In princely families, the
custom of swayamvara or selection of the groom by the princess garlanding the
one of her choice amongst all the princes present, was the accepted norm.
Inter-marriages were common and women often chose their own husbands.
Shakuntala, the daughter of a Brahmin sage, chose Dushyanta, a Kshatriya
prince, and married him. Santanu, a Kshatriya king, married Satyavati, a
fisher-woman, who was crowned queen. Even after her husband's death she was
revered as the Queen Mother, and decided many matters of state and problems of
family successions.
Polygamy existed in some
societies but mostly amongst princes who contracted several marriages with
daughters of neighbouring rulers for political reasons. Polyandry was also
practised in some areas. The classic example is Draupadi, who married the five Pandava
brothers.
Girls were normally not married
till they were in their late teens, sometimes even later. Hindu society as
established by the Indo-Aryans was patriarchal, but many matriarchal societies
of the Dravidian and the pre-Dravidian south continued to exist until quite
late in history even after the adoption of Vedic Hinduism. (Today only Kerala
in the south is matriarchal though even here changes are creeping in.)
The upper castes even earlier
had tried to prevent (though unsuccessfully) inter-caste marriages as also the
upward movement of the lower castes. Towards this end the Brahmins, for
example, tried to make knowledge of the scriptures their monopoly and the
rituals more and more elaborate so that they alone could interpret them. The
Kshatriyas similarly tried to make rulership their birth-right and the Vaishyas
attempted to become the only custodians of the wealth of the land.
However, it was only with the
foreign invasions of the 11th century A.D. and later, starting with the raids
of Mahmud of Ghazni and the Goris, that the caste system became rigid.
Unlike the Moghul rulers of a
later period who were more tolerant in their treatment of the local people, the
earlier invaders looted, plundered and destroyed temples, and marauding soldiers
abducted young girls and women. As life, property and the chastity of women
were of little value to the invaders, each community built a fortress of social
norms around itself to protect its women. Many later-day social evils of the
Hindus such as the rigid caste system, guarding the sanctum sanctorum in
temples from entry except by the few (to prevent looting and plunder), child
marriages (before a girl could be of an age attractive enough to be abducted),
the shaving of widows' heads (to make them unattractive to the foreign
soldier), the widespread practice of Sati (the burning of a widow with her dead
husband), became the norms during this unsettled period of Indian history.
Hindu women lost their
independence and became objects requiring male protection. In the process they
also lost the opportunities they had earlier of acquiring knowledge and
learning.
Hindu Reform
With the coming of British rule
in India and the introduction of Western thought, there arose in India a new
upsurge of intellectual searching and a re-evaluation of our ancient past.
Hindu thinkers reassessed their weaknesses and traced them to the evils of the
rigid caste system and to the social evils that had befallen women and the
so-called untouchable castes. Starting from the early 19th century, several
Indian reformers sprang up all over India and spread their message for
purifying Hinduism of its excessive rites, rituals and orthodoxy and for
abolishing the inequalities heaped on women in the name of the religion. To
mention a few whose work led to reforms on a national scale, the earliest was
Raja Rammohan Roy of Bengal. He preached against rituals and worked for the
abolition of Sati. Although Sati means pure and chaste, the word had (in the
last few centuries) been used to connote the immolation of a widow with her
husband.
Another illustrious son of
Bengal, lshwar Chandra Vidyasagar popularised Sanskrit teaching amongst all
castes and fought for widow remarriage.
The Prarthana Samaj was set up
in Bombay for fighting the caste
system and its great leaders
were R. G. Bhandarkar, the famous Sanskrit scholar, and M. G. Ranade.
The greatest of them all, Swami
Vivekananda, set up the Ramakrishna Mission, an organisation of service and
social reform, and spread the message of true Hinduism throughout India and the
Western world. He fought hard against orthodoxy and preached spiritual freedom,
fearlessness and the universalism of all religions, all of which were basic to
Hindu spiritual beliefs.
Swami Dayanand Saraswati, a
Gujarati Brahmin, fought against Hindu priesthood and wanted Hinduism to go
back to its Vedic glory. He founded the Arya Samaj in 1875, a movement which
was reformist, and attempted to unify the Hindus under the umbrella of Vedic Hinduism,
shorn of later-day superstitions.
Annie Besant, Irish by birth,
came to India in 1895 as a theosophist and worked for Hindu religious revival.
Her admiration for Hindu thought gave great self-respect to Hindus at a time
when they were looked down upon by their British rulers. She set up the Central
Hindu College at Banaras which later became the nucleus of the Banaras Hindu
University.
Mahatma Gandhi, the father of
Independent India, made women take part in the freedom movement, and by this
great act of vision, got rid of many of the social inequalities heaped on
women. He also made the abolition of untouchability an integral part of the
freedom movement. By not permitting untouchable Hindus in places of worship,
Hindu society had been weakened, as the scriptures reiterated the equality of
all men in the eyes of God. Many aspects of Gandhiji's national movement
simultaneously also worked towards Hindu religious reform.
A great religious reformer who
worked against untouchability was Narayana Guru of Kerala who not only fought
against casteism but was also responsible for the high level of education and
religious instruction of the lowest castes in that region.
Dr. C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar had
fought all his life against orthodoxy and untouchability. In 1936, when he was
Dewan of Travancore, the Maharaja's proclamation opened the temples of the
state to all Hindus. For the first time in India, untouchables were allowed to
enter places of worship. Mahatma Gandhi called this step 'the glory of a
miracle,' especially as some of the worst aspects of casteism were practised in
Kerala. Even Swami Vivekananda had bitterly spoken earlier of the "don't
touchism" that prevailed there in the name of religion. From then on,
several temples in other parts of India followed suit.
Each region in India threw up
religious reformers, poets and saints, all of whom taught that social and
religious reform had to go hand in hand. As a result, in 1950, Independent
India laid down in the Constitution that untouchability could not be practised
in any form. Also, the Constitution guaranteed full equality to all men and
women. The Hindu Succession Act of 1956 made daughters equal heirs with sons.
Old habits however die hard and
laws by themselves are not enough. The hearts of the people must change which
will only happen when the upper castes understand the origin of the caste
system, the fact of the fluidity of castes in ancient times, the inter-mixing
of castes within each one of us, and the reasons for the later-day rigidity of
the caste system.
Writer
– Shakunthala Jagannathan
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