part of his apostolic sufferings and the suffering of those who bear witness to crucified God

Discipleship is thus dieing in fellowship with Jesus who died alone on the cross. Martyrdom is not the passionate will to assume sufferings as it prevailed in the medieval church. But marturia is the readiness a disciple has to maintain every moment of his/her life to bear witness to the crucified one.

Marturia the attitude required on our way to cross

It is our attitude of marturia that sustains us on our way toward the cross. The evangelists’ story of the way to cross is an engagement with the world and not a withdrawal from it. Jesus on his way to cross takes heed of the cry of the poor Bartimaeus. He spares time to engage the rich young ruler trying to reproof him and loving him. Discipleship does not end at the dispersal at the foot of the cross; it is also a reinstatement of the disciples who have fled from the scene of crucifixion. Jesus through his post resurrection appearances to the retracted disciples, love them and reinstate them back to the way of the cross. Therefore this “passion-week” will be experienced by all of us as a time to put us back into the love of God and to the way of cross as a response to Jesus’ call to discipleship.

Kandhamal-a Lesson for our Christian Mission

Introduction

Mission Studies is an emerging area of theological research integrating the insights achieved from our rereading of texts and contexts and re-imagining of the methodologies. It strives for a meaningful Christian witness in a time of complex entanglement of social, political, economic and communal developments. There were a number of variables which defined ones sense of belongingness in a specific time-space continuum, like caste, tribe, religion, gender, ethnicity etc. But what happens in today’s world is that these variables are getting mixed up to form rare lethal combinations to define ones right to live or not live in a particular community or geography. In the post independent India we have witnessed the hardening of such variables that in turn determine the sense of identity in the religious, communal or national lines. Such hardening of certain categories creates definite binaries of what is acceptable or not or what is appreciable or not etc. Christian mission need to be thought of in such situations of dichotomization between the self and the other. This paper attempts to re-imagine Christian mission in the post-conflict context of Kandhamal riots.

The Socio-Economic Milieu of Kandhamal

The National Sample Survey of 1999-2000 put Orissa as the poorest state in the Indian union with overall poverty for the districts like Kandhamal and Kalahandi marked as an alarming 87%. Most of the people of the region are marginal or subsistence farmers with the collection of non-timber forest products (NTFP) as the alternate source of income for the poor. The place is inhabited mostly by dalits and tribals, that is, almost 75% of the total population is the combined number of these two groups. But they are socially, culturally and economically marginal and bear the age old stigma of social outcasts. The average landholding for the dalit communities is less than half of that of the state average. Most of the Adivasi lands are marginal and non-irrigated. The literacy levels in this region are still around 30-35% with an abysmal 25% for the females. Census India 2001 website records that only a scant 21.4% in the whole Kandhamal district have permanent houses.[1] The quality of life of the people is seriously affected by the lackluster performance of the schools, PHCs and other social welfare programmes.

Kandhamal riots a brief description

Kandhamal had witnessed two phases of violence in the 2007 and 2008 in a gap of 8 months. When the first time it was initiated, it was because of the unwanted interference of a group of Hindu fundamentalists with the X’mas celebrations of a Christian group in a typical Kandhamal village namely Brahmanigaon. Violence lasted for almost 4-5days, a few people were killed (less than five) both in the clash of two ethnic communities as well as in the resultant police firing. Almost 40 churches were burned to ashes. Priests and nuns and the families of the Christian converts were targeted. Christians were not allowed to celebrate X’mas anywhere in Kandhamal in 2007. It was followed by a greater violence against the lives and property of the Christians in the month of August in 2008. This was triggered by the assassination of Swami Lakshmananda Saraswati who was spearheading the anti-Christian movements in the kuyi linguistic belt. From August 23 the day of swami’s murder, the rioting and killing prolonged to a full month time and more taking the lives of scores of people, much more than the figures published by the government. The casualties were much more than that of the previous violence. There were more than 20 relief camps set up to accommodate more than 25000 people displaced from their villages. Most of them moved over to different towns in the state instead of returning to their volatile villages.[2] This was followed by further violence into the constitutional and ethical rights of the people a large number of Christian families were made to forcibly convert into Hinduism.

The riots got international attention for many reasons like: the government apathy and in some cases the administrative antipathy towards the tortured, use of the agency of the adivasis in inciting the violence, the targeting of the means of livelihood of the victims, which was unprecedented and aimed at denying the remote chances of survival of the victims. It also manipulated the rivalry existing between two communities contesting on their Scheduled Tribe status to further instigate the spread of violence. The main reason for violence projected by the Hindutva ideologists was the abounding conversions to Christianity initiated by the Christian missionaries with “foreign support.”

Many different analyses from very many perspectives to describe the nuances of the violence were done. The historical wedge between the two communities called the pana and the kandha, the economic advances made by the Christian panas intimidating the Hindu Kandhas, the increasing number of Christian converts and Christian churches in the area, the politicization of the historical wedge between the two communities on the access to reserved opportunities, instigation through ideological brain wash etc are cited as the causes of the riots.

