tantism, or, at least, Anglo-Saxon Protestantism, has regarded
caste as primarily and dominantly a religious institution, whose
spirit antagonizes fundamentally our faith, and which must be opposed
at all points. Hence it is a part of the pledge of every one who
enters into the Protestant fellowship in India that he will eschew and
oppose caste at all times. And it may be said that, though Hinduism
loves dearly compromise and evasion, it has in the main held that a
man who has accepted the Christian faith and has been publicly
baptized into its conviction of the "fatherhood of God and the
brotherhood of all men," has no place in its own caste system, and it
consistently deals with him as with an outcast. As we have already
seen, every man who has travelled abroad has lost thereby caste and
has to undergo expiation before reinstatement. It matters not how
thoroughly he has tried to preserve caste customs during his travels
and in the foreign land, he is regarded by all as a _de facto_
outcast.

Marrying a widow is also an act which severs caste ties and places a
man under the ban. Of course, this applies not to the few castes which
allow widow-remarriage. But as the bulk of Hindus deny the right of a
widow to remarry (though there is no caste obstacle to a widower
taking unto himself a new virgin wife every year of his life), a man
cannot enter into an alliance with a widow without losing caste
thereby.

Beef-eating is regarded as so heinous a sin that no member of a
respectable caste would expect consideration for a moment. And yet Dr.
J. H. Barrows has said that the famous Swamy, Vivekanantha, when with
him at Chicago, ate a whole plateful of beef in his presence and with
a great deal of relish. But he, of course, had graduated out of the
ordinary level of Hindu-hood into the sacred heights of Swamyhood, in
which a man is exempt from the mean limitation of caste, and when the
vulgar sins of common Hindu life are transmuted into the ordinary
blessings and privileges of saintdom.

In like manner, vegetarian castes punish their members for the eating
of any meat. The Hindu aversion to meat is very common; it is also
sanitary and wholesome; for meat-eating in the tropics is neither
necessary nor conducive to health. And yet the Pariah outcast has no
scruples in this matter. It is indeed true that he would deem it a sin
to butcher a cow or an ox; but he will not hesitate to poison his
neighbour's cattle, that he may the