Drop the dead past

A common theme running through many of the tendentious arguments over the past year is a demand to restore the glorious past, be it food habits, political stature, cultural fabric or medical practices. As we step into a new year, it's a good time to drop this practice of looking back in anger, especially when we debate tolerance and inclusion.

Equality has always been a troubled spot. Take this well-thumbed story: Dronacharya, guru to the Kuru princes, had assembled a cast of luminaries to watch his students perform a range of skills. Among the audience were Bheeshma, Dhritarashtra, Kunti and Gandhari. Everyone was impressed by their progeny's prowess and, as the evening was about to end, a challenger strode into the arena. Karna - Kunti's illegitimate son - said, if given an opportunity, he could do all that Arjuna had accomplished with his bow and arrow. Karna was, however, denied a shot; Drona, in a bid to protect Arjuna, said he could not compete because he was not a Kshatriya.

This was not the first time that Karna had come up against caste-led bigotry. Earlier, Drona had refused to take him on as a student because he was not a Kshatriya and Parashurama agreed to take Karna on only because he lied about his caste. Ironically, Drona himself was the target of discrimination. His friend, King Dhrupad, had thrown him out of his court calling him a beggar aspiring to the status of a Kshatriya. It seems we were far from an inclusive society even then.

Shaunaka Rishi Das, director of the Oxford Centre of Hindu Studies, says equality, is a Western concept. Hinduism has always believed in order - natural and social. There is a special place for everyone but not everyone is equal. According to Das, inequality in the material world is unavoidable. "Can you do anything about someone being taller/shorter, stouter/thinner or more intelligent than you?" But in an interview to The Hindu in January this year, he said, "People do ask such questions. If we see someone who is brilliant, we want to ask, 'Why not me?' Hinduism keeps such questions away through its concept of karma." But that is not to say that the Vedic attitudes towards equality were never challenged.

Several folktales deal with the issue. According to one story collected by A K Ramanujan (which Wendy Doniger quotes in her book The Hindus), Mariamma was a Brahmin sage's wife. For some reason, her husband sentenced her to death. When she was about to be killed, she embraced a low-caste pariah woman Ellamma; in the melee that ensued, both lost their heads. The sage later regretted his actions, and brought them both back to life but their heads were mixed up. So, when people began worshipping them, they sacrificed goats and roosters to Mariamma (Brahmin head but low caste body) and buffalo to Ellamma (vice versa). These stories reflect the churn in Indian society as different tribes and races coalesced and questioned prevalent notions of superiority. Buddha's story can be seen as a quest for a more equal society, a reaction to the rigid caste system and the ritualistic behaviour of the mainstream Vedic systems.

Inequality was practised not only between castes but also between genders. Women were considered a lesser species and the property of their men. In the Mahabharata, after she is disrobed in the royal court. Draupadi does not question Yudhisthira's right to wager her, but only whether he had done so before he had lost himself. Hers is not a call for equal treatment, but more of a legal question; does a man who has staked himself and lost in a game of dice have the right to stake his wife too? But here too, folklore reverses the mainstream narrative.

The past is not the place to look for answers, neither is it a line that must not be crossed. Yet politicians, commentators and scholars have, in recent times, used past actions to justify modern-day policies and belief systems. It is time to bury these ways.