As Raj Bharat Patta put the things in a perspective in his book “A Violent Sight in a Silent Night”, the occasion of violence was not a time for the church to be too defensive on its missiological, theological and ideological positions, but it is a time to contemporarise its mission and witness.[3] The riots made us think about the way people are formed in a mission context. Each and every mission programmes have certain formative impacts on the people. To realize the nuances of this formation, I would like to see Christian missional engagements with the people of the geography in three different planes namely, historiographic, ideological and hermeneutical or theological. As learning is unlearning I would say the present crises the Kandhamal Church faced in its life and witness urges us to have corrections or deconstructions in these three areas.

Historiographic deconstructions

Kandhamal is a place, which had come to a number of cross-cultural contacts in its complex history of existence. These cultural contacts were also experiences of them being described by the subjectivity of their visitors. The first such contact in the modern period was the arrival of the British colonialists. The colonial accession of this region to the British Raj happened in the year 1835.[4] They were attracted by the vast forest resources like timber. The relationship was very much conflictual. Their attempt was to normalize the uncultured or uncivilized forest-dwellers and in that attempt they described them through their historiography. These historiographies in turn had represented the people in different categories. These categories got consolidated when they started using them for administrative advantages. Later on when the Christian missions made inroads into the area they appropriated the same colonial understanding of the people and thereby inherited their civilizing mission of the forest dwellers in the latter part of the 19^th century CE. The whole attempts of representation and categorisation were part of a programme to tame or domesticate the people of the area to suit their purposes.

Here we can think of a macro level of historiography and a micro level of historiography?[5] At the macro level the history of Christian mission always concentrates on the agency of the missioniser and the role of the local Christian community in defining their future course is seldom acknowledged. The self construction of the converts as an independent and self determining process was never acknowledged in the mission historiographies written in the European colonial subjectivity. Instead they were always picturised as patronised selves with emphasis on the benevolence of the European masters.

Whereas in the micro level of historiography one needs to acknowledge the role played by the converts in furthering the faith as well as the subjective self construction. Here we come across stories of people acting as free persons with definite subjective positions; taking the initiative to interact with the symbolic world of the new faith. It resulted in the renewal of their understanding of the self differently from what they were used to believe as something fixed, rigid and without the possibility of any change. Their openness to the Christian symbolic world enabled them with a new vision of their self as something always undergoing transformation that God wills.

But normally this micro approach is considered irrelevant and was never given an adequate place in the traditional mission historiographies. Mission historiographies were attempts to defend the goodwill and magnanimity of the missioniser and the quality of change imparted on the people by them. Therefore ultimately the problem was with the lack of acknowledgement of the agency of the missionised. It went in the line of argument of the people who opposed conversions saying that the conversions were result of material allurements and the agency of the converts were never in play in religious conversions.

Ideological deconstructions

Each and every mission projects in the history of the people were riding over varying ideologies.[6] The first religious mission of the area was the Hinduising mission of the adivasis and dalits. Their primal religious life, their gods and their beliefs were appropriated into the Hindu way of life, worship and social order, but by ascribing a low ritual status to both the dalits and adivasis. The imposition of the new social order was also an act of ideological distribution of power in that network of relationships to have control over the defined, appropriated and fixed categories of the people. Dongar and kutia were terminologies used along with kandha and pana in order to refer to such cultural categories of people reflecting the stigma they historically carry and also the socio-economic and cultural disempowerment.

The early missions initiated by the missionaries under-girded by the pietistic ideologies of appropriating the people into homogenous and exclusive category of Christian. Where, the Christian categories are put as standing diametrically opposite to the values of the local culture. It paved way for the development of an exclusive self concept in the converts. The local people misread these exclusive claims of the converts as their foreignness that they appropriated from their foreign masters. Thus the Christian identity for the converts has become a matter of their further alienation from the local community.

When other sectarian ideologies like Hindutva took root in the place, they could take advantage on this situation of alienation and resulted in further intensification of it. Christian is represented as the foreign other expected to be displaced by the ‘culturally Indian self.” Indianness is here equated with Hinduness. But the question we must ask at this juncture is what happened to the mission ideology. The mission ideology has got transformed to a defensive ideology that defended its alienation from the local social and cultural realities.

The Christian identity of the people are always depicted and described from the subjective positions of the external agencies of the missionaries and opponents of missionaries and never a voice of the converts was enabled to be vocal in the public space of discourses on mission.

The ideologies focused on the quantitative increase of the church were also aimed at having control over the converts to shape them or to absorb them to their subjectivity. Therefore one could say that it retained the triumphal and colonial values of the modern European missionary enterprises. Here I would say that the riots were also an occasion which exposed the ideologies of mission or the theological premises underlying our missionary endeavors.

It may be because of the anchorage over the colonial ideologies of the mission that the mission engagements of the place could not cross the safe and convenient boundaries of the traditional areas of mission like running the hostels, dispensaries, child development centers etc. it never touched the political aspirations of the people or to link its programmes in a meaningful way with the wider struggles of the dalit and adivasi communities for the revival of their moral agency to determine themselves.

Hermeneutical deconstructions

What is the hermeneutics of the so called mission fields?

