When I was touring a few years ago in the Central Provinces with a British commissioner, who was carrying on an inquiry into certain grievances of the peasantry in connection with irrigation, the villagers from the more remote villages were frequently collected along the road to tell their story, and they brought with them their land-records.  These the “untouchables” had to lay on the ground at the feet of the Brahman subordinate, who would have been defiled had he taken them straight out of their hands, and only after they had withdrawn a few paces did he condescend to pick up the books and verify them before passing them on to his British superior.  The latter, on the other hand, though the representative, according to Congress orators, of a “Satanic” Government that has reduced Indians to “slavery,” never hesitated to question the poor “untouchables” closely and good-humouredly, not merely about the particular matter at issue, but about the condition of their crops or the health of their village, and sometimes gave a friendly pat on the back to the youngsters who accompanied their elders, whilst the Brahman stood by in stony and disgusted silence.

These caste discriminations doubtless originated in remote ages when the Aryan conquerors from the north gradually subdued the aboriginal Dravidian populations.  The “untouchables” are mostly remnants of that population, some of them still very primitive jungle folk whom the Census classes as “animists,” or nature-worshippers, i.e. they still worship trees and stones and the spirits that are supposed to dwell in them.  But they tend gradually to include in their worship some of the gods and goddesses of the Hindu Pantheon, especially those who are credited with power to avert the worst scourges to which the people happen to be subject.  Under a sacred roadside tree I have seen in one place a rude stone, roughly shaped to represent the Goddess of Small-pox, and alongside of it a clay image of a tiger that had killed a man on that very spot, set up in the hope of averting further manifestations of its wrath, and also of appeasing the dead man’s soul so that he might remain quietly within the tiger and become a kindly protector to the village.  The appropriation of Hindu deities is usually the first step towards their absorption into the Hindu social structure.  Others, the more progressive, have settled down as cultivators, a few occasionally becoming quite considerable land-owners.  Others, again, have taken to weaving and to petty trade.  Under British rule they have progressed all along the line.  A Mahar regiment has been raised, officered by Mahomedans from the north, as no Hindu would think of serving with “untouchables,” and though Hindu sepoys must not be brought into proximity with it, it has always behaved very creditably.  Some Mahars are now well educated, and in favour of two of them the Governor of the Central Provinces has exercised the right conferred upon him to nominate a certain number of members to the Provincial Legislative Council in order to give some representation to communities too backward to secure any for themselves under the existing franchise.