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Shudra
People who live beneath the caste system and are therefore considered unworthy of interaction with people from other castes.
Pariah / Outcaste Quotes in Kanthapura
The Kanthapura quotes below are all either spoken by Pariah / Outcaste or refer to Pariah / Outcaste. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Section 1
Quotes
Till now I’ve spoken only of the Brahmin quarter. Our village had a Pariah quarter too, a Potters’ quarter, a Weavers’ quarter, and a Sudra quarter. How many huts had we there? I do not know. There may have been ninety or a hundred—though a hundred may be the right number. Of course you wouldn’t expect me to go into the Pariah quarter, but I have seen from the street-corner Beadle Timmayya’s hut.
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I closed my ears when I heard [Moorthy] went to the Pariah quarter. We said to ourselves, he is one of these Gandhi-men, who say there is neither caste nor clan nor family, and yet they pray like us and they live like us. Only they say, too, one should not marry early, one should allow widows to take husbands and a Brahmin might marry a pariah and a pariah a Brahmin. Well, well, let them say it, how does it affect us? We shall be dead before the world is polluted. We shall have closed our eyes.
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Section 17
Quotes
He’ll never come again, He’ll never come again,
He’ll never come again, Moorthappa.
The God of death has sent for him,
Buffalo and rope and all,
They stole him from us, they lassoed him at night,
He’s gone, He’s gone, He’s gone, Moorthappa.
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Pariah / Outcaste Term Timeline in Kanthapura
The timeline below shows where the term Pariah / Outcaste appears in Kanthapura. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Section 1
...or a hundred” huts in total. Achakka explains that she would never go into the Pariah Quarter, but she estimates that there are “fifteen or twenty” huts there. “Pock-marked Sidda” has...
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...the Potters, Weavers, and Sudras. Achakka worries when she hears Moorthy even went to the Pariah quarter, wondering whether “he is one of these Gandhi-men” who disregard caste. “How does it...
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Section 2
...a hut and the butler guides him there. Khan moves in with one of the pariah women, whom he chose from “among the lonely ones.”
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Moorthy visits the other brahmins and then the pariahs, convincing all the people he meets to start spinning. A crowd follows him to the...
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Section 3
Bhatta complains that pariahs are mixing with brahmins, perhaps to one day usurp their place. Rangamma says not to...
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...is not for all this pollution,” but Bhatta complains that Gandhi has himself “adopted a pariah girl as a daughter.” Bhatta says that he recently visited the Swami in Mysore and...
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...has left the earth.” Bhatta tells Rangamma he wants to save her from all this “pariah business,” keep her on guard about “Moorthy and these city boys.” Achakka interjects that “our...
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...one equal to every other—and there were neither the rich nor the poor.” One village pariah thinks this must be a “strange country” without castes or rice or farmers, although Rangamma...
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...instead to simply say she would see what Gandhi’s book and Moorthy say about the pariahs. Seething, Bhatta threatens to have Moorthy ostracized if he visits the pariahs, but Ramakrishnayya convinces...
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...that the Swami has ordered the whole village excommunicated unless Moorthy stops “mixing with the pariahs.”
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...Chinnamma knows that this is a lie and suggests that only people who mix with pariahs will be excommunicated. Narsamma is unsure whether to believe her or Venkamma, since each claims...
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Section 4
...sought prayaschitta [penance] from the Swami himself.” She laments that her son has become a pariah and runs off, spitting and shouting at a pariah she encounters on the way before...
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...to Moorthy, whom the Swami has not yet excommunicated. But, “if he continued with this pariah business,” Moorthy will be excommunicated, since he has no intention of stopping and even called...
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...bamboo and shriveled like banana bark” as Moorthy spent more and more time with the pariahs. He even openly carries the corpse of a dead woman during her funeral procession, and...
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...the village gate, where she spits in all four cardinal directions and then at the pariah huts, shivers thinking of “ghosts and the spirits and the evil ones of flame” and...
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...ceremonies at her house, but Bhatta refuses to officiate and “sell [his] soul to a pariah.” That night, Moorthy leaves. Achakka explains that nobody knows where he went, or even talks...
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Section 5
...ignore the policeman and the rest of the coolies follow suit—they decide to help the pariahs learn to read and write, and there is nothing Badè Khan can do about it,...
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Section 8
...both agree to join the Panchayat (village council or Congress). He goes to visit the pariah Rachanna, but he is out and his wife, Rachi, invites Moorthy inside. For the first...
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...grandchildren enter, and then Madanna’s and his wife, and then “all the children of the pariah quarter” come and stare at Moorthy “as though the sacred eagle had suddenly appeared in...
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...cannot change his holy thread every day if he is planning to keep visiting the pariahs. He takes a spoonful of Ganges water instead. He meditates by the river after dinner...
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...Gowda shouts that they must keep their promise and they agree out of fear. The pariahs ask to take their vows in the courtyard, and a confused Moorthy agrees as Rangè...
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...declines. Moorthy says they need a woman and Rangamma reluctantly agrees. Moorthy calls for a pariah to join the committee, “and then there is such a silence that a moving ant...
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Section 9
...he was 25. He is, however, wealthy, and the marriage party is extravagant, “and every pariah and cur in Kanthapura was satisfied.” The villagers praise Bhatta and Venkamma, finding them “not...
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Section 10
...of “holy deeds.” Sankar explains that the police blamed Moorthy for “the assault of the pariahs on the Police,” and that there is nothing they can do to get him out.
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...wake up. The villagers worry how they might cremate him during the rains, but the pariahs diligently wash his corpse and set up the funeral pyre the next morning. As they...
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Section 13
...Truth, spin wool and “put aside the idea of the holy brahmin and the untouchable pariah.”
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Section 15
...arrive, they discover that a few dozen of the coolies have moved into their village’s Pariah Street, and people from all around are converging to meet Moorthy and join the “army...
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Section 17
...suddenly they hear a shout from the temple. They rush there and see all the pariah women and children trying to stop the coolies’ march with their bodies, singing that Moorthy...
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Section 18
...see cars heading up the Bebbur Mound “like a marriage procession.” They see Europeans marching “pariah-looking people” out, but something seems wrong, and Rachi brings the other women to Ratna, “for...
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...Bhatta’s lands. They have trouble discerning who is coming and return to their preparations as pariah women shriek and shriek around the valley.
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...protest. That evening, they hear more commotion in the town and look out to see “pariah-looking men” spread to all the village’s fields and the Europeans’ cars drive off. They bring...
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