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India's population groups forty-seven nationalities, divided into 2,378 recognized castes and tribes. Accident of birth determines irrevocably a native's social and domestic relationship, prescribing even what he may eat and drink throughout life, how he must dress, and whom he may marry.
But secondly in the three upper castes the dividing principle, as reported in the earliest accounts, is not race but occupation. We find in most Aryan countries a division into nobles and people, but in India these two classes become three, the priests having been able to assume a prominence unknown elsewhere and to stamp on literature their claim to the highest rank.
The various projects for securing a greater equality among men must be scrutinized with an eye to their total effects upon human happiness. What flagrant forms of inequality exist in our society? Equality is a modern ideal; in former times it was generally assumed that men inevitably belong to classes or castes; that some must have luxury and others poverty, some must rule and others obey.
As regards the subject of low castes raising themselves in the social scale, I know of no instances that have fallen within my own observation, but I have obtained information from other parts of Mysore, the truth of which I have no reason to doubt, although I would advise the reader to receive what I have to say on this point with the same caution that he should receive all information which is even in the smallest degree removed from the experience of personal observation.
At the banquet, with its quail and pheasant, its fruits and flowers, its rare plates and its rarer goblets for the light wines high castes permitted themselves occasionally to drink, Ramabai toyed idly with his goblet and thoughtlessly pushed it toward Kathlyn, who sat at his right.
All they know is that, excluded from the temples by the Brahmans on account of their not belonging to any of the Hindu castes, they are admitted sometimes into the Christian pagodas, thanks to the "padris," a name adopted from the Portuguese padre, and applied indiscriminately to the missionaries of every European sect.
"In the small state of Travancore, where my friend Sir Modava was born, there are said to be four hundred and twenty different castes. The distinction is sometimes the result of occupation, branch of trade, or some accidental circumstance. Let me read a short extract from a book from your library:
The native side of the movement is the work of a limited class, a microscopic minority, as Lord Dufferin described it, when compared with the people proper, but still a very interesting class, seeing that it is of our own creation. It is composed almost entirely of those of the literary or clerkly castes who have received an English education." "Surely that s a very important class.
Such was the destiny of the Romans, and of the Barbarians after them. But a people, having taken its rise in civilisation and democracy, which should gradually establish an inequality of conditions until it arrived at inviolable privileges and exclusive castes, would be a novelty in the world; and nothing intimates that America is likely to furnish so singular an example.
They regarded them, for the most part, as inferior beings. And there were castes even among the officers. I remember that in the last phase, when we captured a number of cavalry officers, these elegant sky-blue fellows held aloof from the infantry officers and would not mix with them.
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