Guru Purnima: Teacher’s Day

Siddhi B. Ranjitkar

On July 3, 2012: the full moon day in July, Nepalis celebrated the Guru Purnima: Teacher’s Day of this year. Teachers hold the third most honorable position after the position of mother and then father in our society. Mother holds the top most position, as she gives birth to you. Father takes the second position, as he takes care of you. Then, we place teacher on the third position, as he shapes our future and build our career.

As soon as you come of age to go to school, the parents send you to the shelter of a teacher. There you remain until you graduate from the school the teacher runs. You do everything for the teacher’s family. You call the spouse of a teacher as the guruma means a mother teacher, as she cooks for you and other fellow students and takes care of you all while you are at their school. Any teacher does not ask for any fee for teaching you but the parents pay as much as they can or think they need to pay. Even after the graduation, you honor the teacher as a guru or a teacher throughout your life and visit him and honor him on the Teacher’s Day once a year. Thus, we have respect for our teachers.

Any teacher teaches his students following the Hindu caste system that divides Hindus in general into four categories such as Brahmin, Chettri, Vaisay, and Shudra. A teacher teaches the students of the first three categories according to their requirement in running their daily business but does not teach anything to Shudras. Hindu teachers believe that they don’t need to teach Shudras anything, as Shudras are the service providers to the people of the three higher classes of the Hindu caste system. So, if you are the offspring of the Shudra parents, you don’t go to school but join your parents to serve the people of the castes higher than yours. So, any Hindu teacher has three classes of students of three different castes.

Brahmin students learn Hindu scriptures to be the most learned people in the Hindu society. They learn Vedas by heart. They learn to perform various religious and social rituals, learn ethics and code of conduct to understand what they can do and what not. In other words Brahmin students hold superior knowledge of Hindu religion, ethics, and code of conduct. A Hindu teacher prepares the Brahmin students to be teachers, priests to work at temples, and to perform religious and social rituals to the Hindu clients.

To the Chettri students, a teacher focuses his teachings on the art of war, archery, and wielding of other weapons depending on the interest of students. Every Chettri student learns the art of war, and then specializes in one of the weapons Hindu warriors use in a war or in self-defense. They also learn how to run administration and how to tax. In other words they learn science of warfare, political science and economics in the modern terms. Learning and reading Vedas are optional to Chettri students. They are not supposed to learn Vedas but they are allowed to read the Vedas. They become rulers, warriors and administrators.

Vaisays are the people of the business of trade and commerce. They don’t learn Vedas, Hindu scriptures, and art of war or any other weapon-wielding arts. In fact, they are prohibited to read Vedas by the Hindu religious ethics. They could read only Puranas: the history of rulers, warriors and wars. They learn how to conduct business of trade and commerce, and how to make money. Any teacher doesn’t take the Vaisay students seriously. They are for creating wealth and for enjoying the earning of wealth and accumulating wealth as much as possible.

If you are a son of Shudra then you have no chance of learning anything, as none of the Hindu teachers takes you as a student. Teachers believe that you don’t need to learn anything to be in your service business. A case in point is an adopted son of the charioteer of King Dhritarastra: born blind, could not get an admission to any one of the teacher’s school but he wanted to learn archery so much that he went to a teacher saying he was a Chettri. He was called Karna: one of the heroic characters in the epic called Mahabharat. Later on, his identity was revealed. Every time, his rivals snubbed Karna and addressed him as the son of a Shudra rather than by his name. Later on, it also was revealed that he was really the nephew of King Dhritarastra.

In the Hindu system, any teacher had a big hand to shape your future career depending on which caste you belonged to. If you are a Brahmin, he makes you a good teacher or a priest to the ruler, a priest serving a temple, and a priest performing religious and social functions to your clients. If you are a Chettri you become a warrior and win a number of kingdoms, even become an emperor and so on. If you are born as a Vaisay you become a rich merchant, and build your own empire of business. If you are one of the Shudras you don’t have a chance to learn anything from a teacher rather learn the trade from your father. Thus, your trade becomes hereditary.

However, if you are a Shudra and commit any crimes, you would get the punishment one-fourth of the punishment Brahmin would get, one-third of Chettri, and a half of Vaisay, as you did not learn anything of the Hindu scriptures and you are an illiterate. Brahmins would get the maximum possible punishment if they committed crimes, as they committed crimes even knowing the outcome of such crimes. In that proportion people of different castes would get the punishment for the same type of crimes they committed. That was the Hindu law enforced by the Hindu warriors.

