ABSTRACT
This chapter consolidates Sundar Sarukkai’s philosophical reading of untouchability. The phenomenological difference between ‘contact’ and ‘touch’, as explained by Sarukkai, is correlated with the notions of purity-pollution and touch-related ability and un-ability. His thesis that touch-un-ability is always subject-centric locates the source of untouchability in the Acharya, an ‘ideal’ Brahmin, a dead being. The ‘ideal’ Brahmin supplements the community of Brahmins and this community carries the impurities of the dead being. To avoid being ‘pure’ untouchables, supplemented untouchables are created. Sarukkai argues that the creation of supplemented untouchables is not limited to a set of people identified as Dalits. It is related to the creation of the objects for this particular metaphysical sense. This chapter applies this reading to the previous two chapters and concludes that ‘contact’-related issues reflect the householder perspective and ‘touch’-related issues reflect the sanyasi perspective. Hence the source of untouchability has to be located in the sanyasi body.
