f a non-Hindu community into
Hinduism. It is thus it becomes a new Hindu caste.[11] Then, uniting
further the mutually exclusive castes, many are the common heritages,
actual or adopted, of traditions and sacred books, and the common
national epics of the Ramayan and the Mahabharat. The cause of the
solidarity is not a common creed, as we shall see when we reach the
consideration of new religious ideas, ideas.

[Sidenote: New ideas opposed to caste, namely, individual liberty and
nationality.]

If Hinduism as a social system is to be moved by the modern spirit, we
may look for movement in the direction of freedom of individual action,
that is, the loosening of caste; we may look for larger ideas of
nationality and citizenship, superseding to some extent the idea of
caste. As is not infrequent in India, Government pointed out the way for
public opinion. In 1831 the Governor-General, Lord William Bentinck,
issued his fiat that no native be debarred from office on account of
caste, creed, or race, and that a son who had left his father's religion
did not thereby forfeit his inheritance.

[Sidenote: Loosening of caste.]

To any observer it is now plain that while caste is still a very
powerful force, and even while new castes, new social rings, are being
formed through the working of the spirit of exclusiveness, the general
ideas of caste are undergoing change. In these latter days one can
hardly credit the account given of the consternation in Calcutta in
1775, when the equality of men before the law was asserted, and the
_brahman_, Nanda-kumar, was hanged for forgery. Many of the orthodox
brahmans shook off the dust of the polluted city from their feet and
quitted Calcutta for a new residence across the Hooghly. In 1904, we
find conservative Hindus only writing to the newspapers to complain that
even in the Hindu College at Benares, the metropolis of Hinduism, some
of the members of the College Committee were openly violating the rules
of caste. In the same year a Calcutta Hindu newspaper, the _Amrita
B[=a]z[=a]r Patrik[=a]_, declared, "Caste is losing its hold on the
Hindu mind."[12] The recent denunciation of caste by an enlightened
Hindu ruler, the Gaekwar of Baroda, is a further significant sign of the
times.

[Sidenote: Offences against caste.]

What does caste forbid and punish? Freedom of thought, if not translated
into social act, has not been an offence against caste at any time in
the period under review