for which Sir Rabindranath Tagore pleads so earnestly in his 'Nationalism.' By perfecting their own systems in the shelter of the pax Britannica the religions can not only add to the sum of the world's culture, but mutually act and react on each other in the process of fitting into the Indian whole. In the meantime, when the higher verities of religion cannot be understood by an unenlightened proletariat, clashes will appear and blood be spilt. The evolution will nevertheless continue, the only real danger being undue haste in political reconstruction. A system of rights does not grow up in a day, but it may be destroyed in a day. In India to 'force the pace' of political development would mean complete ruin to all the forces which are at present working for good.

The creation and maintenance of a system of rights require the recognition, either explicit or implicit, of rights; in other words, the notion of citizenship must underlie the state. That the ideal citizenship is wanting in India is only too evident; it is recognised in the Montagu-Chelmsford Report (paragraph 229) in their reconstruction of the Indian political frame, where it is said, 'Division by creeds and classes means the creation of political camps organised against each other, and teaches men to think as partisans and not as citizens.' I have spoken of creeds, but I have not yet given an intensive analysis of classes. This leads me to a discussion on a subject cognate to the main subject of religion, the subject of caste, which, though intimately connected with religion, is so vital that it must be treated as a subject in itself. In examining the various facts and relations of caste I have, of course, to confine myself mainly to Hinduism, but the Hinduism I shall speak of is not Hinduism as a religion but as a social system. In speaking of Hinduism as a social system, the central fact of which is caste, I shall have further occasion to speak of Hindu ideas of nationality as distinct from Indian nationality.

CHAPTER IV

CASTE

I

COUNTLESS writers on India have described caste in more or less detail, but few have departed from the normal course of description to try to fathom the question of caste and nationality. Of the few whose views of caste go beyond the mere social stratification of Hindu society, only one has made a real attempt with any constructive result to show the relations of caste and nationality. That one is the late Sir Herbert Risley, who, as Census Commissioner for All-India in 1901, received ample opportunity to view the Indian kaleidoscope from a favourable vantage point. Admirably equipped with an excellent classical, historical and anthropological education, a balanced judgment and a facile pen, Risley is second to none in his description of facts and his arrangement of premisses and conclusions. His reflections on Nationality and Caste, published in his 'People of India,' are given after the most complete survey of racial, linguistic, religious, social and educational facts and tendencies yet produced in, or for, India.

As I have already pointed out earlier in these studies, Hinduism is a socio-religious system-two distinguishing features of which are the caste system and the supremacy of the Brahmans. The supremacy of the Brahmans is really an element in the caste system. The Brahmans are spiritual teachers and expounders of the law. They are also the apex caste of the social system.

Caste, in the words of Sir Herbert Risley, may be defined as a collection of families bearing a common name, claiming a common descent from a mythical ancestor, human or divine; professing to follow the same hereditary calling, and regarded by those who are competent to give an opinion as forming a single homogeneous community.' A caste is an endogamous group. The member of a particular caste must marry a member of the same group. Hypergamy, whereby the woman of one caste may marry a member from the next higher group, but may not marry down,' is allowable to a certain extent, but on the whole it is true to say that caste is an exclusive marriage group. Intermarriage between castes is forbidden.

I mention the fact of endogamy because it has a very direct bearing on our central subject. Many observers of Hindu society have found it wellnigh impossible to picture a unified Hindu people, far less a unified India, where the Hindus are so hermetically sealed off from each other. The exclusive groups and sub-groups of Hindu society by their very nature breed an almost fanatical loyalty to the group. The group is a small world or miniature nation in itself. It has its own blood, its own rules and observances, its own government. The caste group produces a caste loyalty. From the nature of the caste, citizenship in Hindu society is primarily citizenship of a caste or family. The sentiment of unity or solidarity is a matter not of a province or nation but of a caste. To the Hindu the influx of aliens or the danger of invasion is of small importance provided it does not endanger his caste. He is governed morning and night, sleeping and waking, by rules of caste. Rigidly caged within its walls, he must guard his cage from encroachment, for what affects his caste affects him. Other castemembers share the same sentiments. They may work together and speak together if caste rules permit, but above all they must preserve their ceremonial mutual exclusiveness. They must eat only with whom caste

rules permit; they may take water only from those who do not defile; they must marry and give in marriage those whom the rigid rules of caste allow.

Sir Herbert Risley drew particular attention to the barrier of endogamy in the development of Indian nationality. No one writing in Europe,' he says, 'would imagine that people who were capable of conceiving the idea of national unity had not long ago passed the stage at which restrictions on intermarriage could form part of their code of social custom.' This, the 'physiological aspect of the question,' has been noted by more than one observer. In the growth and progress of the Roman Empire the feeling of solidarity, though not owing its chief influence to the mixture of blood by intermarriage, was doubtless helped by the ius connubii. The world socio-imperialism for which Sir Rabindranath Tagore pleads is in some important respects comparable to Roman political-imperialism. Whereas the Romans allowed the right of intermarriage not only among the Roman classes themselves but also between Romans and conquered peoples, the Hindu admits such a right only to very rigidly circumscribed castes or caste groups. Not only is the right of intermarriage forbidden by Hindu custom, but the groups cherish that which is the very negation of communal feeling-namely, an actual physical repulsion to each other. Denied the rights of marriage and commensality, and regarded as actually polluting to the touch of higher castes, the lowest castes can scarcely be expected to find a blood basis of unity or a basis of common sentiment with the higher castes. Even the natural love of home and country may seem to be only a shadowy bond of unity where those in authority are able to carry class distinctions so far that the lowest classes dare not walk on the same road as the highest, nor dare touch their fellow-countrymen more highly favoured by birth, without involving the risk of eternal damnation. A society where the intermixture of blood between citizens leads to outer darkness both in this

world and the next cannot normally be expected to unite in the bonds of mutual love and respect necessary for common national feeling.

Sir Comer Petheram, when Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta University, brought this to the notice of the students of his time.

It should be borne in mind [he said] by those who aspire to lead the people of this country into the untried regions of political life, that all the recognised nations of the world have been produced by the freest possible intermingling and fusing of the different race-stocks inhabiting a common territory. The horde, the tribe, the caste, the clan, all the separate and often warring groups characteristic of the earlier stages of civilisation, must, it would seem, be welded together by a process of unrestricted crossing before a nation can be produced. Can we suppose that Germany would ever have arrived at her present greatness, or would indeed have come to be a nation at all if the numerous tribes mentioned by Tacitus or the three hundred petty princedoms of last century, had been stereotyped and their social fusion rendered impossible by a system forbidding intermarriage between the members of different tribes or the inhabitants of different jurisdictions? If the tribe in Germany had, as in India, developed into the caste, would German unity ever have been heard of? Everywhere in history we see the same contest going forward between the earlier, the more barbarous instinct of separation, and the modern civilising tendency towards unity, but we can point to no instance where the former principle, the principle of disunion and isolation, has succeeded in producing anything resembling a nation. History, it may be said, abounds in surprises, but I do not believe that what has happened nowhere else is likely to happen in India in the present generation.

Sir Rabindranath Tagore, a member of the society of which he speaks, says practically the same thing (in his 'Nationalism"). Speaking of Indian nationalists he says:

Nationalists say, look at Switzerland where in spite of race differences the people have solidified into a nation. Yet, remember that in Switzerland the races can mingle, they can