Village Life in India, Part One
"In many a large village of India, life goes on just as it went on five hundred years ago. The people of the village...pay taxes, perhaps, to the British Raj—the…
From: 1917 C.E. To: 1917 C.E.
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
“Among the Village Folk,” Pt. 1, from Home Life in India by John Finnemore, 1917.
In many a large village of India, life goes on just as it went on five hundred years ago. The people of the village...pay taxes, perhaps, to the British Raj—the British Government—but they very rarely see a white face, and they live their own life under their own native headmen, as they have always done. Very often the native huts are clustered together in a village, which may have from a hundred to a thousand houses in it. This custom comes down from times when bands of marauders swept across the land, and no man felt safe unless his home lay within the shelter of the mud or stone wall which encircled the local hamlet. These walls still exist in many places, though the British peace now lies over India, and within them is to be found the ancient, old-world village life of the Indian farmer, artisan, and peasant.
The streets of the village are very narrow—mere alleys threading their way among the rows of mud huts in which the peasants live. These close-packed houses suffer very severely when fire breaks out. The flame leaps from thatch to thatch, from street to street, and the fires are most furious in the scorching heat of summer, when everything that will burn is like tinder. Very often a whole village will be destroyed, and the homeless people are left without shelter or food, for their store of grain has been burned with the rest of their belongings. They beg help, or borrow money, wherever they can, and rebuild their ruined homes.
The home of a well-to-do farmer stands in the village, though his farm may be two or three miles away. It is entered through a main gate in a high mud wall, and the wall will run right round his premises, so that all, men and beasts, must pass in or out at the one point. Inside the gate is an open hall, where male visitors are received and the men of the family sit when they are at leisure.
Next comes an open space, beyond which lies the house proper, a mud and thatch building, containing a large room, where the members of the family eat and sleep, a store-house, and a kitchen. The dining and bedroom is as bare as the house of the ryot, and the family bedding consists of a few mats and pillows rolled up and set in a corner. The store-house is filled with grain, and the kitchen is stocked with vessels of brass and earthenware, for cooking, eating, and carrying water. The cattle-sheds are built at the eastern side of the house; at other points granaries are set up; and the rest of the enclosure is a garden where herbs and plants are grown for the kitchen.
The work of this house, and of every other house in the village, begins very early in the morning. The first glimpse of the morning star is the signal for everyone to rise. The peasants set off to the fields, and the farmer urges his labourers with the cry: "Haste, haste, the star has risen!" From the mud temple of the village comes the loud blast of a holy shell blown by a priest: he is awaking the village gods. Travellers rise and resume their journey. Schoolboys are seen running to school, and the work of the day begins in earnest.
Numbers of the men go down to the river or to the village tank to bathe, while the women sprinkle the front and back yards of their dwellings with cow-dung. This is done to drive away the goddess of ill-luck, who will not come to a place where the cow, a sacred animal in the eyes of all Hindus, is present. Next the women sweep out their houses, milk the cows and goats, clean their cooking-vessels, and make ready the first meal.
To this the men return at about eight o'clock, and sit down on the ground to eat rice or chuppaties. The latter are flat, round, unleavened cakes of meal, and form the daily bread of both rich and poor. With these foods they use various sauces and condiments, pickles and curries, and drink buttermilk. When the men have finished eating, the women take what is left in the dishes. The food is eaten from brass plates or plantain-leaves, and raised to the mouth with the hands.
The men now go back to their labour in the fields or their workshops, and the women fetch water, collect fuel, weave, pound rice or grain, grind spices for curry powder, and get the midday meal ready and serve it at noon. This is mainly of rice and vegetables, served with curds and the usual sauces; and after dinner comes a break while they rest and await the heat of noon to pass. The supper-hour is eight o'clock, when the remainder of the food prepared that day is eaten. But among some classes fresh food is made ready for every meal, for it is a law with them to throw or give away all food left uneaten at a meal. Soon after supper all retire to bed, for they must be afoot at early dawn.
