India Culture

India Culture - Purity and Pollution

India culture expresses the many status differences in Indian society in terms of ritual “purity and pollution”. This is accepted as an essential part of the India culture life.

The rules are extremely complex and vary greatly among different groups and religions and provide a major part of the basis of the caste system. They are an accepted part of life and an expression of social status. They govern all the everyday events of eating, drinking, bathing, touching and talking.

However, broadly speaking, high status is associated with purity and low status with pollution. Going back into ancient India history the high-ranking Brahman, or priestly caste has always been born with more inherent purity than a member of a low-ranking Sweeper caste.

In India culture purity is associated with ritual cleanliness--daily bathing in flowing water, dressing in properly laundered clothes of approved materials, eating only the foods appropriate for one's caste and refraining from physical contact with people of lower rank.

India Culture- The Brahman - The Sweeper - The Warrior

In contrast to the purity of a Brahman, at the other extreme is the Sweeper who is considered inherently polluted. In India culture Sweepers are associated with the traditional occupation of cleaning human faeces from latrines and sweeping public lanes.

The involvement of Sweepers with such filth accords with their low-status at the bottom of the Hindu caste hierarchy India culture states that contact with the products of death or violence are typically polluting and threatening to ritual purity.

However, castes associated with ruling and warfare--and the killing and deaths of human beings--are typically accorded high rank on the caste hierarchy. India history demonstrates that in these instances political power and wealth outrank association with violence as the key determinant of caste rank.

Members of the highest priestly castes, the Brahmans, are generally vegetarians and avoid eating meat, the product of violence and death. High-ranking Warrior castes however consider meat appropriate for their traditions of valour and physical strength.

Ancient India history shows that a Brahman born of proper Brahman parents retains his inherent purity if he bathes and dresses himself properly, adheres to a vegetarian diet, eats meals prepared only by persons of appropriate rank, and keeps his person away from the bodily exuviate of others. If a Brahman happens to come into bodily contact with a polluting substance, he can remove this pollution by bathing and changing his clothing.

However, if he were to eat meat or commit other transgressions of the rigid dietary codes of his caste, he would be considered more deeply polluted and would have to undergo various purifying rites and payment of fines imposed by his caste council in order to restore his inherent purity.

Maintenance of purity is closely associated with the intake of food and drink, not only in terms of the nature of the food itself, but also in terms of who has prepared or touched it. This is especially important for Hindus, but other religious groups hold to these principles to varying degrees.

Generally, a person risks pollution--and lowering his own status--if he accepts beverages or cooked foods from the hands of people of lower caste status than his own. His status will remain intact if he accepts food or beverages from people of higher caste rank.

Although to the non-Indian these rules may seem irrational and bizarre, in India culture, most of the people, particularly in the rural communities, find that these rules provide the order of life. They are intricately bound up with the every day events of living.

To deviate from these rules is seen to have an immediate polluting effect, so every ordinary act of human life serves as a constant reminder of the importance of hierarchy in Indian society.

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