Caste Besides: I Am Fraction Of The Same God

By Sanjay Pathak

Human is divided on the basis of race, religion, caste and communities and many of them face social discrimination and rejection. Caste besides is emphasis the oneness of human kind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Westwood Books Publishing, LLC
• Release date: May 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9781648036224

Sanjay Pathak

A doctor and psychologist by training and temperament Dr. Sanjay Pathak was born in 22nd February 1963 to family of village artisans who had humble social standing . However his father struggled poverty and caste discriminations and acquired Masters in Mathematics and became college teacher and rose to the position of Director of Education in the state of Himachal Pradesh in India. Dr. Sanjay Pathak has worked as doctor in various government hospitals for two decades. He then occupied positions as health administrator and presently working as Senior Medical Superintendent at Himachal Hospital for Mental Health and Rehabilitation, Boileauganj Shimla, He is also Chief executive officer of HP State Mental Health Authority . He is married to Lalita Pathak who gave up her job with life insurance to become whole time mother and a homemaker . They have a daughter and a son together who are pursuing medical studies. Caste besides is largely autobiographical account, fictional at places to cover up for the missing links. It is story of trials and tribulations of experiences of caste in India, as divisive and offensive social phenomenon over five generations starting with the grandfather of his father.

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Copyright © 2021 by Sanjay Pathak.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Books published earlier by the same author by Unistar Publishers Chandigarh.

The Thought sublimates: An anthology 2006

Kamo-asmi: I am the sexual desire 2010

Westwood Books Publishing LLC

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Port Saint Lucie, FL 34987

www.westwoodbookspublishing.com

I was driven to write this book because I did not have one word or one sentence answer to the query of my children – Who are we?

And to find the answer, one has to seek answer to another philosophical question – Who am I?

To my parents whose mere extension I am,

and to my wife, daughter and son,

who came in to my life and made it meaningful.

Contents

Prologue

Part One

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2

3

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Part Two

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Part Three

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Part Four

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Part Five

59

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Part Six

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Epilogue

Prologue

India -1931

I am using my imagery as I was never a witness to the conditions prevailing at that time.

India was still under British Raj and clamoring for Independence.

Even my father was not born.

Decadal census was undertaken on the caste lines. There were innumerable castes in India ordered in the hierarchy, purest of the pure of the human beings, Brahmins followed by warrior class who fought the aggressors and were rulers, descendents of royals and their minions, they presided over small fiefdoms, Jagirs under the suzerainty of bigger kingdoms. There were Kshatriyas who symbolized valor, sacrifice, fearlessness.

Traders ran the business and occupied the third place in the caste hierarchy.

Village artisans and service providers, tailors and weavers, wood workers bamboo workers, carpenters, boat men, fishermen, oilman, masons, barbers and innumerable others in largely agrarian village economy were at the bottom of the fourfold caste system. Each avocation was assigned to a caste and sub-caste.

Leather workers who dragged the dead animals and skinned them and made leather from the skin of the dead animals. More skillful were shoe makers and others repaired the worn out torn shoes. It was rumored that they even ate the flesh of the dead animals.

Scavengers, called bhangis would carry the night soil of the gentry on their heads so that the privileged men could defecate in privacy.

They were called ati shudra.

They were untouchables, pariahs.

This hierarchy etched on their minds so strongly they never rebelled against assortment in to caste groups. They prostrated in front of the high born without any rancor. They would sit in front of them squatting on their haunches, their knees drawn up to their chest, folding hands in front of their chest, head covered with torn dirty bandana.

They would build temples but would never be allowed in to the holy precincts, once they were done. Used to living in squelch in the shanties they had given up to their fate and will of the god. They would suffer misery and humiliation considering it as something preordained. The high born would call them by their caste names with utmost contempt and they too would respond to them without any visible hurt.

When the high born wanted to demean and denigrate someone from their own caste men they would address them by the caste names of low born and by doing that, would inflict upon them the instant humiliation. A low caste name substituted the worst abuse enough to render ultimate humiliation.

