7
FRUSTRATION
The Untouchables are the weariest, most loathed and the most miserable people that history can witness. They are a spent and sacrificed people. To use the language of Shelley they are—
“pale for weariness of climbing heaven, and gazing on earth, wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth”
To put it in simple language the Untouchables have been completely overtaken by a sense of utter frustration. As Mathew Arnold says [1] “life consists in the effort to affirm one’s own essence ; meaning by this, to develop one’s own existence fully and freely, to have ample light and air, to be neither (. . . . . . .)* nor overshadowed. Failure to affirm ones own essence is simply another name for frustration. Its nonfulfilment of one’s efforts to do the best, the withering of one’s faculties, the stunting of one’s personality.”
Many people suffer such frustrations in their history. But they soon recover from the blight and rise to glory again with new vibrations. The case of the Untouchables stands on a different footing. Their frustration is frustration for ever. It is unrelieved by space or time.
In this respect the story of the Untouchables stands in strange contrast with that of the Jews.
Their captivity in Egypt was the first calamity that visited the Jewish people. As the Bible says
[Quote Childern’s Bible-39] (Quotation not recorded—ed.)
Ultimately Pharaoh yielded. The Jewish people escaped captivity and went to Cannan and settled there in the land flowing with milk and honey.
1 Essays on Democracy
- Erased from the MS—ed.