he land; for it prohibits a man
from engaging in any work or trade which is not prescribed by caste rules
and customs; and thus has brought many to penury, want and famine. When
the caste-prescribed occupation or work is not available, the suffering is
very great.

It has brought stagnation to the people by restraining every man who had
ambition to move forward and improve his prospects in life. The whole
village regards as conceited a young man of the outcastes who seeks to
rise in life; they soon bring him low. Progress is impossible under the
caste system.

In like manner, it has fostered the pride and presumption of one class and
destroyed the ambition and aspiration of the other. No people on earth
today are more proud than the Brahmans; none more hopelessly abject than
the Pariahs and other outcastes.

It has also made national unity and the spirit of fellowship impossible in
the land; large corporate interests are impossible for the people. The
castes of the community are filled with jealousy and are mutually
antagonistic; each division having rules and ceremonies which make it
impossible for communion of interests with others. Many would like to see
it removed; but the system itself has created such abjectness of feeling
among them that they dare not come forward to stem its tide or oppose it.

5. The Educational System.

Ignorance still rests like a pall upon that land. According to the census
of 1891, out of a total population of 261,840,000, 133,370,000 were males.
Of these, 118,819,000 were analphabet. Including boys under instruction,
only 14,550,000 could read and write. Of the 128,470,000 females only
740,000 could read and write or were being instructed. In other words,
only eleven per cent. of the males and a little more than one-half of one
per cent. of the females were in any sense literate. In Madras, we find
the greatest progress; but even there eighty-five per cent. of the male
and ninety-nine per cent. of the female population are illiterate. In
Oudh, on the other hand, corresponding figures are ninety-four and very
nearly one hundred per cent. When it is remembered that the Brahmans, who
constitute only five per cent. of the total population, include seventeen
per cent. of the literate class and more than twenty per cent. of those
who know English, it can be understood that the illiteracy of the common
people is still greater than that indicated by the above figures.

Considerable e