PHANTOM INDIA Reflections on a Journey
“My name is Thomas Howard
I'm an American with the Peace Corps.
I've come to India as a specialist in agriculture-
I talk to the peasants-
I tell them, 'Instead of doing a crop in the old method
why don't you try something new?”
There are hundreds like him."
young American Peace Corps volunteers
living for two years in Indian villages-
The Communists accuse them of spying for the CIA-
A//'s fair in war, even if ifs not actually true-
Thomas Howard lives on his own in a village of 800 inhabitants
in the mountainous region of the state of Madras.
“The prob/em is convincing them t0 adopt several new techniques at once.
For example, when they use a new variety of grain,
the y must use a lot of fertilizer and insecticide-
I have to be really careful,
because if I've convinced someone to invest money in new methods
and it doesn't grow the way it should, that's very bad for me- ”
The presence of Tom Howard and his friends is largely symbolic.
There are barely 700 of them
and 560, 000 villages in India.
Everyone tells you, "The villages are the real face of India- ”
ifs where 80% of the population lives, a life unchanged for centuries-
One passes through these villages, ignoring them,
or repeating one of the countless trite remarks
about the Indian peasant's sluggishness, fata/fsm, and refusal to change -
the usual cliches expressed by foreign visitors.
At the start of our journey, we stayed in a village in Haryana,
about 60 miles from Delhi.
It was a very cold January.
Maybe it was the climate, the landscape, their clothing or the irrigation system,
but nothing really seemed exotic to me-
The women covered their faces when we approached,
as if in an Arabic country.
Islamic influence is so strong in this part of north west India
that you'd think you were in North Africa or Syria.
No farms or houses stood ofi' on their own.
All the peasants lived in the village,
one of the most prosperous in the region, despite appearances.
A village like any other.
Peasant life, with its repetitive tasks and empty stretches of time,
wasn't exactly inspiring.
We tried t0 film in snatches
to avoid disturbing the natural order.
But every villager was aware of our presence,
and this seeming naturalness is a bit fake.
The women spend hours each morning making chapat/j
a flat bread of wheat, com, or millet
that is the basis of the northern Indian diet.
ItS eaten with very spicy vegetables,
a lentil puree cal/ed dal,
milk, yogurt, and sometimes butter and molasses.
These villagers are vegetarians.
We were often tempted t0 direct them.
Very basic direction,
like trying to get this woman not to look at the camera,
to act as if we weren't there-
The woman gets involved in her role.
She watches her child, she watches herself
It becomes a kind of performance
in which she plays herself a spinner.
We quickly gave up trying to organize or compose their reality.
Like this man and girl
cutting mustard leaves for fodder.
I don't direct them.
Between the watchful precision of their gestures
and their awareness of being filmed,
they're being directed, but by themselves.
At dayS end, the villagers put on a performance for us,
a real one this time.
As a treat for us,
they dust ofi' instruments that haven 't been used in years
and that need to be tuned.
They're having a great time reconstructing this scene.
After this charming folkloric scene,
we left the village at nightfall
fol/owed, as always, by a flock of kids and onlookers.
Over the f0//0 wing days,
the villagers gradually get used to us-
Within the villagers' daily routine
we 'd make discoveries.
Cow dung isn't for the birds.
Children gather it like precious material,
and the women mix it with straw
to shape it into patties, which are kneaded for a long time
before being placed against walls or on the ground to dry.
There are almost no forests in this region.
Wood is rare, and coal unknown.
Cow dung is the only fuel available to the villagers,
an excellent fuel that bums slowly and gives ofi' lots of heat
It isn't used as fertilizer,
which would be the best we y - but that's not their custom-
Another traditional women S chore is fetching water.
For this village of 2, 000 inhabitants,
there are about 20 wells.
But the women don't fill their buckets where ver they please.
We quickly notice that the same women always go t0 the same wells.
Each has her assigned well,
which she shares with other women of the same caste.
For the first time,
we were seeing a physical manifestation of the caste system.
For foreigners,
the caste system is incomprehensible, and even invisible.
Ifs manifest in every gesture of daily life,
yet we hardly ever see it.
Indians don't like to talk about it. They feel no need to-
Everything rests on a tacit agreement.
