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The identity of society is determined by its basic features. In the case of the Hindu society these features have been the belief in the theory of Karman and that of rebirth, Punarjanman, a corollary to the former which means reaping the reward of actions, good or bad of previous birth/births. The cycle of birth and rebirth continues till the true knowledge in the form of the identity of the individual soul, the Jivatman, with the supreme one, the Paramatman dawns. Except the Materialistis known as Carvakas or Lokayatikas, every school and every sect of Hindu society has belief in Karman and rebirth. Not only the Hindus, even as of the other religions as had their origin in India as reform movements, the religions like Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, and so on have absolute faith in them. At the social plane, the caste system and the system of the stages of life, the Varnasramadharma, have been the essential characteristics of Hindu society which was divided into four groups of Brahmanas, Ksatriyas, Vaisyas and Sudras in the descending order. The Brahmanas formed the intellectuals, the Ksatriyas the warriors, the Vaisyas the merchants and traders and the Sudras the various other professions. In course of time this division primarily conceived on the basis of type of work and activity to be performed by each came to be determined by birth, the real control vesting with the first three upper groups, the last group having been assigned the lowest position and being totally neglected and looked down upon. Among the three groups the Brahmin with his knowledge of scriptures and lores occupied the

dominant position. A challenge was thrown to this by a long line of reformers down the ages, with their own set of ideas which were accepted by their followers as new religions and named after them, Buddhism: for example, after the Buddha and Jainism after Jina Mahavira. The reformers in their own way continued trying to demolish the caste barriers, the barriers of high and low with only limited success which not unoften resulted in their followers forming break away groups, leaving the core of the Hindu society continue with the system wherein a large segment of it for no reason except its birth in a particular group was considered untouchable and unfit for anything decent in life and was condemned to a living deprived of facilities available to the members of the other three groups. The special prerogative of the Brahmins, the ritual, too held society in its firm grip and assured for its performers a special position. The protest movements aimed at loosening its grip but without much spectacular sucess. Women who were equal partners in society and shared the same altar with their husbands even in the performances of the sacrifice in the Vedic period and who joined in the highly philosophical discussions in the period of the Upanisads came to occupy much lower position in the society later.' They were denied the study of the scriptures: strisudrau nadhiyatam, the women and the Sudra, must not read them, and till the beginning of the present century even the formal education. From the ancient to the medieval and from the medieval to the early modern period the position of women is a saga of progressive deterioration. There was and in some cases still is, the practice of the Sati, the burning of the widows on the funeral pyre of their husbands and the lack of education. Though there is nothing of this type in older texts, the children at a very tender age came to be united in wedlock in the late medieval and the early modern period, with all the attendant social evils. If perchance the husband died, the child wife would have to carry on with her widowhood all her life, a life of all misery and privation. The widowhood for the women was the greatest curse. They could not remarry and were

Modern Hindu Society 29 1774 1833 condemned to a life severe and rigorous. They had to shave their heads, sleep on floor, eat frugal meals and wear white clothes. Their very sight was considered inauspicious in weddings and other auspicious occasions. That was the position of the Hindu society till about the middle of the nineteenth century which provided to its observer a very dismal picture, the picture of a society which through its onward march through history had absorbed into it, in spite of its high philosophy and the most elevating of the thoughts of oneness of all living beings, some of the evils which it was not prepared to shed, the evils which were eating into its vitals and emasculating it. The sap of life which had once made it pulsate and throb with inhalation of fresh breath in the ancient and the early medieval periods, the breath which had made it a very free society, where women would go out to meet their lovers all alone in the night as described by Kalidasa, where a wife like Avantisundari would offer her critical comments on the works of a great poet like Rajasekhara, seemed to be running out. The Muslims and the Christian Missionaries taking advantage of the weakness of the Hindu society were getting active in converting Hindus to Islam and Christianity. There were anxious moments around. In those moments there arose among the Hindus crusaders like Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1772-1883) who persuaded the then British Govt. to ban the hideous custom of Sati, Swami Dayanand Saraswati (1824-1883) who advocated widow remarriage and the reconversion of the people from Islam and Christianity to Hinduism, the Suddhi movement as also women's education and carried on a relentless war against idolatory and ritualism while re-establishing the authority of the Vedas against that of the Puranic cults, Maharshi Karve (1858-1910) a strong advocate of widow re/marriage of which he himself provided an example by marrying a Brahmin widow in the city of Poona, the citadel of orthodoxy in Maharashtra and a pioneer of women's education in Modern India, the founder of women's University, Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) who preached against caste system and the habit of drinking while advocating the rural upliftment of which, CC-0. Vrat Shastri

he took the spinning wheel as the symbol, Rama Krishna Paramhansa (1834-1886) and Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) who with their order of the Sannyasins, Rama Krishna Mission Ashrama took to serving the poor and the down trodden by setting up dispensaries, orphanages, schools, libraries and so on meeting the Christian Missionaries thus on their own ground and advocating the Vedantic teaching of equality of all beings while emphasizing the nobler aspects of Hinduism weaning away in that manner the people from Islam and Christianity and a host of others like Ranade (1842-1900), Gokhale (1866-1915), Tilak (1856-1920) and so on, who were strong advocates of reform in Hindu society. In Bengal the movements like the Bramhosamaja and Prarthanasamaja started by Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Keshab Chandra Sen and in Punjab, the Arya Samaja founded by Swami Dayanand, did useful work in bringing out awakening in Hindu society against the evils, it had been suffering from and also infused a new spirit of confidence in its glorious heritage and its equally glorious future. Then there were saints like Tuka Ram in Maharashtra, Shankardeva in Assam, Chaitanya in Bengal, Nanak and other Gurus in Punjab, Kabir in Uttar Pradesh, who had expressed themselves earlier against caste system and emphasized equal treatment to all beings. The cumulative effect of the social reformers of the nineteenth century and the religious preachers earlier did provide a shake-up to Hindu society, which got a further fillip through the scientific and technological knowledge. Added to this was the exposure to the world outside. Under the cumulative impact of all the three, the social reform movements, the scientific age and the exposure to the outside world the modern Hindu society with all its tight grip of tradition and history of thousands of years could not but admit of some change to bring it in line to a certain extent with the spirit of the time preserving at the same time its essentials. Fresh wind is noticeable in it now. No honest observer can find it the same old decadent sodeity it was in the last century. It has new-found confidence in

Modern Hindu Society 31 it. Tradition, though still powerful, has its grip on it loosened perceptibilly. With the coming in of the British the Hindus took to modern education in a big way in contrast to their Muslim brethren who remained backward educationally and are still so. Women's education which was once almost non-existent or was limited to the upper castes only and there too to learning certain skills and arts, is so wide-spread now that it has belied all expectations. Apart from an all women's university, the S.N.D.T. University in Mumbai which was started by Maharshi Karve, as pointed out earlier in Poona in 1916 and which was the first free University in India in the sense that it did not receive any financial grant from the government, has now more than 5000 students on its rolls in its various faculties of Arts, Commerce and Science. Besides, there are hundreds of Women's colleges all over the country. Apart from the exclusively women's colleges, which are now fast becoming outdated, women students study in large numbers in co-educational institutions. At present the position is that of all the school-, college- and university-going students a fairly large proportion is that of girls and they are making top grades in them. No longer are some special areas like science and technology the chosen preserve of the boys. The girls have made inroads into them and successfully so. It is common sight to see girls working in laboratories side by side with boys and discussing problems of such sophisticated nature as Nuclear Physics or Computer Science. The old taboo of women joining certain professions is also no longer there. There are women lawyers, women beaurocrats, women business executives, women financiers and bankers, women pilots, women politicians and so on. The Hindu tradition of the wives of the family not working outside their homes along with other men, does no longer stand in their way now. Child marriages are at a discount now. The statutory age of marriage for the boys is 21 and for the girls 18, which is generally adhered to in urban areas. The only exceptions are the rural areas of some of the more traditional of the Indian States like Rajasthan and Gujarat.

