to swell the
numbers of the Hindu population in the census upon which Hindu
representation ought, according to Hindu politicians, to be based, those
politicians have certainly not as yet shown any title to speak on their
behalf. For there is no more striking contrast to the liberal and
democratic professions of a body which claims, as does the Indian
National Congress, to represent an enlightened, progressive, and
national Hinduism than the fact that in the course of its 25 years'
existence it has scarcely done anything to give practical effect to its
theoretical repudiation of a social system that condemns some 50
millions out of the 300 millions of the Hindu population of India to a
life of unspeakable degradation. For a long time to come, the depressed
castes will probably find, as in the past, their truest friends and best
qualified representatives among the European members of Council, who,
just because they are aliens, are free from all the influences, whether
of interest or of prejudice, which tend to divide Hindu society into so
many watertight compartments. Let any one who has any doubts on this
point read some of the documents published in the Blue-books on the
reforms--petitions from low-caste communities imploring Government not
to commit the defence of their interests to the Hindu Brahman, but to
continue to them the direct and unselfish protection which they have
hitherto enjoyed at the hands of British administrators.

The "depressed classes" of whom we generally speak as Pariahs, though
the name properly belongs only to one particular caste, the Pareiyas in
Southern India, include all Hindus who do not belong to the four highest
or "clean" castes of Hinduism, and they are therefore now officially and
euphemistically designated as the Panchamas--i.e., the fifth caste.
Many of the Panchamas, especially in Southern India, are little better
than bonded serfs; others are condemned to this form of ostracism by the
trades they ply. Such are not only the scavengers and sweepers, but also
the workers in leather, the Chamars and Muchis of Northern and Central
India, and the Chakilians and Madigas of Southern India, who with their
families number 14 or 15 million souls; the washermen, the
_tadi_-drawers and vendors of spirituous liquors, the pressers of oil,
and, in many parts of the country, the cowherd and shepherd castes, &c.
They are generally regarded as descendants of the aboriginal tribes
overwhelmed centuri