No Apologies from Kanpur
The bluntness, if not the tone, of Shastri's attack is matched by a tract from a self-styled Acharya Dev (divine preceptor) of Kanpur, the first of a projected series known as Manas tarang[*] (Waves of the Manas ) and devoted to clearing up the "much-discussed, controversial topic" of Tulsi's attitude toward Shudras. The dilemma of order and transcendence is neatly resolved by this author by the assertion that there are really two Tulsis: "Tulsi the devotee and Tulsi the social preceptor." For Tulsi the devotee, caste does not exist and "there is no question of Brahman or Chandal." But most people do not function on this level and so must be guided by the teachings of preceptor-Tulsi, which, the author explains, are not simply different from those of devotee-Tulsi but actually contradict them.[160] And so after a brief eulogy of the casteless society envisioned by devotee-Tulsi (symbolized by the love-drenched
[158] Shastri, Manasmimamsa[*] , 213-14.
[159] Hess, "For the Sake of Brahmans, Gods, and Cows," 20.
[160] Acharya Dev, KyaTulsike man mem[*]sudrom[*]ke prati ghrna[*]thi 14.
atmosphere of Chitrakut), the Acharya devotes the better part of his tract to what for him is obviously the real message of the Manas : the immutability of birth.
Insisting that varna[*] really refers to "color," he offers an ingenious explanation for the fact that caste divisions no longer seem to follow pure color-coded lines. Alas, the original physical purity of the four orders has been lost due to "mixing," but lest one suppose that this undermines the whole system, Acharya Dev reveals that, though no longer visible to gross eyes, the original colors are still present in the individual's aura or halo of light—invisible to most people who are not Acharyas from Kanpur. The aura of a Brahman, he intones, is pure gold, whereas that of a Shudra is black. A citation or two from an American parapsychologist triumphantly confirms that this particularly devious variety of racism is upheld by "Western scientists."[161] No one need despair, however, for black though his aura may be, the Shudra too has his place in the great scheme of things: he is descended from the feet of the cosmic giant (purusa[*] ), and "if the feet rebel, then the whole body will be crippled; if the feet are listless then the whole body is incapacitated. The whole body is indebted to the feet."[162]
Acharya Dev's views are typical of one kind of Brahmanical elaboration on the Manas occasionally encountered at Katha festivals and in tract literature. One can scarcely call it exegesis, since it rarely refers to the epic itself; Acharya Dev draws most of his citations from the Bhagavadgita , the Manusmrti[*] , and other prestigious Sanskrit texts. But his pamphlet reminds us that the fanciful ideas of epic exegetes have cultural resonances that we ought not overlook. Hess has eloquently described the genesis of her own inquiry into the social impact of the Ramlila :
I began to think about the India through which I moved each day: the girls who were uneducated and otherwise neglected; the women with their faces covered, often married by the time they were twelve . . . the sweepers who were born to the vocation of scooping up filth from the streets with their bare hands and who rarely broke out of the status that was supposedly ordained for them by God. There were forces in India working against the oppression of women, Shudras, untouchables, and so on. And there were powerful forces working to maintain the status quo.
Was Tulsidas one of the forces at work to prevent social change? Did the grand cultural performance and the beloved epic poem I was studying function to perpetuate people's suffering?[163]
[161] Ibid., 30.
[162] Ibid., 43.
[163] Hess, "For the Sake of Brahmans, Gods, and Cows," 3-4.
Hess did not find simple answers to these questions, nor do I. It is clear enough that words on a page do not oppress people—people oppress people—but it should be as clear by now that no scripture, least of all the Manas , is simply "words on a page." If we have admired the variety, ingenuity, and beauty of some of the tangible ways in which people perform this text, should we not consider as well some of the more subtle ways in which they enact its implicit values? Should we not consider the high levels of female illiteracy and female infant mortality in the regions where the epic is most popular? Should we not consider the harsh repression of low-caste and untouchable villagers in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in recent years—acts of violence by the twice-born against whole communities of the landless and oppressed because the latter, emboldened by their government's own words on a page, had begun to overstep their traditional limits? Should we not consider the corrupt local hierarchies of political and police power in these regions, dominated by members of the Brahman and Rajput castes, who more often than not turn their backs on such crimes and let the perpetrators (usually their own caste fellows) escape unpunished? Must we not admit that the epic offers, among other things, a vindication for this state of affairs, both in its resigned assumption of an infinitely corrupt Kali Yuga and in its implicit defense of the privileges of birth?
