The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c6.17

c6.17

Fortunately there are not wanting signs of a revulsion of feeling which bids fair to sweep the entire system of caste with all its incredible foolishness off the face of the earth. The great Hindu reformer Rāja Rammohun Roy declared as early as the year 1824 that "caste divisions are as destructive of national union as of social enjoyment." The late Svāmī Vivekānanda, the brilliant representative of Hinduism at the "Parliament of Religions," held in Chicago in connection with the Universal Exposition in 1893, passed the last years of his too short life (he died in 1902) in a suburb of Calcutta, doing philanthropic work, denouncing caste and the outcasting of those who had crossed the ocean, and recommending the Hindus to take to the eating of meat. The voices of other reformers are lifting. Especially the two great native religious reform associations, the Brāhma Samāj, or Theistic Association of Bengal, and the Ārya Samāj, or Vedic Association of the United Provinces and the Panjab, different as are their aims in other respects, are marshalled on the side of opposition to caste, as an anachronism, anomaly, and bar to social and national progress.