Once up on a time, in a small village in one corner of South Asia, there lived a group of siblings.
We don’t know what happened to their parents. Perhaps they died. Perhaps they were abandoned because the father did not like the mother’s status as an outcaste.1 No matter the reason, the siblings were left to fend for themselves.
It was quite impossible for each of them to care for all of the land that they had. And just tending the land was not enough. At least, not if you needed a good life. You also needed knowledge. You needed to know how to fight. And you needed to make tools, market your produce, and cook and clean up after yourself.
Not everyone could do everything. They had neither the resources nor the time. So, they decided to divide the work among themselves.
One or two decided to be scholars. Another decided to be a warrior. A third a merchant who sold things that everyone else produced. A few of them tilled the land. A few others made articles that everyone needed—pots and pans; baskets; iron tools. Another group kept the house and the land clean. And a last set, among whom were some of the eldest in the family, decided that they don’t want to leave the forests. Thus, they would stay there but would bring the family wood, flowers, fruits and meat from the forest.
The work did not mean that they did not all have access to everything the family had or produced. Everyone had equal share of food, water, tools, space. Each others’ company and camaraderie. Help and assistance when needed. They were siblings after all.
After some time, the scholars realized that the rest of their family did not know much about the matters of the world.
They had studied the sciences. The rest of the siblings and their spouses had not. The group came to them for advice when they had a question, say, about the weather (why were there unseasonal rains?), or about a particular part of the land that did not grow anything, or when outsiders threatened them.
For everything, the scholars’ knowledge was sought. Slowly, they started to develop disdain for these ‘know-nothing’ folks.
Just consider, they thought to themselves. Our siblings know nothing and yet, we have to share everything with them equally. We are clearly better. Why don’t we have more of whatever the family had?
Besides… ugh… just look at all the dirt that these filthy cleaners bring. Are they really our siblings? Maybe they were adopted. Should they even be allowed inside the home? Should they be allowed to drink from our well?
And those forest dwellers; why, they did not even know which gods to propitiate for which blessing. How can they really be our family?
The scholars started talking to the rest of the family about their ideas. Wrote books to explain why they were right. Told stories that declared to the family how the parents had given them full and final rights to everything and everyone else must listen to them. They were the word of the parents and thus must be obeyed.
Of course, not everyone listened. People had work to do. They also had needs.
Some of them did have some doubts about the cleaners and the elders in the forest. And the artisans and toddy tappers and tillers of the land. But they did not quite trust the scholars not to push them out too. Thus, life continued as it had.
In time, the warriors also started having second thoughts about the rest of the group. Was it not their prowess and their skill that kept the group safe? Should not they have a larger share of whatever the family produced? Why are they being forced to share the fruits of their merit with all these weaklings?
They tried to force their siblings to give them more of what belonged to all of them.
There was resistance. Even chaos. The warriors did not want to lose all in their cause, so they retreated.
After a while, they realized that they should team up with the scholars.
With the force of the scholars’ rhetoric and the strength of arms that the warriors brought, surely, they would have their case?
There were ebbs and flows. Arguments and disagreements. Even violent bloodshed.
But eventually, the warrior siblings took ownership of the household while the scholars explained how that is just the god-ordained way of things, that the others must have done something in a previous life to deserve this fate, and if they wanted to protest, they will bring down the wrath of gods over them. Of course the scholars’ dark pronouncements were easier to prove when they had warriors as backup.
The cleaners were thrown out of the house and forbidden to use the well and kitchen. Come in, clean, and then, go. That was the extent of their freedom.
Many of the people who tilled the land, tended animals, and gathered fruits and wood got the same treatment. As did a lot of the artisans who worked with clay and leather. And cotton.
The land is dirty after all. As is sweat. And goodness, all that meat… with blood… and hair… and intestines… and…
And forests… Why must they remain when they could be burnt and the land tilled?
