Pre-Viewing Enrichment Worksheet forWater
INDIA - GEOGRAPHY & DEMOGRAPHICS
India occupies most of the Indian subcontinent. It is about 1/3rd the size of the U.S. and now has more than 1.24 billion people. (Show a map of India and the surrounding nations.) Most Indians are very poor. India has an ancient civilization which has given much to the world, including the concept of zero and the principle of non-violent mass action as an agent to force political change. India is the largest functioning democracy in the world. The two main religions of India are Hindu (80%) and Muslim (13%).
Beginning in 1757, the British East India Company controlled increasingly large parts of India. By 1858 virtually the entire country was subject to British rule, which was transferred to the British Crown. Led by Mahatma Gandhi, India achieved its independence in 1947 through a campaign of non-violent mass action. Gandhi's tactics of non-cooperation, civil disobedience, protest and petition were often referred to as "passive resistance" but they were anything but passive.
One of the ways in which the British had ruled India was to pit Muslim against Hindu. The tactic was called "divide and rule". When Britain granted independence in 1947, it partitioned its former colony into two separate countries: a predominantly Muslim Pakistan and an overwhelmingly Hindu India. Mass chaos resulted as Hindus fled Pakistan and Muslims left India. (India still has a Muslim population of well over 100 million people. It is the fourth largest Muslim nation in the world, after Indonesia, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.)
The Ganges River is one of the major rivers in India. It flows from the Himalayan mountains through eastern India and empties into the Indian ocean in what is now Bangladesh. The water of the Ganges is believed to be holy with the power to wash away sins. It is also believed that a person who dies with holy water from the Ganges in his or her mouth will have an easier path to heaven. Indians use the Ganges to bathe, to wash their clothing, and to carry their ashes to heaven in small containers that float on the river. Stone steps, called ghats, lead down to the river in many places, especially near temples.
HINDU RELIGION AND INDIAN CULTURE
Hinduism is described in ancient Sanskrit books called the "Vedas." Hinduism teaches that a soul has many lives. It returns to earth in various body forms to learn the lessons that life on Earth has to offer. The level of each rebirth depends upon how well the soul lived out its past life. If a person is good in this life he or she will be born to a higher incarnation in the next life. In the order of rebirth, people are higher than animals and men are higher than women.
The goal of Hindu religious practice is to be liberated from worldly desires and released from the cycle of rebirth and death.
In 1938 India was a society bound by ancient customs. Although much has changed, rural India is still quite tradition-bound. Over the thousands of years that Hinduism has held sway in India, many traditions have acquired a religious sanction even though they are antithetical to the basic teachings of the religion. These include the caste system, patriarchy, and the treatment of women, especially if they are widows.
The Caste System: Castes are groups in society ranked in a hierarchy and set by birth. Since occupations are often handed down by birth, caste has a definite relation to occupation. People generally marry only within their caste. In India, there are thousands of castes and sub castes. They are seen as fundamental to the sub-continent's social structure. When people converted from Hinduism to Islam or Sikhism, they retained their caste affiliation.
Despite the fact that the caste system has been outlawed by the Indian constitution, caste ranking and its influence on social interaction are expected to continue to affect life in India in the future. Caste is stronger in the countryside than in the cities and its effect is felt more in matters of kinship and marriage than in interactions that are less personal in nature.
The Brahman caste was traditionally the most respected, honored, and esteemed of all the castes. Brahmans were permitted to read and interpret the holy texts. There were other castes and sub castes for warriors, government administrators, merchants, etc. Some people were not even in the class system. These were called the Untouchables and they occupied the lowest rung in society. They were restricted to "unclean" occupations such as cleaning toilets or cleaning the hides of dead cattle. If a member of a higher caste came into contact with an Untouchable they had to perform a bathing ritual to cleanse themselves of contamination from the touch. If Untouchables tried to improve their situation in life, they were subjected to brutal repression.
Question #1:Write a one page argument contending that there is nothing like a caste system in the U.S. In your article, rebut claims that racism, classism, and entrenched economic inequality have effects that are similar to a caste system.
