uctio ad absurdum_. A certain
Bengali gentleman of low caste was some years ago entitled to be
addressed as "Honourable," from the high public office he held, yet by
departmental orders the Principal of the Government College would shut
the door of the College Hostel in the face of the Honourable's son.

[Sidenote: New religious organisations repudiate caste.]

Of the new religious organisations of educated India, three repudiate
caste, namely, the Protestant Christian community, the Br[=a]hma
Sam[=a]j or Theistic Association, chiefly found in Bengal, and the
[=A]rya Sam[=a]j or Vedic Association of the United Provinces and the
Punjab. These forces of new religious feeling are marshalled against
caste as a social anomaly and a bar to progress. Mahomedanism in its day
was a powerful force arrayed against caste, but its regenerating power
has long ago evaporated, for in many districts of India caste ideas are
found flourishing among the Mahomedan converts from Hinduism. They have
carried over the caste ideas from their old to their new religion.[20]
The Sikhs in the Punjab also repudiate caste, but they too have
forgotten their old reforming mission. Notwithstanding, we repeat,
Northern India owes an immense debt to these two religions, particularly
to Mahomedanism. Let any one who doubts it observe the caste thraldom of
Southern India, where Mahomedan rule never established itself.
Irrational as caste is in Northern India, it is tenfold more so in the
South, as we have already seen. A noteworthy assertion of "the rights of
men," or more literally of the rights of women, against caste may be
noted in that same caste-bound South India. In the Native State of
Travancore, caste custom had prohibited the women of the lower castes
from wearing clothing above the waist. But about the year 1827, the
women who became Christians began to don a loose jacket as the women of
higher caste had been in the habit of doing. Bitter persecution of the
Christian women followed, but in 1859 the right of these lower-caste
women to wear an upper cloth was legally acknowledged.[21]

But the outstanding evidence of new ideas in regard to caste is
furnished by the Hindu revivalists who, under the leading of Mrs. Annie
Besant and the Theosophists, have established the Hindu College,
Benares, as a buttress of Hinduism. From the _Text-book of Hindu
Religion_ prepared for the College, we learn that these representatives
and champions of orthodoxy de