CASTE, A LIMITING FACTOR 27 



Therefore the widow is a *' kill-joy" in any family, a per- 

 son who would bring bad luck to any festive gathering. 

 For this reason it was regarded as better that she with 

 her evil spirit, should depart with her dead husband 

 even though that meant burning alive. Again it is very 

 difficult to-day for a Hindu woman to obtain proper 

 attention at child-birth. At this time she is considered 

 ceremonially unclean, and so can be attended only by 

 low-caste midwives who display an amazing unwilling- 

 ness to adopt either cleanly habits or modem ideas. Per- 

 haps it would be fairer to say that their ideas of cleanli- 

 ness are different from our own, for the newly born babe 

 is usually treated with a dust bath or mud plaster which 

 frequently causes lock-jaw, for the soil of India is im- 

 pregnated with tetanus germs. 



From another aspect caste is the direct denial of hu-[ 

 man brotherhood as understood in the New Testament. | 

 Caste separates men into water-tight compartments, 

 caste insists that men born of woman differ in kind. 

 Some at the top of the scale are ''twice born" or ''di- 

 vine," others at the bottom of the scale are inferior or 

 in the significant phraseology of their own countrymen 

 called "untouchable" and considered sub-human. It is 

 impossible for caste adherents to pray '^Our Father" 

 and yet these two words applied to God in the Lord's 

 prayer contain the idea upon which all human brother- 

 hood, and therefore all human justice, is founded. A low 

 caste Hindu who had been trained in Western medicine, 

 a highly educated gentleman, was haled into court at 

 Calicut for polluting a village tank because he, a low- 

 caste man, walked within a certain distance of the tank. 

 He was acquitted, but the case caused much excitement. 

 (See p. 129, "India in 1919.") 