They were infima species.

India -1951

Flush in the new found independence and dream of Nehru’s tryst with destiny, the new Republic of India still licking the wounds inflicted by the communal acts of partition which showed up the ugly face of the society professed to be civilized one.

What a horrible blow a divisive force can inflict on the peace loving society. People unleashed by the demagoguery of communal leaders divided on the religious lines beheaded their neighbors, raped their women and set their houses on fire to grab their property. Hindu, Sikhs and Muslims went for each other’s blood and plundered their wealth. Those less in numbers had to face the fury of those who outnumbered them. It was raw greed of the people, to plunder the wealth of those who were in minority. In order to hasten their exit they threatened and intimidated and killed the members of their families who once lived in their neighborhood. It was unimaginable that one human being is capable of doing those barbaric acts to another human being

India had lost the high soul, the Mahatma, a mystic saint who made the high born to clean their own toilets in his Asharam, to assert equality of all human beings and to emphasize the dignity of the labor. No matter how repulsive the job seemed but it was absolute necessity in the society. Society can sustain without supermodels, film superstars and cricket prodigies but not without the low paid municipal sweepers who keep the human habitation livable. He called the low caste Hindus, people of God – Harijans.

And those who were at the helms of affairs took a conscious decision. If India had to progress as strong nation, it will have to rise above any divisive forces operating in the society. Census did not include anything related to caste. Secular India still was making an effort for the integration of every section of the society – Caste Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Christians and everyone else.

India -1990

Despite declared principle of secularism and equality, religion centric and caste based parties had grown. V.P. Singh rode in to the citadel of power on the anticorruption plank. While still minister in the congress government lead by Rajeev Gandhi, he dug out a scam in the purchase of the arms and resigned to form his own political outfit. He forged a strange coalition of rightists and leftists. In his effort to survive in the weird world of politics he played the master stroke of enforcing the Mandal commission report. It made provision for the reservation of other backward castes in higher educational institutions and government jobs.

He played the Mandal card to play down the then deputy Prime Minister and create a constituency for his party. Though the manifest motive was trumpeted to achieve social justice but the calculation was to increase the vote share of his party. Entire India plunged in to anarchy with streaks of violence when youths self immolated themselves to express the anguish. Prime Minister was consumed in the fire of his own making. But three Yadavs emerged like proverbial phoenix from the ashes, who carried on the socialist legacy.

On the spectrum of the caste divide OBC and dalits with Muslims they made up the number to grab the power and became regional satraps.

Hindu parties who thrived on the Muslim bashing and tried to whip up Hindu pride to carve for them the vote bank based on the religion. They raised the hysterical propaganda.

Garav se kaho hum hindu hain.

And Jai shri Ram became the mode of greetings to assert Hindu heritage. Their frenzied movement led to demolition of a controversial Mosque at the place of the birth of Lord Rama.

In cow belt dalit politics was on the rise. They were able to convince the millions of men and women on margins of Hinduism who were condemned to poverty and indignities that time had come to assert their identity as respectful citizens in the society. They filled their minds with the sloganeering connoting the hatred for the high born Hindus. In their congregations the air ranted with slogans like – Tilak, tarazu or talwar in ko maro jute char.

Beat the three high caste Hindus, Brahmins, traders and warriors with shoes.

And then forged alliances with the other parties to secure the required vote share and then their theme of slogans changed to Bahujan Hitay, sarva jana sukhay.

Though outward façade changed but at the ground level conditions of the deprived and dispossessed remained, by and large the same. Merely building the statues of Buddha would not help to change the life on the margin of the social spectrum. The power hungry politics just calculated the vote mathematics to get on to the top but the most neglected continued to suffer in poverty. Dalit women continued to be raped and there was hardly any end to their sufferings except that their masters were their own caste men.

Hindu parties made churlish noise against the conversion of dalits to Christianity. Christian missionaries alleged to carry out forceful conversions were lynched and India once again seemed to develop fissures in the society.

