BRAHIM FADLALLAH shrugged his shoulders: "You do not understand, my friend. You cannot get it through your head that it is impossible to destroy caste and to create fraternity by Act of Parliament. Allah—you can't even do it in your own country."
"But modern progress—the telegraph—the democracy of the railway carriage—" interrupted the American.
"You can compel a Brahmin to sit in the same office and to ride in the same railway compartment with a man of low caste, but you can never force him to eat with him or to give him his daughter in marriage. You spoke of those who are educated abroad—and even they, my friend, when they return to Hind, drift back into caste and the ways of caste. For there is a little thread—oh, such a tiny, thin little thread—which binds them to their own land, their own kin, their own caste. And it seems that they have not the strength to break it—this little thread. Ah, yes! Let me tell you something which occurred last year—a true tale—and please do not forget the thread, the little thread—
"Now the whole thing was like a play in one of your theatres—it was staged, dear one, and well staged. The scene was the great hall in which meets the caste tribunal of a certain Brahmin clan. Imagine, if you please, a huge quadrangle, impressively bare but for a low dais at one end. covered with a few Bengali shawls and an antelope skin or two—ah!—and then the dramatic atmosphere. Not the atmosphere of death—oh, no!—much worse than death, much worse. For what is death compared to the loss of caste? And that afternoon they were going to try a man who had polluted his blood, who had sinned a great sin, a sin more heinous than the killing of cows—not a sin according to your code of laws—but then they were men of a different race, and their ins are not your sins—eh?—and mayhap their virtues may not be your virtues.
"On the dais sat his Holiness Srimal Muniswamappa Rama-Swami, and on either side of him stood anxious disciples who looked with awe at his thin, clean-shaven lips and fanned his holy old poll with silver-handled yak tails. Near him sat the pleader and a few Brahmin grandees, whom he was in the habit of consulting in cases of importance. At a respectful distance were the men of the clan: they filed in slowly, prostrating themselves in turn before the Swami and uttering the name of the presiding deity with trembling lips, while his Holiness smiled a contemplative smile, and while his fingers counted the beads on his rosary. The proceeding opened with a sermon pronounced by the Swami. First, he praised Ganesa, Sarasvati, and half a dozen other assorted deities, and then with a great abundance of detail and many long-winded quotations he set forth the duties of the twice-born. He told them that a Brahmin should not break up clods of earth nor tear up the grass under his feet; that he should not look at the setting sun, the vising sun, the sun in eclipse, the image of the sun in a pool of water; that be should not point at the stars with fingers of irreverence; that he should not sleep with his head turned toward the north or west; that he should abstain from cutting his nails with his teeth, from using the same toothstick more than once, from eating off plates used by others, and from wearing sandals worn by strangers—and a thousand such foolish injunctions. The assembly was politely bored, but the Swami enjoyed himself hugely. For it gave him an opportunity to show his great learning and his wonderful memory, and then, like most holy men, he loved to lay stress on the outward emblems of his faith. lie illustrated his sermon by relating several horrid examples, chiefly that of a wicked barber who had shaved a Brahmin with a razor which had been polluted by the shadow of a low-caste falling on it. Finally, be commented on the advent of modernity and expounded with more lengthy and tiresome quotations how the devils of progress, skepticism, irreverence, and anarchy were making headway amongst the twice-born, how the young Brahmins were making their names a name of scorn in the present world and spoiling their chances for the future world.