For years, I have been enquiring into how untouchability originated in India. I couldn’t find a clue anywhere.
The highly abused and misinterpreted Manusmriti has barely one reference to the word in the context of fierce, violent people ... (ref: The Laws of Manu by Wendy Doniger and Brian K Smith) but here too it says that it is possible for people to rise above their station.
It also has several references to pollution, but invariably, with reference to hygiene.
So when and where did the practice of untouchability arise?
I found the answer while researching QUARANTINE in The Age of the Corona Virus and if there was any prevention, if not cure, in ancient Indic texts.
So, where did the practice of untouchability originate?
I found the answer in an elaborate commentary on Patanjali’s Ashtanga Yoga by an ageless hermit who once dwelled in a shack on stilts on the banks of rivers through much of recorded history of 20th century India.
And no, in case you are wondering, it’s not Baba Ramdev who appeared from nowhere in this millennium to erect a corporate empire out of a doctrine.
Ashtanga Yoga, the merging of eight angularities of the body and the eight angularities of mind into one invisible and indivisible whole, in the dot, stresses on eight corporal practices, two of which relate to eating and breathing.
And so it says:
We are the FOOD we eat!
We are the LIFE we breathe!
Yoga seeks to convince us into believing:
‘I am not the body.’
This is because it propounds that there are several entities travelling on this soul ship we call the body.
And these entities draw the oars of this soul ship of ours.
And these entities are microbial LIFE both within and without our bodies.
For, the subtle and the substantial are subsumed in all Creation!
And the subtlety of this UNIVERSE is fluid
And the subtlety of fluid’s flow is in the wind
And the subtlety of wind’s flow is in the breath
And the subtlety of breath’s flow is in the touch.
And that fluid is poison
And that wind is poison
And that breath is poison
And that touch is poison
That’s because microbial life proliferates ...
in what we inhabit
in what we drink
in what we breathe
in what we touch
So ... practitioners of ashtanga yoga hold that it is better to ...
Stand APART!
And...
Stabilise your Breath
To stabilise your Mind
And be...
HAPPY with your own self.
And...
Disengage with the crowd.
And...
Bask in sunlight
And become ...
A Yogi.
They also say ...
Feed yourself with clean food after offering it to Light...
Always consider your food a blessing to keep your mind pure ...
For, your food shapes your THOUGHTS...
The food influences your FLOW...
Be careful of the food you TAKE...
Be careful of who SERVES you...
Always try to save yourself from food poisoning.
That, they say, is UNTOUCHABILITY!
They also say... there is no higher KNOWLEDGE than that!
I think I understand the logic and a common thread somewhere after digging into the core philosophy of untouchability.
It is estimated that there are at least 300 million yoga practitioners worldwide, cutting across religious denomination, many of them international celebrities and, some Arab potentates.
Yet, I haven't heard a single commentary from them so far as profound as the exposition on untouchability recounted above.
Or...
Why social DISTANCING makes sense!
PS: My wandering mind has already started chasing HUMANKIND’s next Big Dilemma in the post-COVID world: How do we survive without... KISSING?
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