Politicians do not belong to any caste. Politician is a caste in itself. They thrive on fissures and accentuate them to derive benefit of the misery of the people.

India -2011

News on TV showed diminutive senior cabinet Minister speaking to media persons in his so familiar Bangla flair. Whether he spoke in Hindi or English it was with his characteristic Bangla staccato. The group of Ministers had a meeting whether caste should be included in decadal census. Alongside him stood the Harvard educated senior Minister in his sparkling white attire typical of the Tamil men. His overbearing demeanor, analytical sharp eyes behind thick frame of glasses and voice with deep bass so readily exhibited his earnestness and resolve. Another Minister in grey suites and matching necktie tried to catch attention of the cameramen by his toothy smile. There were few more in the group. The reporter said that there were differences amongst the group of ministers whether to carryout caste based census or not. Most ardent votary of the caste based census, the law minister had left the meeting in between.

Three Yadavs who played role of King Makers and savior of the government on different occasions were all for caste based census. The exact number would help to evolve a better plan for different sections of the society.

As if one has to ask the caste from the people living under the flyovers and in dingy jhugis, covered with tarpaulin working as construction labor, kiln workers living without basic amenities like, public toilets, clean drinking water. Their children simply growing to become future labor. Without proper schooling they did not have any option or opportunity to move up in the society unless they transgressed the rules and became law breakers.

For long human society had been hoodwinked by Machiavellian politicians. They watch fissures in the society and make them fault lines and drive the wedge to make it permanent, set one section against the other, devour the cream and throw the crumbs to hoi polloi.

Hindu –Muslim divide. They are different and therefore need different homeland. Shia and Sunnis Muslims are different and therefore they wage war against each other, kill each other. Sikhs want to claim different homeland, Khalistan because they consider themselves different from Hindus. In their quest they convert the places of the worship in to arms ordinance and safe heavens for the mass murderers.

Hindus treat their less fortunate brethren untouchables and politicians use them as vote bank, few don the mettle of their messiahs. They castigate Brahminical society calling them Manuvadi

Hindu zealots torch Christians missionaries home, lynch them implicating them for forced conversions. Christians hate Jews because they consider they (Jews) killed Jesus Christ.

North Indians are stalked and looted, beaten in order to force them to leave Mumabi. Only Marathas are rightful and bonafide inhabitants of Mumbai. Down south Dravidian movement champion to restore the Tamil pride. The despise the Hindi Speaking North Indians.

Crux of political calculations in India is to widen the gaps in the society and get the numbers. Yadavs devise the formula MY. OBCs and Muslims combine together to get the arithmetic right to romp in to the seat of power. Right wing parties force the wedge between the Hindu and Muslim population to consolidate the Hindu votes. Dalit political parties harp on the centuries old oppression and denial to section of the Hindus yet do nothing at the ground level to improve their lot. They get busy erecting statues and building parks which is just token recognition of their self pride.

More adventurous groups spearhead the separatist movements to cede from the union of India as independent homeland like Khalistan and Independent Kashmir. They take to the guns and spread terror to achieve their ends. The masses do not gain anything out of that but few people cherish the dream to become head of the nation state however small.

There can be numerous means to divide the humanity, caste, color, region and religion. But there is one reason to unite them. All of them have the fraction of God lurking in them. He is the sole creator of all beings. All of them have the same anatomical layout and physiological functioning. The molecular basis to sustain life is similar in all of them. All of them have the same number of chambers in the heart and it beats in same rhythm. Brain of the Hindu and Muslim is same and the same arterial network which feeds it. The windpipe of the Shudra and Brahmin divides at the same level and lungs have the same pattern of the division.

All of us have the right to live with the human dignity. Everyone is not born equal but sharing the fortunes with less privileged will bring equality.

The eternal divide is between haves and have nots.

Exploiters and exploited.

State has to be above all differences. It caters to the welfare of all without any prejudice. Each one of us have the right to live with human dignity.

