Page 268 - DSOC201_SOCIAL_STRUCTURE_AND_SOCIAL_CHANGE_ENGLISH

Unit 12: Processes of Change

to touch the bathroom vessels, but someone poured water over him while he sat on the bathroom Notes
floor. Only when he had been thoroughly drenched, and had gargled his mouth with water, was he
allowed to touch the vessels. The place where the tonsure had been performed was purified with
cowdung. There was some resistance initially to the use of the safety razor among the high castes, as
its use involved pollution. The institution of the daily shave also violated the ban on shaving on
certain days of the week, and other inauspicious days. The safety razor enabled a man to shave when
and where he liked. I remember that once during my field work in Rampura I shaved after I had had
my morning bath and the Peasant headman mildly reproved me for it. (His granddaughter, then
about ten, was critical of my indifference to pollution.) In his own house, the safety razor had been
tabooed, and when his graduate son came on an occasional visit from Mysore, he was allowed to use
the razor only in an adjoining building used for guests.
Women, especially widows, and elderly men are generally more particular about observing the rules
of pollution than others. The upper castes are more particular than the lower Brahmins are the most
particular among the former, and among Brahmins priests out do the laity. Indeed, Brahminical
preoccupation with purity-pollution ideas and ritualism is the subject of much joking if not criticism.
Traditional Brahminical life requires not only leisure but also an absence of spatial mobility. Travel
subjects orthodox Brahmins to great hardship and privation.
Just as notions of uncleanliness and even sinfulness lie close to pollution, so do cleanliness, spiritual
merit and holiness lie close to purity. While all baths purify the bather, bathing in a sacred river
cleanses him, in addition, of sin (papa), and earns him punya or spiritual merit. A daily bath in a
sacred river (punya snana), worshipping in a temple, listening to the narration of religious stories
(harikathd kalakshepa), singing devotional songs in company with other devotees (bhajan), keeping the
company of religious persons (satsanga), frequent fasting (upavasa), prayer and meditation (prarthana,
dhyana)—these constitute the essence of a religious life as distinguished from a life devoted to secular
concerns.
The notion of pollution and purity has both weakened and become less pervasive in the last few
decades as a result of the forces already mentioned. It may be noted here that the popularity of travel
and teashops is not confined to city folk but extends to villagers as well. When I began my field work
in Rampura in 1948 villagers were surprised to find me walking to neighbouring villages. Why did I
walk when there were buses? When I revisited the village in 1952 I found bus travel had greatly
increased in popularity, and the headman himself had invested money in buses.
Urban life sets up its own pressures, and a man’s daily routine, his place of residence, the times of his
meals, are influenced more by his job than by caste and religion. This is all the more true when the
city he lives in is a highly industrialized one such as Bangalore or Bhadravati, and not like Mysore,
which derived its importance from being the traditional capital of the state until November 1, 1956,
when it became part of a larger Kannada-speaking state. Even more influential is the fact that
immigrants from the villages to cities are freed to some extent from caste and kin pressures, and must
instead conform to the norms of work-mates and neighbourhood groups. I am not arguing that urban
living leads to a total abandonment of the traditional way of life; in fact, it is a commonplace of
observation that behaviour varies according to context, and people are not always worried by
inconsistencies in it. A Nayar informant told Kathleen Gough, “When I put on my shirt to go to the
office, I take off my caste, and when I come home and take off my shirt, I put on my caste.” On a long-
term basis, however, such contextual variation usually paves the way for the eventual overall
secularization of behaviour. Thus, for instance, in Mysore in the early 1930s priestly (vaidika) Brahmins
did not patronize coffee shops, even coffee shops where the cooks were Brahmins. Elderly lay (loukika)
Brahmins also did not like to visit them; on those infrequent occasions when they did, they sat in an
inner room specially reserved for Brahmins and ate off leaves instead of pollution-carrying aluminium
and brass plates. Now very few coffee shops have rooms reserved for Brahmins—in fact, such
reservation would be against the law. The most popular coffee shops in the city have a cosmopolitan
clientele, and few customers bother about the caste of cooks and waiters. Even women occasionally
visit them, and there are “family” cubicles where they can eat in privacy.
The more educated customers show concern about cleanliness in coffee shops and not about caste.
Many of them prefer Western-style “coffee houses” as they appear to be cleaner, quieter and serve

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