Are the hermeneutics or the theologies of the place really informed by the culture and political aspirations of the people? Hermeneutics deals with the symbolic resources available for the people in constructing meanings. The riots revealed the fact that the construction of meanings in a communally and ideologically polarized socio-cultural milieu cannot be taken for granted. Empowering the people with a hermeneutical tool to interpret such historic junctures of Herculean impediments in their ecclesial existence is also a grave responsibility of the present day Christian missions. What we could notice amid the cacophony of responses to the violence in Kandhamal was the absence of the voice of the victims. To a greater extend the hermeneutical tools available for the people are that of a sanskritising mission, whether it is the Christian or Hindu missions. What is meant here is the approach to appropriate the dalitness and adivasiness (not as essential qualities, but as cultural and historical distinctiveness) into a general category of Christian or Hindu defined by the cultural elites of the society. Thus such religious missions to the people were violating the episteme of the adivasi and dalit communities.[7] Their knowledge systems were often regarded as falsities and a new episteme is superimposed.

Here I would like to invite our attention to the way the church has become visible to the world outside. The visibility of the church has become a threatening presence for the communities of other faiths and that visibility did not take into consideration the dalit and adivasi epistemic framework.[8] The visibility was an imparted visibility on the people from outside. Or it was not an outcome of free and imaginative expression of the faith, worldview and life of the people of the geography.

By concluding the paper due to the brevity of time I would say the future course of the mission of the Church in India must take into consideration these three important areas that determine the nature of mission. It not only makes the mission approach of the church holistic but also reclaims the agency of the missionised.

Bibliography

Akkara, Anto. Shining Faith in Kandhamal. Bangalore: ATC Publications, 2009.

________. Kandhamal: A Blot on Indian Secularism. Delhi: Media House, 2009.

Clarke, Sathianathan. Dalits and Christianity: Subaltern Religion and Liberation

Theology in India. New Delhi: Oxford, 1998.

Copley, Antony. Religions in Conflict: Ideology, Cultural Contact and Conversion in Late-Colonial Era. Oxford, 1997.

Ibarra-Colado, Eduardo. “Organization Studies and Epistemic Coloniality in Latin America: Thinking Otherness from the Margins.” Organization 13/4 (July, 2006): 465.

Longchar, Wati. “After 23rd Attack on Christians in Orissa: Implications for Tribals

and Dalits.” NCCR 128/9 (October, 2008): 459-475.

Kirk, Andrew J. and Vanhoozer, Kevin, eds. To Stake a Claim: Mission and the Western Crisis of Knowledge. Maryknoll: Orbis, 1999.

Nayak, Bhagyabati. “Our Journey Glimpses of Church in Kond Hills.” Souvenir on

the Occasion of Inauguration of Phulbani CNI Diocese. G. Udayagiri:

Phulbani Diocese Ad-hoc Committee, 1997.

Sarkar, Sumit. “Hindutva and the Question of Conversions.” In The Concerned

Indian’s Guide to Communalism. Edited by K. N. Panikkar. New Delhi:

Penguin Books, 2001.

Patta, Raj Bharat. A Violent Sight on a Silent Night: Missiological Discourses in the

Context of Violence against Christians. Delhi: ISPCK, 2009.

http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2522/stories/20081107252202500.htm

Accessed on 21 0ctober, 2009.

---

[1] Census India 2001, Basic data sheet, District Kandhamal, Orissa, http://www.censusindia.gov.in/

Dist_File/ datasheet-2121.pdf

(January 11. 2011).

[2] http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2522/stories/20081107252202500.htm

Accessed on 21 0ctober, 2009.

[3] Raj Bharat Patta, A Violent Sight on a Silent Night: Missiological Discourses in the Context of Violence against Christians, Delhi: ISPCK, 2009.

[4] Bhagyabati Nayak, “Our Journey Glimpses of Church in Kond Hills,” Souvenir on the Occasion of

Inauguration of Phulbani CNI Diocese, (G. Udayagiri: Phulbani Diocese Ad-hoc Committee, 1997),

35.

[5] The terminologies, “macro” and “micro” histories are used by the author to differentiate

between the history in the subjectivity of the colonial other or its reproduction and history narrated by

the people from their own subjectivity. The macro history recorded here is a history of the Christian

conversions written by a missionary namely Barbara Boals, a missionary who was sent to this place

and later reproduced by Bhagyabati Nayak. But the micro histories are narrated histories of the place

by the people of the place.

[6] Antony Copley, Religions in Conflict: Ideology, Cultural Contact and Conversion in Late-Colonial Era, Oxford:OUP, 1997. 110.

[7] Eduardo Ibarra-Colado, “Organization Studies and Epistemic Coloniality in Latin America: Thinking Otherness from the Margins”, Organization, 13/4 (July, 2006), 465.

[8] Sumit Sarkar, “Hindutva and the Question of Conversions.” In The Concerned Indian’s Guide to Communalism, Edited by K. N. Panikkar, New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2001, 84.

A brief survey of caste system: theories of origin and development; comparison of caste and class; links between capitalism, Brahmanism and Patriarchy; history and development of untouchability.

