SUJIT DE
When I read the news report that the Vankhandeshwar temple in Kanpur was washed with “1,000 litres” of Ganga water on November 2 to ‘purify’ the temple because a Muslim woman had entered and prayed at the temple, the words of B R Ambedkar came to my mind, “Untouchability has ruined the untouchables, the Hindus and ultimately the nation as well”.
Untouchability morally kills victims and spiritually destroys perpetrators. It is akin to suicide bombing.
Swami Vivekananda rescued himself from momentary lapses that could have taken him to the ugly trap of untouchability. He realised that if he failed to take untouchability head-on, it would have cost him all that he learned from Sri Ramakrishna and his human soul.
One evening, Swami Vivekananda was walking along a village street in northern India. When he came near a small cottage, he saw an old man smoking a hookah. Swami Vivekananda asked the old man if he would give him his hookah.
The old man said, “Oh, Swami, I am a scavenger, I am an untouchable. How can I give you my hookah?”
Swami Vivekananda said to him, “I am sorry. Alas, I won’t be able to smoke.” Vivekananda left him and continued walking.
In a few minutes, he felt miserable. He told himself, “What am I doing? What have I done? Did not Thakur teach me that wherever there is a human being, there also is Lord Shiva? Each human being embodies God. This is what I have learned from my Master, Sri Ramakrishna.
I have given up everything. I am a sannyasin. So, I am one with the rest of the world by virtue of my renunciation. Yet, although I have renounced everything, still I have preserved this sense of discrimination. Here is a cobbler; here is a scavenger; here is a Brahmin; here is a Shudra. Be it low caste or high caste, how can I have the heart to distinguish? Are they not all God’s children? The sense of superiority and inferiority — how can I have that kind of feeling?”
Vivekananda then went running back to the old man and said, “Please, please, give me your hookah. Each man is God Himself.”
The old man hesitantly gave the hookah to Swami Vivekananda. Swami Vivekananda smoked and then said to the old man, “I am divinely happy, supremely happy, for two reasons. My human desire is fulfilled. I am able to smoke. My divine desire is fulfilled because I have been able to realise my inner vision of universal oneness.
My Supreme Lord abides in all. This vision of mine I have been able to manifest today by smoking here from your hookah at your house. God is for all.
I shall remain ever grateful to you, for it is through you that my Lord has taught me the supreme lesson that we are all one, we are all equal, we are all children of our absolute “Lord Supreme.”
Not only did Swami Vivekananda rescue himself from falling into the abyss of untouchability, but he showed to the world that there should not be any place of untouchability in Hinduism by worshipping and touching the feet of a Muslim girl as Goddess Durga in Kashmir in 1898.
We should not let the principle of humanity be washed down with water by not protesting against the naked display of untouchability. The public display of untouchability is silent terrorism. Such an act is against the Constitution of India in general and Article 17 in particular, which says, “Untouchability' is abolished and its practice in any form is forbidden.”
Prompt legal action must be taken against those who indulge in untouchability.