Patriarchy:A basic belief of Hinduism and traditional Indian society is male dominance. It permeates almost every aspect of Indian society. Men are considered superior to women. Women pray to be reborn as a man, which is seen as a step up in the universal order.
A section of the Vedas called the "Laws of Manu" have been interpreted to designate a woman's life as having three stages. The first stage is when a girl is under the protection of her father. In the second stage, as a woman, she is under the protection of her husband. The third stage is widowhood, taken care of by her oldest son. But if there is no male child or if the son's wife doesn't like her, the widow is shunned and isolated. Basically, a woman doesn't have a real life unless she has a man by her side. She is to look to her father and her husband as her teacher, her provider, and her keeper. When her husband dies, she is to dedicate her life to Lord Krishna, the highest Hindu god. Krishna is often pictured playing a flute.
Treatment of Widows:A married woman is considered to be half her husband's body and when he dies she is considered to be half his corpse. When a husband dies his widow must atone for her sins, which were thought to have contributed to the death of her husband. Widows, no matter what caste they were originally born into, were (and still are in many instances) relegated to the lowest stratum of society. They are considered bad luck and unclean. For traditional Indians, even the shadow of a widow is dangerous. Widows are therefore shunned by society. The pronoun for a widow in India is "it" rather than "she."
There were few good choices for a widow in traditional Indian society. She could throw herself on her husband's funeral pyre and burn with his body. This was called Sati. This custom has recently fallen into disfavor and is now illegal. The best solution was for the widow to live with her eldest son. She could not remarry, unless the husband's younger brother consented to marry her.
A woman with no male child to provide for her, or whose son wouldn't take her in, was relegated to a lonely ascetic life of prayer. Some found a haven in ashrams, strict regime religious communities. Life in widows' ashrams was simple and sparse. The widows got one bland meal per day. Tomatoes, spices, onions, and sugar were forbidden to widows. There was no luxury in the ashram and women slept on mats on the floor. Their heads were shaven and they dressed in all white or all red. They were forbidden to wear makeup. Their days were to be entirely focused on finding salvation in Lord Krishna hoping for a good after-life and a better situation in their next reincarnation. One of the few times that widows could celebrate was the feast of Holi, a festival of color. One of them would be dressed as Krishna and color applied to their faces and clothing.
Question #2:Just one hundred years ago, the U.S. was a patriarchal society. Women could not vote in most states, their rights on divorce were inferior to those of men, few women graduated from college, fewer still were in the professions, there were no female members of Congress, etc. While women are still not treated as equal to men in all respects, much has changed. This has not happened in some other parts of the world. What reasons can you give for why the U.S. attitude toward women has changed so much?
MISCELLANEOUS
· In India married women wear metal bands on their left wrist. When their husbands dies, the bands are broken off.
· Tumeric is a yellow/orange colored spice known for its antiseptic effects.
· Hindus believe that when they die, they should die in the open so that it's easier for their souls to gain access to the gods.
· Hindus are vegetarian and cows are sacred to them.
· Theswastika, both right and left facing versions, are ancient religious symbols of Hinduism. In Hindu designs there is often a dot in each quadrant. It is considered an auspicious sign and adorns many temples. It is used on jewelry, in books, and on buildings. The Nazis took the left facing version of the swastika for the symbol of their political party. The Hindu swastika has nothing to do with that of the Nazis.
· A eunuch is a man who has been castrated. A hermaphrodite is a person born with both male and female sexual characteristics. In India there, are 500,000 to 1 million eunuchs and hermaphrodites. They form societal groups and have particular functions. They sing at weddings and births. Lately some eunuchs have been elected to political office in India as people who will be less subject to corruption because they do not have families and children.