Course facilitator: Rev Dr David Udayakumar                       Presenter: Jacob P Thomas

3 December 2010

1. Introduction

There are many notable approaches prevailing in the understanding of the phenomenon of caste.  The first one, according to Ursula Sharma, is the naturalistic view of caste chiefly propagated by the British writers of the colonial period.  Here the phenomenon of caste is understood as the representative of a pre-rational or primitive state of the imagination and the social expression of this organic existence.[1] This view was a kind of “collapsing history into nature and rendering the Indian society ‘timeless and exotic’.”[2]  The second view is promulgated by the French writers and it tends to view caste as a moral phenomenon; “an expression of the collective consciousness at an early level of social evolution in which the individual is subordinated to an organic division of labour.”[3] What bearing this peculiar orientalist understandings of caste had is that these views helped to construct the very traditional society of India as backward. The colonial recognition of local institutions as tradition tended to freeze caste as timeless categories from what had been evolving and flexible social forms.[4] Further the Britishers took caste reality more seriously and their subsequent censuses attempted to classify the entire population in caste lines that is everyone had to be included in one or other caste groups. As a result of this apparent objectification of caste, it had become more real and liable to rigidification.

2. Caste system definitions

Caste is not an Indian word but is derived from Portuguese word casta and Spanish castus meaning that which is not mixed or pure breed. There are various terms which approximate to it in Indian languages.  There is the widely used concept of varna, which refers to the four fold division of society into estates based on function.  Then there is the term jati, which refers to the named endogamous groups that are usually more or less localized or have a regional base.  Certain elements prominent in the definition of caste are division of functions or common traditional occupations, hereditary transmission of same situation and potentialities to posterity, endogamous organisation, common name, membership through birth, hierarchy based on ritual purity and pollution and resultant stratification etc.[5]

According to Ursula Sharma, “we shall note the origins of the concept of caste in an ‘orientalist’ colonial discourse about the specific nature of Indian society and show how it finds its place as part of a more analytical sociological discourse about the nature of stratification and the division of labour in societies in general.”[6] In the colonial discourses the Indian reality was represented as “other” to the western self and privileged the knowledge of the colonial discourses as superior to the Indians themselves. The chief contributors to this knowledge were the missionaries, colonial administrators, travelers and officials.  Here India was represented as an essentially static society of which caste was the defining social institution.  Towards the end of the nineteenth century we see more systematic efforts from the ethnologists and administrators of the colonial government to comprehend the local varieties of the caste system.[7] All these efforts of the British colonial historians cum ethnographers defined caste in racial lines and projected Indian caste ridden societies as pathological. This in turn used to legitimize the British rule of India.[8]

3. Theories on origin of caste

3.1 Brahmanic theory of the origin of the castes

It is a theory derived from the Brahmanic literature to explain the creation of the universe, of human beings and of the different varnas.[9] The common belief among the Hindus is that the Brahmans proceeded from the mouth of Brahma; the Kshatriyas from his arms; the Vaisyas from his thighs and the Sudras from his feet. John Muir and Dr. Wilson were two of the prominent orientalist scholars who had done detailed investigations into the origin of castes and examined Hindu scriptures like Rig-Veda and interpreted the 90^th hymn of the 10^th book called the Purusha Sukta to explicate the Hindu idea of creation. The gods divided purusha into different parts; different beings came into existence from different parts of Purusha’s body. Likewise the mouth gave birth to the Brahman; the arms to Rajanya (kshatriyas); the thighs to Vaisyas and the feet to Sudras. [10]

The taittiriya Brahmana  states: “ the Brahman caste is sprung from the gods; the sudra from the Asuras.” I. 2,6.7.

Manu; after describing how Brahma the parent of all creations was born from a golden egg’ says:-  “that the world might be peopled, he caused the brahman, the Kshatriya, the Vaisya and the Sudra to issue from his mouth, his arms, his thighs and his feet.”[11]

Another line of argument is that (as it is found in mahabharata and bhagavata purana) there was no originally no distinction between castes and the existing distinction had arisen out of difference of character and occupation. Bhagavata purana says there was only one caste in the Krita age.

Various smrithis like yagnavalkya smrithi and manu smrithi  strongly disapprove marriages outside one’s caste. Such marriages and the resultant children form the chandalas.

Thus the Hindu scriptures are not giving a consensus opinion on the matter of origin of castes. May theories are contradictory and conflicting. The later theories in the Brahman age are clearly depicting the differential origin of the caste and perpetuate the Brahmanical ideology of the dominance of the Brahmans in the social order. Ambedkar critiques this theory by naming it “…senseless ebullitions of a silly mind.”[12]

