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Some Mistakes Corrected advantages which minimize the restrictions of the social order, which restrictions will melt and disappear as education advances to universal sway. Under another name, if my observations are not at fault, a system of equal rigor and more marked distinction is forcing its way even in this free land of yours, born also of the same motherhood of pride, monopoly, and the centralization of wealth and power. For I find even here great social distinctions, and even religious exclusiveness, lifting their banners and building their walls with a Zeal and a pertinacity of purpose and visible results, that are almost equal to the observable decay of the system as it is popularly believed to exist, in India. I will conclude my observations on this point by quoting a paragraph or two from a very high authority in Her Majesty's India Civil Service and an Honorary Secretary to the Royal Society – Mr. Hober Needham Cust:
"How has society dealt with caste? I can only give an opinion based upon experience acquired in a solitary life among the people of Upper India for weeks and months together without any European companion, I never found caste an obstacle ta social intercourse, nor did the subject ever press itself forward, and yet the population of the villages and towns visited each day, differed considerably. Few villages were absolutely without Mahometan none without men of the lowest caste, and in the thronging of an Indian crowd there must be indiscriminate contact. In my establishment, there was the Brahman, with whom I transacted ordinary business, the Rajput, who carried my messages, the Khatri and Kayat, who engrossed my orders Mahometan and Hindu sat upon the floor working side by side, in constant contact, and handed papers from one to the other; and, If the half caste Christian sat at a table to write English letters, it was only because the method of English correspondence required this distinction. My own tent was daily thronged by men of all castes and positions in life, and my visits to the male apartments of the notables was
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