East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current, 1905-11-08
THE INDIAN CASTE is AN IR-
REvOCABLE LAW.

Caste is n great social organization
which governs and directs the Hindu
of India in every action of his daily
life, says the Youths Companion.
There are four fundamental divisions
of caste-the priestly or Brahmin
the warrior, the trading. and the la
boring; and these, again, are divided
into subsections numbering thousands,
Below the laboring caste these is a
substratum which is termed Pariah
or outcast. The Pariah, says the
author of Indian Life in Town and
Country" is not much more than a
sanitary machine which performs the
functions of scavenger.
All these castles are hereditary. A
priests son is a priest. soldiers a
soldier, carpenters u carpenter, Il
scavenger's scavenger. There is no
question of what shall we do with
our boys?" in Hinduism; that prob
lem has been solved in advance for
1000 years. For sire to start his
son in any other calling than his own
would be against his caste" and
there all argument ends. For caste
is both social and religious, and in
cludes the calling as well as the creed.
A Hindu cannot change his caste,
although he may be expelled from IT,;
his social status is fixed forever at
the time of his birth, and he can only
fall. never rise. This has tended to
make the Hindus an ambitionless
race. Caste will admit no fusion of
new blood, and when the same eXclu-
sive spirit is imported into the ordi-
nary dealings of life, you arrive at
that stagnant convervatism which is
called custom" in the east.
Caste is restricted to the Hindus,
but custom is universal There is the
Indian peasants plow. The over
whelming majority of the inhabitants
of India are dependent on the land.
and their crops would be much in
creased by better methods of cultiva-
ton.
The plow in use is an implement
which merely scratches the surface
of the earth--an heirloom from re-
motest antiquity. A new plow was
introduced by an enterprising firm
of manufacturers. and lent free for
trial broadcast over a province. 1t
did the work more thoroughly, and
was offered at price within the
peasants means. But 1t did not
"catch on" simply because the plow-
man could not get at his bullocks'
tails to twist them. The superior till
age. the increase of crop, could not
compensate for the REIMBURSEMENT of
this time-honored custom.
There was a contractor engaged in
railway excavation, who recognized
that the soil could be far more ex-
peditiously removed in wheelbarrows
than carried away in baskets on the
heads of coolies. So he invested in
some wheelbarrows and showed how
they were to be trundled, and flat
tered himself upon having introduced
useful reform. The next time he
visited the works he found his men
putting a little dust into the wheel
barrows and carrying them away on
| their heads.
The paraphernalia of Indian daily
life all belongs to the barbarous ages
Attempt to introduce any other and
you are rebuffed with the reply, III
is not the custom. My father used
this article and therefore it is my
duty to use it. Would you have me
set myself up for a wiser man thar
my reverend parent?"
| Thus is stifled all attempt at re.
! form. There is not the excuse of ig-
norance. With the superior mode
before him, the native deliberately
| rejects it, He is not to be beguileC
by any demonstration; he is too com
pletely crusted with conservatism anC
prejudice.