There were revolutions and counter revolutions. Protests and fights. Arguments and debates. Appeals to conscience, gods, and philosophy.
Rapes and murders. Slavery. Brutality that cannot be condemned enough.
Then, one day, the cleaners decided that if scholarship and arms were what brought respect, then they were going to gain scholarship and arms. Many of the artisans and tillers joined them. As did the forest dwellers. If they can’t gain that knowledge and skills, then, at least, their children would gain them and advance. Or so they thought.
The scholar siblings—yes, they were siblings, remember—did not agree.
Pour hot oil into the mouths and ears of these upstarts who want to gain knowledge, they said.2 Beat them and bury them. Not a drop of pure water for them. The gods do not want them. The gods would not accept their offerings. And they want knowledge blessed by the gods?
At last… tired of all the abuse… the cleaners and tillers, artisans and forest dwellers decided to walk out.
They don’t need a family that constantly abused them. They don’t need gods who did not take offerings from them. And as for scholarship, they will learn on their own; and from those who will not share the prejudices of their family.
And that was that.
Religion is a matter not just of the spirit but of material reality as well.
It is about culture. About community. About sense of self. And about sense of belonging.
If your religion doesn’t provide you community, respect, or the gods’ kindness and proximity; if your religion doesn’t allow you to know god, or get material benefits, then what use is it to you?
In such a case, aren’t you allowed to choose a different path? Be it a path to material benefits, community, or to God? Or all of them together?
Is it not abuse to force people to remain in families that abused them?
Is it moral? Is it ethical? Is it kind?
Why make the accident of birth a chain on a person’s legs that cannot be cut off?
Religious conversion has traditionally been part of the armoire that Dalits used to challenge caste in Hindu society.
When British came, Anglican missionaries and other missionaries soon followed. They found willing recipients for their message among the most downtrodden of the people of South Asia: Dalits and Adivasis.
These Dalits and Adivasis were not just passive receptacles who were misguided by ‘folks’ who ‘were counting souls.’ They actively used the new religion to both transform their individual lives and mobilize for better social justice. There was of course caste within existing churches, especially among the older churches in Kerala. The Dalit Christians critiqued these prejudices and practices and formed their own Dalit Christian movements.3
Likewise, Dr. B.R Ambedkar had used religious conversion—in his case and in the case of those who were persuaded by his arguments, to Buddhism—because he did not see any reason to hope that Hinduism could rid itself of the caste system that designated a portion of humanity as impure. After all, reform movements of the past had failed to uproot and bury this evil. What guarantee was there that the same failure would not be repeated?4
This tradition has continued into the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. A famous instance is of a community of Dalits in Meenakshipuram in Tamil Nadu who converted en masse to Islam in 1981. As Aakar Patel notes,
On 17 April 2019, the Times of India published a report (‘In Meenakshipuram, conversions continue in hope of social dignity’). It spoke to individuals like Umar Kaiyam, a Dalit who used to be a Mookhan. As a primary school teacher he could not get anyone to rent a room to him. When he converted he got one immediately. Another man, Saifullah, said he collected paddy for the local temple. They used to treat him shabbily, he said, ‘Now they call me “bhai”.’5
Same sort of community conversion to Islam recurred in TN, this time in Coimbatore in 2019. The reason? The death of Dalits in the village of Nadoor due to a wall collapse.6
These are established facts.
Why then is it that people who are not so affected, especially those who hold position of privilege with respect to the converts, assume that the people who convert have no intelligence or agency of their own and are misled by vested interests?
Why are law and violence being used to add impediments in the way of a deeply personal decision?7
Let me tell you another story. It starts with these two lines.
Malayapulayana madathin muttathu mazha vanna naloru vazha nattu;
Manatarilashakal polathilororo, marataka koombu mulachu vannu.8
Once up on a time, during the rainy season, the story goes, a Pulayan named Malayan planted a plantain in front of his thatched hut.
