preached in the Vedic texts. The Tamil text Thirukkuṟaḷ, said to have been composed during the fifth or sixth century CE, teaches kindness, love, and generosity toward all, including wife and children. It is a much read, much adored book among Tamil people. Manu, who wrote the Laws of Manu, is believed to have been a Brahman. Thiruvaḷḷuvar, who wrote the Thirukkuṟaḷ, is said to have been a Jain, a Paṟaiyar, a weaver—definitively the first, but conceivably all three. In Tamil Sangam poetry, written about two thousand years ago, Kuṟavars, now classified as untouchable, were described admiringly.
Alternatives to Vedic Hinduism were always there, and they too developed and drew followers. Buddhism and Jainism were strong movements. Christian communities became established in India from the coming of Thomas the Apostle in the third century CE. Muslim traders lived in India from shortly after Islam was founded in the seventh century CE. In southern India, around the sixth century CE, an intensely emotional form of self-sacrifice developed. The saints were worshippers of Siva or Vishnu, two Hindu gods. Caste differences were not acknowledged. Personal devotion was everything. This form of religion continues in southern India. It is called bhakti. Christianity and Islam continue in India as minority religions. Buddhism flourished for centuries then moved to other parts of Asia.
Muslim rule in northern India started in the thirteenth century. Until the sixteenth century, Persianate Muslims (with Persian language and culture) ruled most of northeast India. They were supplanted by the militarily superior Mughals (Mongols), who claimed descent from Genghis Khan. A hybrid Muslim empire developed in India, where they remained as warriors, conquering almost all of India except the very far south. Though militarily mighty, they are said to have been good rulers and good administrators. They also introduced fine Muslim art, literature, textiles, architecture, and maritime and administrative skills. These rulers were not in principle opposed to Hindus or any particular caste. Islam teaches the equality of all men. Therefore caste differences were not officially recognized by Mughal rulers, but status and rank remained in the form of zamindars, whose positions were sometimes hereditary; they owned vast tracts of land and taxed the peasants who worked on that land. The zamindars maintained military organizations, took royal titles, lived in lavish splendor, and acted as sovereign kings. When the British proceeded to gain control of India by military means, zamindars fought the British who challenged them. Area by area, the British won. Muslims did not recognize women as the equals of men. Neither, for that matter, did the British, some strong and valiant queens notwithstanding. In Pukkatturai, the small town where I lived for a year, there was an old broken temple that had been destroyed by the Muslims, I was told. The family deity of the Hindu household was a grandmother who killed her grandchildren to save them from Muslim depredations. There is no way to ascertain whether this actually happened. But there are still antagonisms, sometimes murderous riots, between Muslims and Hindus in India. Partition between India and Pakistan, implemented at the end of British rule, contributed to this antagonistic division of people and religions.
Subcontinental thought changed with the British Raj, which brought in its own ideas about people in India and how they should be organized, classified, and characterized. Every tribe and every caste was considered to be what it always was and what it always would be. Absolute determinism was law. Nobody could change caste and nobody could take on an occupation different from that of his or her parents. All forest-dwelling tribes and all itinerant tribes were judged by the British Raj to be criminal because they were able to live outside the organizations established by the Raj. They were outlaws in a sense, therefore outcastes, but they were not necessarily killers or thieves. Laborers who worked for landowners were slaves, bonded to the land on which they worked. The caste system was solidified under the British then pronounced illegal by the early postindependence government. This law could not be enforced. Subsequent laws prohibiting untouchability and discrimination against lower caste individuals were passed with little effect. Cross-caste marriage was encouraged by the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, C. N. Annadurai, in 1967, and a number of marriages between Brahman women and men of scheduled castes have happened after that and have been successful.6 But in 2007, the Supreme Court of India ruled that social organization based on caste is inherited and cannot be changed.7
Events of the past remain also in the form of stone carvings and written materials. Experiences of the past are inscribed in bodies of the present. Hunger is passed down through generations. If a woman cannot eat well, her baby will be smaller. If her baby grows up and has a baby, that baby will be smaller still. And so on. Events of the past held only in memory are free to change. Bodies may take generations to recover from trauma. Written materials, whether old or new, can be read and discussed today, and they may change people’s lives today. But written materials are fixed. These are inaccessible to the nonliterate. Literary information comes to them from a variety of sources, all of them human, most of them having their own agendas. To a nonliterate Dalit they may say, from a distance, “Your job is to do such-and-such and not so-and-so,” and some Dalits may accede to this command. Others may not.
Memory is selective. The British Raj did much to rigidify caste boundaries.8 When the Mughals ruled, they ruled over a hierarchical civilization which they themselves helped create. Hindu kingdoms before them managed varna hierarchies. The histories of peasants have been mostly forgotten, as have been the histories of forest-dwelling peoples. Victorian mores together with the necessity of caste and the oppression of women have been accepted as primordial by many people in India who call themselves Hindu. But none of the people now classified as scheduled castes or scheduled tribes were always untouchables. A few centuries ago, some histories say, they were respected and honored. It is safe to say that ten millennia ago, when people were as human as they are now, there were no hierarchical orders in South Asia at all. To have a hierarchy you need material surplus. Before the Neolithic age, people had no such surplus. Descendants of those who lived in South Asia then still live in South Asia now. This concept may be hard to grasp for Americans whose ancestors came to this continent just a few centuries ago or more recently still. Native Americans are as marginalized here as Adivasis are in India today.
Poverty and Disease
As early as the Sangam period in Tamil Nadu, drought for lack of rain was named in the texts as a danger. Rain is praised lavishly in ten early verses of the Thirukkuṟaḷ. During British rule, famines in India took countless lives. Millions of Dalits in the Madras Presidency, now Tamil Nadu, died from the famine of 1876–78 (Kolappan 2013). During famines in the British period, grain was hoarded by landholders. British in India took what was grown as food and sold it overseas. The workers were the ones that died. These events have been remembered by survivors. Food is carefully looked after. Food is the most important thing. No hungry person must see another eating. The necessity of feeding another before one feeds oneself is an unwritten rule, closely followed. But in a hierarchical social system, which direction the food goes in is of utmost concern, and the direction is down. The lowest eat the leftovers. Those who own the crops own the world. Hunger is always just around the corner and has been that way for millennia in southern India. Memories are passed on through generations. Seeds are cherished, planted, and reaped. The memory of a past better than the present remains. In the struggles of the present, little space remains in the mind to consider the long-term future. And honestly, how much can anyone predict? Memories of mythic heroes and heroines played out in street and temple dramas, Bible stories, stories of gods, stories of sacrifice, battle, triumph, and slaughter all enter into the lives of people who watch them as street or temple theater. Such stories from long ago are reenacted in household and family dramas, in village dramas, and in song. In such dramas, a man may beat or kill his wife or sister if he deems her faithless. A landlord may beat or kill a worker if he catches the worker stealing. Epic battles of higher versus lower castes are carried out. People of lower castes may be deemed monkeys. But children are to be loved, cherished, enjoyed, dressed up.9
Disease does not affect only the poor. Communicable disease spreads to everyone. Immunities can protect a person but not completely. Bacteria and viruses change every year so that an immunity from last year will not necessarily help this year. And there are many different diseases caused by many different kinds of organism. All diseases caused by microorganisms spread. Some can be prevented and some can be treated; others one just has to live through. Most preventions and treatments fail to reach everybody. Those who are not reached can