The castes springing from political office might, strictly speaking, be placed in the category of professional castes, but those produced by diversity of religious beliefs should be attached to none of the preceding causes.  In theory, that is, only judged by the reading of books, all India would be divided into two or three great religions only.  But practically these religions are very numerous.  New gods, considered as simple incarnations of ancient ones, are born and die every day, and their votaries soon form a new caste as rigid in its exclusions as the others.

Two fundamental signs mark the conformity of castes, and separate from all the others the persons belonging to them.  The first is that the individuals of the same caste cannot eat except among themselves.  The second is that they can only marry among themselves.

These two proscriptions are quite fundamental, and the first not less than the second.  You may meet by the hundreds in India Brahmans who are employed by the government in the post-office and railway service, or even Brahmans who are beggars.  But the humble functionary or wretched mendicant would rather die than sit at table with the viceroy of India.

The quality of Brahmans is hereditary, like a title of nobility in Europe.  It is not a synonym of priest, as is generally believed, because it is from this caste that priests are recruited.  This caste was formerly so exalted that the rank of royalty was not sufficient to enable one to aspire to the hand of a Brahman’s daughter.

The Hindu would rather die than violate the laws of his caste.  Nothing is more terrible than for him to lose it.  Such loss may be compared to excommunication in the middle ages, or to a condemnation for an infamous crime in modern Europe.  To lose his caste is to lose everything at one blow, parents, relations, and fortune.  Every one turns his back upon the culprit and refuses to have any dealings with him.  He must enter the casteless category, which is employed only for the most abject functions.

As to the social and political consequences of such a system, the only social bond among the Hindus is caste.  Outside of caste the world does not exist for him.  He is separated from persons of another caste by an abyss much deeper than that which separates Europeans of the most different nationalities.  The latter may intermarry, but persons of different castes cannot.  The result is that every village possesses as many groups as there are castes represented.

With such a system union against a master is impossible.  This system of caste explains the phenomenon of two hundred and fifty millions of men obeying, without a murmur, sixty or seventy thousand strangers[24] whom they detest.  The only fatherland of the Hindu is his caste.  He has never had another.  His country is not a fatherland to him, and he has never dreamed of its unity.

[Footnote 24:  English.]