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Book Name: Zen - The Diamond ThunderboltPrevious     Next
 

them to worship in the temples; they are even forbidden to touch Hindus. Not even their shadow should touch any Hindu; otherwise the Hindu has to take a bath to cleanse himself.

And still those poor people go on remaining part of Hindu society. It seems to be a certain conspiracy between the Hindu priests and the government, that the priests are out protecting their temples and the harijans, who were trying ... what harm could they have done? Just worshipping in the temple ... and if a Hindu temple is not allowing a certain section of society, then certainly that section should separate itself from such humiliation.

Hindus will realize the situation only when the harijans separate, because they are one fourth of Hindu society and they serve the ugliest purposes. Once they leave the Hindu fold, then the Hindus will understand who is going to clean their toilets, who is going to kill and murder and butcher animals, and who is going to make shoes, and who is going to clean the streets. All that is ugly has been imposed on harijans.

In fact this gives them great power. Nobody has ever told them that the work they are doing is such that if they stop even for seven days the whole of India will be stinking. And then let the brahmins clean the toilets and the Shankaracharyas clean the streets -- just seven days will be enough for Hindus to learn the lesson. Hindus will come to the harijans and ask them, "Please enter our temples; without you our temples are not temples. Purify our temples by entering them, otherwise the whole society will be in such a difficult situation."

Brahmins cannot do such things, nor can other high-class Hindus. Only one man, Gautam Buddha, really denied the caste system. And because of denying the caste system, Buddhism had to disappear from India.

Another person who denied the caste system was Mahavira, but he was more diplomatic than Gautam Buddha. He denied the caste system but continued to use the harijans for the same purposes as other Hindus. That is the reason why Jainism became a small religion, confined only to the business class. They could not be brahmins; brahmins wouldn't allow them. They could

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