‘Sanatan’: A shameful history of caste violence in Sharankumar Limbale’s novel about the Mahars

The story of Sanatan, written by Sharankumar Limbale and translated from the Marathi by Paromita Sengupta, starts with Holi and moves to Diwali, but the events in between couldn’t be further away from the joy these festivals bring. There is no main character to whom a reader can attach themselves – except Sidnak and Bhimnak, who come and go as the story progresses.

The long days of Mahars

Sanatan tells the story of Mahars, the “untouchable” community of Maharwada: a repugnant peripheral area designated at one end of the village for them to live. The story jumps from one Mahar to another, tying them in vicious shackles of caste-based discrimination. According to Mahars, “The world is going to drown in a deluge. But how does it matter to us? Let the landowners worry. What have we to lose?”

To give a brief idea of the deplorable crimes committed against the untouchables, here’s how they lived their lives: Mahars spent days doing menial jobs for the upper castes in the village and during the night they patrolled the village as watchmen. They were not given any monetary compensation for the work they did but had to beg for stale food, going from home to home and sometimes having to snatch rotis from dogs’ mouths. The author writes: “What is the job of a Mahar? Keep waiting for food for all the twelve months. And what are the wages for his work? Stale food!”

If an animal died, they were supposed to take it away and eat it. They prayed for it because a dead animal meant full stomachs – “The death of an animal was a festival for the Mahars”. Sometimes upper castes accused them of killing the animals just so they could eat, so Mahars ended up being beaten within inches of their deaths. While walking, they couldn’t let their shadow fall on upper castes as that would pollute the latter. In some regions, especially in Peshwai (ruled by Peshwas), they had to tie a broom to their behinds so it could wipe off their footprints lest they polluted others. There is even a mention of the human sacrifice of a Mahar in the foundation of a tower to prevent it from crumbling repeatedly.

They were not spared even in death. The upper caste denied them entry to their fields to bury their dead. Such was the injustice meted out to them that even in their prayers, the Mahars wished to be reborn “from the womb of a cow.” They wouldn’t pray to be reborn as a human. When a Brahmin died, writes the author, his soul took a new body through a new birth. He found salvation. But a Mahar has no soul. His spirit wanders about endlessly. He never finds salvation. When a Mahar dies, he becomes a ghost.

The Mahars who thought converting to a different religion would ease their suffering were wrong. The ones who converted to Islam faced discrimination in their new religion too as “the village was clearly divided between Hindus, Muslims and untouchables.” When missionaries started preaching Christianity and converted Mahars, they couldn’t find the equality they were promised. The white Christians didn’t have anything to do with them. They had trouble marrying their children. Neither the Mahars nor the Christians considered each other their own. But the conundrum of taking these people into Hinduism was even more complicated: “People are converting to become Muslims, Christians. No one is converting to become Hindu. Even if someone did, which caste would he be taken into?”

The following conversation sheds some light upon the dilemma of conversion amongst Mahars:

“Who are you?” Biru asked.

“I’m Philip Bush.”

“Why such a strange name?”

“I’m the same Sidnak Mahar.”

“Oh, you have changed your religion, haven’t you?”

“Yes, I became a Christian.”

“Do you get money to become a Christian?”

“No.”

“Then? What do you get?”

“We get humanity.”

“True. We treated you like dirt! You should all leave!”

“That will happen in the days to come.”

“It will be good…Hinduism will get rid of its dirt.”

The root cause

The author has held religion responsible for the inhumane plight of Mahars. He writes: “Religion loots the soul of human beings, and power loots their rights. Religion and power are evils that have eclipsed human life.” According to one story, Lord Shiva produced a child who began to eat a dead cow. He thus cursed him to eat the flesh of dead animals. This was how the Mahar caste was born.

The author writes about where the untouchables must live, what they must eat, what they must wear, in what kind of houses they must live, what ornaments they must wear, what language they must speak, what language they must hear, what names they should call themselves by, how they should be punished, everything is well documented in the Hindu scriptures. Untouchability is the worst part of the Hindu practice – and the courage to reject these rules can be gained only when one understands the scriptures.

