History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v5.c86.s3.1

v5.c86.s3.1

The Hindus of mediæval India presented an equally unhappy spectacle. They could not possibly form a nation, or even one compact sect. A social solidarity like that of the Muhammadans was inconceivable among a people divided into countless mutually exclusive castes, with their rancorous disputes about rights to the sacred thread and the Vedic chant, access to public water-supplies, besides touchability, and in Southern India also approachability. And time and prosperity seemed only to aggravate these differences. "Caste grows by fission," and the multiplication of new sub-castes was in active progress through the operation of internal forces during Muhammadan rule, dividing and weakening Hindu society still further. A Hindu revival like the empire of the Peshwas, instead of uniting them only embittered caste bickerings by intensifying orthodoxy, leading to a stricter repression of the lower castes by the forces of the State, and provoking more wide-spread and organised caste feuds, like those between the different subdivisions of the Deccani Brahmans or between the only two literate and well-to-do castes of Maharashtra, *viz.*, the Brahmans and the Prabhus.