{"id":3384,"date":"2003-08-08T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2003-08-08T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2003\/08\/08\/2003-08-08-the-brahmins-who-became-untouchables\/"},"modified":"2003-08-08T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2003-08-08T12:00:00","slug":"2003-08-08-the-brahmins-who-became-untouchables","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2003\/08\/08\/2003-08-08-the-brahmins-who-became-untouchables\/","title":{"rendered":"The Brahmins Who Became Untouchables"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.hindustantimes.com\/news\/181_329898,0006.htm\">Source<\/a><\/P><P>PATNA, INDIA, August 5,2003: The Mahapatra brahmins of Sahupura village in Buxar district of Bihar are finding that they are virtual untouchables in their own land. They perform cremation rituals and their very appearance at a doorstep is considered a bad omen.&#8221;We used to knock at the door of a house only when there was a death in the house to perform the cremation rituals, so our appearance is regarded as a bad sign,&#8221; said Ramanand Pandey. But there don&#8217;t seem to be any major regrets. <BR><br \/>\n<BR><br \/>\nMost brahmins in the village said they never encouraged their children to pursue modern studies. Instead of going to school, children start picking up the finer points of their specialised job under the expert tutelage of their elders. At least they don&#8217;t have to worry about unemployment, community leaders said defending the decision. &#8220;The work of performing cremation rituals gives us the guarantee of a job without education. In the neighbouring village, there are many educated upper caste youth who are sitting at home because they have no job,&#8221; said Madan Pandey.<BR><br \/>\n<BR><br \/>\nThe brahmins of Sahupura have the advantage of performing the last rites at the famous Ramrekha Ghat on the banks of the Ganges not far from the village. The place is considered auspicious for conducting cremations because the river turns to the north at the spot. Like the famous pandas of Gaya in Bihar, Puri in Orissa and Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, the brahmins of Sahpura have the right to undertake cremation rituals in a large area spanning about six districts.<\/P> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SourcePATNA, INDIA, August 5,2003: The Mahapatra brahmins of Sahupura village in Buxar district of Bihar are finding that they are,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3384\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}