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Brahmin
The caste system organizes Indian culture into an unequal and often prohibitive hierarchy; though the different varnas, or social classes, have their origins in the ancient Hindu Vedic texts, the caste system was more formally codified and enforced by the British as a tool of colonial oppression. Crucially, many residents of India are excluded from the caste system, from Muslims and other non-Hindus to “outcastes” (also known in the novel as untouchables or harijans, and known today as “Dalits”). As Bakha’s narrative demonstrates, caste can prescribe employment, but it can also determine where people live, what kind of clothing they wear, how they are allowed to worship, and their access to material resources and education. During India’s independence movement of the 1930s and 1940s, Mohandas K. Gandhi (alongside more radical leaders like B. R. Ambedkar) called for an end to caste, seeing it as oppressive and outdated. Though Gandhi’s activism led to a monumental shift in Indian law and culture, caste and its controversies persist.
Caste Quotes in Untouchable
The Untouchable quotes below are all either spoken by Caste or refer to Caste. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Pages 3–43
Quotes
[Bakha] had wept and cried to be allowed to go to school. But then his father had told him that schools were meant for the babus, not for the lowly sweepers. He hadn’t quite understood the reason for that then. Later at the British barracks he realized why his father had not sent him to school. He was a sweeper’s son and could never be a babu. Later still he realized that there was no school which would admit him because the parents of the other children would not allow their sons to be contaminated by the touch of the low-caste man’s sons. How absurd, he thought, that was, since most of the Hindu children touched him willingly at hockey and wouldn’t mind having him at school with them. […] These old Hindus were cruel. He was a sweeper, he knew, but he could not consciously accept that fact.
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Pages 43–73
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A superb specimen of humanity [Bakha] seemed whenever he made the high resolve to say something, to go and do something, his fine form rising like a tiger at bay. And yet […] he could not overstep the barriers which the conventions of his superiors had built up to protect their weakness against him. He could not invade the magic circle which protects a priest from attack by anybody, especially by a low-caste man. So, in the highest moment of his strength, the slave in him asserted himself, and he lapsed back, wild with torture, biting his lips, ruminating his grievances […].
He contemplated his experience now in the spirit of resignation which he had inherited through the long centuries down through his countless outcaste ancestors, fixed, yet flowing like a wave, confirmed at the beginning of each generation by the discipline of the caste ideal.
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Pages 73–105
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What had [Bakha] done to deserve such treatment? He loved the child. He had been very sorry when Chota refused to let him join the game. Then why should the boy's mother abuse him when he had tried to be kind? […] ‘Of course, I polluted the child. I couldn't help doing so. I knew my touch would pollute. But it was impossible not to pick him up. He was dazed, the poor little thing. And she abused me. I only get abuse and derision wherever I go. Pollution, pollution, I do nothing else but pollute people. They all say that: “Polluted, polluted!” She was perhaps justified though. Her son was injured. She could have said anything. It was my fault and of the other boys too. Why did we start that quarrel? It started on account of the goal I scored. Cursed me! The poor child!’
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Pages 105–139
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He wanted to be detached. It wasn’t that he had lost grip of the emotion that had brought him swirling on the tide of the rushing stream of people. But he became aware of the fact of being a sweeper by the contrast which his dirty khaki uniform presented to the white garments of most of the crowd. There was an insuperable barrier between himself and the crowd, the barrier of caste. He was part of a consciousness which he could share and yet not understand. He had been lifted from the gutter, through the barriers of space, to partake of a life which was his, and yet not his. He was in the midst of a humanity which included him in its folds and yet debarred him from entering into a sentient, living, quivering contact with it.
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Caste Term Timeline in Untouchable
The timeline below shows where the term Caste appears in Untouchable. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Pages 3–43
The outcastes’ colony lies just outside the town of Bulashah, in the Himalayan foothills. Though the area...
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...And because the Tommies treated him with kindness, Bakha now feels superior to his fellow outcastes. The only outcastes he respects are Chota, a leather-worker’s son, and Ram Charan, a washerman’s...
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...sweeper be so clean. At first Charat Singh sneers at Bakha, the familiar gesture of high-caste prejudice—but then Charat Singh relaxes, forgetting his bias and letting out a “childlike laugh.”
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Bakha continues to clean the latrines as different men come through, mostly “Hindus” (meaning non-outcaste Hindus) and the occasional “Muhammadan” (Muslim). On the one hand, Bakha wants to be done...
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Since the outcastes are not allowed to draw directly from the well (because “Hindus” would view that as...
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...son’s wedding day. A sepoy passes the well, but he refuses to stop for the outcastes. Eventually, Pundit Kali Nath, one of the priests in charge of the town’s temple, agrees...
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...bathroom soon. Gulabo demands to be first to get water, and the rest of the outcastes rush towards the well. Only Sohini sits alone, away from the fray.
