Minds Are Open When Hearts Are Open
In the 1920she had held that every Hindu “must follow the hereditary profession” and that “prohibition of intermarriage” between people of different varnas was “necessary for a rapid evolution of the soul.” But later he gradually became “a social revolu-tionist,” advocating intermarriage between Brahmins and Untouchables in order to dismantle the caste system “root and branch,” and acknowledging that “When all become casteless, monopoly of occupations would go.” The changes were duein part to the influence of two opponents of the caste system whose integrity he held in high regard: Ambedkar and Gora.His view of marriage between people of different religious affiliations underwent a similar change
* According to the classical Hindu
Ordinances of Manu
(O, 318), “If any man low in birth should, through greed, live by the occu- pations of the exalted, the king should banish him at once, after depriving him of his property” – and as for high-caste people: “Better one’s own duties incomplete than those of another well performed, for he who lives by the duties of another falls from caste at once.”
virtually prescient summary of Gandhi’s attitude, until his last years, toward marriage between people of different castesis in the following remarks of 1919:
[Citation 30] 1919: Interdining [and] intermarrying, I hold, are not essential for the promotion of the spirit of democracy....But as time goes forward and new necessities and occasions arise, the custom regarding... interdining and intermarrying willrequire cautious modifications or rearrangements.
38
In his ashram (his experimental model commune), interdining with Untouchables was a corellary to their acceptance in 1915as members.
*
But for a long time Gandhi took a different stance in regard to Hindu practice at large, and in this regard wasin the early to mid-1920s outspoken against interdining, and intermarriage
In the years following 200AD the practice of caste and therefore untouchability was
* According to the classical Hindu
Ordinances of Manu
(O, 318), “If any man low in birth should, through greed, live by the occu- pations of the exalted, the king should banish him at once, after depriving him of his property” – and as for high-caste people: “Better one’s own duties incomplete than those of another well performed, for he who lives by the duties of another falls from caste at once.”
virtually prescient summary of Gandhi’s attitude, until his last years, toward marriage between people of different castesis in the following remarks of 1919:
[Citation 30] 1919: Interdining [and] intermarrying, I hold, are not essential for the promotion of the spirit of democracy....But as time goes forward and new necessities and occasions arise, the custom regarding... interdining and intermarrying willrequire cautious modifications or rearrangements.
38
In his ashram (his experimental model commune), interdining with Untouchables was a corellary to their acceptance in 1915as members.
*
But for a long time Gandhi took a different stance in regard to Hindu practice at large, and in this regard wasin the early to mid-1920s outspoken against interdining, and intermarriage
In the years following 200AD the practice of caste and therefore untouchability was