Social Distancing & Saucha

Following are random excerpts from my old writings and some are from a letter I had written to my daughter’s middle school Math teacher (circa 2006) who would be showing slides of Varanasi in class and talking about untouchability. It turned out that he also held Bible related after-class gatherings at the school. This was my first exposure to the attack on Hinduism by the Church and how “untouchability” has been one of their favorite weapons, or should I say a beast that they have created, fed, and nurtured for several decades, if not centuries. A beast that we have been made to believe is our own creation. Anyhow, I thought I will share these since I feel it is quite relevant today due to the COVID pandemic that the world is going through.

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Sushruta (600BC ~ couple of centuries before Hippocrates), a Shalya Vaidya (surgeon) who describes over a 100 surgical instruments and stresses on keeping the instruments “pure” and practiced several hundred surgeries including plastic surgery, along with Charaka (300BC), a medical practioner, has shown a clear & repeated sensitivity to what Pasteur discovered, a little over 100 years ago: Germ Theory. For example Sushruta talks of fumigating the surgery room with "vapours of white mustard, bdellium, nimva leaves, and resinous guns of Shala trees, etc.," to sterilize it (8).

For centuries,this understanding of cleanliness and disease has pervaded every aspect of life and common practices pertaining to hygiene in India. In the 13th Century, Marco Polo wrote about his observations on the South Indian coast about a curious practice of using only the right "clean" hand for eating and the left "unclean" hand for unclean tasks(2) – a practice that is prevalent even today.

“Both men and women wash their whole bodies in water twice every day, that is, in the morning and the evening. Until this ablution has taken place they neither eat nor drink; and the person who should neglect this observance, would be regarded as a heretic. It ought to be noticed that in eating they make use of the right hand only, nor do they ever touch their food with the left. For every cleanly and delicate work, they employ the former, and reserve the latter for the base uses of personal abstersion, and other offices connected with the animal functions. They drink out of a particular kind of vessel, and each individual from his own, never making use of the drinking pot of another person. When they drink, they do not apply the vessel to the mouth, but hold it above the head, and pour the liquid into the mouth, not suffering the vessel on any account to touch the lips.” Marco Polo on Manners of the People of Malabaar

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"Untouchability" or segregation was a key component of cleanliness in much of India. The practice of restricted entry into the kitchen by the lady of the house only after a morning bath, exclusive handling of serving spoons while serving meals is observed to this date. This was prevalent even in my grandmother’s house. Sharing a plate, a spoon, or bite from the same apple was and is still considered an "unclean" practice. This "unclean" practise is called as Ucchishta in Sanskrit, UshTa in Marathi, Jootha in Hindi, Engili in Telugu was perhaps codified by the ritual of offering to God to ensure strict compliance.

Sewage removal was done manually until my parents generation in much of India. The people involved in the manual removal were restricted to certain areas of the neighborhood only. There was a methodology to this madness -- Sterilization at a personal level was accomplished by segregating the unclean hand; the kitchen was kept sterile at the family level by restricting entry, and at the neighborhood level where people whose immune systems were "fortified" through regular exposure to human waste were kept separate from the rest and would not be touched. Untouchability of the left hand, untouchability of consumable items and utensils in the kitchen by family members, and untouchability of people who dealt with unclean and bio-hazardous jobs were all aspects of the same public health protocols. The english themselves have documented this extreme sensitivity to what we now know as potentially contagious microbes; one instance was the practice of small pox vaccination in bengal in the mid eighteenth century, a hundred years before germ theory and antibiotics were understood by modern medicine (3). 

"That noxious animalculae, floating in the atmosphere, are the cause of all pestilential, and other epidemical disorders, is a doctrine the Bramins are not singular in; however, some of the conclusions drawn from it, are purely their own."  - An Account of the Manner of Inoculating for the Smallpox in the East Indies By J.Z. Holwell, F.R.S. addressed to the President and Members of the College of Physicians in London. (A.D. 1767) (3)

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Here are accounts of some travelers on this very subject:

Xuan Zang (7th Century CE) on Cleanliness, Ablutions, & C.
They (Indias) are very particular in their personal cleanliness, and allow no remissness in this particular. All wash themselves before eating; they never use that which has been left over (from a former meal); they do not pass the dishes. Wooden and stone vessels, when used, must be destroyed; vessels of gold, silver, copper, or iron after each meal must be rubbed and polished. After eating they cleanse their teeth with a willow stick, and wash their hands and mouth.