Yet I would not wish to join Rajnikant Shastri in making the Manas a scapegoat for the ills that afflict North Indian society or to overlook the many positive values that the text imparts. The tension between order and aspiration is not a discovery of the twentieth century, and Tulsi has clearly provided fuel both for orderers and aspirers. Moreover, when one turns from cultural generalization to the relationships of individual devotees to their epic, the picture becomes more complicated. When I interviewed the independent-minded young woman who had surprised me with her devotion to the Manas , I brought up the subject of the text's treatment of women; did she find any of the controversial passages troubling? She replied emphatically that she was "not at all bothered by anything in the Manas " and continued, "The things Goswami-ji says about women pertain to natural life [prakrtik[*] jivan ] only and are valid as far as that goes. But they don't concern individuals. Our Hindu dharma is that woman's position must always be a little lower, and man's a little higher. That was true in Tulsidas's time and it is also true today. It is only natural and I don't have any objection to that."[164] Should such a statement be taken at face value? Explained as
[164] "Rita," interview, July 1983.
the repetition of an official line absorbed since childhood? Or dismissed as a formally "correct" answer to an outsider and not indicative of the speaker's real feelings? Any field researcher, even while proceeding with caution over cross-cultural terrain, must unavoidably make judgments about the motives and sincerity of interviewees. In this case I recognized that the Manas , in spite of its explicit message that "woman's position must always be a little lower," paradoxically provided this woman with a justification for her own independent course within her family and also gave her (in ritualized recitation) a perceived power over the course of events. Notable too was the fact that she and a close friend spent a good deal of time attending recitation programs in distant parts of the city—a piously unobjectionable activity that nevertheless carried them far from the constricting environment of the joint household. Indeed, Katha programs and Ramlilas appear to provide, especially for lower-middle-class urban women, a socially sanctioned break from the routine of household chores. Such women turn out in large numbers to sit knitting under gaudy canopies and flickering lights, listening to orators addressing them as "sisters" and "goddesses," and hearing again the old familiar stories, and yes, the old familiar ideology with its balance of limits and possibilities.
A foreign observer with preconceived notions of what constitutes conservative tradition and liberal reform—Hess's "hypothetical Modern Egalitarian Democrat"[165] —may also overlook the fact that, vexing as some lines in the Manas may be, the controversy over them is largely a paper war conducted at a lofty remove not only from the epic's real audience but also perhaps from the real issues. A closer reading of some of Tulsi's stronger critics suggests that their objections are more to the poet's style than to his content. It is the "harshness" and "vulgarity" of Tulsi's expression of traditional views that is objected to rather than the views themselves, and this "liberal" attitude, which indeed reflects the impact of modern higher education, can easily coexist with a social arrogance and an elitism more insidious than anything in the Manas . In his discussion of the epic's views on varna[*] , Shastri attacks Tulsi's supposed motives rather than the inherent injustice of his views, and he tellingly devotes fully a fourth of his book to an elaborate but unconvincing attempt to prove that Tulsidas himself could not have been a Brahman but rather was of low birth and probably illegitimate—a real Brahman, it appears, would never have been so blatant about his superi-
[165] Hess, "For the Sake of Brahmans, Gods, and Cows," 6.
ority.[166] Despite his eloquent insights, Shastri's overall tone is squarely elitist and anti-Vaishnava—he does not hesitate, for example, to repeatedly quote the Manusmrti[*] (a text hardly known for its feminist or egalitarian stance) in support of his views—and one suspects that this astrologer-pandit's attack on the "audacity" of the Brahman-pretender Tulsi would in an earlier century have been phrased in quite different terms but has now found its way into a fashionable social-reformist idiom.
Especially revealing is Shastri's contemptuous observation that he has seen, "never mind illiterates and rustics, but the distinguished holders of B.A. and M.A. degrees, including many lawyers and high government officers, before a stone image of Ramchandra, dancing, clapping their hands, and singing the verses of the Manas ."[167] The attitude suggested here is characteristic of a university-educated elite of what might be termed "neo-Brahmans," who hold themselves aloof not from social prejudice, which they continue to express, but from a certain bhakti -permeated folk ethos that they perceive as beneath their dignity. The Manas offered an affirmation of traditional social structure balanced with an ecstatic devotional message presented in a mass idiom. It did not challenge social stratification per se but created a context in which M.A. holders and lawyers, putting aside their august dignity, might mingle with illiterates and rustics in a performance context that temporarily relaxed social restraints and gave equal pleasure to all. The new elite, however, shrinks from such recreational contact with the lower classes.
The difficult task of interpreting motives returns me to the image of the mirror, cracked or otherwise. For it seems that much of what is beheld in the Manas depends, after all, on the beholder. A Gandhi will look into the mirror and see devotion to God and compassion for the oppressed; a Baba Ramchandra will see the hope of a just society; a Rajnikant Shastri will see intolerable impudence; an Acharya Dev will see his own golden aura.