Part One

Tracing the roots

Hardwar-It c on the banks of the holy Ganges it literally means the door to the abode of the God. The Ganges is divided in to several streams along the several Ghats where the pilgrims take holy dip and cleanse themselves from the sinful acts. Bathing ghats depict the human devotion of Hindus to the Supreme and way to redemption. Mesmerizing incense of the pastilles, blowing of the conches and hum of the hymns makes the ambience truly spiritual. Petals of the marigold floating on the surface of the ripples and the tiny earthen lamps placed on the small bowels made of the fig leaf and their reflections on the shimmering water makes a rare spectacle of sort.

Har ki pauri is the main bathing ghat. Men in loin clothes, women with their clothes on take holy dip in the ice cold water is an affirmative action to their faith in Hinduism.

One can see on these bathing ghats hundreds of men and women with their torsos standing out, hold their breath or pinch their nose and in the next second their head going down only to emerge few seconds later, hair sticking to the scalp, hands folded in reverence in front of the chest, their lips muttering verses from the scriptures.

Believer in the Hinduism must visit Hardwar during the life time and after death someone from the family must carry the ashes in the urns made of the clay to immerse them in the holy water of the Mother Ganges. The immersion of ashes is part of the last rites and is duly conducted by the local priests who serve their clients from generation to generation.

Pandas as they are known, keep meticulous records of the lineage of the families and clearly defined clientele from the different states and areas within the state.

If you go to the panda of the family and tell the name of the state and the district and subareas they will let you know about the family tree. They can trace the family. In the olden times they would use the leaves (Bhoj Patra) of the trees to write upon, later they made the ledgers like that of the money lenders in the village. Now some of them even use the computers to store the data and access that at will.

I visited Hardwar along with my uncle carrying the ashes of my grandfather for immersion in 1991. On the bus terminus itself the agents of the Pandas surrounded us. When they got to know that we had come from Himachal Pradesh they directed us to another man. We asked from him about Pandit Nand Lal who was priest for our village.

We had instructions from village elders to locate the village priest as he had been doing the last rites of every deceased in the family. He was respectful when he got to know that I was a doctor. Of course he enhanced his fee for performing the rituals proportionately. I had a faint idea about the charges for the performance of the rites from the men from the village who had visited the place on earlier occasion for the same purpose. But I did not made it a point to argue and bargain as the occasion was solemn.

After the rituals were over I asked him, Pandit ji I want to know about my ancestry, where did they come from?

Pt. Nand Lal thought for a while. We have records with us and dig it out to find out the last known person in your family. It might be time consuming.

His thoughtful statement reminded me of the behavior of the babus in the state secretariat. They would often pretend to be awfully busy and when they palms were greased they would go to any extent to push through the file to the sahib with favorable comment.

Pandit ji I shall pay you for all the botheration you will have to take to do that. I lured him.

I promised him that I shall return soon with that specific purpose later when family is done with the mourning period.

When I broached the topic with my father he said You don’t have to go to the Pandas of Hardwar for tracing your ancestry. I have it here with me for one and a quarter century. I don’t think they can track beyond that.

He went inside the room and brought a long notebook and a pen. He started to draw the family tree. First man to come to our village was Guria. he told me and then he traced the families I had known in the village. His four sons Kanku, Twarsu, Maghu and Shankar and their families further down. I got to know about connection of all the families in the village.

They came here as settlers. From where they came was not known. It was tradition amongst the Rajas to send the craftsmen to their allies. My ancestors were bamboo craftsmen and also worked as watchmen of the mango orchard spread on the vast slope on the outskirts of the village known as rania – ra –bagh, which meant, garden of the queen. Family owned few bighas of the land. They were craftsmen, agriculturists and watchmen of the mango garden.

Every summer they would pick up the best mangoes and put them in the especially made basket for the royal presentation to the queen at Mandi. It sound incredible but one would walk all the way to the Mandi, a good fifty mile distance with the head loads of mangoes.