3.2 The caste as race theory of origin of caste/Aryan invasion theory

This is also a theory developed by the colonial orientalist scholars to explain the origin of caste system in the racial lines. This theory is based on the references of two different races in the Hindu scriptures namely the Aryas and the Dasyus. According to this theory India was invaded around 1500 BC by a people who called themselves as Aryans and possessed physically and culturally distinctive qualities from that of the original inhabitants of the land. The aryas were considered as the noble race with light skin colour and prominent nose and the dasyus was a term used by the aryas to refer to the aborigines of India who are dark and with “goat-like” nose. The former settlers and agriculturalists moved into the Indo-Gangetic plains from Europe. Whereas, the Dasyus were wandering races and the enemies of the aryas.  The aryas had a totally different language from that of the Dasyus and the latter were pushed down to the southern part of the country. Dipankar Gupta expresses his difference with this theory by citing it as a theory primarily to justify the reenactment of the conquering of the dark skinned Indians by the light colored European colonizers in the modern era.[13]  Dr Ambedkar also identifies this theory as a western theory, which attempted to fill the lacunae of origin of shudras in the Brahmanic theory of origin of castes.[14] For him the “caste is race theory” is politically misleading if not dangerous. He further proposes that the terms light and darkness referred to in the Vedas can also mean knowledge or lack of it. The nose-less ness, which has a reference in only one place in Vedas can also mean poor speech.[15]

3.3 Ambedkar’s critic of the Aryan invasion theory

Ambedkar accused the Brahmins of basking in the reflected glory of their Aryan origin. Drawing insights from the studies of Prof Ripley’s anthropometric studies on race and the studies of Max Muller on Aryan race, he arrives at a hypothesis that the Aryan race is a cultural and linguistic construction it has nothing to do with the actual anatomic peculiarities of the people.[16] Ambedkar further intercepts the Aryan invasion theory by saying that the mention of sporadic violence between a neighboring people does not indicate war and invasion, but conflicts due to cultural and cultic differences. He substantiates his point by citing references like avrata (without rites) apavrata and anyavrata (different rites) etc used to differentiate the Dasyus from the Aryans. [17] Thus in his own words, “the Aryans were not a race. The Aryans were a collection of people. The cement that held these together was their interest in the maintenance of a type of culture called the Aryan culture.”[18]

4. The Theory of Varna

According to Dumont the Varna classification can be broadly divided into two categories, namely the ‘twice born’ or dvijiya jati and the ‘once born’ or the eka jati. [19]  The former comprises the three varnas except Shudras and the Shudras in turn comprises the eka jati. And there is also a third group in addition to the two mentioned above, which is an excluded group namely the “never born” which cannot be admitted to exist. These are the untouchables, the panchama. There is no mention of untouchability in the early Vedic texts; it is only in the later vedic texts that untouchable population make their appearance. By the time we come to Buddha, untouchability had clearly established itself.[20]

Stephen knapp in his article titled “Casteism: Is It the Scourge of Hinduism, or the Perversion of a Legitimate Vedic System?” says that, varnashrama was a virtuous and legitimate system, meant for the progressive organisation of the society. This was a grouping of people into four occupational groups based on the natural proclivity of the people. But the naivety of this approach is questionable from the perspective of dalit liberative discourses of today. What is missing here is the acknowledgement of the power relations and processes of status ascriptions related to this kind of organisation of social life.[21]

4.1 Building of Hierarchy on the basis of status and power

Thus in the “theory of the varnas” one finds that status (spiritual authority represented by Brahmans) and power (temporal authority represented by Kshatriyas) is differentiated to effect the manifestation of the hierarchy in the pure form. But the important thing to note here is that these entirely distinct principles are united in their opposition to other categories in the caste system. According to Manu these are two forces represented by the Brahmans and the Kshatriyas which were been given dominion over all creatures.[22] Therefore in the varna theory the twice born are specially favored by the laws, with the Brahmans occupying the most advantageous position. The varnas are divided in accordance with the respective dharmas of the varnas, therefore we have four classes with their dharmas attached to them, namely, Brahmins, the priestly and the educated class, Kshatriyas, the military class, the Vaishyas, the trading class and the śudras the servant class. According to Ambedkar, for a period they were only classes with different dharmas but after a period they became castes and the four classes became thousands of castes and sub-castes with hierarchic relationships. Therefore he cautions the readers to be mindful of the fact that caste has never been the same throughout the history. Instead, caste has been a growing institution. Even though the caste system can be seen as an evolution of the varna system, caste should be studied separately from that of varna system.[23]

4.2 Caste as a re-organisation of varna through conversion

Dipankar Gupta says in primitive economy of the early vedic period (B C 1500 following), it was impossible for the Aryans to maintain profound distance between the indigenous subjugated groups in the day-to-day activities. Even the Brahmins and the Kshatriyas worked on the land and did other manual jobs at this early phase of Aryan expansion. Therefore the religious conversion of the indigenous people into the vedic fold was the most effective guarantee of the Aryans superiority over the rest. At this stage the full blown four varna system was not emerged. The main division existed as per the indications of the Rig veda, the oldest of the Vedas, is that between the Aryans and the dasas. The Aryans further were divided into the elites and the commoners. The latter were known as vis in the rig veda and later constituted the vaishya varna. They were common peasants engaged in agricultural practices. The Aryans also attempted to effect a workable relationship with the tribes around, but naturally from a position of strength. The friendly tribes were accommodated as the allies of the Aryans. And at the same time those unfriendly tribes who were unable to withstand the onslaught of the Aryans were enslaved by the Aryans and became a servile group in the vedic economic structure. They were the dasas and often regarded as the property of the Aryans like cattle.[24]