edta 32 Society and Culture The position of widows too is not as bad at present as it once used to be. They are not the hated lot now even among the uneducated or less educated. Among the educated the social sigma is as good as gone. To be truthful one cannot deny that in spite of all the progress in women's education and social status, women still do not enjoy, thanks to tight hold of tradition, absolute equality with men. Hindu society does discriminate against them. While the birth of a boy in it is an occasion for jubilation, that of a girl is that of gloom. The pall of gloom is thicker if a female child is followed by many others of her sex. The position is retrieved only with the birth of a male child. This attitude towards the girls has its roots in the past. With no old age security from the State, one had to depend upon the family only. Since the daughters are given away in marriage and are to become part and parcel of different households², the family in the case of the aged parents or other elderly relatives signified only sons and grandsons. Further, due to its esoteric beliefs it is the sons who are authorized to make offerings at the Sraddha ceremany, the > offering to the deceased ancestors. The sons obviously are more useful than the daughters. They are also useful in perpetuating families, a duty cast on the adult male by scriptures: prajatantum ma vyavacchetsih³, "do not snap the thread of a family continuity", which he has to fulfil by begetting children repaying thereby the debt to his ancestors, the pitrrna. Again, continuity of a feudal society depended on its ability to protect itself against onslaughts of adversaries as also availability of adequate hands for agro-commercial activities. All this accorded to sons in society a forward position which continues, even with the obsolescence of some of the above considerations, down to the present period. From the very birth girls are viewed as a liability in comparison to boys who are looked as an asset. Because of this, India has one of the lowest of the sex ratios in the world. The low value attached to girls leads to their neglect. In India there are 130 million girls below the age of 20. The majority of these are born into an environment in which they suffer from hunger, disease and ignorance. Their neglect is built-in in the age-old concept of

Modern Hindu Society 33 girls belonging to some one else, their being another's property, artho hi kanya parakiya eva, as Kalidasa puts it. From their very inception they are not looked upon as part of the family of their birth. Their going over to another family eventually, after marriage, conditions the entire attitude towards them even at the stage of their upbringing. A Telugu proverb expresses it most effectively: Bringing up a girl is like watering a plant in a neighbour's garden. A Delhi newspaper reported the bizarre behaviour of a Delhi father of two girls, kidnapping one of his own daughters, a three year old girl and abandoning her in Chandigarh. Even though highly educated and sober, he permitted himself this outrageous act for he was finding it difficult to prepare himself mentally to bring up two daughters, a poignant pointer to the prevailing prejudice in Hindu society against female offspring. It is this prejudice that is responsible for the practice of female infanticide which continues to the present day, the newspapers carrying reports of it every now and then. In one such published in the Bangkok Post', a reference was made to a survey conducted in the Salem region of Tamilnadu according to which female infanticide touches one family in every two which in addition to prompting district officials to crack down on offending parents has made them install white painted cradles outside 116 hospitals and clinics so that parents who do not want babies could leave them. Mothers come quietly to cradles, deposit their infants and walk away without looking back. 'Nobody stops them or asks questions', said the administrative head of the Salem district. In November and December in 1992, according to the survey, eighteen girls were left in the cradles ranging in age from a few days to a few weeks who were brought up in the government orphanage in Chennai. According to the above-mentioned district administrative head, the families just kill the new-born girls and bury them. When questioned 111 out of 1250 women in 100 randomly chosen villages admitted that they had killed at least one infant, 547 said infanticide had occurred in their families and 837 said that they knew that it was common in their villages. CC-0. Prof. Satya Vrat Shastri Collection,

male 34 Society and Culture "Even a useless mail buffalo can fetch 100 rupees" said one women. "A girl child means nothing but expense." The general method of killing the baby girls is choking them with milk mixed with raw grains of rice or giving them the juice of a poisonous herb. It could be strangulation also. According to a report published in The Times of India the death of a baby girl delivered in one of Delhi's hospitals fathered by an auto rickshaw driver who already has two daughters carried strangulation marks on her neck.7 The female infanticide is assuming a new and more pernicious form of the destruction of the foetus, if it is that of the female child on the basis of the determination of the gender of the child, made possible by science even while in womb. This type of female infanticide has shown an unprecedented rise in Indian cities forcing the authorities to think of measures to prevent by law and other means the pre-natal determination of the sex of the child. For some of the analysts female infanticide boils down to economics. India has an average per capita income of Rs. 18,400.00 per annum with no social security, health insurance and housing. The tradition is-that has yawning breaches in it visible now-that sons support their old parents. In contrast a daughter has to be married off at great expense pretty early. At that point of time her obligations get transferred to her husband and his family. Preference for sons would continue as long as there would be no social security. More than that, the age-old belief is that it is the son who perpetuates the family line and it is he who performs obsequies, the tarpana, the pindadana and so on which are so essential for delivering the father and other ancestorsthe very etymology of the word puttra, son is so contrived as to support this: punnamno narakad yasmat trayate pitaram sutah tasmat puttra iti proktah svayam eva svayambhuva (cf. Manu. 9.138), "because he delivers the father from the hell called Put, so he is called putra by the self-existent himself". It is only he or other male relative who is authorized according to the Dharmasastra for the mukhagnidana, placing of fire on the mouth of the deceased which starts the cremation. It is he again who is "a

Modern Hindu Society 35 to perform the many of the post-cremation rites like the asthisancayana, the gathering of the bones from the funeral pyre, the asthipravaha, the floating of the bones in river. There is a social taboo for a daughter or some other female relative performing these rites. Till some time back women could not even accompany the funeral procession to the cremation ground. Their participation in the cremation therefore was out of question. Till they get the acceptability for such practice, the preference for son would continue. For this a quantum change in social thinking is necessary. And till this comes about, would continue preference for boys and discrimination against girls with the more heinous manifestations of it, in the form of female infanticide or the destruction of the female foetus. There is a village called Jeeda in the district of Bhatinda in Punjab which has acquired the nick name of 'Kudi Mar Pind' (village where female children are killed). This village has abysmally low sex ratio according to 2001 census, 743 females per 1000 males which is lower than that of the entire Malwa region, which is 779 per 1000; an alarmingly low figure itself. Though village elders hotly contest the census figures, village women do concede to the extent that as of them as have two to three daughters go in for pre-natal test and abort the pregnancy if the test shows that the next child is the female. "After all, who wants to listen to mother-in-law's abuses", said one of them.8 The destruction of the foetus, if it is that of the female child on the basis of determination of its gender made possible by science, though bad, is carried on clandestinely on a large scale even among educated and affluent families even in metro and other cities proving the point, that it is not poverty and illiteracy alone which drive people to it but also the prospect of large amount of dowry and the insatiable demand for it from prospective grooms and their families which could destroy the future of their daughters leaving them devastated in the process. Society being what it is, a girl child is a source of great and unending worry for the father. An old Sanskrit stanza sums it up most poignantly:

kanya prajata mahatiti cinta kasmai pradeyeti mahan vitarkahi datta sukham prapsyati va na veti kanyapitrtvam bahu nama kastami⁹ "The fact that a daughter is born, is itself a matter of great worry. The worry then turns as to whom she is to be given away in marriage. (The next worry is) whether she would be happy in marriage or not. To be a father of a girl is indeed a great misery". The hideous practice of dowry in marriage in Hindu society is one single great factor going against a girl child. The spectre begins to haunt the parents from her very birth. They stretch resources to the maximum to arrange what goes now-a-days by the term 'decent marriage', to the extent of incurring heavy loans which they go on repaying for the rest of their life. It is not only the dowry that has to be arranged; it is rich gifts too, the sequence for which starts with just the firming up of the relationship, the thaka, the betrothal, the mangani, the bangle wearing ceremony and a multiplicity of other big or small rites. Every time the parents of the girls have to shell out gold chains, saris and other costly gifts to all sorts of relatives of the bride groom as also to their own, putting severe strain on their resources which in many cases they would have already strained while educating the daughters. Even this, they can some how stomach but not the harassment their dear daughter, a part of their flesh and blood, has to suffer for bringing insufficient dowry, the dowry not to the expectation of the in-laws or the burgeoning demands even after marriage. The harassment in several cases is total; mental, verbal and physical, all of which leading to extreme steps of bride burning or ending of their life by brides themselves. In a bizarre incident a 52 years old orthopaedic surgeon was charged with four members of his family colluding in torturing and maiming the daughter-in-law and her four years old daughter 10. It was January 2004. The daughter was allegedly severely bitten by her father and even physically abused. The child's body is so badly injured that she can urinate only through stomach with the help of medical implements. The version of the daughter-in-law is as follows, "I

