If there has to be change in the world, it will have to be facilitated through education and not through the creation and enforcement of laws to effect it
Photo Credits: EDIT main
Recently, a friend of mine wrote a column here decrying the ugly past of caste discrimination, women reduced to sex-objects, religion led by fanatics, and so on. It sounded like one of those songs of lamentations in Latin, like “Deus meus cur derelinquisti me?” (My God, why have you abandoned me?) which one heard year after year like the pre-monsoon showers during the Holy Week, and which devout Goan Catholics miss in the post-Liberation Goa. Since God in post-Liberation Goa understands Konkani, a change for the better, but the preachers of yore displayed their flashes of divine wisdom to the rural faithful with impressive Latin quotes.
My London-based author-friend makes use of every available occasion for passionate pleas for change, presuming obviously that it will bring cheer and happiness to mankind in India and the rest of the world. London has that tradition since the times A. Huxley’s Brave New World. But Huxley’s utopian fiction did not save England and Europe from World War II, and I fear my friend’s utopianism and desire for change may go the same way.
The visible lack of some serious reflection about the past social and economic contexts that made various situations, seen now as ugly and regrettable, both possible and admissible, leaves a reader like me somewhat skeptical about the bursts of enthusiasm of the lovers of change.
It is fashionable today to be prophet activists, but most candidates ignore why Israel of old needed Judges and Prophets. The former led the people during times when there were no consecrated kings, and the latter were a sort of theologians of History, who warned the kings from time to time of dangers of leading the people astray with changes they wished to bring about. It would shock the modern candidates for prophecy that that historic task of a prophet in the Bible was to ensure against changes that deviated from the Past, from the compact with God of Israel.
A compulsive desire for change is what I experienced with dread in a senior Jesuit colleague while we were posted at St. Britto’s High School in Goa in the early 70s of the last century. He would drop into my room almost once every week. I loved Fr. JT’s visits, because he was witty, spoke in Queen’s English and had a ponderous cadence to his voice. But he would invariably suggest a fresh change in the furniture arrangement in my room, but after giving a helping hand to start, I would be left alone to complete it. God may have assigned to him this pleasant duty to keep him happy in his life without end.
I would recommend to my change-loving activists the reading of a small booklet containing Upton lectures delivered in 1926 at Manchester College, Oxford, by India’s second President S. Radhakrishnan, and entitled The Hindu View of Life. He delivered them more or less at the same time Hunxley wrote his Brave New World. Anticipating the ethnic cleansing that Hitler would set in motion, Radhakrishnan presented the rise of caste system in India as a Hindu solution to ethnic cleansing.
In a country like India that has suffered repeated tides of immigration across centuries, the EU non-solution of today woud be disastrous and Jewish holocaust a relatively minor tragedy. One cannot forget 10 millions refugees that came from Bangladesh in the 70s and stayed on. EU today with more resources is fretting and fuming about a couple of million immigrants, which it insists in calling refugees, shunting them from country to country, and raising walls. When it suited the West European politicians the Berlin Wall was a scandal. Radhakrishnan explains that despite modern views about caste discriminations and exclusions, those were introduced as a Hindu solution to large-scale population influxes.
Two main characteristics of a caste are the practices of social isolation through commensality and banning of intermarriages. Viewed without modern prejudices about social exclusion, freedom to choose a marriage partner, freedom to eat with whomever one chooses and whatever one wishes, the refugees generally dislike their women being taken over by strangers or being forced to eat what they are not used to. The caste ensured these protections and allowed the immigrants to lead their lives peacefully, contributing to the host society with their skills. The castes were also professional schools that preserved and transmitted those skills from generation to generation.
One has to agree that many of the exaggerations and abuses in the past practices need to be reviewed and changed, but the West forgets its pedagogy when convenient. Motivating through education, rather than imposing by law and force need to be the instruments of a healthy change. But even there we may see hurdles difficult to bypass, such as the intermarriages among Konkani speaking Goans of different castes. My London-based Goan friend has certainly this grievance in the catalogue for change.
Marriage is not just between two individuals. It also links families, and marriage outside one’s family sought and ensured this social enrichment. Marriage is also to enjoy a pleasant life together, not an option for constant irritations day in and day out. I doubt a Brahmin used to taka will bear for long hearing a Chardo wife’s teka. This is only a sample of linguistic undertones that will not vanish with love and passion.
Teotonio R de Souza is Founder-Director of the Xavier Centre of Historical Research (1979-1994), Fellow of the Portuguese Academy of History (since 1983), retired professor of Universidade Lusófona, Lisboa (1996-2014), author of Medieval Goa (1979,1994,2009), Goa to Me (1994), Goa outgrowing Postcolonialism (2014) and a dozen of edited works and over 200 published articles
