Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 78

38
CHAPTER
Expulsion from Caste.
By whom
inflicted.
— Cases
in
III
which such Degradation
is
inflicted.
— Restoration to Caste. — Methods of effecting
it.
Of all kinds of punishment the hardest and most un-
bearable for a Hindu is that which cuts him off and expels
him from
his caste.
Those whose duty it is to inflict it
are the gurus, of whom I shall have more to say in a sub-
sequent chapter, and, in default of them, the caste headmen.
These latter are usually to be found in every district, and
it is to them that all doubtful or difficult questions affecting
the caste system are referred. They call in, in order to
help them to decide such questions, a few elders who are
versed in the intricacies of the matters in dispute.
This expulsion from caste, which follows either an in-
fringement of caste usages or some public offence calculated
if left unpunished to bring dishonour on the whole com-
munity, is a kind of social excommunication, which deprives
the unhappy person who suffers it of all intercourse with
his fellow-creatures.
It renders him, as it were, dead to
the world, and leaves him nothing in common with the
rest of society.
In losing his caste he loses not only his
relations and friends, but often his wife and his children,
who would rather leave him to his fate than share his
disgrace with him.
Nobody dare eat with him or even
give him a drop of water.
If he has marriageable daughters
nobody asks them in marriage, and in like manner his sons
are refused wives.
He has to take it for granted that
wherever he goes he will be avoided, pointed at with scorn,
and regarded as an outcaste.
If after losing caste a Hindu could obtain admission into
an
inferior caste, his punishment would in some degree be
but even this humiliating compensation is denied
tolerable
to him.
;
A simple Sudra with any notions of honour and
propriety would never associate or even speak with a
Brahmin degraded in this manner. It is necessary, there-
fore, for an outcaste to seek asylum in the lowest caste of
Pariahs if he fail to obtain restoration to his own
or else
he is obliged to associate with persons of doubtful caste.
There are always people of this kind, especially in the
;