Like the wishes that bloom in the mind, emerald blooms bloomed on it.
Azhaki, the Pulayan’s wife, took care of it as if it was one among her children.
Monsoons left. Summer came. The Pulayan and his wife toiled from dawn to dusk on the landlord’s land. And all the while their kids played underneath the plantain’s shade and counted days to the time when the banana would be ready to be picked. Each of them made plans to ensure they got a share; to make sure that none of the others hogged the lot.
One day, they watched with hope and excitement as their father cut the bunch.
Until their father turned to them and asked them not to weep. The savarna landlord has ordered him to hand over the banana to him. OR ELSE.
Thus perished the Pulayan couple’s work and dreams.
And thus ended the children’s hopes of filling their bellies with ripe banana.
Caste does not matter these days, I am informed.
If caste does not matter, how is it that Dalits are kept from temples and forbidden to drink from communal water pots in this day and age?9
If caste does not matter how is it that the burden of multi-dimensional poverty falls disproportionately on the Dalits and the Adivasis?10 How is it that the upper castes live longer than Dalits and Adivasis?11 How is it that academia and the top STEM institutions of India refuse to even comply with the legal requirement to fill the seats that are reserved for Dalits and Adivasis?12
If caste does not matter, how is it that most laws enacted against conversion have additional punishments for converting Dalits, Adivasis, and women?13
Conscious or not, how can conversion not be a resistance to this ill treatment?
A person should be able to choose their religion freely.
Having the state determine the faith or religion of a person is not worthy of a democracy that respects human rights. Or a majority that respects the minoritized and underprivileged people’s freedoms. It is not worthy of a privileged caste that is conscious of its privilege and the wrongs of the past and works towards and hopes for equity.
But we are not such a country or such a people, are we?
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References
Parayi Petta Panthirukulam, the Malayalam story, starts with a brahmin man in the court of Vikramaditya who hears that fate has decreed a Dalit (paraya) wife for him. At first, he tries to get the baby killed. But since fate is fate, the baby survives. Then, he decides that he cannot keep the children, so he abandons them one by one. Each is picked by folks from a different caste and in the case of one, religion (Uppukoottan is a Muslim). The story I think was subversive for the times in terms of caste; though the gender bit leaves much to be desired.
Laws of Manu, translated by George Bühler. https://sacred-texts.com/hin/manu/manu08.htm.
P. Sanal Mohan. “Social Space, Civil Society, and Dalit Agency in Twentieth-Century Kerala.” In Dalit Studies, edited by Ramnarayan S. Rawat and K. Satyanarayana. Durham: Duke University Press, 2016. https://read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/66/chapter/99961/Social-Space-Civil-Society-and-Dalit-Agency-in.
Ambedkar, B.R. Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, Vol 1. Compiled by Vasant Moon. New Delhi: Dr. Ambedkar Foundation, 2014. https://www.mea.gov.in/books-writings-of-ambedkar.htm. See Annihilation of Caste. See also Tejas Harad. https://www.thequint.com/voices/ambedkars-idea-of-liberty-and-anti-conversion-laws.
Patel, Aakar. Our Hindu Rashtra: What It Is. How We Got Here. New Delhi: Westland, 2020.
Vazhakkula, Changampuzha Krishna Pilla. You can find a recitation of the poem here.
https://hdr.undp.org/system/files/documents//2021mpireportenpdf.pdf. Multidimensional poverty is calculated based on criteria such as nutrition, child mortality, access to cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing, and assets (see page 6 of the report).
https://article-14.com/post/life-expectancy-of-adivasis-dalits-muslims-substantially-lower-than-upper--caste-hindus-new-studies-6260c520a0c38. The upper caste and OBC (Other Backward Caste) folks are combined in the study in this article. As per Oxfam India Inequality Report 2021, (collected from NFHS data), ‘on average, an upper caste woman lives 15 years longer than a Dalit woman.’