Caste in India: The Facts and the System c6.s3.17

c6.s3.17

The principle is very widespread, but never absolute. A caste such as that of the Khatris in the Panjab ⁴ is regulated in this respect by complicated arrangements which authorize marriage between certain sections of the caste and not between others. Among various Rajput populations ⁵ several clans intermarry, while they exclude others from this privilege; but this rule is often broken by anomalies. We see, for example, the Gaur Brahmans agreeing at Delhi to unions that similar castes reject in the Doab and Rohilkhand.¹ These are some examples amongst a hundred similar eccentricities. In spite of the value unanimously accorded to equality between husband and wife, more than one caste, and not necessarily the lowest, making very substantial concessions in practice, accepts betrothal from a lower caste.² It is a spirit of compromise imposed by special circumstances, reviving a state of things which must have been regarded long ago with less disfavour than is now the case.