A friend remarked the other day that this is an “unendingly interesting” country. The phrase is stuck in my head, and it recurs when I come across stuff like this:
There were no Hindu untouchables in the West Punjab, and such work as that of sweepers, skin-flayers and leather workers was done by Muslims. They were presumably untouchable Hindus who had at one time become Muslims to escape their lot, which they apparently did not manage to do…
As I boy I would feel quite ashamed when my mother, asking for a glass of water at some Muslim house, would be told with ingratiating courtesy that both the glass and the water had come from a neighbouring Hindu family. But slowly I saw the change come in. Our father made no bones about eating with Muslims and bringing them home. Interestingly, this problem was solved in our home, as in many other homes where a similar change was at work, by the introduction of chinaware. Our women, who objected to Muslims eating off our metal utensils, willingly shared china plates, cups and saucers. These were somehow considered uncontaminable. Their gleam white, smooth surface, from which grease slipped off so easily, somehow immunised them from contamination. My mother would at first not use the chinaware herself and reserved it for the menfolk and for Muslim, Christian and English guests, but she soon began to weaken. This led to the next stage of accepting unpeeled fruit in non-Hindu homes.
Then followed the acceptance of tea and manufactured biscuits and the English bottled lime cordial, but mother never reached the stage of eating cooked food with Muslims or even with my father’s English colleagues. This also used to puzzle me, because I could understand the traditional taboo on Muslim food, but how did the taboo attach itself to the English? I think it came from the discovery that like Muslims they ate beef, and that only Muslim cooks would serve them. As a child I could never understand how the Muslims and the English swallowed such insults from us and did not retaliate. It took the ideal of pakistan and a separate Muslim nation in the 1940’s to create an occasional feeling in Punjabi Muslim minds that they should also not accept food or water from the Hindus. The English, I suppose, just left it as one of our idiosyncrasies and bothered no more about it.
That is from Prakash Tandon’s invaluable Punjabi Saga: 1857-2000: The Monumental Story of Five Generations of a Remarkable Punjabi Family.
Reminded me of a question I once asked in the Dalit basti of a village, about access to the well, only to be told, “There’s a handpump in every other house now.”
Do you have a similar story to share about caste’s encounter with modernity?
And talk about food and hierarchies, you may want to attend this talk if you are in Delhi on tomorrow.
KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006 
India: A country of hypocrites who boasts caste as sign of the diversity…
Good article Shivam. Hindus and Muslim leave thousand years together with joining at upper level and alienated with huge divide at the depth in customs.
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One of the my relative was living in Kanpur,One of th e union leader of state bank o fIndia was staying in first floor who belongs to Brahmin caste.one day ,one of dalit fellow had visited union leader house and I believed during lunch period brahmin fellow asked dalit man that you go down stairs and ask your caste fellow to give you utensil to eat food in my house.this was insult for my relative who was staying ground floor so he replied politealy to dalit man that you are wellcome to have lunch in my house but I would not give my utensil to go to brahmin house because it will spoil my utensil.Dalits have to learn how to treat hindu who are practising untouchability.I think dalit fellow belong to the same village from where union leader belongs.time has come 175 million dalits should hit hard to hinduism so hindu would not dare to practice untouchabilty in future.
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“As a child I could never understand how the Muslims and the English swallowed such insults from us and did not retaliate. ”
– for the English part, clearly, the writer was a child then. This was the country where the English were looting billions and killing lakhs.English “swallowed” “insults”?
– for understanding the Muslim part, one possibly needs to understand the caste history of Indic Muslims – so better answers for this exists in the dalit samaj of India now and their interaction with higher castes – especially in places where behenji does not rule.North Bihar in general is a good example.Also, one might want to read Ziaudiin Sardar about the nature of the “schism” – between insecurity of converts and perceived loss of power from once-hegemonic groups of the original faith. These fault-lines are almost without fail the most problematic – the ideas of victimhood and betrayal get enmeshed with new fables, but I presume, a trans-generational strain of a dyad-hatred remains.
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is modernity a pure unblemished category while caste is the dirty one.it is funny that after all post modern debates the issue is posed as pure modernity vs impure caste.
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In 2007 AD , I visited the Mahad tank where Dr. Ambedkar struggled hard to access to the drinking water for all . I noticed that the Mahad tank is easily accesible to every one but its water is not to be drunk ! What is the achievement ?
The constitution drafted under the chairmanship of Dr. Ambedkar allows equality , liberity , fraternity and justice to every Indian citizen but the law enforcing agencies are in the hands of the manuwadis ! What is the achievement ?
IT IS A RAPE WITH THE CONSTITUTION !!!!!
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I find the bit about chinaware interesting because my paternal grandmother (who is what would normally be considered an “upper caste” hindu) refused to eat out of chinaware for a long time. Her theory was that that’s the crockery that is used when ‘outsiders’ come over to eat, and one does not know – and here I paraphrase- where their hands and mouths have been !
She started eating out of some chinaware though. But only the one that wasn’t used when guests were visiting and was reserved for the “ghar ke log”
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