The busiest spot in the village is the well, for women are coming and going to it all day long. They stand and chatter and laugh while each in turn fills her tall water-jar, and then, when the jar is filled and balanced on her head, moves away with swift, graceful carriage. Some have good whole robes, some are in little better than rags, but everyone has a corner of her robe drawn across her face as a veil, and the veil is never dropped until she is within her own door.
A little beyond the well, and seated full in the sun, is a very strange figure. It is that of an old man, almost naked, and very thin, every bone starting through the skin of his meagre body, and his legs and arms looking like mere sticks. From head to foot he is plastered with mud and filth, and his wild eyes glitter through a tangle of matted hair. He takes no notice of anyone, but stares straight before him as if lost in thought; and when the women see him, they become silent. It is a beggar—a religious mendicant.
Now there comes round a corner near at hand a Hindu gentleman, very handsomely dressed. He wears a great turban of pink muslin and a rich robe of silk; he shines in the sun like a flower. He walks forward without seeing the beggar, and all of a sudden the latter bursts into an angry roar, and assails the gentleman with a torrent of abuse. He calls him every name you could imagine, and a great many you could not imagine, and the politest of them all is to call him the son of a dog and a pig, two very unclean animals.
What is wrong? Why, the gentleman came so near the beggar that his shadow fell on the latter. And what reply does he make to the stream of angry language? He bows most respectfully, and entreats pardon in the most abject tones, for at a glance he has read the painted marks on the beggar's face.
This seems all very strange, but it is really quite simple: the beggar is a high-caste Hindu, the rich man is of a lower caste, and his shadow, to the beggar, is unclean. What is caste? Caste is the class into which every Hindu is born. There are four great castes: the priest caste, the warrior caste, the merchant caste, and the labourer caste. But these castes have been so divided and subdivided that there are now thousands of castes in India, and every member of each caste looks upon the other members as brothers, and those outside his own caste as strangers and men apart from him.
In whatever caste a Hindu is born, to that he belongs to the day of his death, unless he is deprived of it. He may fall out of caste, but he can never rise to a higher one. He loses caste by breaking the laws of caste. It would be impossible to say here what all those laws are, for they are very numerous, but these are a few of the chief. Men may only marry in their own caste, eat with their own caste, or touch food prepared either by a man of their own caste or a man of higher caste. No man may allow another of lower caste to touch his cooked food, or even to enter the room where it is being made ready. The higher-caste man is denied if a lower caste touches him, or brushes against him, or if he allows the shadow of an inferior to fall upon him. A Hindu may not marry a widow or leave India without losing caste. He at once loses caste if he becomes a Christian or a Moslem.
What is the punishment of a man who loses caste? It is the most thoroughgoing boycott in the world. His friends and relatives and all the members of his caste give him the cold shoulder at once. They will not speak with him, eat with him, drink with him, smoke with him. His children remain unmarried, and this is a terrible thing in Hindu eyes, for no family will be connected with him in any form. He cannot obtain the services of a priest, a barber, or a washerman, and he is refused aid at every turn of his way. The caste system is of tremendous power in Hindu social life, and its whole might is directed with crushing force against the man who has broken his caste and been driven out from his fellows.
The consequence is that the Hindu will do anything sooner than break a law of caste. He will starve rather than touch food which may have been denied in any way by an inferior; if he is a bad man, he will cheerfully commit every crime in the criminal calendar, but he will not offend against caste. And, finally, caste is the one subject upon which every Hindu will tell the truth. No man can have dealings with a stranger unless he is sure of the latter's caste, and the stranger will be bound to tell truly to what order he belongs. Caste is the be-all and end-all of the Hindu. He may be false to everything else, but never to that.
Caste is not a matter of wealth or position. The highest caste includes beggars who scarce know where to find a handful of rice; the lowest may have men of great wealth among its members. So now we see why the beggar roared out in angry and haughty disdain, and why the finely dressed merchant bent low and asked pardon humbly, and made haste to get out of the way. The one is a Brahmin, a member of the priestly caste, and the other a man of lower caste. And if that rich merchant were to bribe with all his wealth—ay, and a hundred times his wealth—he could not persuade the poorest Hindu to look upon him as the equal of the naked beggar.
Finnemore, John. Home Life in India. A. & C. Black, 1917.
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