Modern Hindu Society 37 got married five years ago. At that time my parents had given 1.5 lacs as dowry. For the past few months my father-in-law has been beating me for demanding another 2 lacs. My brother gave Rs. 50,000/- in December 2003. The fateful night of January 2, 2004 I made a mistake of telling my father-in-law that her family was not bound to give them any money. At this my husband bit off chunks of flesh from both my cheeks and when I refused to sign a blank paper, he bit off a part of my index finger. This was to make me realize that post-graduate degree can get a woman nowhere. That night my husband had kept banging my head on the wall and hitting me. My in-laws egged him on. To save myself I went and locked myself in the drawing room. To make me come out they then started torturing my daughter. Her thumb and index finger of one hand have been completely severed. She was hit with a car wiper. Doctors say that her head had been banged so many times that she may end up with permanent brain damage". There was a report in the newspapers of a 23 year old woman married to a property dealer a few months back forced to consume pesticides, an incident which was culmination of dowry harassment to which she had been subjected by her in-laws. With the possibilities of all these horrors staring in the face it is but natural that aversion for the girl child may have come to the built up in the Hindu psyche. Not that, there have been no protests against the pernicious practice of dowry. Powerful voices have been raised against it by an array of social reformers, but with little effect. The practice persists in all its varied ramifications, giving the people, sometimes on the high with education which was expected otherwise to loosen its grip, providing the fillip. The higher the education or the post, the more the price for the groom. Apart from cash and jewellery or refrigerators or cars, real estate has come to be added to it, plots of land and houses or flats being asked for and given away in dowry. This is in spite of the daughters being highly educated. With the aversion for the girl child for the reasons explained above, it is but natural that there be fewer girls as compared to

boys, a glaring gender disparity which has led to the appearance of many a new social phenomenon. In the State of Haryana, there being big disparity in sex ratio, many young men not finding bride for themselves in their own community approach the village matron with hefty amounts of money with the request that she arrange for them a bride. The matron condescendingly tries her contacts in other States and brings the bride from other communities who not unoften find themselves unable to adjust to their new surroundings. In Gujarat it has led to the emergence of a phenomenon of boys with no sister not able to get brides for themselves. As a report goes, more and more boys in the district of Mehsana, notorious for its preference for the male child and lowest sex ratio of 798 girls per 1000 boys not able to find a girl in their community are forced to buy bride from outside and have to cough up large sums of money for that or to remain unmarried. The situation is particularly bad for those who do not have sisters. There is a tradition called Satta Paddhati among the Choudharies, Rabaris and certain Patel and Prajapati communities of marrying brother and sister of one family to the sister and brother of the other family. Boys who do not have sisters would not be getting matches. There are many boys in the Mehasana village who are forced to remain unmarried for they do not have the sisters to exchange in the wedding. The only option for them is to go and buy a wife which has occasioned other problems. Many cases have come to light where the girls brought from outside the communities have left the boys within two to three months of marriage. It is almost like business where parents of a girl start demanding more money or they call their girls back. In one of the instances recounted by a social worker of Mehasana, the newly wedded wife of a youth in Kanoda village left her husband who had paid Rs. 30,000/- to procure her after three months of marriage. The parents of the girl had asked for some gold ornaments in addition to the money. The boy's family obliged. But the girl decamped with the jewellery in a matter of days. In this situation boys have come to be at the receiving end. And all

Modern Hindu Society 39 this due to declining sex ratio which is one of the lowest in Gujarat with 878 girls per 1000 boys in the 0-6 age group. This is indicative of the brewing social crisis in the district of Gujarat where female infanticide is common. 12 The Hindustan Times in an editorial 13 recently referred to the phenomenon of the procurement of the brides not only from the different communities of the regions of the same State but also from other States as also from other countries lending the situation international dimension, the full impact of which will be possible to assess only after some time because it will lead to social disharmony and the dilution of the age-old social norms which may bring families into conflict with each other. May be, the society would realize the gravity of the situation then and desist from the pernicious practice of looking down upon the female child. As the saying goes, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Thing seems to be looking up now. Some women have dared to make inroads into the male bastion. In cities and towns, particularly in north India, women accompanying the funeral procession or being present in the cremation ground, the Smasana, is a common enough sight. There are some who have resorted to performing even the last rites. The Times of India, New Delhi, in its issue of January 27, 2003 has attempted a profile of such women. Ms. Latika Padgaonkar, the Executive Editor of the Cinemaya in her write-up published in the above issue, records the event of the sudden death of her father and says that even though there was no shortage of the male relatives to perform the last rites, every one, the priest included, awaited her arrival from Delhi and quite simply took it for granted that it would be she who would perform the rites at the Vaikuntha even though she was accompanied by her son. No questions were asked, no eyebrows raised. This act appeared to them and to her most natural. Nor was there any discussion later of the ground-breaking she had taken. Perhaps that itself was a measure of how far her large family of cousins, aunts, uncles, etc. had travelled in their faith and outlook. Latika feels immense satisfaction looking back

now as to how she was part of gently bending tradition without fuss and noise. Quite unconsciously, she writes, "we had risen above a stubborn duality of opposite: male and female." Her final remark: "Social change, I discovered, when it swells from below, can reach far without tearing the social matrix". In line with the above was the action of another lady Shruti, a Delhi based teacher who performed the last rites of her deceased husband even though she had a little son who she did not want to subject to the ordeal. For breaking the tradition she had another reason too. She had been closest to her husband who was also a friend and lover to her. It was but appropriate, she thought, that the send off for the final journey be done by her. The priest, as she records, did not bat an eye lid when she expressed this desire of her, though to family members it was an outrage, an act of her wilful neglect of them. They also relented later in deference to her sentiments. It is not only in the area of performing certain rituals only, women are venturing into the area of priesthood as well. In the very heartland of Maharashtra's orthodox Brahmanical order Pune-based Shanker Sewa Samiti (SSS) since its inception in 1976, has trained, through its one year course, over 7000 women priests from all castes 14. Another Pune-based organization, the Jnana Prabodhini (JP), has blended tradition with modernity in its three months course. So far, 800 people, half of whom are women, have completed the course. Apart from giving training, Prabodhini's core team of seventeen male and eight female priests also regularly performs rituals 15. In Kerala, till a few years ago, anything related to Vedic hymns and sacred ceremonies was considered the domain of Namboodiris and the Pottis - the two classes of Brahmanical order. But over the past few years 37 non-brahmin women have become priests, thanks to the efforts of Gurupadam of Kodungallur in Thrissur district. 16 The revolution is taking roots in Varanasi as well, where students of Panini Kanya Mahavidyalaya are being trained in