It surprised me how they could walk for so long with heavy load. But men and women of that era were used to such hard labor.

It was standard way of life.

My father was the first child of Sayahoo, who in turn was the only son of Nagina. Born in pre-independence India on 3rd Oct 1933 in the small village Rakhoh of princely state of Mandi. Poverty not withstanding his birth was celebrated by the family and jaggery and roasted grams were distributed in the village and womenfolk of the village gathered in the small compound of his thatched house to render some thanksgiving to the gods on the arrival of the newborn. Birth of the son used to be special occasion and always marked with gusto among all sections of the society. He was named Nathu Ram on the thirteenth day by the village Pandit who made his natal chart. Horoscope he prepared did not mention anything significant but he told Sayahoo that the planetary constellation at the time of the birth of child indicated that his son would be very obstinate.

His father however dismissed the prophecies as he was clear that he could actually tackle his son’s professed obstinacy with unhindered authority that a father could possibly possess.

But Nathu Ram did show obstinate character in his childhood. May be it was just like any other child and despite his father’s intimidations he would insist for the fulfillment of the demand until it was not duly met or he was submitted to silence by the fear of his father. His hubris was intolerable and would invite the fury of his father although his protective mother and grandfather would not allow any corporal punishment. His mother a fragile woman who did not know anything but to love her child was the cushion of warmth and intimacy a child needed during the growing years. She would yield to every demand mutely to the extent it was possible for her. She quivered with fear when her husband scolded her for spoiling their son. Her muted demeanor was typical of the patriarchal family where woman would have little say in the affairs of the household.

She gave birth to another son four years after and a daughter two years after that.

And then she died.

Nathu remembered her body being brought by the men from the village covered by the white cloth. People said different things about how she died. Some said she had climbed up the tree to collect green fodder for the animals, from where she slipped and fell down. But he heard others saying in hushed voices that she actually drowned herself in the well far away from the village. Nathu has seen her pathetic position in the household. Always on the receiving end of the husband and mother in law. She was scolded umpteen times a day either by husband or by mother in law. Sometimes she won’t be given anything to eat just to penalize her for some actual or impugned fault on her part which would be always very trivial. May be she was fed up from the perpetual rejection that she actually brought an end to her suffering.

Her death was enormous loss to the little Nathu.

Nathu grew up and felt the pinch of the motherless rearing in his household. His childhood was typical of the child born in the rural areas, helping elders in the household chores, taking out the cattle for grazing, collecting woods from the forest for the kitchen fuel and all this while playing with his chums. Climbing up on the trees to pluck mangoes, figs, jamuns and many other wild fruits which grew all around the village.

Children would suck the nectar from the white flowers of the shrub with aromatic odor which grew in the village. Sometimes collecting the wild strawberries and putting them in the glass bottle filled with water and carrying it all the time with him. Once in a while he would take a swig and along with water some straw berries would make way to his mouth and he munched them with much pleasure. He played with water in the brook near village well making turbines of the citrus fruit by thrusting thorns along the equator and a long bamboo stick to make some kind of axle. He would then let a stream of water flow on to the thorns and lo and behold the citrus fruit would start revolving.

He called it his water floor mill he had known about in the village called ghrat. Before the electric flour mills came in to being the ghrats were used in the village to make flour or women in the household would use the rounded stone slabs (chakki) moving against one another to make flour.

During rainy season he would head towards the small rivulet where he would swim with this peers whole day not even turning up for eating and instead making up a camp fire and roasted the fish they would catch from the rivulet. Sometimes they would carry corns in their pockets and bury them in the hot ash and simmering fire. After a while there would be crackling sound like fire crackers and popcorns would tumble out in quick bursts. Then they would spread the ash and collect the rest of the popcorns, often burning their fingertips with the hot ash.

At six Nathu was sent to the village school run by a single teacher who taught children of the adjoining villages. There were ten odd pupil under his tutelage. Small children belonging to all sections of the society, Brahmins, landed class, traders and craftsmen in the village. Fee was not paid in cash but in kind. Every pupil brought something to the teacher, milk, butter milk, curd, ghee, cereals or lentils. Even twigs of fire wood were accepted as mode of payment.