From childhood on, women always draw water from the same well.
To them, caste divisions are like natural law.
They're a reflex, not a conscious choice.
The caste system was ofiicial/y abolished by the /ndian constitution,
but laws can't erase a tradition dating back millennia.
When the government digs wells in a village,
it digs 10 where two would sufi7ce -
to accommodate the caste system-
Guidebooks explain that there are four castes in India."
Brahmans, the priests,
K shatriyas, the warriors,
Vaisyas, peasants and merchants,
and at the bottom, Sudras, who serve the others.
Outside the system are the outcastes, the Untouchables.
This simplistic division bears no relation to reality.
From one region to the next, castes divide and multiply almost to infinity.
Each village has a hierarchy thatS both strict and fluid,
in which everyone has a role, including the Untouchables,
who are also divided into distinct groups
and are as necessary to the balance of the whole as the Brahmans-
In this village there are over 20 castes.
After our first contact with the caste system,
we saw villagers difierent/y
We imagined the place each held in the hierarchy,
but how to know for sure?
To our questions, the few villagers who spoke English
gave vague answers or changed the subject'.
The words in themselves don't mean anything.
“Pariah, ” “Untouchable, ” and “caste”
are words invented by Europeans
that don't exist in Indian languages-
Reality is more comp/ex than terms used to describe it.
One day, passing some houses set apart from the rest,
the sarpanch, the village leader who interpreted for us,
said nonchalantly “Those are the Backward Classes. ”
Its the expression often used in India to designate the Untouchables.
In newspapers and political speeches,
the preferred term is har/jah, which means “child of God. ”
The term was coined by Gandhi
to show his intention of giving equal rights to everyone.
The har/jan don't seem any difierent from other villagers.
The leader of the village seems to have a good relationship with them,
a slightly paternal one that implies everyone knows their place,
reminiscent, perhaps, of relations between blacks and whites
in small towns in the American South.
Sometimes there are articles in Indian newspapers like-"
“l-lar/jan Stoned t0 Death in Village for Wearing Sandals. ”
In certain regions, the Untouchables are obliged to go barefoot
Or, "In a Small Town in Andhra Pradesh,
Young Har/jan Tied Up and Burned Alive. ”
Why? He was suspected of stealing two copper pitchers.
For the scandal to be exposed,
a policeman or civil servant had to break the /aw of silence-
I notice that the countless Untouchable children
never set foot in the village school,
even though the government has passed laws
promoting education for har/jan.
Do the y really want them to take advantage of it?
I was told that peasants of the inferior classes were against change
more than anyone else,
that they would refuse agricultural reform
if it altered the traditional hierarchy,
and that thus, regressive thinking and lack of education
made the systems worst victims its staunchest defenders.
I'm told this courtyard, quite near the neighborhood of the Untouchables,
is the home of an upper-caste family.
What makes this house and these women difiereht?
M/e begin to understand that there are in visible - or almost in visible - lines
separating neighborhoods, houses and people.
These lines exist in people's minds, not in the material world.
It seems like an everyday scene.
The village leader smokes the hookah with friends in front of his house.
The hookah is the Indian water pipe.
Smoke from very pungent tobacco is passed through a reservoir of water.
The mouthpiece passes from hand to banal,
but not from mouth to mouth-
The smoker places his closed fist between the mouthpiece and his lips-
Once again, caste taboos intervene.
Touching oneS lips to a mouthpiece after someone of a lower caste
would be a source of great impurity.
One doesn't smoke the hookah with just anyone.
These villagers are in the same caste, or in castes close to their own-
/t may seem anecdotal, but it touches the heart of the prob/em.
The caste system is based above all on ideas of purity and impurity
of religious origin.
In a small town near our village,
this public bath is always filled with bathers.
I ask if the bathers belong t0 difierent castes.
As usual, I get evasive answers-
Theres been a definite loosening of taboos, especially in the cities,
but for many Indians, the essential questions remain-"
With whom do you do this or that activity? Whom can you marry?
With whom can you bathe, eat or smoke?
/h the West, the basic unit of society is the individual.
In India, individual people don't matter.
Ifs their relationship that matters-
One isn't pure or impure. One is more or less pure than someone else.
