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Jun 16, 2021

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30th June, 2020

When Manu embarked upon a journey to the Himalayas, he could never have anticipated failure. Seventh in his line, the father of the chaturvarna system, what chance did the snowy peaks at the head of the Beas valley stand against a man of his stature? But when he arrived at the indomitable Rohtang, he had to yield. And like men of a wounded spirit most often do, he spat at the sun and christened this span of land Kulant-peeth, or the limit of the habitable world.
Centuries later, I can’t help but wonder at the ridiculous self-assurance with which he singlehandedly turned blind to the oriental civilisations beyond this treacherous mountain pass. My grandfather, a lawyer at the Kullu and Lahaul-Spiti district courts, would often chew on his anecdotes, which doubled as fantastic bedtime stories – how in the days of his active practice, like many others who travelled frequently between the two valleys (Beas and the Chandrabhaga) back then, he would cross the mountains on foot. “The trick is”, he’d say with his eyes lighting up, “to lie down on your belly when the winds blow! That way you can’t get blown away.”
The village of Manali, popularly termed old Manali, was founded by Manu, and has a temple dedicated to the hermit sage. Over the years, he has acquired the air of a deity, venerated by the locals and visitors alike. What’s peculiar about this temple is that it admits any person irrespective of her caste or her position in social hierarchy, while the doors of most temples in the valley come with an invisible boundary, an unwritten caveat defining the restrictions on visiting Dalits. Perhaps the deified Manu has given up on casteism that Manu the mortal cemented through his Smriti.
Places of worship are one of the finest mirrors of the society. Their rules, laws and norms portray the truest mind-set of a people – while unencumbered liberalism stays away from their core values, staunch conservatism and its inevitable decay has been effectively realised by people of religion. The very survival of such places through history suggests a constant change and reform over the years. Even as a great number of people shun religion or nominally acknowledge it whilst leaning towards tepid agnostism, it continues to be a strong social force and capital. It is in their premises that the primitive distinctions, like ones grounded in the origin of one’s birth or in the colour of one’s skin, become more visible than ever.
Menstruating women are barred from entering temples, Dalits are ousted from the inner courtyards, while the deity sits within the sanctum of his cultivated oblivion. We are all aware of the matter of Sabrimala temple. While a great number of people debated on this monolithic tradition, many others questioned how it would serve the cause of effective feminism. A lot of people who challenged this practice would hardly ever visit this temple anyway, so why the ruckus? Is symbolism something that affects people as much as we claim it to?
The answer to this is found in Indian history. The early twenties are mostly associated with the Non-Cooperation movement, when Gandhi’s strategy of Satyagraha was being put to experimentation. But what silently recedes into anonymity in school history textbooks is the struggle that went on in Kerala against casteism at the same time. The matter was the same:
entry of avarnas, or casteless Hindus in temple premises. Perhaps when we are tired casting aspersions on one another for this sorry state of affairs, giving this chapter of history a read wouldn’t hurt.
Perhaps Manu never imagined that inking a myopic, communal, discriminatory document would ever lead to centuries of debating and discontentment. Perhaps he would have been proud to see the unfortunate relevance that his manuscript still enjoys in the Indian context.
But it isn’t just Aryavrata that is plagued by inflated discrimination. Not until long ago, women could not vote in several countries. They had to earn this basic right. Blacks were bought and sold to cultivate cotton and sugarcane, most coloured diaspora in distant lands have their origins in colonial history, and Jesus became a white man on a cross. Jews were chased away and murdered by the millions, while a narcissist penned his Kampf, or struggle. Our histories have been too violent and discriminatory to be glorified, and their spectres continue to haunt us. This is evident from crimes against the Queer community, crimes against women, crimes against religious and ethnic minorities, but most of all, from the privileged class’ obstinate complacence and lack of empathy towards anyone who’s not them.
Not very long ago, thousands of miles away in a distant country on the other end of the globe, a black man choked on the words, “I can’t breathe”, under a police officer’s knee. And the world was taken by storm. George Floyd’s murder awakened and set a chain of events in motion across borders. The hashtags #blacklivesmatter and #icantbreathe have become frontrunners in the war against racial discrimination on the social media, while people continue to throng streets and thoroughfares in protest. Even the happy people in this distant land of Manu garner opinions on the matter. Some stand strong with the oppressed, while some condemn the unfortunate violent episodes in the course of this necessary protest.
If the great library of Alexandria burgeons with the records of all humanity, it must house countless memoirs of bloodshed and injustice. History has taught us that we humans (saved by Noah or Manu, depending on whichever version one chooses), are discriminatory and unjust by nature. From the cotton estates by the Mississippi to the ghats of Benaras, we are a people hungry for entitlement. And we have lived up to the task of drawing indelible lines amongst ourselves consistently. Even before caste, before the idea of anything that could be seen as an acquisition, lines were drawn on the basis of sex and gender roles were assigned. Women would go out with their babies, carrying wicker baskets to gather berries and root vegetables. And they’d come home to men who’d be drinking to celebrate a good day’s hunt.
The fact that the human race is inherently discriminating, is seconded by the numerous struggles, silent or vocal, of minorities and the marginalised. Not long ago, Indian newspapers were aflood with the plight of migrant workers. Several thousands of them trudged towards their hometowns on foot. Many didn’t make it. Many died less than a furlong away from their towns. Politicians cashed in on the episode, philanthropists came out to help, and the instruments of the state were largely ineffective. It was during this time, that the cushioned majority, in their blindness came up with a bizarre social media hashtag, #metoomigrant: the social media equivalent of the remark, “Let them eat the cake.”
But what about George Floyd? What about how black lives matter? In a subcontinent with no native African-Americans, why do we see a bunch of Instagram activists talking about the injustice and oppression suffered by the community since the colonial age in America? Why
has this brutal incident in a distant land roused our passions? Why do some of us seek to pull down the statue of our beloved Manu the hermit in some judicial complex?
The poor sage inked something that was a core part of the Vedic society. And perhaps, it is absurd that the son of a learned Brahmin should be demoted to a Vaishya if he develops an aptitude for marketing and business studies. The idea of such loss of free entitlement was perhaps unbearable to him. And in his naivety, he cast the Brahman Purush of the Rigveda into stone. In his innocent inexperience, he formulated the diktats for women.
Over the years, the Manu statue in the Rajasthan High Court premises has gathered attention now and then. It has been blackened in the past and people have asked it to be pulled down. Granted that this would symbolise the momentary triumph of the oppressed, one can’t ignore that it would mean giving into the historical amnesia that we as a people are so vulnerable to. Such blindness and apathy is a narrative worth preserving. I think Manu deserves the spot in that judicial complex, not as an honour, but as a reminder of our collective social failure. It must remind us the shortcomings in our ideas of justice and governance that come with an automatically inherited caste system. He must become a symbol of majoritarian complacence. He must become a symbol of the society’s inability to align with the cause of the victim, and its tendency to glorify the loud oppressor – just as Britain did with Churchill, just as Nazi Germany did with Hitler.
They’ve pulled down several statues in the West, and while the cause and their reasons for doing so are driven by the high ideals of egalitarianism, I believe that we must not do away with symbols of remembrance of the (effective) father of casteism in India. For the savarnas it hardly matters whether or not the statue is taken down. They’ll condemn the damage to public property, talk about it for a while and move on. It would, however, do more harm in the long run to the cause of Dalits and other marginalised sections of the society. We must regard both Manu and Ambedkar. Only then can we move ahead and materialise the ideas of equity. Turning blind to our failure and taking his statue down would mean dismissing it all – just as Manu himself did at the Rohtang

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