calculation, "one-sixth of the people are in a chronically depressed and ignorant condition."
But even this opposition of Hindus and pariahs is unimportant compared with the caste system, which divides the Hindus inter se to an incredible extent. The castes, again, are infinitely parcelled out, the Brahminical alone containing over 1800 subdivisions. The principle of caste being that its members exclusively eat together and exclusively intermarry, the result is that India consists of a population indescribably heterogeneous. As Sir Bampfylde Fuller has explained: "For at least twelve centuries intermarriage between castes has been absolutely prohibited; the population of a district or a town is a collection of different nationalities—almost different species—of mankind. It is hardly too much to say that by the caste system the inhabitants of India are differentiated into two thousand species." India, in fact, is a continent of stereotyped chaos. The first preoccupation of each Hindu is to maintain his caste, his separateness, his ceremonial purity, sanctioned, as it is, under the segis of the Brahmans, by rules, laws, prejudices, and traditions. From one point of view, in caste is a man's salvation and happiness; from another, it is the utter negation of equality, the very bar of progress, and the heaviest chain which humanity has ever worn.
And then, piled high upon the top of all the endless detritus of caste, comes the pyre upon which Hindus and Mohammedans burn Indian unity