Modern Hindu Society 41 priesthood. Dressed in yellow and wearing yajnyopavita, a group of young girls performs havana, pouring oblations in the fire and chanting mantras in chaste Sanskrit. The atmosphere is charged with spiritual fervour, reminiscent of the asramas of yore. This unique centre of learning has produced a number of Sanskrit scholars and karmakandi women Pundits. Presently 70 students from different parts of the country are on its rolls 18. And all the effort seems to be bearing fruit as acceptable change in attitude is visible. In Pune, for example, no eyebrows are raised when a women priest conducts marriages, pujas or sraddhas. In fact, there is growing preference for women priests for conducting these ceremonies. As a client put it: Women priests do not take short cuts while performing rituals. 5/2/27/thr Suniti Gadgil, a JKP team member performs around 15 shraddha ceremonies every month besides conducting puja and sacred thread ceremonies. Says she, earlier I used to do only other rituals but I decided to do the sraddha ceremony only after no priest was available to do the sraddha of my mother".1 18 Not only are women being trained in priesthood in large numbers, the long lost tradition of performing the sacred thread ceremony for girls to give them the right to perform all religious rituals in the family has also been evolved. Since the Brahmin community has now started moving to other professions, the traditional knowledge of the rituals is getting narrower. The reason for this mainly lies in the diminishing of Sanskrit teaching. The traditional Pandits who could officiate at the ceremonies or could perform the pujas are getting scarce. In their absence, a phenomenon unthinkable till a few years back of video cassettes of important ceremonies and pujas to assist people perform them is making its appearance. Even when the Pandits are available, their performance because of ignorance of Sanskrit; quite often they have not studied that at any stage; is very inadequate. They just perform the ritual, that too perfunctorily and are absolutely in no position to explain it, to an inquisitive modern Hindu who may be keen on knowing . al

its significance as also the meaning of the mantras accompanying it. There is some thinking on at the moment to start institutions for training priests and pujaris to ensure their availability to the Hindu community. A news report published in The Times of India, New Delhi in its issue of June 4, 2003 also speaks of institutions which train people in priesthood in addition to the Sanskrit Vidyalayas and the Universities which run Karmakanda courses. It also speaks of loosening of caste barriers for priesthood that being no longer the sole preserve of the Brahmins, a pointer to the whiff of change overtaking Hindu society. Something which was unthinkable a couple of years back is a practical reality now. The reports reads: "Looking for a purohit to solemnize your daughter's wedding? Take your pick from the mind-boggling variety. You can pick and choose from a variety of male Pundits or females ones, to suit your requirements. You can also go for a Brahmin Pundit or his Thakur, Bania, or Kayasth colleague. The liberal sect can even opt for Yadav, Kurmi, or SC purohits, guaranteed to be as professionally proficient as their upper caste batch-mates. With an army of freshly trained 3000 odd purohits in UP one can bid adieu to the staid and not so friendly neighbourhood Pundit lisping his way to the puja. Bringing in this silent revolution is the U.P. Sanskrit Sansthan which started the 'Purohit Karmakanda Prashikshana Yojana' in 2002." The Sansthan ran a short term course for a batch of 100 with a pre-condition that each would go back to his native place and train at least 30 in turn. They did a good job and now the energetic new entrants give their conventional counterparts a run for their money, claims Chandra Kant Dwivedi, Director of the Sansthan. The Sansthan has come up with a "do-it-yourself" book of instructions for the adventurous. The 300-page Karmakanda manual- a best seller-details as to how to carry out different religious ceremonies. The latest to follow in the footsteps of the U.P. Sanskrit Sansthan, as per the report published in The Hindustan Times,

Modern Hindu Society 43 New Delhi in its issue of September 28, 2005, are the Rajasthan Sanskrit Academy, Jaipur and the Sanskritam, Kota which are training sons of the Dalits who till recently were forbidden from even entering the temples in priesthood and are being imparted basic knowledge of related disciplines like Astrology. This they are doing by organizing camps of short term duration. A 20-day camp was organized by them in September, 2005 where a dozenodd boys from backward communities received instruction in priesthood. The hideous custom of Sati, the burning of the widow in the funeral pire of her husband, though abolished legally since 1829, raises its head every now and then and is not limited to uneducated poor widows. The latest victom of this, Roop Kanwar of the Deorala village of the district of Sikar of Rajasthan, was a graduate girl, educated and brought up in the comparatively modern city of Jaipur. Though the ghastly act on September 4 1987 had stirred up nation/wide protest and shocked the 2 conscience of the more open minded of the Hindus, there were thousands, a huge number of them women, who gathered at the place of the immolation chanting the praise of the immolated. There were attempts at glorification of the act through a ceremony called the Chunari Mahotsava. The Rajput youths with naked swords guarded the place of immolation, the Sati Sthal. Some even among the political and the religious leaders including the incumbent of one of the most respected of the religious seats of the Hindus, the Shankaracharya of Puri lent their support to the custom on scriptural authority. The Deorala incident made people look around and acquaint themselves with other places like Jhunjhunu where thirteen women had committed Sati in the 17 th century AD. The event there is celebrated annually on September 10 at the Rani Sati temple erected at the Sati Sthal. Large numbers of people gather there on the day mentioned above, say prayers and make offerings. 19 The glorification of Sati has an economic aspect also. Some people have their vested interest in commemoration of the ghastly event. The offerings by large congregations at Sati Sthals are a

source of income to their self appointed custodians. They gobble up large sums and evidently have their own motive in supporting the ghastly custom and its glorification. Apart from collections, a widow dying may mean one person less to claim a share in the property of the deceased man. Hence the desire of the relatives to get rid of her by burning her forcibly or otherwise along with the dead husband, proclaim her a Sati and impart divinity to her for her supreme self sacrifice. The helpless widow then is a Devi who invites veneration and worship. The existing Anti Sati Act did not have provision in it for preventing the glorification of Sati. Through the effort of the various women's organizations in the wake of the Deorala incident the Government of Rajasthan promulgated the Prevention of Sati Act, 1987 which prohibited it (the glorification of Sati) in the temples to be constructed henceforth. It has no provision in it to prohibit it in the temples in existence already. Accordingly the Rajasthan High Court did not uphold the legislation. The Parliament of India passed the Prevention of Sati Act taking all aspects of the practice of Sati into consideration. The Act got the assent of the President of India on January 3/1988 and was gazzetted on January 6, 1988. Every thing said and done, the unpalatable fact remains that heither literacy nor improved career prospect for women have helped raise the status of female child in the country. It is not only men who can do so, women have also to change their attitude towards the members of their own sex. The demand for dowry, a prime cause for the bride burning does not emanate invariably from only the men-folk but also from women-folk. The female in-laws are often guilty of ill-treating the bride for bringing insufficient dowry forcing her to take the extreme step of ending her life or in the alternative to continue to live a life of misery. Of late some women's organizations like Saheli, All India Women's Conference, Manushi, Mahila Janawadi Samiti, the Women's Co-ordinating Council have come into being to help members of their sex in distress. The attitude of men towards women too has undergone some change, helping them a bit to come to their own to occupy their rightful place in society.

鉁揷ap Modern Hindu Society 45 At the government level Department of Women and Child Development under the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Govt of India has prepared a National Perspective Plan on women. While dealing with the position of women in the present day Hindu society one thing that has to be borne in mind is that the position varies from region to region. In a country of the size of India it cannot be hoped to be uniform. In Western and Southern India the position of Women is better than in the LC Northern and Eastern. The dowry deaths and Sati incidents are conspicuously absent there. Further, women in these parts enjoy much more freedom than their sisters in other parts even with all the entrenched conservatism and orthodoxy. The case of some mod families apart, the strangehold of caste is so tight on Hindu society, particularly in the countryside and small towns and talukas that marriages outside the caste or the communities invite severest of censure. Panchayats meet and prescribe the punishment. If one of the parties, the boy or the girl is of the higher caste, and the other one of the lower one, the members of the higher one make it as a prestige issue and choose to kill the boy or the girl of the lower cast or subject them to violence. Such killings go by the name of the "honour killing". On January 10, 2004 a convention of victims of these honour killings was held in New Delhi, where they narrated their tales of woe. Among the speakers was one Geetarani of Hoshiarpur in Punjab, a Rajput woman who had married a Jat who was killed within two months of the marriage by Rajput villagers. This when both the boy and girl had the consent of their parents for the matrimonial relationship. Some Rajputs from the boy's village had cut off his (the boy's) hands and legs and subsequently killed him for daring to marry one of their women. Most of such cases are reported from Punjab, Haryana and parts of Western Uttar Pradesh. 23 such cases were reported in 2002-2003. One out of every ten murders in Punjab and Haryana are 'honour killings'. The convention organized by the All India Democratic Women's Association called for a commitment by political parties to upholds one's right to marry one of one's choice and a ban on caste panchayats.

