Irrational as caste is in Northern India, it is tenfold more so in the
South, as we have already seen. A noteworthy assertion of "the rights of
men," or more literally of the rights of women, against caste may be
noted in that same caste-bound South India. In the Native State of
Travancore, caste custom had prohibited the women of the lower castes
from wearing clothing above the waist. But about the year 1827, the
women who became Christians began to don a loose jacket as the women of
higher caste had been in the habit of doing. Bitter persecution of the
Christian women followed, but in 1859 the right of these lower-caste
women to wear an upper cloth was legally acknowledged.[21]

But the outstanding evidence of new ideas in regard to caste is
furnished by the Hindu revivalists who, under the leading of Mrs. Annie
Besant and the Theosophists, have established the Hindu College,
Benares, as a buttress of Hinduism. From the _Text-book of Hindu
Religion_ prepared for the College, we learn that these representatives
and champions of orthodoxy defend caste only to the extent of the
ancient fourfold division of society into brahmans, rulers, merchants
and agriculturists (one caste), and servants. What, we may ask, is to
become of the 1886 sub-divisions of the brahman caste alone, all
mutually exclusive with regard to inter-marriage? The text-book actually
quotes sacred texts to show that caste depends on conduct, not on birth,
and refers to bygone cases of promotion of heroes to a higher caste
without rebirth. Its final pronouncement on caste is that "unless the
abuses that are interwoven with it can be eliminated, its doom is
certain." So far has the opinion of orthodox conservative Hinduism
progressed with reference to its fundamental social feature, caste.