Caste in India: The Facts and the System c8.s7.4

c8.s7.4

A social institution which dominates an immense country, which is interwoven in its whole past, has necessarily more than one cause. It would be a mistake to confine it within the too precise limits of a single deduction. Such strong currents are composed of numerous tributary streams. There are many other countries where an immigrant race has found itself in juxtaposition with natives whom it has conquered and dispossessed without this situation giving birth to castes. Other peoples have known strong class-distinctions, yet the caste has remained strange to them. Theocracy fashions other settings to its purpose. The system in India must therefore result from the combined action of several factors, the most important of which I have tried to indicate.