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During the last two decades especially the philanthropic work done by the missionaries in plague and famine time has borne a rich harvest, for the Panchamas have naturally turned a ready ear to the spiritual ministrations of those who stretched out their hands to help them in the hour of extreme need.
And India by finding true independence and self-expression through an imperishable Hindu-Muslim unity and through non-violent means, i.e., unadulterated self sacrifice can point a way out of the prevailing darkness. Vivekanand used to call the Panchamas 'suppressed classes. There is no doubt that Vivekanand's is a more accurate adjective.
No physical inconvenience can warrant abandonment of one's own religion. If the inhuman treatment of the Panchamas were a part of Hinduism, its rejection would be a paramount duty both for them and for those like me who would not make a fetish even of religion and condone every evil in its sacred name. But, I believe that untouchability is no part of Hinduism.
Orthodox Hinduism bowed in such cases to the accomplished fact, just as it has acquiesced in later years when education and the equality of treatment brought by British rule have enabled a small number of Panchamas to qualify for employment under Government.
It is quite true that naturally the Panchamas are poor, dirty, ignorant, and, as a consequence of many centuries of oppression, peculiarly addicted to the more mean and servile vices. But the most hopeful element in their case is that they are conscious of their degradation and eager to escape from it.
All can non-co-operate, but few only can offer civil disobedience. Therefore, by way of protest against Hinduism, the Panchamas can certainly stop all contact and connection with the other Hindus so long as special grievances are maintained. But this means organised intelligent effort.
Non-co-operation with it is free from violence, is essentially a movement of intensive self-purification. That process has commenced and whether the Panchamas deliberately take part in it or not, the rest of the Hindus dare not neglect them without hampering their own progress.
For whilst there is on the one hand a slowly ascending scale by which the Panchamas may ultimately hope to smuggle themselves in amongst the inferior Sudras, the lowest of the four "clean" castes, so there is a descending scale by which Brahmans, under the pressure of poverty or disrepute, sink to so low a place in Brahmanism that they are willing to lend their ministrations, at a price, to the more prosperous of the Panchamas and help them on their way to a higher status.
Not only Christian but Mahomedan missionaries have been at work amongst them, and though the vast majority remain Hindus, they note, like the Panchamas all over India must note, the immediate rise in the social scale of their fellow-caste-men who embrace either Christianity or Islam.
The "depressed classes" of whom we generally speak as Pariahs, though the name properly belongs only to one particular caste, the Pareiyas in Southern India, include all Hindus who do not belong to the four highest or "clean" castes of Hinduism, and they are therefore now officially and euphemistically designated as the Panchamas i.e., the fifth caste.
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