ch led them to
grovel at the feet of their social superiors, and they acquire
more sense of the rights and dignity which belong to
them as men. Where they are able to escape their
surroundings they prove themselves in no way inferior,
either in mental or in moral character, to the best of their
fellow-countrymen. Especially is this the case in the Mission
Boarding Schools, where the change wrought is a moral
miracle. In many schools and colleges Christian lads of
Panchama origin are holding their own with, and in not a
few cases are actually outstripping, their Brahman competitors.
... In one district the Hindus themselves
bore striking testimony to the effect of Christian teaching on
the pariahs, "Before they became Christians," one of them
said, "we had always to lock up our storehouses, and were
always having things stolen. But now all that is changed,
We can leave our houses open and never lose anything."

In the heyday of the Hindu Social Reform Movement, before it was checked
by the inrush of political agitation, the question of the elevation of
the depressed castes was often and earnestly discussed by progressive
Hindus themselves, but it is only recently that it has again been taken
up seriously by some of the Hindu leaders, and notably by Mr. Gokhale.
One of the utterances that has produced the greatest impression in Hindu
circles is a speech made last year by the Gaekwar of Baroda, a Hindu
Prince who not only professes advanced Liberal views, but whose heart
naturally goes out to the depressed castes, as the fortunes of his own
house were made in the turmoil of the eighteenth century by a Mahratta
of humble extraction, if not actually of low-caste origin. His Highness
does not attempt to minimize the evils of the system.

The same principles which impel us to ask for political
Justice for ourselves should actuate us to show social justice
to each other.... By the sincerity of our efforts to
uplift the depressed classes we shall be judged fit to achieve
the objects of our national desire.... The system which
divides us into innumerable castes claiming to rise by
minutely graduated steps from the pariah to the Brahman
is a whole tissue of injustice, splitting men equal by nature
into divisions high and low, based not on the natural standard
of personal qualities but on accidents of birth. The eternal
struggle between caste and