Social criticism, where defilement lives
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
कन्या गो करी कथेचा विकरा । चांडाळ तो खरा तया नांवें ॥१॥
गुण अवगुण हे दोन्ही प्रमाण । यातिशीं कारण नाहीं देवा ॥२॥
आशाबद्ध नये करूं तें करिती । तुका म्हणे जाती नरकामधीं ॥३॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
One who sells daughters, cows, and sacred stories. He is the truly fallen one, that is his name. Virtue and vice are the only true measures; caste has nothing to do with God. Says Tuka, those bound by desire do what should never be done. They fall into hell.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
Who is the truly low one? Not the man born low. It is the man who sells what is holy: his daughter, his cow, even the telling of God's story. Your birth does not make you low. What you do makes you low. Good and bad are the only measure. Before God, caste counts for nothing. People ruled by their wants do what should never be done. Tuka says: they are the ones who fall.
What it means
Tukaram moves the idea of pollution off birth and onto conduct, keeping the harshest word in the language to do it. The truly defiled one, the real outcaste, is not the person born low but the one who turns sacred things into merchandise. What makes you low is what you do. Good and bad are the only measure, and before God a person's birth counts for nothing at all. Coming from a man whose own right to sing of God was attacked over his birth, this is less a tidy reform than a testimony; and his anger lands not on the low-born but on the desire-bound who know better and do worse.
Social Criticism
Rebuke of hypocrisy, caste pride, false teachers, greed, and religious pretence.
More in this theme →