Caste in India: The Facts and the System c8.s6.22

c8.s6.22

In classical antiquity the slow fusion of the classes is at once the stimulant and the result of civil and political ideas. In India the theocratic power blocks all evolution in this direction; and India has never attained to the idea either of the state or of the fatherland. The sphere of interest contracts rather than expands. In the republics of antiquity the class-conception tended to develop into the wider idea of the city; in India it grows more sharply defined, and inclines to confine itself within the narrow limits of the caste. We must not forget that the immigrants were scattered over an immense area; groups too vast were doomed to dispersion, and in these circumstances peculiar tendencies acquired added strength.