4.3 The status of the Shudras in the Varna system

The four varna system was ideologically refined by the Brahmanas over time. The Dharmasutras which were the compiled between 600 and 300 B. C., represented the crystallisation of these efforts by the orthodox brahmanas whose homeland was the upper-Gangetic basin. According to Dharmasutras, because śudras were born of the feet of the Universal Soul, Brahman, they were destined to serve the three upper varnas born from his mouth, arms and thighs. They had to support their lives with the small compensation they received for their services to the twice born varnas. The Dharmasutras determined this compensation as cast-off shoes, umbrellas, garments,  mats and left over food of the twice born.[25] On the other hand the Dharmasutras also require the masters to take care of their śudras. The sudra was strictly prohibited from participating in the veda religious ceremonies. If a śudra intentionally overhears the Veda chants, he shall have his ears filled with molten tin and dark red pigment. Though these punishments were not widely and frequently carried out, they signify how unrighteously the śudras were excluded from the customs of the twice born.[26] And because of the ritual purity sought by the twice born, the śudra were excluded from offering or cooking food and drinks for the former. Śudra males out crossing the endogamous rules of the varna system were severely punished even up to the point of death and a twice born male having a śudra wife was considered always in a state of ritual impurity and was forbidden from being part of sraddha (ancestral worship) ceremonies. All these regulations, according to Kotani were intended to segregate the śudras from the twice born societies. The loopholes provided in the Dharmasutras for failing to stick on to the proscriptions of the Varna Dharma were also unjustly discriminating against the śudras and apparently favoring the twice born. The theoretical basis of the four-varna system as described in the dharmasutras was systematized in the Manu-smriti, which was compiled between 200 B. C. and 200 A. D.[27] Manu-smriti lays out in an even more substantive manner,  than the dharmasutras, provisions about discrimination against śudra varna and its exclusion from the twice born society. For example in the Manu-smriti it is stated that the śudra varna was created by the God for the purpose of serving the twice born society and that any wealth amassed by the śudras belonged to the latter.  The king in his position as the upholder of the state order was strictly directed to ensure that the śudras stay in a servile position to the twice born.

5. Untouchability

5.1 Origin and development

5.1.1 Theory of illegitimate birth of chandalas

The term untouchable is one of the several terms used to refer to the castes historically regarded as irredeemably polluted. According to the Hindu law codes, the chandala the representative of the untouchables of the ancient times was the progeny of a sudra father and a brahmana mother, ie, the offsprings of the most condemned pratiloma marriage. But this theory of origin of untouchables is an ideological production of the varna conception of the orthodox Brahmins and was not based on the historical facts. According to Kotani, the chandalas came into existence only towards the later vedic period, when the brahmanas secured the top position in the society by virtue of their monopoly of the priesthood. A primitive ideological distinction between purity and pollution in ritualistic terms came into existence during this period to legitimize the brahmanic purity and sanctity over all other social realities. This emphasis on purity gave rise to people on the opposite end of the society who were considered to be impure. Then between the most pure Brahmins and the most polluted untouchables were inserted the remaining varnas of the varna system and they were ascribed different levels of purity in accordance with their respective dharmas.[28]

5.1.2 Degradation of hunting gathering life in comparison to the settled agrarian life

Most of the untouchables originated in the tribal peoples carrying on hunting and gathering in the forests on the peripheries of Aryan agrarian society. During the later Vedic era (1000- 600 BC) the Aryans moved over to the middle and upper gangetic basin and formed themselves as agrarian societies. The religious ideologies like transmigration too have resulted in the development of antagonism towards people who are leading life styles other than settled agrarian and engaging in the acts of hunting and slaughtering animals. Later on some of the tribal groups accepted the Aryan agrarian way of life and eventually got assimilated into the varna system. But those who were not able to undergo this transition was continued to be stigmatised as impure and were socially discriminated.  The name chandala was originally used to refer to such indigenous non-concomitant tribes and as their untouchability developed over time all people associated with their way of life were came to be called the untouchables or chandalas.[29]

5.1.3 Theory based on Brahmanic counter movements to Buddhism

Another theory of origin of untouchability is closely connected with the Brahmin counter-reformation against Buddhism and the persistent practice of beef eating among Buddhists.[30]

5.2 Untouchability in contemporary Indian society

Untouchability in Indian social realities denote the status gap persistent between the ordinary clean artisans and those exterior groups who are often associated with “polluting” occupations such as scavenging or tanning. The practices used to mark these castes off and enforce the distance between them and other groups included obliging them to live in separate hamlets, use separate wells to draw water, imposing restrictions on wearing certain types of clothes and ornaments etc. In some areas low caste women were not allowed to wear upper clothes to signify their lower status.[31] While slavery is an almost extinct practice, untouchability remains very much a living presence in India of today. Following legislation making the practice a crime, it is no more an open thing, but it is there all the same.[32] Gandhi saw untouchability as an aberration of varnashrama dharma, thus his effort was to purify it. Vivekananda also held a similar view on caste system.[33]

But it was Ambedkar who was more critical about the social system perpetuating untouchability. Ambedkar did not find Gandhi’s condemnation of untouchability radical enough. He was unapologetic in his hostility towards a varna-based society.[34] For Ambedkar equality did not mean equal status of varnas, but an equal economic, political and social order.[35]  Later on anthropologists like Hutton endorsed the position taken by Ambedkar in saying that (1946), the unfortunate position of the “exterior castes” cannot be remedied without destroying the caste system. 

