Introductory - Global Sikh Studies

52
of the Sudra reached its climax in the permanent institutions of
untouchability and unapproachability. The Jataka stories confirm that
the treatment meted out to Chandalas in actual practice was not much
different from that prescribed in the Shastric texts. 33
Every social order, in order to survive, must preserve the social
values on which it is based. The protagonists of the orthodox social
order were very clear in their minds about this objective. It is very
significant that, out of the huge mass of orthodox literature, there is
hardly a passage which unequivocally concedes social equality between
man and man, Half a dozen or so passages and instances are cited to
show that some sort of equality was conceded. But these isolated
passages and instances have to be assessed in the context of the actual
orthodox religious and social development as a whole. Firstly, these
passages appear to signify religious equality rather than distinct social
equality. Hinduism is noted for its religious catholicity, but only so
long as anything did not challenge its social order. Secondly, the Sudras
were, at a very early period of time, pointedly excluded from being
given even religious equality. Women cane to be explicitly debarred
later. There is no evidence that before the medieval Bhakti movement,
it was ever mooted or an attempt was made basically to reverse
these development. Thirdly, these passages are mostly from the
Upanisads and the Mahabharata, which in their inception belonged
to the unorthodox schools of thought, or from the utterance of
some ascetic or mendicant, who had cut himself the utterance of
some ascetic or mendicant, who had cut himself from society ,i.e.
the caste order. Fourthly, for one dubious passage expressing the
liberal idea appears more like a residue left over, by mistake or
otherwise, from a liberal ideology, rather than a real expression of
the text itself. If the Mahabharata concedes that all castes may
offer sacrifices to Prajapatya, and that the sacrifice of faith is
instituted for them all (xii, ver. 2313), in the same chapter it is
declared that, ‘Prajapati created him (the Sudra), as the slave of
the other castes’ (xii ver. 2377). He is not to amass wealth, for by its
acquisition he, who is an inferior, would subject his superiors to
himself. 34 He may not offer the sacrifices open to other castes, but