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...his sister’s wedding day, and Bakha teases his friend for his pretentious outfit. The other outcastes are also out on the street, silently taking in the sun, but Bakha does not...
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...firm that he needs to sweep the streets. Two younger boys, the sons of a higher-caste babu, appear. Bakha and his friends often play hockey with the elder brother (though they...
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...their way to school. Bakha once wanted to go to school, before he learned that outcaste children were not allowed. Still, dreaming of becoming a sahib, Bakha bought a primer and...
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...dessert in the store. The shopkeeper smirks at this, thinking that “no-one save a greedy low-caste man” would ever buy this many jalebis.
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Suddenly, someone is yelling at Bakha, calling him “low-caste vermin” and a “swine.” Bakha immediately plasters a smile onto his face, but the man...
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The rest of the onlookers join in, mocking Bakha’s sahib dress and lamenting that outcastes now dream of having higher status. Two children even accuse Bakha of hitting them in...
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...for not announcing his presence and blaming the touched man for his violent reaction. The higher-caste Hindus “always abuse us,” Bakha thinks, “because we touch dung. They hate dung. I hate...
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...notes that Muslims and British people show none of the cruelty towards sweepers that other outcastes and higher-caste Hindus do. Bakha continues his work, though he feels self-conscious, as if everyone...
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Pages 43–73
...seen, browsing stalls at the bazaar and snacking on whatever food they can get. But higher-caste Hindus always treat these bulls with respect, a religious custom that Bakha does not quite...
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...wail, noting that “a temple can be polluted according to the Holy Books by a low-caste man coming within sixty-nine yards”; Bakha has been inside the doors. No one else notices...
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...clean the drain, so he walks away, prompting the local woman to reflect that the outcastes are “getting more and more uppish.”
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When Bakha returns to his street, he sees that many of the outcastes are outside; since none of them have lights in their homes, they try to take...
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...Untouchables get abused whether they shout warnings or not, but Lakha disagrees, insisting that the higher-caste Hindus “are our masters.” Moreover, Lakha knows that the police would offer no protection if...
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...get medicine, but he was forbidden from going into the shop, and none of the higher-caste Hindus who went in would help him. After an hour of waiting, Lakha ran back...
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...the shop and went straight inside, not caring that it violated all the rules. The higher-caste Hindus shouted at Lakha to leave because he was polluting everything, and the Hakim Sahib...
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...that he might have died, Lakha uses this story as evidence that many of the higher-caste Hindus are kind. Bakha notices that his father “had never throughout this narrative renounced his...
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...decides, lies in his impish ears. Unlike Bakha, Rakha is “a true child of the outcaste colony”; he embraces the dark and the bugs and the trash heaps.
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Pages 73–105
...Bakha has ever treated their friendship as if it abides by the subtle gradations of caste.
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...the mushrooms and mango groves that dot the landscape, feeling that, for a moment, his outcaste neighborhood “has been effaced clean off the map of his being.” The boys agree to...
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...asks Bakha to get him two pieces of coal for his hookah, a task most high-caste Hindus would not entrust to a sweeper because it would be seen as “polluting” the...
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...the younger brother from earlier in the day. Bakha likes these brothers: despite their high caste and their father’s prominent position, they are always kind to Bakha. Now, Bakha shows his...
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Pages 105–139
...spot where the Mahatma is supposed to speak. In their chaos, no one cares about caste, and Bakha ends up brushing arms with people of “all the different races, colours, castes,...
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...of devotion. But then Bakha remembers his khaki uniform, which delineates him from all the higher-caste people wearing white. Even as he joins in this moment of shared consciousness with the...
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...rights, but he does not understand how Gandhi’s commitment to fasting could help the lower castes. Maybe, Bakha decides, Gandhi is just fasting because he thinks the Untouchables don’t have access...
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...his anti-colonial beliefs). This thrills Bakha, who knows Gandhi uses the word “harijan” to describe outcastes. Bakha links Gandhi’s care for the outcastes to the equality Hutchinson was talking about; he...
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...to rush it, he knows he cannot, despite the fact that Gandhi has abolished all caste distinctions for the day. So Bakha climbs a tree, taking in Gandhi’s “saintly” face and...
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...Gandhi announces that if he were reborn, he would like to be born as an outcaste.
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But Gandhi then shifts again, instructing outcastes to “purify their lives”; he implies that some outcastes are unclean, or that they refuse...
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...dissenting. The man complains that Gandhi’s commitment to orthodox Hinduism is in conflict with his anti-caste sentiment. Having read Rousseau and Hobbes, the man (R. N. Bashir) thinks Gandhi needs to...
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...more and more irritated, Sarshar continues, positing that everyone is basically equal and that the caste system is a result of Brahmin greed and manipulation. To prove his ideas, Sarshar points...
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