Storia do Mogor 369.5

369.5

Strange to say, this question of recognising castes is, I am told, still under discussion in the non-Catholic missions of Southern India. In Northern India the missions seem to have ignored caste after conversion; in the South it has been different. The Abbé J. A. Dubois, though not a Jesuit, upheld caste Christianity as a merely civil or social distinction; Bishop Heber seems to have been of much the same opinion ('Narrative of a Journey,' 4th edition, 1829, 3 vols., iii. 444; 'Life,' 2 vols., 4to., 1830, ii. 221, 399). Swartz and the Lutheran missionaries had tolerated caste and divided the Pariahs from the Sudras at public worship; but the younger school of clergy were actively opposed to any such concessions. Even the Bishop calls the high caste demand for a separate cup for the sacrament an 'abominable claim.' Daniel Wilson, Bishop of Calcutta and Metropolitan of India, would allow of no compromise, and denounced all such concessions as inadmissible ('Life of the Right Rev. D. Wilson,' by Josiah Bateman, 2 vols, 1860, i. 392, 424, 437; ii. 218). I believe that in the South of India the question is still one that provokes controversy.]