THE GLOBAL AFRICAN COMMUNITY
H I S T O R Y N O T E S
THE PARIAH AND THE PUNDIT:
A UNIQUE CASE OF LITERARY BIGOTRYBy DR. R. S. SRIDHAR
Posted by RUNOKO RASHIDI
Every time the international English and British media use the word "Pariah" to attribute the meaning of "outcast" or "shunned" to anybody or anything, all real Pariah people who can read English cringe in humiliation and wonder whether they will be excused if literary liberty is taken by them to use the word "English", "American" or "British" to collectively convey the meaning of "ignorant bigots".
The real "Pariah" (or "Pariar") people are a large indigenous tribal group in the Tamil Nadu state of South India who are physically, religiously and socially segregated as "outcasts" and "untouchables" by the Hindu majority along with two hundred million other similarly "outcast" people who are collectively referred to as "Dalits". The Hindus themselves are hierarchically divided into a step ladder structure of upper and lower castes, but, the hierarchically divided "caste" Hindus collectively discriminate and segregate the "outcast" indigenous Dalits of whom the Pariahs are prominent members.
The English language mindlessly institutionalized the bigotry of Hindus by usurping the tribal name of the Pariah people to convey the degrading meaning attributed to the Pariahs by the bigoted Hindus. To add insult to injury, the custodians of the English language use the word "Pundit" in a positive sense to convey the meaning of a scholar or an expert. It should be remembered that "Pundit" is the traditional name of the Brahmans who are placed at the top of the Hindu caste hierarchy just by the reason of their birth. The Brahmans or the Pundits were accorded the monopolistic privilege of functioning as priests and religious scholars at the expense of other lower castes and outcastes who were forcibly denied access to literacy in the name of the Hindu religious texts that codified the caste system.
The laws of Manu ("Manu Smiruthi"), the Hindu text which codified the caste system actually says that "molten lead has to be poured into the ears of those 'low born' who dare to hear the recital of the written word". The laws of Manu go on to describe other punishments such as "castration" to lowly born men who dare to consort with Brahman and other high born Hindu women. May be the English language can use the word "Pundit" to describe those who become scholars or experts in their chosen field by killing or tormenting their competitors in keeping with the real social, historical and theological facts, but to generically use the word "Pundit" to describe any scholar or expert is a gross miscarriage of literary justice and an enduring insult to all those who were (and are) victimized by the Hindu caste system including the "Pariahs".
Every time a Pariah person reads the word "Pariah" in the English media his or her mind is literally tortured by a torment for which the word "insult" would be an understating description. The word "Pariah" is always used in a negative sense in the international news media, for example, by routinely describing Cuba, Iraq or Libya as "Pariah" states. Anybody who has been shunned by others is branded as a "Pariah" and to give another example from the news media, Slobadan Milosevic is being described frequently as an "international Pariah".
On the contrary, experts, scholars, scientists and even football coaches are frequently described positively and praised as "Pundits" in the British and international English media, thus insulting all those "lowly born" who had suffered and are still suffering torture, execution or enforced illiteracy to preserve the monopolistic scholarly status of the Pundits (Brahmans) and the integrity of the caste based socio-religious hierarchical oligarchy. Ill treatment of Dalit students in schools, denial of land to dalits in rural areas, police torture of Dalits who politically challenge their victimization, murders of young couples who fall in love by defying caste barriers and many other varieties of atrocities against Dalits are still painfully common in India in keeping with the "hoary" traditions of Manu's Laws. Hindu scriptures such as Manu's Laws sought to preserve the scholarly status of the Pundits by institutionally segregating and tormenting people such as the Pariahs.
Many do not know that the despicable laws of Manu still form the basis of contemporary Hindu Civil Law which legally bans "lowly born" from becoming temple priests and denies equal property rights to women. A law enacted by a progressive political dispensation in my home state of Tamil Nadu (in the late sixties) which enabled people of all castes to become temple priests was thrown out by the Supreme Court of India because it defied the bigoted Laws of Manu which form the legal basis of Hindu Civil Law.
The attitudes and the ideology behind the Hindu caste system explains why India spends huge sums on high technology education that leads to nuclear explosions, but, a pittance on primary education and health care in order to prevent the oppressed Dalits from being really alive (healthy) and reading. Those who use the word "Pundit" positively in English should realize that they are praising bigotry by using that word. Will anybody use the word "Nazi" in a casual literary sense to mean a "superior" person? The use of the word "Pundit" to mean a "scholarly" person is more demeaning than a similar use of the word "Nazi" to mean a "superior" person because the bigotry of the Pundit is still alive, kicking and actively tormenting millions of people through a system of segregation, exclusion and ostracisation while the bigotry of the Nazi has been long defeated if not fully suppressed.
Pundits (Brahmans) still enjoy a monopoly on the profession of priesthood and Hindu scriptural scholarship simply by reason of their birth, and, even today it is impossible for a Dalit or a lower caste Hindu to become a Hindu priest or study the Hindu scriptures.
The continued use of the words "Pariah" and "Pundit" in the English language in their current meanings is a disgusting literary violation of human rights and should be stopped at the earliest just as the word "nigger" was banned from conventional English language usage several decades ago.
I call upon the custodians and users of the English language, whoever they are, whatever they are and wherever they are, to scrap the bigoted colonial relic of using the words "Pariah" and "Pundit" as a starter to cure the persistent indifference shown by the British, American and the international English media towards the 200 million human beings who are socially, religiously, physically and culturally segregated by the Hindu society in India, Nepal and other parts of South Asia.
I would like to cordially caution that each and every media organ, book and publication in Britain that may henceforth use the word "Pariah" or "Pundit" in their current humiliating meanings attributed by English language dictionaries may be liable for legal action under the purview of the Human Rights Act and this liability can be enforced through courts of law if need be. For those media organs and publishers outside Britain, I am sure that principles of natural Justice will enforce such a liability.
It is high time that the British, American and international English language media took note of this linguistic bigotry institutionalized by the oversight of colonial English masters who may even have felt proud to please the Brahmans who helped them govern India and demean the Pariahs through institutionalizing bigoted Hindu terms in the English vocabulary. The correction of this literary injustice is long overdue.
Copyright for the above article rests with its author Dr.Iniyan Elango (alias) R.S.Sridhar
Copyright © 1998 Runoko Rashidi. All rights reserved.
Revised: August 21, 2001.
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