28 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW 



To return to what is both the social and economic 

 aspect of caste. There is an unwillingness to have sani- 

 tary latrines in the villages. The people go out into the 

 fields to relieve themselves and fail completely to follow 

 the Mosaic law in this matter (Deut. 23 : 13) of the dis- 

 posing of refuse. Such an omission is the inevitable 

 cause of widespread disease, the contamination of the 

 water supply, and the fouling of all approaches to the 

 village. Added to objections of this nature, caste re- 

 stricts marriage within very narrow limits, caste pre- 

 vents those social amenities which the Westerner as- 

 sociates with his meal times and therefore hinders the 

 consequent interchange of ideas. It supports a joint 

 family system in which all share alike, where the drones 

 and the ne'er-do-wells can take the heart out of the work- 

 ing members of the family by refusing to work, but in- 

 sist upon being fed. It causes the minute distribution 

 of all property and thus lies behind the present un- 

 economic system of land holding where the farm is broken 

 up into scattered strips and into holdings so small as to 

 prevent a family from obtaining a decent living from the 

 produce of such a tiny acreage. 



Let it be understood, however, that in this criticism 

 of the system of caste as it stands to-day, condemnation 

 is not wholesale. Caste is not all bad. It has its good 

 side. Surely a system which has succeeded in holding 

 a great people together for untold centuries must have 

 in it elements of unusual cohesive strength. The trouble 

 is that caste has undergone so little change that it has 

 failed to adapt itself to the changing conditions of hu- 

 man life. Caste is outgrown. It is an anachronism in 

 a world in which the railroad, the telegraph, the penny 