6. Caste and class

Scholars like Dumont, Hocart, Hutton, Pocock, Srinivas, and others argued that caste and class belong to different social realities. Caste and class are two different principles of social stratification. Caste as an age old tradition is particularly associated with the social life of the Indians and in a very few other regions of south Asia. On the other hand class was seen as a universal phenomenon of modern society. In the caste system, one’s position, whether it is high or low, in the social hierarchy is decided purely on the basis of birth. On the other hand, class refers to the differences in the life standards caused by the economic factors in.[36]  Class is the principal type of organizational base in the western societies. Class is a division of a population marked off from the rest by different criteria such as income, occupation, education, prestige or status. For Marx class is a mirror reflecting the totality of the relations in every society.  Class for him is relations with the means of production. Thus Marx differentiates between a labour class and the owning class.

The early approaches of Indian academia towards the analytical study of these two types of stratification was based on a substantial difference made between these two categories to see caste as a rigid dysfunctional category and class with a kind of opposite nature of caste, i.e., as flexible and dynamic. This kind of approaches to the study of caste and class put them into polar opposites.[37] Now a day, caste is also understood as a developing structure rather than a rigid, absolutist, unchanging reality. Several intended and unintended changes in the caste system have brought both positive and negative changes, which have implications for the changes in the class structure and the power relations.[38] Yogendra singh views both these realities as mutually embedded. For him caste is not simply a reality of social stratification based on ritual purity and impurity of the people alone. But it has economic and power dimensions also. G. Dietrich and B. Wielenga comments on attempts to make clear-cut distinctions between class and caste as superficial.[39] This is because of the fact that in social reality we note that the social mobility across the class borders is not that frequent and great. On the other hand certain decisive social changes have also brought in conspicuous changes in the organisation of the castes as against the common notion of it as rigid and static. K. L. Sharma comments that, with the emergence of a new middle class disproportionate to the size of the upper and the lower classes, the stage is set for the forging of a new alliance between caste, class and power.[40]

7. Caste and patriarchy

Patriarchy is one of the oldest forms of discrimination based on gender difference embedded in the structure of the family from the early days. It too was a product of the historical processes of social and economic structuring of life like caste system based on the functions of the participants of the particular societies.[41] It has through the centuries regulated the relationship of sexes and generations in the households; and structured the productive processes of life like child birth and rearing to subsistence production in an obviously sex determined manner. Like caste system, patriarchy also survived so many social changes and is still causing suffering to the women all over. The feminist studies in depth on this reality reveal that, this is a product of history and not something like a God-given natural reality.[42] Patriarchal structures are analyzed as part of a power relationship, which denies or restricts access to property, to education and other amenities, which regulates division of labour and uses violence and all sorts of social pressures to maintain its power and dominance. In short patriarchy is a multidimensional dominance over the women’s labour, sexuality and fertility.

Caste as an endogamous marriage circle needs and uses patriarchy to perpetuate itself. In this way the access to resources like that of land is retained in the control of the dominant castes and of the males. Both in caste and patriarchy the interaction with organic life brings forth notions of purity and impurity. There for all women and dalit women and men have pollution in common, associated with their involvement in the production of life.[43] Thus there is a commonality for their struggle to protect their production of life and land, livelihood and water.

7. Caste and Capitalism

Capitalism according to William I Robinson is the spread of capitalist mode of relationships of production, replacing all the pre-capitalist mode of productions thereby. Further more, capitalism means unequal development. Globalisation is seen as the culmination of the age long process of capitalism. In the dalit perspective, what the capitalism is doing in today’s world is an ever increasing gap between the rich and the poor. It is all about two mutually enriching economic process, viz., the expansion of the market and the simultaneous resource appropriation. The privatization process of the capitalism freezes the social security mechanisms in place for the subaltern like dalits and women and makes them more vulnerable.  As capitalism supports elitism, in the Indian socio-political scenario it promotes the patriarchal elite ideologies like Hindutva and thereby reinforce Brahmanism, which in turn continues the control of the dalits and the women in the contemporary Indian situations.[44]

8. Conclusion

All the attempts to unearth the ideological formations in the Indian polity, which discriminate against people on the bases of caste, class and gender, must converge into a movement towards a non-caste, non- patriarchal social life. Such a society re-imagined in today’s Indian context should be equalitarian and sustainable. What we urgently need in today’s context is the integration of various efforts initiated in different parts of the country for liberation and self-affirmation to form such a movement, where the differences are not assimilated into any common universal value system. It also signifies a re-imagination of the nation as different from the one which dominates the current Indian political scenario, based on the Aryan cultural. Indian Christian community too must take a very cautious and conscious course of life and witness in differentiating it with the hegemonic tendencies of assimilation and appropriation of the cultural diversities of the marginal communities. It’s witness instead must be catering such diversities as a medium of reflecting God’s glory and at the same time challenging the monolithic formulations of nationalism.

