In most societies, killing is considered highly polluting. Since Louis Moulinier’s magisterial study of pollution, Le pur et l’impur dans la pensée des Grecs d’Homère à Aristote, the most comprehensive discussion of ideas of pollution among the ancient Greeks is Robert Parker’s Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion (1983). For the ancient Greeks all evil, crime, wrong-doing and violation of conduct tainted and defiled the perpetrator. Such miasma may at first be literal and physical, when a killer is marked by the blood of his victim, which he must wash off before he can be purified again. But soon the literal, physical aspects of the contamination turned into something much deeper and more severe, a sort of alienation from one’s essence and separation not just from society but severance from the cosmic order. Indeed, it is difficult for us to understand just how serious the threat of pollution was. To be polluted was not only to be split from one’s own inner essence, that which made one a human being and entitled one to the privileges thereof, it also debarred one from the afterlife, whether it was the world of the heroes or the manes.1 Pollution, until cleansed, meant an alienation from self, society and nature.
The extent of the dread of pollution in the Classical world can be gauged by the horror that the Chorus expresses at Medea’s imminent murder of her own children in Euripedes’ eponymous tragedy.
Earth, awake! Bright arrows of the Sun,
Look! Look down on the accursed woman
Before she lifts up a murderous hand
To pollute it with her children’s blood!
For they are of your own golden race;
And for mortals to spill blood that grew
In the veins of gods is a fearful thing.
(Euripides 1981: 55–56)
Similarly, when Jason discovers Medea’s crimes of jealousy he cries out:
You abomination! Of all women most detested
By every god, by me, by the whole human race!
You could endure – a mother! – to lift sword against
Your own little ones; to leave me childless, my life wrecked.
After such murder do you outface both Sun and Earth –
Guilty of gross pollution? May the gods blast your life!
(Euripides 1981: 58)
Once again, what is striking is not just the anger or the grief, but also the utter horror and unbearable sense of pollution caused by Medea’s filicides and murders. As the Chorus says earlier,
Where kindred blood pollutes the ground
A curse hangs over human lives;
And murder measures the doom that falls
By Heaven’s law on the guilty house.
(Ibid.: 56)
What might strike a modern reader is how Euripides repeatedly stresses pollution rather than evil, passion, madness, sorrow, or rage. As Parker (1983: 25–26) shows, homicides in Greek society were considered highly polluted as far back as in Homer. Since there are few traces of blood feuds among the Greeks, the logical conclusion is that murderers were forced into exile owing to the pollution caused by their action (ibid.). This way, the cause of the problem was removed, also obviating the need for retribution.
So high was the sense of pollution caused by manslaughter in primitive societies that in Totem and Taboo, Freud corrects what he considers a general assumption that ‘savage and half-savage’ races are ruthless killers. This misconception still persists in the popular representations, especially in the West. On the contrary, Freud says,
the killing of a man is governed by a number of observances which are included among the usages of taboo. These observances fall easily into four groups. They demand (1) the appeasement of the slain enemy, (2) restrictions upon the slayer, (3) acts of expiation and purification by him and (4) certain ceremonial observances.
(Freud 1913; 1950; 2001: 40)
In other words, a murder could not simply be left alone. It violated the natural order of things and therefore elaborate rituals and observances were required to counteract its baneful effects. Murder, killing and death thus implicate the whole of society in a complex of violation, pollution, purification, atonement and so on, traces of which persist to this day.