He taught them the elementary knowledge of language and mathematical skills in his own indigenous style. Nathu found it interesting attending school than going with the cattle and collecting woods. He wondered at the wisdom of the teacher who could know so much.

But in a quaint development, village school master disappeared all of sudden and all his students were left to themselves either to return to the family avocation or to find a new school which was five kilometers away in case of Nathu.

But having no choice and the studying had caught his fancy and he found it interesting, he was ready to go to another school. It was quite taxing on the child of seven years to cover ten Kilometers daily for his schooling. He ran most of the times to keep pace with the other students who were much older to him studying in higher classes. With cloth bag hung on the sides and holding his writing wooden board, 15x10 inches with pent-angular handle smeared with the yellow clay and sun dried, tightly in his hand he would reach his school in an hour or so. He loved all of his school paraphernalia. His black slate with wooden rim and cloth mop strewn to the one side, his ink pots, his pen made up from the variety of tubular twigs (a variety of grass) growing in the village. He kept his books clean and did not allow the dog ears to develop on the pages.

His frail body would exhaust at the end of the day. During summers it became all the more difficult as there were not many water sources on the way and he would quench his thirst by chewing the leaves of the herbs which grew in the jungle. They were succulent and tasted mildly sweet and gave little children the energy. Most importantly in the process of collecting and chewing those leaves their mind remained engaged and they would not feel the fatigue.

During winters, the days would be shorter and there was real danger of losing the life as leopards started growling after the sunset and Nathu would be still on his way back from school. There were stories when the men or women or children were picked up or attacked by the leopards. His heart beat would hasten at the thought of coming face to face to some ferocious leopard. He could not have done anything to save himself.

His grandmother would hug him tightly as he returned from his school perhaps with the sense of gratitude to god. Attending school was full of danger of losing life. She was also aware of the lurking danger but life is nothing but taking calculated risks for greater advantage.

So was it with Nathu.

As he got in to higher classes he began to enjoy his status as the only boy who could read and write in his own community. He would be in great demand during village marriages where his services would be sought for jotting down the names of the heads of the families and the gifts they would present to the bride or the groom. It was kept as a sort of record to return the favor when the time would come. His hand writing was really good and that was all the more reason that people would ask his father Bring Nathu along.

He was kind or special invitee as village people came to their house to extend the invitation of the marriage. Nathu felt special at his writing and reading skills. Old men and women came searching for him to write a letter to their relatives working away from the village and again for reading the letter they would receive later in reply.

When Nathu was in his eighth standard, school fee was hiked and his family thought half an aana a little too much to pay or they thought it was not quite worthwhile investment. So he was withdrawn from the school and asked to learn the traditional family occupation, bamboo craft. His heart sank at the sudden turn of events. He had dreamt to pass matriculation and become a school teacher. Even passing eighth standard could have fetched him some government job like village revenue official who kept the land records of the village. Patwari was respectable man in the village and they would often call him Hakam ji.

He found his dreams shattered as none of his imploring to let him continue his studies were given any heed from the family elders. It was not all that important, they thought.

Five years later

Nathu along with his cousin Nandu was away from the house. They were engaged by some zamindar (land lord) for making bamboo baskets. In return they would get some paltry remuneration and two time meals. In December biting chill he was wearing a worn out payajama and oversized shirt (Obviously they were donated) which fluttered in the fast blowing wind. Chill was so penetrating that he could feel the goose bumps on his entire body.

They had made fire from the scrapings of the bamboo which billowed more smoke than heat because dampness had sipped in to every fiber of it. Land lady would give them food and sometimes tea from a distance that made her to extend her arm to the fullest as if she was feeding some leper.

Nathu particularly did not like that. He lost his craving for the food. He felt like running back to his house. But he did not have the courage to confront his father. There was no one back