MAHATMA GANDHI
Mohandas Gandhi was the greatest political leaders of the 20th century. His influence was not only felt by the Indian people but all over the world. India's refusal, under Gandhi's leadership, to use violence to throw off the yoke of British Imperialism showed the world that there were ways to fight oppression that did not require injury and killing. People seeking political and social change adopted Gandhi's tactics of non-violent mass action, also called civil disobedience, with great results all over the world. A few of the many examples are: the U.S. Civil Rights Movement; the fall of the Soviet Union (one of the world's two superpowers) in 1991; forcing the end to apartheid in South Africa in 1994; removing the long-time dictator of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos, in 1986; the defeat of the fascist dictatorship in Argentina in 1983 which began from the peaceful protests of "Los Madres," the mothers of political opponents of the regime who had been killed or abducted; the "Velvet" Revolution in which Czechoslovakia removed communist rule in 1989; the Rose Revolution in Georgia in 2003; the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine in 2004; and the Arab Spring of 2011.
Gandhi was also a great religious and moral leader of the Indian people who called him "Mahatma" which means "Great Soul". They also called him "Bapu" which means father in Gujarat, one of the languages spoken in India. Gandhi's highest principles were love and truth. Throughout his life, Gandhi was a religious Hindu, but he acknowledged the validity of all other religions. When asked if he was a Hindu, Gandhi replied, "Yes I am. I am also a Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist and a Jew." Gandhi rejected Indian/Hindu traditions that did not recognize the worth of the individual and campaigned for reform in many areas of Indian life.
Many religious texts stress the equality of all beings before God. This was the bedrock of Gandhi's reforms. He looked at Indian society and saw where its customs and practices violated this basic principle. These included sectarian tensions between Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, the oppression of the Untouchables, child marriage, and the treatment of widows. Gandhi preached that all men were brothers, whatever their religion. He advocated civil rights for the Untouchables and called them "Harijan" which means children of God. He campaigned against child marriage and supported remarriage for widows, especially child widows. He challenged the Indian people to go to the roots of their religion which incorporated loving and inclusive messages similar to those of Jesus Christ. He asked Indians to reject the cultural overlays on Hinduism (that had been thought to be religious doctrine for centuries) and to reject the old rules that supported the caste system, denied equal treatment for women, and oppressed widows.
Gandhi was an Indian of a mercantile caste who was educated as an attorney in England. He first practiced law in South Africa where the British had imported Indians to serve as laborers and shopkeepers. The Indians in South Africa were subjected to harsh and oppressive laws by the government, although they were not treated as poorly as the Africans. Gandhi developed non-violent mass action as a tactic to overturn the harshest laws against Indians.
Gandhian non-violence works on the minds of the oppressors to make them realize that continued oppression debases their own moral values. Through boycotts and other forms of direct action, the protesters also assert economic pressure on those in power.
In 1915 Gandhi returned to India and became active in religious and political affairs. He was a leader of the Indian National Congress, a broad-based political organization which sought independence from Britain. While Gandhi wanted India to be independent of British rule, he would not demean himself by hurting anyone. ("There are many causes that I am prepared to die for but no causes that I am prepared to kill for.") His leadership of non-violent resistance to British rule led the authorities to put Gandhi in prison several times. Each imprisonment made him more popular. Eventually, in 1947, India gained its independence from the British Empire without an armed struggle.
Gandhi was not always able to convince the Indian people to do what he wanted, but he had tremendous power. For example, in 1947 there were terrible sectarian riots in Bombay and several other parts of India. Hindus were killing Muslims and Muslims were killing Hindus. People were being massacred by the thousands, including women and children. Gandhi implored the populace to stop and when they wouldn't, he went on a fast to the death or until they did stop. After several days, the leaders of the riots came to his bedside and swore that the violence would end, if only Gandhi would eat and not die. He sent them away and told them to come back when the violence had stopped. Only then would he eat. The riots stopped, the cities were quiet, and Gandhi ate again.SeeMahatma Gandhi, Apostle of Nonviolenceby John Dear, S.J.
Gandhi's reforms were rejected by Hindu fundamentalists, one of whom assassinated Gandhi on January 30, 1948, a few months after India gained its independence.