Test of Faith

As disciple and spiritual heir of Mahatma Gandhi, frail and wispy Acharya Vinoba Bhave, born to India's Brahman caste, came to love the Untouchables. Like the Mahatma, he called them harijans, or "children of God." As he tramped across India's countryside, exhorting landowners to give up part of their holdings to landless peasants, the respected Bhave would visit the Untouchables in their outcast dwellings, and accept food from their hands. Slowly chipped at over the years, the Hindu practice of untouchability was declared illegal in the constitution which free India adopted in 1949. But Bhave, like Gandhi, knew that true justice for the Untouchables must come not from man's laws but from man's conscience.

Last week Bhave came to the holy place of Deoghar, in Bihar, where proud pandas (priests) still cling to the tradition in spite of the law. At a prayer meeting, Bhave expressed gentle regret that Untouchables were not permitted to enter Deoghar's 1,200-year-old Temple of Baidyanath to receive darshan, or spiritual blessing. "On the question of service and devotion to God," he said, "there should be no barrier." Later, as dusk spread across the ancient holy grounds, Bhave put his faith in man's conscience to test. The holy man walked silently to the temple with his disciples, among them several Untouchables. When they neared the great stone pile, the pandas gave the alarm. Some 50 of them, many armed with staves and sharp canes, rushed out and set upon the pilgrim band. Bhave calmly instructed his disciples to sit down and accept the beating without fighting back. One disciple was knocked unconscious, three were hurt so badly that they later went to a hospital. Bhave himself was cut several times, although his followers tried to protect his 86-lb. body with their own.

Thanks & Forgiveness. Back in his camp, Bhave admonished his disciples to bear no ill will toward the pandas. Then he offered thanks for "having the blessing of the Lord in this manner." But a national cry of protest rose up across India. "This stupid and brutal assault," cried Premier Jawaharlal Nehru, "brings out forcibly the degradation of those who claim to serve religion, and want to make it a vested interest of their own." President Rajendra Prasad, who gave up his Bihar estates to Bhave's campaign to collect land for his landless ones (TIME, May 11), sent a message of shame and regret. The opposition Socialist Party bitterly criticized Bihar's Congress-dominated government for not protecting a man revered by millions of Indians as a saint.

Quickly, the Bihar police arrested twelve of the pandas for assault, and for barring the temple to Untouchables in defiance of the law. It was the first time Hindu priests had been prosecuted for a defiance that many had practiced since the law was passed. Bihar's chief minister warned the other pandas that he would lead the next party of Untouchables to the temple.

Alarmed and surprised by the clamor, the pandas gave way: they swung back the temple's doors and stood by, some silent, some muttering, while Untouchables flocked in to pray. Bhave set out once more for the villages, leaving behind his prayer that the pandas be forgiven. "This is an age of science," said the holy man, "and every faith is being tested. If our society keeps this in view, and behaves accordingly, all will go well."

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