There is no hope for his sons and daughters of getting
married, however innocent they may be of the sin of their father.
From the moment of "excommunication" the Hindu must totally disappear.
His mother and wife must not feed him, must not let him drink from
the family well. No member of any existing caste dares to sell
him his food or cook for him. He must either starve or buy eatables
from outcasts and Europeans, and so incur the dangers of further
pollution. When the Brahmanical power was at its zenith, such acts
as deceiving, robbing and even killing this wretch were encouraged,
as he was beyond the pale of the laws. Now, at all events, he is
free from the latter danger, but still, even now, if he happens to
die before he is forgiven and received back into his caste, his
body may not be burned, and no purifying mantrams will be chanted
for him; he will be thrown into the water, or left to rot under
the bushes like a dead cat.
This is a passive force, and its passiveness only makes it more
formidable. Western education and English influence can do nothing
to change it. There exists only one course of action for the
excommunicated; he must show signs of repentance and submit to
all kinds of humiliations, often to the total loss of all his
worldly possessions. Personally, I know several young Brahmans,
who, having brilliantly passed the university examinations in England,
have had to submit to the most repulsive conditions of purification
on their return home; these purifications consisting chiefly in
shaving off half their moustaches and eyebrows, crawling in the
dust round pagodas, clinging during long hours to the tail of a
sacred cow, and, finally, swallowing the excrements of this cow.
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