Hindu teachers had their shelters often made in the middle of forest. They kept as many cows as possible. They did not need to worry about the fodders to feed the cattle, as the forests were abundantly available and the human population was small. Cows became the source of milk: the most nutritious food. Milk became one of the main foods of the teachers. Fruits were easily available. So, they did not need to eat meat to be healthy. They declared cows as the deity of wealth and prohibited to kill cows and eat the meat. They measured their wealth in terms of the number of cattle they possessed at that time.

Later on, cows became so holy that even their urine and dung became the necessities for cleaning the pollution caused by the death of someone in a Hindu family. At the same time, dead cows became untouchable and only the Hindus identified as untouchables could eat the meat of the dead cows. You could not wear even the belt made of cow skin to enter the sacred Hindu temples. So, cow-meat-eating people become untouchable to the Hindus that strictly follow the Hindu holy laws.

If you were born in the Hindu society you would remain as one of the Hindus of the of the four castes. You could not move up the Hindu caste hierarchy but could go down if you wished. You could not be a Brahmin if you were not born as a Brahmin (Except for a case: Biswamitra was a Chettri but by virtue of being a scholar of Hindu scriptures he upgraded himself to a Brahmin) but a Brahmin could go down to be a Chettri and so on. If you were not born as a Chettri you could not learn the art of war, and other art of wielding weapons. Vaisays had at least some education enough for making money but not enough for being warriors, administrators not to mention to be priests. Shudras were not educated believing they did not need education to run their business. So, the Brahmin teachers must have thought why they should waste their time on educating the Shudras. Later on, some of the Shudras became untouchables as their business became so unhygienic to the Brahmins, Chettris and Vaisays.

In other to preserve their sanity, Brahmin teachers had prescribed the people of the four different castes different foods. Brahmins could eat only some selected foods and fruits and drink selected beverages. They could not eat tomatoes, onions, garlic, millets, and meat, eat only pure food and drink only milk and fruit juice. Chettris can eat the meat but of only selected livestock such as goat and wild boar not even chicken but could enjoy alcohol drinking to some extent. Vaisays can have choices of eating almost all fresh foods and fruits and meat and drinking everything but certainly not eating the cow meat. Shudras could eat everything they could digest but not the cow meat. Only untouchables cold eat the meat of dead cows; they could not kill cows. Killing cows had been more than killing humans.

Brahmins could not eat the cooked foods touched by any other people other than Brahmins. Chettris could eat the foods cooked by Brahmins but not even touched by the Vaisays and Shudras. Vaisays could eat foods cooked by anybody except for the Shudras. They could eat the foods cooked by Shudras if they were out of their home country, as they might need to travel to other countries for the business of trade and commerce. While traveling they could relax their food habit and needed not strictly follow the Hindu code of food. Shudras could eat everything and drink anything they liked.

If your travel includes crossing any ocean then you lose your caste when you return home. However, you can get it back performing some religious rituals and making offerings to Hindu deities as prescribed by the Hindu priests.

You find numerous sub-castes within the four categories of the Hindu caste system. Later on, Brahmins divided themselves to the different sub-castes. Brahmins serving as a royal priests called themselves royal teachers and claimed the highest not only status but also a sub-caste, then, the Brahmins serving as the priests and running the business of performing Hindu rites and ritual for their clients, and finally the Brahmins serving as cooks and working as farmers.

Chettris also very smart to divide themselves. The rulers claimed the highest sub-caste. They even attempted on tracking down their lineage to Lord Rama and so on. Then, the Chettris serving as the ministers, warriors in the army, and administrators and finally the farmers have been divided into sub-castes, too.

Rich Vaisays also claimed the highest status in the society, and maintained their high class society among the rich Vaisays while the less fortunate Vaisays engaged in the retail business accepted the low status in the Hindu society.

Shudras maintained different divisions depending on the success of their business of serving the people of the three high castes Hindus. For example, charioteers of the rulers, and other high-ranking warriors claimed the high status and maintained high living standard.

Even the untouchables divided themselves. Some of them claimed higher than others.

Thus, the four main Hindu caste system had been branched away into many sub-castes due mainly to the teachers, as they could influence the rulers that could upgrade or down grade anyone’s caste depending on their judgment.

July 4, 2012