Even the stories that upper castes share amongst themselves carry ludicrous details. A character is seen thinking about a story where an upper caste woman got pregnant listening to the laughter of a Mahar and gave birth to a tortoise. He mentions “Shambuk-vadh” from Ramayana where Rama murders a lower caste ascetic Shambuk for doing penance. The story of Amritnak Mahar and Rani Keertimati is the most absurd of all. A Mahar is sent to find a lost queen. When he comes back with her, people accuse him of defiling queen’s modesty. He asks the king to bring a small box he had given him when he left. The box is opened, Mahar’s cut penis is found inside. When the king asks Mahar to name his reward, he says, “All I want is the fifty-two rights charter for our untouchable people. We Mahars have been subjected to a lot of injustice.”

A different view of colonialism

The story streamlines itself along the events that dot the struggle of independence to highlight the never-changing lives of Mahars. It begins around the time when Maharas come to know that the East India Company is recruiting untouchables in the army and giving them weapons. The author mentions the historical landmark of the opening of a girls’ school in Pune by Mahatma Jyotiba Phule in 1848 and in 1852, a school for the children of the untouchables in Vetal Peth. The story then moves to the revolt of 1857, the assimilation of East India Company rule into British Raj and ends around Marley Minto reforms in 1918 at a somewhat hopeful note when BR Ambedkar, a professor in Sydenham College sent a petition to the governor, asking him to be made a representative of the untouchables.

While colonial rule was viewed as oppressive and unjust, Mahars had a different view. Since it considered them humans and accorded them a dignity they had long been denied, they championed it. A Mahar remarks: “To take away the broom and hand a cannon to the Mahars is nothing short of a miracle.” When Tehsildar George Thomas, who firmly believed that in Hindustan, people killed each other in the name of religion, asks the village sardar why untouchables are not allowed to fill water from the lake, he has no reply. However, when the power shifted from the East India Company to the Crown and the British Raj prevailed after the revolt of 1857, it led to the removal of almost all the untouchables from the army to appease the upper castes. Learning from the failures of the East India Company, the Crown decided not to meddle in the affairs of the upper-caste Hindus.

As far as the upper castes are concerned, the rank discrimination also arose from the economic point of view. It suited them to keep Mahars oppressed as they were being exploited as indentured labour. Even the Raj sends thousands of Indians to the UK to serve as indentured labour. There, all of them are brown-skinned and the gora is their boss. Such is the level of rift in the society and dirt in mind that an upper caste man, distressed to share a ship with the untouchables, jumps to his death.

Mahars had learnt to live with the hatred. They thought they were paying for the sins they committed in past lives. The continuous oppression had hardened them. The author writes that wherever the untouchables went, they put up a brave fight. They were so used to poverty and discrimination they could cast their roots even on a cliff. They remained alive in the most challenging environments. They were never obliterated. They knew that it was useless to complain about torture and injustice, and would bear their sorrows with laughter. They never lost hope. Every day brought with it new hope. They could do any work for a handful of bread. They did not know how to say “no”. Perhaps non-violence was born of the untouchables’ resilience to centuries of torture and pain.

The story also details the harassment and killings of the Adivasis. The bheels who lived in forests were ousted after the forests were razed to make way for civilisation. Their lands were usurped and their women, raped. The simmering unrest led to the killings of the British by the Adivasis.

The writer talks about harassment and rape of lower-caste women. In Moustache, S Hareesh wrote about the caste discrimination faced by Namboothiri women in the Kuttanad region of Kerala who were not allowed to cover their breasts. Similarly, Limbale has written about a breast tax paid by untouchable women. They had no respite even after being bare-breasted. Women with larger breasts had to pay a higher tax.

The upper caste Hindus had Kunbeen women in their homes, who could be exploited and raped at their pleasure. The children borne out of this union were routinely discarded.

In his short story collection, The Birth Lottery and Other Surprises, Booker Prize winner Shehan Karunatilak writes: “What is God’s grace? It’s all just shit luck. Where we were born. Which houses we get. Nothing is planned. Everything is a sweep ticket.”

It is all luck indeed. Where we end up taking birth, which religion to follow, nothing is under control. And yet the violence and the crimes continue. If you pick up a newspaper, you come across the crime of the human sacrifice of a two-year-old boy in Hathras. Reports of lower caste men being beaten and killed are fairly uniform. It seems we have learnt nothing from the history. It is unfortunate and shameful.

Sanatan: A Novel, Sharankumar Limbale, translated from the Marathi by Paromita Sengupta, Penguin India.