On the roof of the baths, we found a charming little outdoor school.
The children are learning to count in Hindi and English-
Schoolmasters are often of the Brahman caste,
as teaching is one of their traditional roles-
How can we expect them to attack the caste system
when they occupy its highest rung?
One of the kids asked in faltering English if I was American-
My negative response troubled him, and he asked,
“Then what caste do you belong to?”
Wisdom from the mouths of babes.
This child already knows that castes are barriers between people,
and for him, nationalities are no doubt just foreign castes.
Every day we spent in the village,
we saw this blind camel
circling tirelessly from dawn til/ dusk,
dragging a mil/stone behind him t0 mix the cement.
Finally we filmed him
as a heavy-handed symbol of Indian society.
An Indian of the caste system is caught in a web of rights and responsibilities,
absolutely unaware of the concept of individual freedom
that we value so highly.
His destiny is laid out from birth, with almost no possibility for free will
But there is a reward."
Living interdependently, in relation to everyone else,
he S part of a whole, shielded from solitude.
Day after day, we saw the same teams take turns at this well.
The precise division of labor is a direct corollary of the caste system.
This man is a water carrier and nothing else.
Its his dharma, his duty, his place in the hierarchy.
In the past, when villages formed a closed economic system,
the 20 or 30 castes of the community were linked
by an elaborate and codified exchange of services.
Priest, peasant', barber, water carrier."
Each carried out his hereditary function,
and in exchange received goods and services.
An idyllic vision of agricultural communism
where everyone's needs are met,
which, even if it did once exist, is lost to the villagers today.
These water carriers are no longer linked to the community
but to the landowners who pay their salary.
Today, the division of labor looks more like one person exploiting another.
A few hundred yards from the village,
these men and women live in huts in a clearing.
Originally from a mountain tribe,
they came down t0 the plains in search of work.
They live in quarantine.
We never once saw them enter the village.
These are the real outcastes. Without a place in the system,
their lot is worse than that of the Untouchables-
At the nearby river,
the village clothes washers attack the washing
with an energy that makes up for the lack of soap.
Washing laundry is a particularly impure task
and is therefore reserved for the lowest ranks of the Untouchables,
cal/ed dhobi.
By giving this task to the dhobi, upper-caste housewives avoid defile-meat.
Dhobi are found all over India.
Here, on the riverbed in Madras,
hundreds of dhobi wash the dirty laundry of the entire city.
They're remarkably organized.
Men, women and children all share the work.
The laundry is collected, washed, dried ironed
and returned to the client the same day.
The historical origin of the castes is generally attributed
to the traditional divisions among the Aryan people -
priests, warriors and farmers -
also found in the ancient civilizations of Greece, Rome and Germany.
Ifs said the Aryans, after invading India over 3, 000 years ago,
integrated the local population into the hierarchy
by placing them at the bottom.
But recent discoveries show that castes existed in the first /ndian civilizations,
before the arrival of the Aryans.
In the modem city of Bombay,
washers are cooped up in this enormous washhouse
with cement stalls and running water.
Modernization hasn 't changed essential facts."
it's still the dhobi caste, and they alone,
in charge of this impure task.
In front of the Red For!' in Delhi}
d yers dry long pieces of multicolored cloth
that will become turbans.
In the cities, the craftsmens castes
resemble the craft guilds of medieval Christian Europe.
One wonders how castes survive in modem India.
In 1853, Karl Marx prophesied
that railroad construction would alter the division of labor in India
and, at the same time, destroy the caste system.
It seems Marx was wrong.
Railroads have long crisscrossed the country,
yet the castes are still here,
even if they don't oficial/J/ exist.
For example, castes play a decisive role in elections,
which completely negates the concept of democracy.
Almost everyone votes according to caste.
Candidates, regardless of party,
represent, above all else, a caste or alliance of castes,
and the political arena, all ideology aside,
is nothing but a power struggle between rival castes.
The caste system has even survived pro/etarianization.
The southern Indians crammed into this shantytown in Bombay
haven 't lost their roots.
They regroup according to family, native village or region.
In cities, caste solidarity also plays a part at work.
Certain government administrations only admit members
of a certain caste.