Untouchability has been abolished under the constitution of India, though as a social phenomenon, it still is practised, of course in a much subdued scale, the orthodoxy feeling helpless in upholding it in the present circumstances. In the buses, the railway trains, the aeroplanes and other public vehicles an orthodox Brahmin may be forced to share the seat with the so called untouchables, his orthodoxy notwithstanding. He may also be forced to buy provisions from the ration shop or the provision store owned by some one from the lower caste. He may also likewise have to serve under a lower caste officer who now availing himself of the equal opportunities of education and special concessions in the form of scholarship and stipend as also reservation in jobs may have made it to the top. As for the caste barriers, the process of industrialization has contributed not a little to their loosening. The big plants and factories as also giant industries coming up everyday have brought together large communities of workers and labourers from all castes who live together in big settlements, where they cannot keep on exclusively to the customs of their respective castes. The inevitable interaction among them has helped loosen the many barriers among them. The original idea of certain castes holding on to their professions does not hold good now. The sheer instinct of survival makes them step out of them. For one, the openings are few in their own professions, there may be more in others. With rapid industrialization, a Brahmin may find that he can earn much more in a factory or a workshop or in an office than in a temple or a traditional institution. He may also not find the job satisfaction in the ancestral profession he may be looking for and may like to try pastures anew. It could also be that with the change in the social habits there may not be enough work for him in his ancestral profession. Since the priesthood or teaching in a traditional institution may not carry now the prestige they did earlier, it may not satisfy his ambition and he may opt out for a non-conventional profession. He may also not be in a position-tocarry on vigorously with the does and don'ts of his caste to which heredity had conditioned him. He may be forced to make

Modern Hindu Society 47 adjustment in his life style. He cannot hope to be the superioritysporting Brahmin, his ancestors were. Though maintaining his separate identity and the semblance of caste superiority, he would have to be a changed man, mixing up with the people of lower castes who share with him his profession. To that extent he has shed off the rigidity of his caste and that by sheer force of circumstances. Since science and technology have brought the world much closer together, there is more of interaction between communities and groups which makes them shed a part of their exclusiveness. The western liberal ideas have also influenced not a little the educated segments of Hindu society in making them more flexible and responsive to new ideas of greater interaction. There is less of discrimination among them consequently against the lower castes. The practice of untouchability has given a lot of bad name to Hindu society. It is interesting to note in this connection that in India it is not the special characteristic of the Hindu society 5 alone other societies too having their quota of it. An overwhelming majority of the followers of other religions being converts from Hinduism, they have carried the practice to their new religious societies thus divesting Hindu society of the stigma of its sole preserve. T. C. Joseph in his interesting write-up "On the Other Side of Conversion" in The Hindustan Times 20 makes the point that the Christians of Harijan or scheduled caste origin who form 75% of the total Christian population of India, i.e., 1.6 crore of the two crore Christians, are discriminated against within the Church though according to the Christian religion there is within its ranks neither Greek, nor Jew, nor Gentile, nor slaves, nor free men; rather as far as spiritual membership is concerned, there is not even male or female, all being one in Christ. A Harijan simply acquires equality with a Brahmin because both have gone through a five minutes ritual and have had water poured over their heads. Caste is not skin-deep, its stigma sticks. Nor is rank subdued which is why Christians from among the various castes still like to follow erstwhile demarcations Rarely is there an inter-

caste marriage within the community and a studied segregation is often maintained in Christian settlements, in Churches and even in places of burial when mud should actually be an excellent leveler. And at the highest level, Harijans, in spite of their numerical strength, have no worthwhile representation in the hierarchy. This is all untouchability of sort; and it can rightly be argued that the concept of equality should gain ground within the Church itself among the baptized just as attempts are made to promote it elsewhere. Prior to Joseph, C.S. Jayaram had published his write-up "Dalit Christians Seek Job Quota" which had appeared in The Hindustan Times 21 wherein too the sad plight of the Harijans or scheduled caste converts to Christianity was bemoaned. According to the writer these scheduled caste Christian converts are deprived politically, discriminated against socially and exploited economically. They continue to be branded as untouchables and even in Christian villages are forced to live in segregated "cheris". Even the benefits of the educational, medical and developmental projects of the Church do not reach the Dalit (Harijan convert) Christians. They are discriminated against from becoming priests, etc. Of the 41 Christian M.P.s there is none from the Dalit Christians. They have organized themselves now into a group and put forward the demand that they be provided with all facilities and special concessions including job reservations as are available to Hindu outcastes. What is the position with the Christians is also the position with the Sikhs too, whose faith does not recognize caste barriers. In actual practice there are acute caste distinctions in Sikh community. Inter-marriages between converts from different castes are few and far between. A Khatri Sikh being of the higher caste would not like in normal course to marry a Jat or a Mahzabi (scheduled caste) Sikh. This the Muslims too may not like to do. Just as there is caste prejudice among Christians and Sikhs, so is it even among Muslims. Like Dalit (low caste) Christians and Sikhs, there are Dalit Muslims too. A report published in The Times of India under the title "Caste Away: Dalit Muslims Seek their Rights" refers to an assemblage in Delhi of Dalit Muslims from all over the

Modern Hindu Society 49 country to claim their right of equality by demanding reservation in jobs in line with their caste fellows among Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs. It says that though caste division may be sacriligious in Islam, yet in India it is a reality. The Ashraf-Aflat (noble and low) division is very much prevalent among the Muslims even if the community leaders may not want to recognize it. The 15% Ashraf (the upper class mostly of Arab, Persian and Afghanistan) controls jobs, education and political space while the converts still converts still 鉁� lug the low caste tag from pre-conversion days. There are six tribes which have a sizable Muslim population listed in the ST category. There are 55 castes with Muslims in it, in the OBC list. The gathering raised the question: If Muslims can be the OBC why cannot they be scheduled castes. 22 Prejudices die hard. They continue to persist even after conversion which is no guarantee to their disappearance. Once confined to Hinduism, they have made inroads into other communities. Caste in a way is an allIndia phenomenon, rooted deep in the Indian psyche. There have been protests galore against the rigours of the caste system which determines the position of an individual in society, high or low, on the basis of birth. There has been a long chain of social reformers who have put their might in its eradication. In line with the above is a movement sweeping the State of Gujarat these days. There has been an age-old practice of offering tea to Harijans in separate saucers called Rampatar placed outside a rural household. The practice has penetrated deep among Harijan subcastes too. The upper crust Harijans, Venkars, Rohits, emulate high caste rural folk while offering tea in Rampatar to the lowestrung scavengers or Valmikis. The tea is poured in such a way that even sprinkles do not touch the server. As symbol of casteism in rural Gujarat, so far there have been isolated efforts to fight against this evil custom that is taken for granted by all. A decade ago one, Dahyabhai Parmar would go about breaking the Rampatras wherever he saw them. The result was that he entered into a scuffle with a tea vendor and ended up with a criminal case against them. tr./ ( ) B

xiao 50 50 Society and Culture January 25, 2005 saw the start of an unique 100-days campaign to end the custom, asking the rural folk of 40 talukas of Anand, Kheda, Vadodara etc. to give up Rampatar and take up Bhimpatar. Organized by an Ahmedabad-based non-political organization, Navsarjan Trust, it mainly asks upper crust Harijans to take a pledge not to resort to the casteist custom. It asks the scavengers to take tea from Bhimpatar or the same saucers as people from upper caste Harijans do. Unless the Dalits learn to reject casteism, how can they be expected to fight against it? Nearly 200 Padayatris from several non-political bodies permanently participate in the campaign and move from village to village. 23 There is a resistance now in the Hindu society to conversion to Islam and Christianity. The whole-scale conversion to Islam of the residents of the South Indian village of Meenakshipuram had shocked the conscience of the Hindu community and had activated it to do something positive to stop them. Scores of Hindu volunteers had descended on the village to readmit into the Hindu fold people who had deserted it in which they did meet with partial success. Similarly many Hindu organizations have become active in following the attempts of the Christian Missionaries in converting tribal and other backward classes in different parts of the country. The movement for re-conversion started by the organizations like the Arya Samaja, after some initial success, have made little headway, even some of the reconverted, not having got the social sanction reverting to their new-found haven of Islam and Christianity. As for conversions there have practically been none, prosylitization being none of the characteristics of the Hindu religion. Not to talk of the votaries of other religions, even the deserters from the Hindu fold are considered as fallen, Mlecchas from which position they can never recover. The Hindu society still is thus a very closed society not admitting easily into it people from other religions. A development worth noticing in modern Hindu society is the loosening of the family ties particularly in bigger cities and

