Government hospital and be refused admission by a native medical officer
because his presence polluted at a distance of 24 feet--has not the
Government Report declared it so? It is no fancy, for a year or two ago
the Post Office reported that in one village the Post Office was found
located where low castes were not allowed to approach. In some
provinces, also, teachers will object to the admission of low-caste
children in their schools; or "if they admit them make them sit outside
in the verandah."[18] What now of the dignity of manual labour which
many a high official has expounded to native youth? Or to take another
instance of un-British countenancing of the caste idea. The Shahas of
_Bengal_ are a humble caste, and the members of higher castes will not,
as a rule, take water at their hands, so the Government Report tells us.
On the other hand, the Shahas of _Assam_, immigrants from Bengal, have
managed to raise themselves high in the social scale. Why, when an Assam
Shaha takes up his residence again in his motherland, Bengal, should
this Blue-book be casting up to him his humble origin? Why this
un-British weighting of those who are behind in the race? Again, at the
very time of the Census, the Maratha caste was in conflict with the
brahman in two Native States of Western India, Kohlapur and Baroda, over
a matter of religious privileges. The brahman contention is that the
Mahratta pretensions to high-caste blood [kshatriya] are groundless, and
now we have the very same statement in the _Census Report_, backing "the
king of the castle" against "the dirty rascal." Not a century ago,
students of kayasth [clerk] caste were excluded from the Sanscrit
College in Calcutta; they are now within the privileged circle, but
their claim might not yet have been made good had a Government Blue-book
of these earlier days been allowed to brand them as debarred from the
College by their caste. At a public meeting the writer heard one of the
most learned and respected Hindus of Calcutta respectfully protest to
the Lieutenant-Governor against the public recognition in the _Census