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Hinduism's Treatment of Untouchables

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Hinduism's Treatment of Untouchables Introduction India is one of the world's great civilizations. An ancient land, vast and complex, with a full and diverse cultural heritage that has enriched the world. Extending back to the time of the world's earliest civilizations in an unbroken tradition, Indian history has seen the mingling of numerous peoples, the founding of great religions and the flourishing of science and philosophy under the patronage of grand empires. With a great reluctance to abandon traditions, India has grown a culture that is vast and rich, with an enormous body of history, legend, theology, and philosophy. With such breadth, India offers a multitude of adventuring options. Many settings are available such as the high fantasy Hindu epics or the refined British Empire in India. In these settings India allows many genres. Espionage is an example, chasing stolen nuclear material in modern India or foiling Russian imperialism in the 19th century. War is an option; one could play a soldier in the army of Alexander the Great or a proud Rajput knight willing to die before surrender. Or horror in a dangerous and alien land with ancient multi-armed gods and bloodthirsty Tantric sorcerers. Also, many styles are available, from high intrigue in the court of the Mogul Emperors to earnest quests for spiritual purity to the silliness of Mumbai "masala" movies. GURPS India presents India in all its glory. It covers the whole of Indian history, with particular emphasis on the Gupta Empire, the Moghul Empire, and the British Empire. It also details Indian mythology and the Hindu epics allowing for authentic Indian fantasy to be played. GURPS India provides a full introduction to Indian culture, describing the unique Indian customs and lifestyle. India's religions are presented including details on the difficult concepts of karma and reincarnation. This book is all you need to open up the exciting and fascinating land that is India. About the Author In 1993 Ben Chapman took up a scholarship to study physics at Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda in India -- thereby reconciling the two disparate threads of his life, a love of India and a career in the physical sciences. In 1995 he took the "second birth" and become a Hindu, adopting the Hindu name "Baldev." India "So far as I am able to judge, nothing has been left undone, either by man or Nature, to make India the most extraordinary country that the sun visits on his round . Always when you think you have come to the end of her tremendous specialties and have finished hanging tags on her . another specialty crops up and another tag is required. Perhaps it would be simplest to throw away all the tags and generalize her with one all-comprehensive name, as the Land of Wonders." --<\#208> Mark Twain The Indies, the vast and ancient land across the Indus river, has become, as testified by Mark Twain, synonymous with wonder, both magnificent and bizarre. Separated from the rest of the world by giant mountain ranges, expanses of ocean, and walls of incomprehension, India has forever been a foreign land of plenty, either a land of riches or a land of spiritual wealth. India is one of the world's great cultures and it wears its antiquity with pride. The 5,000 years of India's history has littered the landscape with ruins of forts, palaces, and temples that have been home to magnificent emperors, pious heroes, and even gods. With an unbroken evolution from its earliest days, the culture of India is rich beyond easy comprehension. India's many religions, arts, and philosophies have depth born of millennia of contemplation and growth and have such complexity and diversity as to be positively labyrinthine. Indian society too, with its untold customs and ponderous caste system, has a complexity that can only come from great age. In India, number seems to have a different meaning, such is the scale of things in this land. India the country now has a population of over a billion people who speak 1,652 languages and worship as many as 330 million gods. India it seems is only able to do things to excess. The wealth of India is legendary, it has given the English language the word "mogul" to refer to people of extreme wealth. Yet, India also has a wealth of poverty, India's impoverished outnumber the entire population of the United States. A land that contains so much is not easy to understand; nor should it be any surprise that India contains great inconsistencies -- in fact India is a land of veritable contradictions. This is the land of Gandhi and non-violence, with a nuclear arsenal and that once featured the savage cults of thagi. It is a space-age country with an economy based on peasant farming, where pastoral, and often savage, traditions coexist with the highest technological capacity. A worldly land with the most complex of spiritual traditions. A staidly conservative land whose literature includes the Kamasutra, the famous treatise on the arts of love. It is little wonder that this land of paradoxes is such a mystery to outsiders. In the past, India was viewed as a distant land of riches, the treasures of India were legendary; from India came gold, diamonds, spices, exotic beasts, and the strangest of customs. Today, India is seen by many as being a land of intractable spiritual philosophies. However, these philosophies are nearly as esoteric to the average Indian as they are to interested foreigners. Indians, for their part, are rather less interested in the rest of the world (at least they were until the advent of satellite TV and its visions of plenty). To an Indian, this land has produced a culture so complete, as to need no imports. The Regions of India For the purposes of this book, India refers not just to the modern county of India or Bharat (see Names of India), but to the whole region often known as the Subcontinent or South Asia. Crowned by the Himalayas in the north, this region ranges roughly from the Hindu Kush Mountains in the west to the Patkai Hills in the east, encompassing the countries of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Bhutan, as well as the islands of Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Combined, these countries cover an area of 1,730,000 sq. miles, encompassing the widest range of geographies; from the Himalayas, the worlds highest mountain range to the flatness of the Gangetic plain; from the arid Thar Desert to Cherrapunji, one of the wettest places in the world; from the glaciers at the heights of Kashmir to the baking Deccan plateau. The Indus and Punjab One of the great rivers of India, the Indus flows from its source in the Himalayas through the provinces of Punjab and Sind to the Arabian Sea. All but the uppermost parts of the river now lie in Pakistan. It was on the banks of this great river that the ancient Indus Valley Civilization flourished (see p. xx). At that time the land was semi-arid but fertile enough to support an urban civilization. However, since then, the southern regions of the river basin have become dry and barren. In A.D. 644 an Arab invasion force turned back from this land finding that the "water is scarce, the fruits are poor, and the robbers are bold; if a few troops are sent they will be slain, if many, they will starve." Karachi is the main city of the southern Indus basin. The Punjab lies up the Indus River. The name means "five rivers," referring to the rivers Indus, Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, and Sutlej. With the waters of these five rivers and the climate of the hills, Punjab is the breadbasket of India and Pakistan, between whom the region is divided. As the entry point to India from the west, Punjab has been the first to see most of India's invaders. It was here that the Aryans first lived in India (see Aryans, p. xx) and since then it has been fought over by Persians, Greeks, Scythians, Kushans, Hunas, Turks, and Moghuls -- only the British and Portuguese entered India from other directions. The Punjab is the birthplace of Sikhism (see Sikhism, pp. xx-yy) and for periods during the 19th century was home to a Sikh kingdom. However, when the region was divided during Partition (see Independence and Partition, p. xx), a large number of Sikhs left Pakistani Punjab to move to India (along with many Hindus and also many Muslims relocated west to Pakistan). Some Sikhs call for Punjab to become a Sikh homeland, "Khalistan." Before 1966 the states of Himachal Pradesh and Haryana were part of the state and region of Punjab. Lahore is the largest city of Punjab, now in Pakistan. Amritsar in India is the home of the Golden Temple. The western fringes of this region, Baluchistan and the North-West Frontier, where the country of Pakistan meets Afghanistan, has long been home to warrior tribes. Today it is home to Afghans and Pathans but the dry, rocky hills have also been defended by Turks, Kushans, and Bactrian Greeks. Ganga River Valley The mighty Ganga flows from the sacred town of Hardwar, running out of the Himalayas into the vast Gangetic river basin. It absorbs the Jamuna at Allahabad and flows east to empty into the Bay of Bengal, catching the Brahmaputra on the way. The Ganga River Valley cuts a deep trough between the Himalayas to the north and the Vidhya Hills to the south. Largely flat plains, the valley, heartland of modern India, has been the most populated and farmed region of India since the Aryans cleared the impenetrable jungle.
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