Modern Hindu Society 51 towns. Joint family has been a special characteristic of the Hindu society since times immemorial. Large numbers of family members, father, mother, brothers with their wives and children, unmarried sisters and other family members have been living under one roof sharing the same kitchen. Of late, in urban areas families have started bifurcating. Modern education is partly to account for this. The modern Hindu young man wants independence for himself, he is more self-centred and wants privacy. His educated wife who more often than not is a working woman wants the benefit of the earnings of her husband and herself to her own limited circle of her husband, herself and her children only. She has little time and inclination, even if she does not have a job, to serve the other members of the family. She is chary of attending on the in-laws and the brothers and the sisters of the husband. The result: The joint family as an essential part of the Hindu ethos is under strain now. It has started cracking up. The process is being accelerated by migration of the family members in search of jobs in other places which come severely in the way of the family members living together in one place. Since the sons have now started moving away from their parents and other relatives and have started setting up their separate households, the western phenomenon of the loneliness of the old people has opened itself up to Hindu society too. The concept of the homes for the old in the western sense of the term is now catching up in India though it has been there in the form of the Vanaprasthasrama when the old people would retire to the forest with wives after voluntarily renouncing their possessions. The old system no longer holds good now. There are no forests around. Even if there be, people do not feel like moving into them. They prefer to continue to enjoy the warmth of the family. Now that it has begun to be denied to them, they move into some Asrama in certain religious orders. But there are no organized homes for the old to which they may repair after being neglected and rejected by their children. The social security which had been available to the aged and the infirm in the form of the care bestowed on them by the rest of the members of the family is no longer

available to as of them as have their families (in the wider sense of the term) broken leading to their feeling forlorn and uncared for. Of the fourfold stages of life as conceived and practised by the ancients, it is only the two, the Bramhacarya, the period of s study and the Grhastha, the life of house-holders which are the vogue in the Hindu society at present. Very few go in for the Vanaprastha, living away from home alone or with wife, after voluntary renunciation of their possessions and fewer still for Sannyasa, the life of a recluse. They stay on in the families - not a recent phenomenon certainly - the other members taking care of them, looking not only to their physical comforts but also to their emotional satisfaction as well, inculcating in them the sense of belonging, the feeling of acceptance which has an importance of its own in old age. The grandpa and the grandma play with the grand children, teach them the three Rs, tell them stories, derive joy from their small talk and that more than compensates for the infirmities of their age. With the break-up coming in of the joint family this phenomenon is under heavy strain. This is having its impact on the Hindu society in another respect too. Many of the stories from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the Puranas and other texts and the devotional hymns the young ones used to learn earlier in their childhood from their grandparents and other elderly relatives even before their schooling. This kept them in touch with the old tradition which was handed down thus from generation to generation. With the break in the joint family there is break in this too. The new generation of Hindus has little exposure to this knowledge and wisdom and is moving farther and farther away from its tradition which is causing extreme anxiety to elders among them. This phenomenon is much more acute with the Indian immigrants who find their children cut off from their Indian moorings. They want them to know something of the culture of their ancestors, their civilization and religion even while living in an altogether different social and cultural milieu in vom countries of their birth and upbringing. They would thus have an

Modern Hindu Society 53 opportunity of having an indirect contact with India, to keep on with something of their inherited Indianness. Though India is modernizing at a fast rate, the belief in outdated occult practices still holds its sway. The soothsayers, the Tantriks, the Ojhas still call the shots. It was at the behest of a Tantrik that a man had killed his wife, as reported in the press to make an offering to Goddess Kali to ward off the evil influence of some spirit on one of his sons. 24 The ailments, the diseases, the losses in money or business and successive deaths are attributed not only by the uneducated superstitious rural folk but even by the city-bread white collared to some evil spirit, kisi pret ka saya, for the exorcization of which they would repair to an Ojha or a Tantrik. Many of the problems the people ascribe to some evil spirit or the other. It is to ward them off that people resort to quaint practices. Among the Santhals the appearance of the first tooth in the upper gum is considered a bad omen. To break the spell it is necessary to marry off the girl immediately. Marrying to a boy would serve the purpose but that entailing considerable expenditure, Baburam Handa, a poor Santhal share cropper of tr./ weg Khanyan, married off his daughter Karmanidhi to a stray dog on June 11, 2003, the ceremony being attended by 100 guests. The evil spell having being broken by the ritual, the girl was free to marry later and not to suffer any stigma 25. How superstition holds the sway over Hindu psyche is illustrated by a bizarre incident. No good rain in donkey's year in Karnataka. No pujas appeased the rain god. So when the prayers did not help, the residents of Magadi Taluk of Banglore's a outskirts invoked an ancient alternative. They arranged the marriage between two donkeys. Legend has it that troubled by the absence of rain and wind the gods approached Varuna, the god of water, for help who directed them to a donkey. The donkey is believed to have shown them the way. Following this legend the Muhurtam for the wedding was finalized. It fell between 9.10 am to 9.15 am. The female donkey named Ganga dressed in green silk sari with gold zari was married to a male donkey Varuna

amidst chanting of mantras and the ringing of bells with the Arati plate being placed right under their nose. 25 The belief in the ghosts, the evil spirits and their possessing the human being is deeply ingrained in the Hindu psyche. India perhaps may be having the dubious distinction of being the only country of the world where there is a special fair for the ghosts and the evil spirits. Every year on Paush Purnima which falls in January, a village in the southern Madhya Pradesh holds a BhootPret Ka Mela. The objective is to exorcise those haunted by evil soul. About 5000 such 'possessed' people are brought to the Guru Deoji Sant temple at Malaipur, 290 Kms. south of Bhopal, from across MP, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh annually. On Paush Purnima, this year, the village had more than 60000 visitors including families of past victims, curious onlookers, but mostly those convinced that their relatives were possessed by spirits. The fair concluded on the day of Basant Pancami, on February 6, 2004.27 With dishevelled hair and strange shrieks, the 'possessed' cry before the priests who sprinkle holy water to bring the spirit under control. 'Who are you?' shouts the temple priest Bhikhariram at a 15 years old girl brought to the fair by her father for exorcism. Malajopur is a nondescript village with some 200 priests, who claim they have been 'trained in the art of expelling evil spirits.' Head priest Chandra Singh Mahant said the fair has been taking place annually for 250 years. Mahant said the two banyan trees in the temple compound are home to 'several lakh ghosts who have been expelled from human bodies'. 'Our temple is the Samadhi of Guru Deoji Sant, who was born around 1700 AD. He was a Rajput from Rajasthan whose family settled here', Mahant said. ' Since the childhood, he revealed supernatural powers, turning sand to sugar, clay to jaggery and giving sight to the blind. During droughts his miracles found granaries overflowing'. Priests say Deoji Sant had asked villagers to bury him in a samadhi and exhume him 11 months later. But, the villagers dug him nine months later and found a foetus of an unborn child. They buried it again', Mahant said. 'No one knows how the tradition in 2

5. Modern Hindu Society 55 of exorcising at his samadhi became a ritual but the fair has been held since then. Slack business or some malady the astrologer would ascribe to bad effects of some planets who would need to be placated by some special puja where he would officiate or the wearing of some stones or chanting of some mantras. The blessings of the sanyasins or the gurus are taken by the mass of credulous Hindus as the panacea for the ills that may be affecting them. It is not only for the spiritual solace that they would repair to them but also for the solution of their mundane problems. It is the faith deeply ingrained in Hindu psyche that if gods are pleased things would go in their favour. Special pujas are organized for this purpose and vows of special offering to them undertaken. It was in fulfilment of the vow that if his new company did well that a non resident Indian of United States who is believed to be a software Engineer from Tamil Nadu had donated anonymously a diamond-studded crown made of 1.5 kg of 24 caret gold to Lord Venkateswara which is said to have cost him over Rs. 1 crore. The crown was donated in the presence of Kanchi Shankaracharya who performed the morning rites and then handed it over to temple authorities 28. The above is one instance among hundreds and thousands of them. It is in this spirit that the animals are sacrificed. According to a report published in The Hindustan Times 29 lacs of goats, sheep, buffalos and cocks were sacrificed during a puja across Orissa notwithstanding protests of animal rights activities. People in some parts of Orissa may have taken to sacrificing cucumbers or gourds but the majority still kill animals to gratify the Mother Goddess. In Devi worship power is concentrated in blood which is seen as a symbol of reproduction. Hence animal sacrifices are practised by Shakti cult believers. All that modernization and consumerism have done to the practice is to alter the orientation. Animal sacrifice which was a community affair in the past meant for the general welfare of the village, has turned to individuals doing it to satisfy their desires. The Prevention of Cruelty to Animal's Act is simply ineffective in preventing the people to go in for animal sacrifice.

