n
India as in all Oriental communities. Mutual helpfulness is the best
feature of the caste system, of the Hindu family system, of the old
Indian village system, and it explains the absence in a country where
there is so much poverty of those abject forms of pauperism with which
we are compelled at home to deal through the painful medium of our Poor
Laws. But until the leaven of Western ideas had been imported into India
mutual helpfulness was generally confined within the narrow limits of
distinct and separate social units. It is now slowly expanding out of
watertight compartments into a more spacious conception of the social
inter-dependence of the different classes of the community. This
expansion of the Indian's social horizon began with the social reform
movement which had kindled the enthusiasm, of an older generation in the
'70's and '80's of the last century. Far from being, as some contend, a
by-product of the more recent Nationalism, which had never been heard of
at that period, its progress, as I have already shown, has been hampered
not only by the reactionary tendencies of this Nationalism in religious
and social matters, but by the diversion of some of the best energies of
the country into the relatively barren field of political agitation.

Though social reform has been checked, it has not been altogether
arrested, nor can it be arrested so long as British rule, by the mere
fact of its existence, maintains the ascendency of Western ideals.
Happily there are still plenty of educated Indians who realize that the
liberation of Indian society from the trammels which are of its own
making is much more urgent than its enfranchisement from an alien yoke.
Even amongst politicians of almost every complexion the necessity of
removing from the Indian social system the reproach of degrading
anachronisms is finding at least theoretical recognition. Alongside of
more conspicuous political organizations devoted mainly to political
propaganda, other organizations have been quietly developing all over
India whose chief purpose it is to grapple with social, religious, and
economic problems which are not, or need not necessarily be, in any way
connected with politics. Their voices are too often drowned by the
louder clamour of the politicians pure and simple, and they attract
little attention outside India. But no one who has spent any time in
India can fail to be struck with the many-sided activities revealed in
all the no