Bibliography

Monographs

Dumont,Louis. Homo Hierarchicus. Delhi: Oxford UniversityPress,1988. Indian edition.

Karinanithi, G. Caste and Class in Industrial Organisation: A Case Study of Two Indusstrial Units in Tamilnadu. New Delhi: Commonwealth Publishers, 1991.

Moon, Vasant. Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and speeches Vol. 7. Bombay: Education Deprtment Government of  Maharashtra, 1990.

Gabriela Dietrich and Bas Wielenga, Towards Understanding Indian Society,Madurai: Centre for Social Analysis, 1998 (Reprint).

Gupta, Dipankar. Caste:Understanding Hierarchy anddifference in Indian Society,New Delhi: Penguin, 2000.

Kotani, H. ed. Caste System, Untouchability and the Depressed. New Delhi: Manohar, 1997.

Murdoch, J. compiler. Caste: Its Supposed Origin; its History; its effects; the duty of the Government; Hindus and Christians with respect to it: and its Prospects. Madras: CLS for India, 1896.

Omvedt, Gail. Dalit Visions, Hyderabad: orient Longman, 1995.

Sharma,K. L. ed. Caste and Class in India, New Delhi: Rawat Publications. 1994.

Ursula Sharma, Caste. Buckingham: Open University Press, 1999.

Journals

Ashok K. Pankaj, “Engaging with Discourse on Caste, Class and Politics in India”. South Asia Research. 27/392007). 333-353.

Dietrich, Gabriela. “Patriarchy, Caste and Class”. Journal of Dharma 23/1(1998).104-111.

Kavoori, Purnendu S. “The Varna Trophic System: An Ecological Theory of Caste formation,” Economic and Political Weekly ( March 23, 2002): 1156.

Webliography

Gupta, Dipankar. “Caste, Race, politics,” Seminar, (3 October, 2001):

http://www.india-seminar.com/2001/508/508%20dipankar%20gupta.htm

---

[1] Ursula Sharma, op. cit., 7,8.

[2] Ibid., 8.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] G. Karunanithi, Caste and Class in Industrial Organisation: A Case Study of Two Indusstrial Units in Tamilnadu, (New Delhi: Commonwealth Publishers, 1991), 19-23.  

[6] Ursula Sharma, Caste  (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1999), 3.

[7]Ibid.,7.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and speeches Vol. 7 Edited by Vasant Moon, Bombay: Education Deprtment Government of  Maharashtra, 1990, 37.

[10] J. Murdoch, compiler, Caste: Its Supposed Origin; its History; its effects; the duty of the Government; Hindus and Christians with respect to it: and its Prospects, (Madras: CLS for India, 1896): 4.

[11] Ibid., 7.

[12] Ambedkar, op. cit., 66.

[13] Dipankar Gupta, “Caste, Race, politics, Seminar,” (3 October, 2001):

http://www.india-seminar.com/2001/508/508%20dipankar%20gupta.htm

[14] Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, op. cit., 65,79.

[15] Dipankar Gupta, op. cit.

[16] Ambedkar, op. cit., 66-69.

[17] Ibid., 74,75.

[18] Gail Omvedt, Dalit Visions, Hyderabad: orient Longman, 1995. 48.

[19] Louis Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus, (Delhi: Oxford UniversityPress,1988, Indian edition), 67.

[20] Poornendu S. Kavoori, op. cit., 1159.

[21] From the e-materials provided by Dr Udayakumar

[22] Dumont, op. cit., 72.

[23] Ambedkar, vol 5 p156.

[24] Dipankar Gupta, Caste:Understanding Hierarchy anddifference in Indian Society,New Delhi: Penguin, 2000. 202-204.

[25] H. Kotani,ed, Caste System, Untouchability and the Depressed, New Delhi: Manohar, 1997. 4.

[26] Ibid.

[27] Kotani, op. cit., 8.

[28] Ibid., 11.

[29] Ibid., 12.

[30] Gabriela Dietrich and Bas Wielenga, Towards Understanding Indian Society, Madurai: Centre for Social Analysis, 1998. 41.

[31] Ursula Sharma, op. cit., 47,48.

[32] Purnendu S Kavoori, “ The Varna Trophic System: An Ecological Theory of Caste formation,” Economic and Political Weekly ( March 23, 2002): 1156.

[33] Ibid.

[34] Poornendu S. Kavoori, op. cit.

[35] Ibid.

[36] G. Karunanithi, op.cit., 18.

[37] Ashok K. Pankaj, “Engaging with Discourse on Caste, Class and Politics in India”. South Asia Research. 27/392007). 333-353.

[38] K. L. Sharma,ed., Caste and Class in India, New Delhi: Rawat Publications, 1994. 2.

[39] Gabriela Dietrich and Bas Wielenga, Towards Understanding Indian Society,Madurai: Centre for Social Analysis, 1998 (Reprint). 34,35.

[40] Ibid.

[41] Dietrich & Wielenga, op. cit., 35.

[42] Ibid., 36.

[43] Gabriela Dietrich, “Patriarchy, Caste and Class”, Journal of Dharma 23/1(1998), 109.

[44] Ibid., 110.