.56 Society and Culture Recently the Government of Bihar had to step in to ban animal sacrifice in the temples of the state 30. This will, for sure, go the way the Prevention of Cruelty to Animal's Act of 1960 has gone. Those in charge of the implementation of the Act look the other way when it is violated for fear of being charged with hurting the religious sentiments of the people. This was proved when King Gyanendra of Nepal on coming to India after his coronation, sacrificed, despite the protest of the animals right groups, five animals, including a buffalo at the ancient Kamakhya temple in Guwahati and a goat in Kalighat at Kolkata's famous Kali temple. Animal sacrifice in temples is an ancient Hindu custom to propitiate the gods. This was turned into 'a divine ritual' by kings and feudal landlords. Over the years, this bloody practice has acquired perverse sociological dimensions which have very little to do with the earlier rituals. Now the animals are beheaded for a variety of mundane reasons, reasons varying from wanting a male child to seeking a cure for a disease. Not surprisingly a massive network of contractors, temple trusts, wealthy priests, money lenders and crooks have got involved in this trade whereby people are coaxed to sacrifice animals. in th The hold of tradition on Hindu society one can understand, it being one of the most ancient societies of the world which could gather a lot of dust in its onward march that got acceptability in the name of tradition, age-old practice and time-honoured custom. are What is more interesting is that some of the incidents/recorded in the texts like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata the veracity of which is still doubtful, their being found in such portions as are considered later additions or interpolations. The Agnipariksa, the fire ordeal of Sita is one such. An incident occurs in the Uttarakanda of the Valmiki Ramayana where Sita was made to prove her chastity by walking on fire. Well, Sita of the Ramayanic text walked on the fire or not, a modern Sita of the name of Sangita was made to do so to prove her chastity by walking on it. As the story goes, as per a report in The Hindustan Times, she,

Modern Hindu Society 57 married to a person in Ujjain, had gone to Mumbai to attend a marriage. From there she reportedly went to Vaishno Devi with a friend and returned to Ujjain after eleven days. But her suspicious husband refused to allow her entry into the house. Sangita narrated the turn of events to her mother who in turn got in touch with community elders gathered at a private place. She was given a ceremonial bath and turmeric paste was applied to her hands. Some Peepal leaves were placed on her palms and finally a red-hot iron rod was put on them. Sangita was to hold the rod and walk a short distance after which she dropped the rod. Luckily she, a woman of Sakal Gihara community of Madhya Pradesh, did not suffer any burns. The whole incidents was videographed and the cassettes were later seized by the police³2. The Agnipariksa of the modern times is not restricted to women only. A young man had to undergo a similar Pariksa to prove his innocence against the charge of his having illicit relationship with his cousin sister. The Panchayat of the Sansi Samaj of the Sansi colony of Jodhpur had prescribed this test for the boy. The Panchs placed on his hand, a red-hot axe and asked him to walk seven steps. The boy passed the test with no burns on his hands. Before that the boy was given bath and made to wear. Dhoti and the Yajnopavita. After the innocence of the boy was established, his cousin sister could go back to her in-laws who had not been allowing her entry in their house for the past three days. Interestingly, this Agnipariksa is not limited only to the Hindus. According to a news item even four Muslim men were made to undergo it in Pakistan. A village council in the district of Multan prescribed this test for men who were suspected of killing a women Saada Bai. The men were ordered to walk on 2.5 meters of burning embers. The men's feet were then wrapped in cloth and examined three hours later. One of the four had suffered burns. He was declared the killer. 33 Though this is not peculiar to the Hindus, science and technology have weakened the hold of religion on society. So have done the exigencies of the modern age. There are more of

the elderly temple or Arya Samaj going people today than the young ones. The younger generation seems to be distancing itself from the traditional way of life. Given much more to the materialistic ways, it has little time and inclination for religious practices which it understands very little, the family and the society having provided him with little exposure to it. This should be a matter of serious concerr. for the leaders of the Hindu society who need to bestir themselves and do something about it at an early date so that the position is salvaged well in time. Time was when groups of holy people, the Sannyasins, moved from village to village preaching Dharma and delivering sermons on matters religious. Week long recitations, the saptahas, from the Bhagavata were organized, the sessions of stories from old texts were held, and the scenes from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata were enacted. This was a regular phenomenon of Hindu life. A break has come in this and the population has little exposure to this traditional link with the past. The diminishing of the traditional Sanskrit schools, the Pathashalas and the Vidyalayas, too has played its part in this. The Pandits in these institutions to whom people looked up for spiritual and religious guidance and who were readily available to them in the village are no longer so, the Pathashalas and the Vidyalayas having withered away with students not coming forward to learn Sanskrit, that being too unremunerative to them. Widow marriage is still not the prevailing norm. Inter-caste marriages, however, are not that exception now as they once used to be nor do they stir up the protest that they did earlier, winning thus grudging acceptance from the Hindu society. There is a lot of talk now-a-days of Hindu chauvinism. Luckily for India, it is limited only to certain pockets. An overwhelming majority of the Hindus are still away from it. That accounts for the presence in India of large minorities, six million Sikhs, twenty million Christians and one hundred twelve million Muslims. Even in India, the cradle of Hinduism, not to speak of countries other than it, the Hindu youth are suffering from the problem of identity. They have little idea of what goes with a *

1/2 Modern Hindu Society 59 Hindu. With the joint family cracking up and the parents ever busy with their vocations or problems there is nobody to tell them of their moorings. The roving religious preachers who would frequent cities, towns and countryside giving discourses on the essentials of Hindu religion and telling stories from the epics and the Puranas acquainting their audiences with Hindu mythology are steadily declining in number. The onslaught of western thought and way of life and love of the lucre have cut the youth away from their traditional base. The regular visits to temples by youth are getting scarcer or are confined only to those coming from deeply religious families, the families where the elders still exercise strong hold over the youngsters. Very few of the College or the Universty going students sport the tuft of the hair though belonging to the three upper castes and the sacred thread, the yajnopavita. Among the Samskaras generally the two, the Vivaha, marriage and Antyesti, the funeral are observed though Namakarana, christening and Mundana, tonsure are not altogether absent, some of the families being rather particular in observing them. In most parts of north India the Upanayana, the sacred thread ceremony is either not observed or is concomitant with the marriage ceremony, the bridegroom made to wear it before it with little of ceremonial, though in south India it is observed as a matter of general routine. The Vadarambha Samskara, though followed in the south is conspicuous by its absence in the north. The other Samskaras, are all but forgotten. The plain fact is that most of young men and women, not only they, even the eldershave no idea of the Samskaras, their importance, the ritual going with them and the part they play in an individual's life. It would not be a surprise if they do not know even their names or even their number. With the descendants of the priests helping in the performance of the ceremonies taking to other vocations there is real dearth of them. Their dwindling numbers have given rise to the curious phenomenon of cassettes being developed and the ceremonies being performend by playing them. In many cases the priests being not well-versed in Sanskrit are not able to recite the mantras/ slokas correctly let alone explaining them and e 71

