Caste and Race in India c12.55

c12.55

The relations of an individual member to a group in which he is born, and to which he is bound by ties, traditional, sentimental, and cultural, in a society where almost everyone belongs to one of such groups, and none can hope to have any respectable status without his group, are such that they are not susceptible to change as a result of legal enactment, administrative rules, or judicial decisions. Though caste has ceased to be a unit administering justice, yet it has not lost its hold on its individual members, who still continue to be controlled by the opinion of the caste. The picture of the control of an individual's activities by his caste, given in 1925 by an eminent social worker of Gujarat, convinces one, by its close similarity with our description of caste of the middle of the nineteenth century, that as regards at least this aspect of caste, there has been almost no change during the course of three-quarters of a century. She observes: "On our side of the country, I mean in Gujarat, the greatest hindrance to all social reforms is the caste. If I want to educate my girl, the caste would step in and say you should not do it. If I wish to postpone my children's marriage till they are sufficiently grown up, the caste would raise its hand and forbid me. If a widow chooses to marry again and settle respectably in her home the caste would threaten to ostracize her. If a young man wishes to go to Europe for bettering his own or the country's prospects, the caste would, though perhaps nowadays give him a hearty send-off, yet close its doors on him when he returns. If a respectable man of the so-considered Untouchable class is invited to a house, the caste would deliver its judgment against that householder and condemn him as unfit for any intercourse."³