The Importance Of Untouchability In Manu Smriti

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Many treated birth, death and menstruation as sources of contamination. The idea of impurity in Manu Smriti was real and not merely notional. For he made the food offered by the polluted person unacceptable. The Hindus who touch the Untouchables and become contaminated can become pure by undergoing purificatory ceremonies. But there is nothing which can make the Untouchables pure. They remain impure throughout their life and they give birth to children who are born with the stigma of Untouchability attached to them. This is what makes the Untouchability among Hindus so peculiar because it is a case of permanent, hereditary stain which nothing can cleanse. Non-Hindu societies which believed in contamination isolated the individuals affected or at the most those closely connected with them. But the Untouchability among the Hindus involves the isolation of a class which accounts for millions of people. Non-Hindu societies only isolated the affected individuals. They did not segregate them to ghettos. The Hindu society insists on segregation of the Untouchables. They won’t live in the quarters of the Untouchables and will not allow the Untouchables to live inside the Hindu quarters. It is not the case of social separation, rather it is the stoppage of social integration. People were treated impure but as individuals by the Non-Hindus. Never a whole class was treated as impure. Moreover, their impurity was if a temporary duration and was curable by performing certain rites.

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