Historically speaking, it is likely that some of these ideas of pollution and atonement, prevalent in both pagan and Jewish cultures, migrated into Christianity, where the original sin may itself be construed as the pollution arising from the violation of a sort of incest taboo – in the sense that Adam and Eve were siblings, which is why sex between them was forbidden. The wages of sin, in Christianity, is not only death, but if the sin is mortal, then eternal damnation. Similarly, Cain’s murder of his brother, Abel, polluted him; cursed and marked by God, he wandered the earth till he founded the earth’s first city, which is why pastoral innocence is never associated with cities. Cain was not only the first man born of woman, but also the first murderer and fratricide. Originally a farmer, while Abel was a shepherd, Cain could no longer pursue his original calling because the ground, polluted by his slain brother’s blood, became infertile (Byron 2011: 121). The taint left by Cain’s crime could not be wiped out until, quite literally, the last of his descendants was drowned in the great flood (Byron 2011: 122). The pollution caused by blood is also the reason that women in traditional societies were considered impure during menstruation. To cleanse the pollution of Adam and Eve’s ‘original sin’, however, the blood of Jesus Christ was needed, blood here being much more potent than the traditionally universal purifier, water. Indeed blood, which normally pollutes, is here turned into a super-cleanser because it is after all no ordinary blood, but the blood of the Son of God. The general pollution of (wo)man is thus expiated by the sacrifice of the Messiah. This form of atonement, as Frazer (1951) and others have shown, is a variation of offering a substitute or scapegoat who carries away the pollution, thus cleansing the community. But in this exchange what is peculiar is that the affected party, the entire human community, has no agency in either the sin that they are charged with or its atonement; they are merely passive recipients of both the pollution and the cleansing, their agency confined only to whether they accept the saviour and commit themselves to abjure sin in his name. In the case of Gandhi’s murder, however, we are responsible both for the pollution and for the possible cleansing through the appropriate form of atonement.
In Hindu traditions, in contrast to Christianity, there is no notion of original sin; instead, there is an idea of original purity. The self, atman, is incorruptible, quite identical in substance, and in some views even in form, to Brahman or the Absolute. No wonder there are many words like nirmala, suddha, saucha, socha, medhya, puta, niranjana, and so on, to denote the original purity of the self. In the moral code enjoined by dharma, many negative actions including killing (himsa), lying (asatya, anrta), stealing, sexual misconduct, hoarding and so on are polluting, causing a break in the individual’s contract with himself. Such a self-alienating rift can have serious and harmful consequences not just for the individual but also for the family or community. To mitigate or counteract these ill-effects, the tradition provides for an elaborate system of prayashchita or atonement.
As P. V. Kane’s monumental History of the Dharmaśāstras shows, the Hindus evolved an elaborate methodology of penance to counterbalance the consequences of wrong actions, reducing the guilt and cleansing the pollution that accrues from them. Manusmriti outlines several means of reducing the consequences of sin. These include anutāpa (regret), prāṇāyāma (breath control), tapas (askesis), homa (offerings in a fire sacrifice), japa (repetition of prayers), dana (charity), upavasa (fasting), tirthayatrā (going on pilgrimages), and so on (Kane 1962–1975, Vol. IV: 41–42). In Volume V, Kane also discusses vrata, or solemn religious vows and undertaking, a practice which goes back to the Rg Veda (1962–1975: 1–11). Incidentally, vow-taking was very important in the Gandhian praxis and informed his lifelong experiments in self-improvement.
There is some disagreement on the efficacy of prāyaścittas for intentional offences. According to Manusmriti (Buhler 1886, Vol. 11: 45–46) unintentional sins are expiated through Vedic recitation and intentional sins can be obliterated by performing various prāyaścittas:
(All) sages prescribe a penance for a sin unintentionally committed; some declare, on the evidence of the revealed texts, (that it may be performed) even for an intentional (offence).
A sin unintentionally committed is expiated by the recitation of Vedic texts, but that which (men) in their folly commit intentionally, by various (special) penances.
(Buhler 1886, Vol. 11: 72)
In contrast, the Yājñavalkya Smriti supposes that intentional crimes and violations are not cancelled by prāyaścitta, but the act of atonement will re-allow social interaction with the guilty (3.226); given the linguistic property of Sanskrit to permit multiple meanings in the way words can be parsed, the same verse, however, can be interpreted to mean its exact opposite, that is, atonement will cancel the sins but not permit re-integration with society for heinous offences committed intentionally. In either case, atonement is not complete for intentional sins. There is also a distinction between the degree, kind and agent of wrong-doing, with complicated gradations and variations. However, very few crimes result in ‘mortal’ pollution, which in traditional Hindu society meant excommunication or loss of caste or being forbidden from social intercourse with others, which was tantamount to a kind of death or at least a loss of identity. These heinous sins (mahāpataka) include the murder of a ‘holy’ man and sexual misconduct with one’s guru’s wife, who stands in the place of one’s mother. Here is one list of such crimes: Killing a Brahmana, drinking (the spirituous liquor called) Sura, stealing (the gold of a Brahmana), adultery with a Guru’s wife, and associating with such (offenders), they declare (to be) mortal sins (mahapataka).
