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Moussa Isa of the Somali was the out-cast of out-casts, the pariah of pariahs, prohibited from touching the untouchables, one of a class depressed below the depressed classes in short a Hubshi! Even a broad-nosed, foreheadless, blubber lipped aborigine from the hill-jungles objected to his presence!
Gokhale contemplates there is no need to dwell. For the "Servants of India," moulded by one mind and trained to obey one will, are to go forth as missionaries throughout India, in the highways and by-ways, among the "untouchables" as well as among the higher classes, preaching to each and all the birth of an Indian nation.
In the larger urban schools under Government control British laws, which recognise no caste distinctions, enforce the admission of Mahar boys, some of whom do extremely well. But in a village school you will often see the poor little "untouchables," if admitted at all, relegated to mats on the outside verandah, where they may pick up such scraps of teaching as they can.
The latter, on the other hand, though the representative, according to Congress orators, of a "Satanic" Government that has reduced Indians to "slavery," never hesitated to question the poor "untouchables" closely and good-humouredly, not merely about the particular matter at issue, but about the condition of their crops or the health of their village, and sometimes gave a friendly pat on the back to the youngsters who accompanied their elders, whilst the Brahman stood by in stony and disgusted silence.
Hinduism with all its rigidity is, it is true, sufficiently elastic to sanction, at least tacitly, a slow process of evolution by which the Panchama castes for there are many castes even amongst the "untouchables" gradually shake off to some extent the slough of "uncleanness" and establish some sort of ill-defined relations even with Brahmanism.
The Brahman quarters surround the temples, of which of course only the outer courtyards are accessible to other than high-caste Hindus. The low-caste "untouchables," who do the menial work of the town, live strictly segregated in their own quarter, which consists only of mud huts and even flimsier shelters of platted palm-leaves and bamboos.
In a caste-divided community they were scavengers and untouchables, living a life close to that of domestic animals. Most civilizations have permitted gifted individuals to move vertically, from the bottom toward the top levels of the social pyramid. Vertical movement was severely restricted, however. Generally people lived, served and died on the class or caste level into which they were born.
His own is another Bible name, of more humble associations, but he deserves to be called Abraham. Thirty years ago a missionary first evangelized and then baptized some two hundred villagers outcasts, untouchables, social lepers. Being newly become Christians, they deposed their old village god. The landlord beat them and berated them, but they were done with the idol.
He is not even allowed to draw water from the village well, lest he should "pollute" it by his touch, and where there is no second well for the "untouchables," the hardship is cruel, especially in seasons of drought when casual water dries up.
There will doubtless in time be gradual sorting of politicians into definite groups, but there are two unbridgeable gulfs in the Indian social system which must always militate against the building up of a solid political party system: first, the gulf between Hindu and Moslem, which still yawns as wide as ever, and second, the gulf between the Brahman and the "untouchables" who, by the way, have found their fears that they would be downtrodden under the new Councils completely baseless.
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