Page 267 - DSOC201_SOCIAL_STRUCTURE_AND_SOCIAL_CHANGE_ENGLISH

Social Structure and Social Change

Notes much more affected by it than everyone else. In my discussion of secularization I shall be referring
principally to the new elite in Mysore, though it is probable that my remarks also apply with some
variations to the elite in other parts of the country. I shall consider first the effects of secularization on
ideas regarding pollution and purity, then the changes in the lives and position of priestly Brahmins
and finally, the implications for Hinduism of changes in caste, village community and joint family.
No student of Hindu religious behaviour can afford to ignore the concepts of pollution and purity.
Terms exist for pollution and purity in every Indian language, and each of these terms has a certain
amount of semantic stretch enabling it to move from one meaning to another as the context requires.
Thus pollution may refer to uncleanliness, defilement, impurity short of defilement and indirectly
even to sinfulness, while purity refers to cleanliness, spiritual merit and indirectly to holiness.
The structural distance between various castes is defined in terms of pollution and purity. A higher
caste is always “pure” in relation to a lower caste, and in order to retain its higher status it should
abstain from certain forms of contact with the lower. It may not ordinarily eat food cooked by them,
or marry or have sex relations with them. Where one of the castes is very high and the other very low,
there is a ban on touching or even getting very close to one another. A breach of rules renders the
higher caste member impure, and purity can only be restored by the performance of a purification
rite and, frequently, also by undergoing such punishment as the caste council decides upon. Sometimes,
however, the offence is so serious—as, for instance, when a Brahmin or other high-caste woman has
sex relations with an Untouchable man—that the former is permanently excommunicated from her
caste. The concepts of pollution and purity are important not only in a static but also in a dynamic
context: traditionally, when a caste group or its section wanted to move up it would Sanskritize its
style of life and stop accepting cooked food from those castes with which it had previously inter-
dined.
Corresponding to the caste hierarchy are hierarchies in food, occupation and styles of life. The highest
castes are vegetarians as well as teetotalers, while the lowest eat meat (including domestic pork and
beef) and consume indigenous liquor. Consumption of the meat of such a village scavenger as the pig
pollutes the eaters, while the ban on beef comes from the high place given to the cow in the sacred
texts of Hinduism. Among occupations, those involving manual work are rated lower than those
which do not. Manual occupations may involve the handling of dirty or polluting (for example,
human waste matter) objects, or engaging in butchery which is regarded as sinful. At the lowest level
of the caste system are occupations that are sinful or polluting or both.
Not only caste but also kinship is bound up with pollution ideas. Thus, birth as well as death results
in pollution for specific periods for members of the kinship group, death pollution being more rigorous
than birth pollution. Within the kinship group, the mourning period is longer for the closest relatives,
such as widow, widower and sons, and the taboos are also more elaborate. The onset of puberty for
a girl was traditionally marked by confining her to a room for several days, at the end of which time
there was a purificatory bath and ritual. A woman was considered polluting during her monthly
periods. Traditionally, women kept away from all activity and contact with other members of the
household for three days during their periods. All bodily waste matter, with the exception of sweat,
was regarded not only as dirty but as polluting. This is one of the reasons why a bath was a condition
precedent to prayer; and while praying or performing ritual, the subject had to exercise sphincter
and bladder control. Restraint on sex was also imposed on religious occasions, including pilgrimages
to such shrines as the Madeshwara temple in Kollegal taluk in Mysore district and the famous temple
to Shasta in southern Kerala.
The daily routine was also permeated with ideas of pollution and purity. A person’s normal condition
was one of mild impurity, and he exchanged this for short periods of purity or serious impurity. He
had to be ritually pure not only while praying but also while eating (see in this connection pp. 53-54).
In order to be pure, he had to have a bath, change into ritually pure clothes, and avoid contact even
with other members of his family who were not in a similar condition. During certain festivals and
the shrdddha (annual ceremony for dead father or mother) the subject had to abstain from even a
drink of water till the ritual was over.
Traditionally, a man did not shave himself. He was shaved by a member of the barber caste, and the
barber’s touch as well as shaved hair were both polluting. After he was shaved, he was not allowed

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