(Buhler 1886, Vol. 11: 72)
But obviously this is directed at Brahmins; drinking liquor was allowed to other caste groups. It is also clear that associating with those who are polluted on account of having violated the prescribed code of conduct is forbidden until these offenders have performed the proper penance:
Let him not dwell together with the murderers of children, with those who have returned evil for good, and with the slayers of suppliants for protection or of women, though they may have been purified according to the sacred law.
(Ibid.: 77)
Overall, grievous offences, including killing, are highly polluting. In fact, the Manusmriti (ibid.: 127–146), considers killing not just humans or animals as polluting, but even boneless creatures, insects, trees, shrubs, plants – indeed, almost any kind of creature (ibid.: 144) and prescribes penances to atone for it (ibid.: 75).
From this overview, it should be unmistakable that Nathuram’s assassination of the Mahatma, a case of deliberate and intentional patricide, puts a spell of symbolic ‘pollution’ on the whole nation, already stained with so much blood-letting during the violence and massacres of the Partition. Given the abhorrence, in fact, the impossibility of patricide to the Hindu mind, this act violates the very ‘soul’ or spirit of the nation from the Hindu point of view, fracturing its inner integrity and casting a miasma of horror and despair on its prospects as a newly independent nation.
To understand better the nature of this contagion, we might turn to Mary Douglas’s influential, if commonsensical, study Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (1966; 1984). Douglas stresses that ‘pollution is a type of danger which is not likely to occur except where the lines of structure, cosmic or social, are clearly defined’ (1966; 1984: 114). Having shown at great length how the prohibition against patricide is extremely strong and well-defined in Hindu society, the objection that traditional or mythic notions of pollution may not apply to modern societies or situations is not very convincing. On the contrary, the polluting consequences of Gandhi’s murder would be evident to most Hindus; at least instinctively they would understand its implications, which would register on their unconscious, even if they did not associate it at first with patricide or even did not care to remember it. In matters of this sort, not paying attention or ‘forgetting’ are both symptoms of the kind of collective repression that I have been positing, not of its absence.
Parker’s synthesizing encapsulation of how pollution occurs, which he offers towards the end of his book (1983: 325–327), shows how it is not merely guilt or anxiety that trigger pollution but fundamental breaches in the normal order. ‘A culture’s beliefs about pollution [do not] derive from anxiety or a sense of guilt’, says Parker, but are instead ‘by-products of an ideal of order’ (Parker 1983: 326). What ensues after such pollution, which violates the ideal order is a state of ‘abnormality’, which demands appropriate ‘ritual measures’ to set it right (ibid.). That a son must not kill his father is part of the ideal order of the Hindus; patricide, if Freud is to be believed, is also a universal taboo. That Nathuram does perform such a deed makes him rupture not just the ideal order but also India’s sense of continuity with its past. It marks his brand of Hindu nationalism as a fundamental rupture from the general Hindu tradition. It is thus a radically modern action by a radically modern Hindu. Hinduism, as it were, gatecrashes into modernity through patricide. Prāyaścittas, it is clear, are not just for purging one’s own soul of pollution; they are, necessarily, also for the restoration of order in the whole of society. Consequently, the atonement for this act, the circle of responsibility for which has already been enlarged to include all of us, has to be both social and collective; only then will the wound in the psyche of the nation be healed, only then will a breach in its soul-fabric be mended.
Note
1 Literally, collective powers, later ‘spirits’ of the dead; or ‘the good people’, an anxious euphemism like the Greek name of ‘the kindly ones’ for the Furies (‘Manes’, Encyclopaedia Britannica).
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