Beef, Brahmins, and Broken Men: An Annotated Critical Selection from The Untouchables

1 The entrenched association of ‘impurity’ and the ‘dead cow’ was institutionalized through a mechanism of taxation between the Savarnas and the Antyajas. Shalini Randeria provides an account of such a system of discrimination in Gujarat. ‘The right (hak) to drag and flay [the carrion] had to be secured against payment of a tax to the local ruler at a periodic auction. In Sabarkantha district [of Gujarat] this tax was known as bhambh, which means dead animal’ (Randeria 1989, 175). Hiroyuki Kotani, in his study of Mahar vatan in the colonial period in the Bombay presidency says, apropos of a Bombay High Court verdict of 1870, that ‘in the course of the nineteenth century conflicts often arose between Vatandar Mahars and peasants over the problem of who should be awarded possession of the skins of dead cattle. In these cases, the parties to the conflicts frequently resorted to taking legal action. Through these actions a new precedent came to be consolidated in that the owner of the animal while alive was also the owner of the skin of the animal when dead’ (1997a, 112). In another essay, Kotani also points to occasional conflicts between Mahars and Mangs over the right to the hides of dead cattle in a Mang house over which Mahars tended to stake a ‘vatan’ claim (1997b, 60).

2 [The Untouchables have felt the force of the accusation levelled against them by the Hindus for eating beef. Instead of giving up the habit, the Untouchables have invented a philosophy which justifies eating the beef of the dead cow. The gist of the philosophy is that eating the flesh of the dead cow is a better way of showing respect to the cow than throwing her carcass to the wind.] In the various origin myths of many untouchable jatis that are forced to dispose of and eat the dead cow, across the north and south of the subcontinent, often the narrative revolves around a fall from a higher caste, often from being a Brahmin. G.W. Briggs in his classic study The Chamars (1920) documents several such legends. In one, ‘five brothers, Brahmans, while out walking one day, saw the carcass of a cow by the roadside. Four of the brothers passed it by, but the fifth removed the body. Thereupon he was excommunicated by his brothers. His descendants continue to remove the carcasses of cattle’ (17). More recently, the social anthropologist Simon Charsley (2004) has documented what he calls a living purana, the Jamba Purana that is performed by the Chindus among the Madigas of present-day Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. The Madigas are the equivalent of the Chamars of North India. In this telling of history as fable, performed as a yakshagana, the Madiga claims an origin more original than the primal birth of the Brahman. This story, claiming a Puranic status of circa fifth century CE, features the gods Parvati and Siva, among others, the Dalit forebears Chennaiah and Jamabvan and Kamadhenu, the holiest of cows. G. Kalyana Rao, Telugu Marxist writer with a Maoist orientation, retells this tale in his acclaimed novel Antarani Vasantam (2000, translated as Untouchable Spring into English and several Indian languages). The Jamba Purana as narrated in Antarani Vasantam in a nutshell: Chennaiah, miraculously born to Parvati, has the job of grazing Kamadhenu the cow. One day, he has the urge to drink its milk. He asks Parvati, and she tells him to tell the cow of his urge. On hearing his request, Kamadhenu drops dead. If its milk is so sweet, how must its flesh taste, Siva and Parvati wonder. All the devas and devatas, gods and godlings, come to see, and stand salivating around the dead Kamadhenu. But all of them together cannot lift its body. Chennaiah, at Siva’s behest, then summons his ancestor, Jambavan. He is stronger than all the gods and lifts the dead cow with his left hand. The gods then butcher the cow and tell Jamabavan how to cook it, asking him to make two halves of the meat. He does not heed them and cooks the entire meat in one pot. While being stirred, a piece of meat falls to the ground and is muddied. It becomes impure. The lad Chennaiah cleans it and puts it back into the pot. This angers the gods, and Siva curses Jambavan and Chennaiah: You will live in Kaliyuga, eating the meat of dead cows and sweeping the streets forever and ever. Heedless, Jambavan and Chennaiah eat the beef. And so it happens that in Kaliyuga, Jambavan’s progeny become Madigas and Chennaiah’s children become Malas.

3 Vyasa was a mythic sage who is credited with the authorship of the Mahabharata and for rendering the Vedas in their present four-part structure. His given name was Krishna Dvaipayana; the name ‘Vyasa’, which means ‘editor’ or ‘divider’, was attributed to him because he divided the unified Vedic knowledge system to make it more understandable in the coming Kaliyuga (White 2014, 227–8). In addition, he is said to have composed the Puranas and the Upapuranas. He was also the originator of the Brahmin tradition of ‘smrti’: the practice of writing down that which has been remembered (Sullivan 1989). After he formalized the Vedas, which had previously only been transmitted aurally (or so it is claimed), he went on to influence various disciples, who themselves produced written interpretive tracts (Mani 1975, 885–8).