Caste in India: The Facts and the System c6.s7.34

c6.s7.34

It would be difficult to draw up even an approximate list of the offences against which the judicial procedure of the caste is exercised. Even those common to all—the use of certain foods regarded as impure, intercourse with castes whose contact involves pollution, above all, meals taken in common with them—are open, according to the case, to a multitude of distinctions, none of which is without importance. The use of fermented liquors is not everywhere prohibited nor punished to the same extent. Adultery is proceeded against, but it is, in the case of a woman, viewed in a very different light, according as the accomplice is a man of high or low caste.¹ Other cases are more particularly associated with certain groups; there are some where prostitution entails punishment, since it is not looked upon as the normal profession of the caste. To neglect the funeral of a relative and to kill a cow are, on the contrary, offences so grave that almost everywhere they call forth the utmost rigour of the law. On the other hand, only a certain number of the castes are so strict as to punish the man who has been guilty of failing to marry a daughter before the age of puberty,² or of neglecting, beyond a certain date, the initiation of his son and the investiture with the sacred thread.³