That's why, in modern India, instead of disappearing,
castes are becoming rigid, autonomous blocks
that are no longer interdependent, but rivals and competitors.
The hierarchy remains,
but stripped of its traditional frame work,
its become a plain and simple form of economic oppression.
We came across this funeral in the streets of Madras.
The musicians play Marlborough.
The flower-covered corpse is carried t0 the place where it will be burned.
I see no sufiering or tears, nor even sadness.
To us, for whom death is so tragic,
this aspect of Hinduism is stunning.
The bonfire is prepared.
The older brother will perform the ritual, assisted by a priest
Balls of rice are held to the mouth and forehead of the deceased
Death is not an end, nor even a separation.
One lives and dies and is then reborn,
over and over in an unbroken chain.
Each life is judged,
and the next life constitutes the verdict
/f you ire born an Untouchable, ifs your fault,
because in a previous life you proved yourself unworthy.
You can imagine the social efiicienc y of the system.
No penalty is permanent',
unlike the heaven and hell of the Christians,
where residence is eternal.
Hindus are given a suspended sentence,
as if books were kept on their conduct
from one birth to the next.
This ceremony of propitiation takes place in the days f0//owing the death.
The deceased still lingers near the earth,
so the last ties t0 the body left behind must be severed.
The deceased s closest relatives contact him,
assure him that hes still respected by the living,
and ask him to enter the specially prepared balls of rice-
The ofierings include flowers, urine,
cow dung, fire and dirt.
When itS finished, the rice balls are fed t0 a cow, the sacred animal.
The priest invokes gods and demons in alternation,
transferring the sacred thread from one shoulder t0 the other.
Now liberated the soul of the deceased can reihcamate in another body
or disappear forever,
because the supreme goal is to one day not be reborn,
but to dissolve into the Absolute once and for all,
to merge with the cosmic void.
M/haz' can the concepts we treasure mean to an Indian believer,
concepts like progress, individual freedom, a higher living standard?
They 're taught to live and act without desire,
to disregard material reality,
to accept the way things are as divine judgment.
The caste system is a logical extension of this worldview.
Modernizing Indian farmers
is not a matter of fertilizers and irrigation.
It's a matter of changing what's in their heads-
They'd have t0 see the world difierent/y
The villagers don't want us to leave
without filming their traditional sport,
a mixture of Red Rover and Greco-Roman wrestling.
There are two teams,
and each player in tum attacks his opponents.
But no one knows the rules, or they've been forgotten.
The game quickly degenerates into a huge wrestling match,
to the great joy of the spectators-
Maybe some hope can be found in this forgetting of rules,
a sign and symbol of rejection of the past.
The panchayat is a son' of town council,
an elected assembly whose leader is the sarpanch, the village leader.
In principle, its composed of six members.
Today, our villages panchayat has gathered for a special session,
because a villager has lodged a complaint.
A government ofiicia/ from a neighboring village will handle the case.
At first, / was very impressed.
I was seeing Athenian-style direct democracy in action.
There was a large crowd. The witnesses gave testimony in turn.
The discussion was open and lively.
I 'd heard each panohayat must include an Untouchable and a woman-
M/hen I ask to see them, I in? told the y're absent from today/s meeting.
First surprise.
Second surprise." We finally /earn the reason for the investigation.
The sarpanch, the village leader,
the dignified old man who accompanied us everywhere,
is accused of embezzling 2, 000 rupees
of go vernment money allotted to the village.
I learned the outcome from a disgruntled villager."
The investigation was unable to reach a conclusion,
and the case was closed.
The government ofiicia/ was a close friend of the village leader,
who is an important landowner.
I gradually realize that beneath its democratic appearance,
the panchayat is just a tool of the rich peasantry.
There aren 't any large holdings of land.
In the region, ifs exceptional to own 30 acres,
but the wealth y peasants, who almost always belong to the same caste,
are often moneylenders.
The entire village is indebted to them,
which allows them to monopolize production.
They stockpile grain t0 later manipulate prices.
These sh y/ocks with political clout
seem to prove Marx right."
Castes tum into social classes.
But one must be wary of simplistic analyses,
for India's complexity will continue to amaze for a long time to come-
Translation by LYNN MASSEY for SUBTEXT SUBTITLING