nthropy which carries with
an even hand its sweet services to the high and the low--to Pariah as
to the Brahman,--all these institutions and influences are at work
like a mighty leaven in the mind and heart of India. And the people
cannot be blind to this influence; and it is gradually transforming
their ideals and ambition.

Connected with these more subtle western civilizing agencies are found
the material agencies which are the dread foes of caste exclusion. The
chief among these is the railroad, the thirty thousand miles of which
are so many tongues to proclaim the doom of past narrowness. The
Brahman, with all his mean pride, cannot forego the wonderful
conveniences of the "iron road and the fire-carriage"; but in order to
avail himself of them, he must sit an hour at a time cheek by jowl
with a low-caste--it may be a Pariah--fellow-passenger. The railroad
gnaws at the vitals of caste life and convictions.

Next to it come the schools. Millions of youth are trained in them
daily to regard caste as an unworthy classification. All sections are
taught in the same classes; they play in the same playground. In both
places the lower often excels the higher caste boy. The seeds of
equality and a common regard are thus constantly sown among the youth
of all sections of the land. If it astonished the recent educational
(Moseley) Commission which went from England to the United States to
study the educational conditions there, when it saw the children of
the President of the country studying side by side with the children
of day-labourers, so must it seem wonderful, and wonderfully good, to
a student of social conditions in India, to behold the child of a
Pariah and that of a Brahman preparing, side by side, in the
schoolroom, for the responsibilities and the blessings of life.

Many other agencies similar to the above are doing their benign
levelling work.

The government, however, is the great leveller. In all its gifts of
offices, in all posts of honour and influence, it distributes its
blessings with strict impartiality, so far as caste is concerned. It
wisely ignores all social distinctions and depends upon qualifications
of culture and character when it seeks men to conduct its affairs.
This is something unprecedented in the land of Manu. That the outcast
should stand an equal chance with the high castes for positions of
honour and emolument was unknown in this land of sharp distinctions.

And even more fundament