Until these ablutions are finished they do not touch one another. Every time they perform the functions of nature they wash their bodies and use perfumes of sandal-wood and turmeric.

Fa Hien (400 CE) on Mathura and general customs of central India,
In the Middle Kingdom, the cold and heat are finely tempered, and there is neither hoarfrost nor snow. The people are numerous and happy; they have not to register their households, or attend to any magistrates and their rules; only those who cultivate the royal land have to pay (a portion of) the grain from it. If they want to go, they go; if they want to stay on, they stay. The king governs without decapitation or (other) corporal punishments. Criminals are simply fined, lightly or heavily, according to the circumstances (of each case). Even in cases of repeated attempts at wicked rebellion, they only have their right hands cut off. The king’s body-guards and attendants all have salaries. Throughout the whole country the people do not kill any living creature, nor drink intoxicating liquor, nor eat onions or garlic. The only exception is that of the Chandalas -that is the name for those who are (held to be) wicked men, and live apart from others. When they enter the gate of a city or a market-place, they strike a piece of wood to make themselves known, so that men know and avoid them, and do not come into contact with them. In that country they do not keep pigs and fowls, and do not sell live cattle; in the markets there are no butchers’ shops and no dealers in intoxicating drink. In buying and selling commodities they use cowries.Only the Chandalas are fishermen and hunters, and sell flesh meat. (4 Eitel (pp. 145, 6) says, “The name Chandalas is explained by ‘butchers,’ ‘wicked men,’ and those who carry ‘the awful flag,’ to warn off their betters;—the lowest and most despised caste of India, members of which, however, when converted, were admitted even into the ranks of the priesthood.”) 

Alberuni (1030 AD)
"Since it is forbidden to eat the remains of a meal; every single man must have his own food for himself; for if anyone of the party who are eating should take of the food from one and the same plate, that which remains in the plate becomes, after the first eater has taken part, to him who wants to take as the second, the remains of the meal , and such is forbidden."

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The excerpts above by no means deny inequalities that are seen on account of what we commonly now call as as Caste. However, during a thousand-year turmoil caused by invasions from Afghans, Turks and the British, all traditional infrastructure, schools and social systems went into a complete dissarray (insert reference). Varnas and Jatis have been reduced to Caste, thanks largely to Lord Risley . Old rationales lost their meaning and became dogmas, a rich country was economically drained by exploitation and heavy taxation (land tax was levied at 90% of rental by the Brittish in Bengal (4)). Although movement of people across castes happened based on their accomplishments, the 19th century census by the British permanently affixed labels to last names and a new official, socially impoverished class emerged as the "untouchables". Ever since the British "divide & rule" policy, the fire has also been fanned further by special interest groups trying to use it for their own political/strategic advantage. Many reformers of the past have worked to remove the inequalities that are still continuing in the form of reservations. Currently 27% of seats are reserved for "lower" classes in educational institutions and government jobs. In the state of Tamilnadu, this number is a whopping 69%!

The bottom-line is that inequalities exist much like they do everywhere; but to portray untouchability as the central and defining part of a culture has been a deliberate and malicious strategy of the evangelists and other exclusivist ideologies.

References:
(1) "Chatur varnyam maya srstam, gunah karme vibhagasah" Bhagawad Gita (4.13)
(2) Murray, Hugh, The Travels of Marco Polo
(3) Dharampal, An Account of the Manner of Inoculating for the Smallpox in the East Indies (AD 1767), Dharampal - Collected Writings, Vol I Indian Science & Technology in the Eighteenth Century

(4) Dutt, Romesh Chandra, Economic History of India
(5) Legge, James, A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms Being an Account by the Chinese Monk Fa-Hien of his
Travels in India and Ceylon (A.D. 399-414) in Search of the Buddhist Books of Discipline.
(6) Beal, Samuel, Si-Yu-Ki - Budhist REcords of The Western World (Translated from Chinese of Hiuen Tsiang A.D. 629)
(7) Sachau, Edward C., Al Biruni's India
(8) Bhishagratna (Sharma), Kunja Lal, An English translation of the Sushrita Samhita