Worship, libations, six sacred rites,
this dharma's full of ritual blights.
Four ages teaching Gayatri, I ask you, who won liberty?
You wash your body if you touch another,
tell me who could be lower than you?
Proud of your merit, puffed up with your rights,
no good comes out of such great pride.
How could he whose very name
is pride-destroyer endure the same?
Drop the limits of caste and clan,
seek for freedom's space,
destroy the shoot, destroy the seed,
seek the unembodied place.
Kabir: Ramaini 35, translation by Hess and Singh in The Bijak of Kabir 1986.
Source: Caste is the cruellest exclusion by Gail Omvedt.
Tags: Kabir