crowned with the honour which his earnestness,
his eloquence, his power of reasoning, his attractive manner, and his
striking physique and dress called forth, Young India lionised him; Old
India met in Calcutta and resolved that Mr. Dutt of kayasth caste must
drop the brahman title _Swami_, which he had assumed, before _they_
could recognise him. In 1895, having gone to Dakhineswar, the old
residence of his Hindu master, Ramkrishna, Swami Vivekananda was
actually expelled from the temple where his master had been wont to
worship. The Chicago representative of Hinduism had been guilty of the
sins of crossing the sea and of living like a European, and so he must
be disowned and the temple purged of his presence. After a few years,
Swami Vivekananda bravely settled down to unobtrusive, philanthropic
work, one had almost said _Christian philanthropic work_, in a suburb of
Calcutta, denouncing caste and idolatry and the outcasting of those who
had crossed the sea, and recommending the Hindus to take to
flesh-eating. There, and while so engaged, in 1902 he died. How shall we
ticket that strange personage? Kayasth caste as he was born, or new
brahman? Swami or B.A. of a Mission College of the modern Calcutta
University? A conservative or a reformer? Hindu ascetic or Christian
philanthropist? He stands for India in transition, old and new ideas
commingling. He is a typical product of the English and Christian
education given to multitudes in India to-day.

CHAPTER V

WOMAN'S PLACE

"To lift the woman's fallen divinity
Upon an equal pedestal with man's."

"The woman's cause is man's; they rise or sink
Together, dwarfed or godlike, bond or free."

TENNYSON, _The Princess_.

[Sidenote: Social inferiority of women.]

Next to caste, the chief social feature of India is the position of
women in the community. Hindus and Mahomedans alike assign to the female
sex an inferior position. In Mahomedan mosques, for example, no woman is
ever seen at prayer; she would not be permitted to take part. Only by
the neglect of female children in India, and the special disadvantages
from which women suffer there, can it be explained why in India in 1901
there were only 963 females to every 1000 males. In India, as in Europe
and all the world over, more boys than girls are born, but in the course
of life the balance is soon redressed, and in the whole population in
every country in Europe, except Italy[22] and Bulgaria, t