Shivaji and His Times c19.s2.19

c19.s2.19

A further hindrance to the growth of patriotism was the infinitely minute sub-division of society, which made the formation of one nation, or a compact body of men moved by community of life thought and interests, impossible, and even inconceivable. Apart from the impassable chasm between the Hindus and the Muslims living on the same soil and under the same rulers, the Hindus themselves were split up into innumerable mutually warring (or, at best, contemptuously detached and indifferent) fragments. Not only did caste despise and persecute caste, but even among the members of the same caste there were ditsinctions as sharp as those marking off the Muhammadan from the Hindu or the Shudra from the Brahman. Certain families claimed to be of nobler blood (*kulin*) than all others of the same caste and locality, and depressed and insulted the latter in society. The highest aim of a Hindu in that age—as even in our own times,—was to elevate his own family (and often also his own sub-division of a caste) in the social scale by lavish bounty to the Brahmans and the caste elders, by hypergamy, or by a nearer approach to the practices of the highest or "twice-born" castes. But the dominant families (or castes) tried to keep the newer or lower ones down at their former level of degradation by turning all the engines of social persecution against them. They took away from such daring aspirants and disturbers of the primeval stereotyped usage and custom, not only the benefit of the clergy but also all the amenities of social life and the services of the public servants of the village. This boycott or outcasting (*grāmanya*) was a more terrifying penalty than death itself.