elucidating the various steps in the ceremony, leaving the participants almost totally ignorant of what is being pronounced and why. This may not matter much to the older generation which may be prone to accept things as they are with its focus on the sacredness of what goes on but may not go well with the more inquisitive of the younger one which is more inclined to go into everything scientifically and rationally. That being not satisfied, it leads to general apathy towards religious ritual as such, as something which has to be observed more as traditon than anything else. The young Hindu men and women today find themselves at crossroads. With so many currents and cross-currents buffeting them their thinking in matters religious and mythological has become fairly unclear. Their identity as Hindus is at stake. They are Hindu because they are born of Hindus parents, blissfully ignorant in more cases than one of what their religion really stands for. Ask a Hindu youngster as to why Ganesa worshipped at the start of any enterprise for the removal of obstacles as Vighnavinayaka or just Vinayaka the shortened form of the word carries elephant head on him or why he, the heavy and the pot-bellied one rides a nondescript rat which is too small for him, or why Kartikeya sports six faces occasioning the appellation Sadanana or Sanmukha, you can only expect in an overwhelmingly large number of cases blank expression. Not to talk of Sruti and Smrti, he may not be aware of even the teachings of the Bhagavadgita. Not to speak of the titles, even the number of the Upanisads, he may not even know. It is a fact, though not a pleasant one, that many young men and women of Hindu parents came to know of the national epics the Ramayana and the Mahabharata through the T. V. serials. In one of the tests conducted some time back many people mentioned Ramanand Sagar as the author of the Ramayana! The economic progress coming in the wake of the scientific and technological progress has led to fostering of material outlook in society with consumerism its dominant note. Watching the late night movies and the television channels which have proliferated of late and getting up late in the morning is what the younger

channels Modern Hindu Society 61 generation in the affluent sections of Hindu society is exposed to. The middle section being too busy thinking of ways and means for equipping for career or earning livelihood has little time for religious observances or listening to discourses of saints and preachers either in temple precints or community halls or open or covered Pandals or on the television screens through various chanells like Astha and Samskara which beam them forth. How are the Hindu values to be inculcated then? Even the basic things about the Hindu deities, as pointed out above, the younger people do not know, let alone the rigmarole of the myths going with them as also the basic tenets, the ideas and ideals of Hinduism which the older Hindu had the good luck to imbibe through interaction among the members of the extended family or the many holy men crossing his path. The crisis of identity has deepened with the erosion of Sanskrit learning, which till recently had been widely pursued. This was a great link with the past. The Sanskrit lessons drawn from various ancient texts would provide the young learner with a window to the past. Quite a big chunk of the knowledge of his religion the learner would get through these lessons. It is not without reason that it is said that culture is dependent upon Sanskrit: samskrtih samskrtasrita. With the development of science it is but natural that a young person should develop scientific temper. He may question everything. Efforts have, therefore, to be initiated to answer his questions and not to brush them aside with a shrug as some of the elders are wont to do. The questions of the youngsters have to be handled delicately and with utmost sensitivity and sympathy. The spirit of enquiry has to be encouraged and not deprecated. In the Gita the Lord has mentioned pariprasna, counter questioning, as the means of acquiring knowledge: tad viddhi pranipatena pariprasnena sevaya! upadeksyanti te jnanam jnaninas tattvadarsinahip 4 It is incumbent upon the leaders of the Hindu community to arrange for the education of the youngsters in the basics of Hinduism. This can be done through discourses by the learned

people with scientific temper and the gift of the gab to reach out to wider sections of the younger lot and the ability to motivate them to have a general perception of Hinduism. The purpose can also be achieved by bringing out small tracts or monographs on different aspects of it: its gods and goddesses, the myths | surroubling them, its sacred texts, its sects, its Samskaras and rituals, its festivals, its systems of philosophy, its great thinkers, the seers and sages and so on. If the older generation has the good of Hinduism at heart, it has first to equip itself with adequate knowledge about it and then impart it to the new generation. It is a very competitive society in which one lives today. Just as there is stiff competition in other spheres of life, there is A/ competition in religion too. There are people at work who are out to promote their own religion. This, they do by not only highlighting the good points of their religions but also by attacking other religions by picking holes in them. Hinduism has been subjected for long periods to these vicious attacks which are continuing upto this day being an ongoing process. The Hindu youth has to be wary of these attacks and not carried away by them. He has to have his own arsenal to fight them and repulse them. For this he has to have full knowledge of his religion first and has to be educated sufficiently to counter with arguments marshalled cogently and consistently what its opponents have to say. He has to put up proper defences. He has to have full grasp of what Hinduism stands for. While he has to have that, he has also to be conscious of making distinction between Hinduism, its high principles, its philosophy of universalism and toleration and accomodation of divergent views and the present state of the Hindu society with all its past baggage of distinction of high and low based on the mere accident of birth and the cobweb of many other evils like the dowry system, the female infanticide (leading to glaring disparity in gender ratio), the superstitious belief in some of the weird practices and the like. The Hindu society in the modern age cannot continue to be what it had been in the earlier period. The young Hindu bred and nurtured in CC-0. Prof. Satya Vrat Shastri Collection, New Delin modern scientific

Modern Hindu Society 63 environment may not take kindly to all that has come to be associated with a society which goes back to a hoary past. This putrid mass the society has to shed. The modern young Hindu may have nothing of it. That is his dilemma. Though not having an idea, an in-depth one at that, of his tradition, he cannot totally break loose from it. He finds himself just standing at the crossroads, a confused and a bewildered person groping for his identity! Connected with the question of assertion of identity in modern Hindu society is the phenomenon of developing some order in it and not leave it as a conglomerate of sects and faiths with countless splinter organizations and associations for their promotion. The idea is developing now that these organizations and associations should be brought under one umbrella organization that may look for the welfare of the Hindus in general and not any particular section/sections thereof. The world Hindu Conferences are now being organized, the first one having taken place in New York, USA in 1986 and the second once in 21 Kathmandu, Nepal in 1988. A kind of new awakening is overtaking the Hindu society with the desire to make its presence felt in the world community. With all its modernity, it still is very much traditional not only in the value system which of course is not bad but also in its beliefs, practices and way of life. It still clings to the past while living in the space age. It has its moorings in its thousands of years of history which has given it the resilience to hold on even against heaviest of the odds. It is responding to the changing times with its core intact which has been its strength down the centuries. It has endless divisions, yet is one, to be designated by the single term Hindu. It is old in maintaining its contact with the Vedic and the Purhic age in prayers, the mode of worship, the pantheon, the ritual, the practices, yet modern in education, in professions and the incorporation by it of the most sophisticated of the industrial and the technical knowhow. With all its contradictions and complexities it is an ongoing society with its rich past and hopefully, an equally rich future.

REFERENCES 1. Kalidasa derides women in the Abhijnanasakuntala, 5.22 2. ibid., 4.17 3. Taittiriyopanisad, Siksavalli, 11.1 4. Abhijnanasakuntala, 4.17 5. Ghai, Anup: Crimes of Passion, The Hindustan Times, New Delhi, September 1988. 6. January 15,1993 7. The Times of India, New Delhi, January 9, 2004 8. The Hindustan Times, New Delhi, June 6, 2003 9. A popular saying 10. The Times of India, New Delhi, January 13,2004 11. ibid., July, 13, 2004 12. ibid., July 7, 2004 13. ibid., July 7, 2004 14. Hindustan (Hindi), New Delhi, September 4, 1988 15. The Hindustan Times, New Delhi, January 11, 2004 16. ibid., September 25, 1998 17. The Times of India, New Delhi, January 25, 2003 18. ibid., December 6, 2004 19. The Times of India, New Delhi, June 17, 2003 20. ibid, January 25, 2003 21. The Hindustan Times, New Delhi, July 6, 2002 22. ibid, October 16, 2002 23. The Hindustan Times, New Delhi, July 28, 2004 24. ibid., June 18, 2003 25. The Times of India, New Delhi, June 17, 2003 26. ibid., January 25,2003 27. The Hindustan Times, New Delhi, July 6, 2004 28. ibid., July 6, 2002 29. ibid., July 9, 2002 30. ibid. 31. ibid., June 8, 2002 32. Bhaskar, Jodhpur, June 24, 2004 33. The Times of India, New Delhi, December 31, 2004 34. Gita, 4.34