82 



What one would say now I think is something like this, 

 that about 100 million Indians are engaged in the modern 

 world, in industry and other aspects of the international 

 scene. India has become the seventh or eighth largest 

 industrial power in the world in the last few years. Six 

 hundred million Indians are still living in the Middle Ages. 

 Not exactly in the Middle Ages, but with one foot in the 

 Middle Ages . 



You drive by a typical Indian village, for exanple, 

 and it doesn't look it superficially, but it must look 

 superficially now like it looked 2000 years ago. It isn't 

 quite that way when you get in there. For example, they 

 will have a covered well with a hand pump so they can get 

 clean water. They have antibiotics, lots of antibiotics. 

 They have a road going by. Otherwise you wouldn't be able 

 to look at it ! A lot of the young men have left the village 

 and gone out to work in industry or work in the cities. 



It depends where you are, the caste system is still 

 very strong in some states, like Bihar, it's terrible. I 

 remember about two or three years ago I took my grandson to 

 India — I usually try to take one of my grandchildren each 

 time I go to India — and we went to a village in Bihar. We 

 first went to an untouchable village. There were two 

 villages essentially contiguous to each other. The main 

 village was a Brahmin village, and Brahmins aren't supposed 

 to farm. It's against their religion to actually do 

 farming. So the farming was done by these untouchables. 

 The Brahmin boys all went to the neighboring sugar factory 

 and became coolies. That was quite all right. But not to 

 work on the farm. 



I remember there was a little old woman that we were 

 talking to in the untouchable village. She was quite small 

 and quite pathetic looking. She said, "We never get enough 

 to eat, the untouchables." Right there in the square, right 

 next to us, was a bundle of cloth and under that cloth was a 

 dying baby. The mother would look at it every now and then 

 and see how it was getting along. 



At an early age, the Brahmin kids and the kids all 

 played together. My grandson, who was then about fourteen, 

 was about twice as tall as any of them, and he was sort of 

 like a Pied Piper because he had a camera, and they all 

 wanted to have their picture taken. So as he walked along 

 he had a cloud of about a hundred children surrounding him, 

 both the untouchable kids and the Brahmin kids . You 

 couldn't tell them apart. At least I couldn't, and he 

 couldn't. They were all saying, "Please take my picture." 

 Of course, he ran out of film after a while! He had to 

 snap, pretend to take their pictures, it didn't matter. 



Then we later had a little meeting in the square or 

 the meeting place of the Brahmin village. I remember we 

 talked to a little girl, a little untouchable girl of about 

 eleven years old. She had quit school. There was no point 

 in going to school. It would not help her any to get 

 anywhere in life. She was stuck in that untouchable caste. 



