Page:An Essay On Hinduism.pdf/108

mission into that caste. If any particular caste wishes to take in a foreigner, the Hindu community as a whole has no power to prevent it.

Again, there is another way by which a person, or a group of persons, can call themselves Hindus. All that is necessary is that that group of persons should begin to call itself Hindus. If they do that, nobody in the world can prevent it. Of course, almost all of the existing castes will decline to intermarry with the newly-formed group; but even the existing Hindu castes do not marry with each other. After a generation or two nobody would doubt their claim as Hindus. There has been a case where a Roman Catholic community, which quarrelled with their priests, and gave up Christianity, bought Hindu gods, worshipped them, and became Hindus. Nowadays, their claim to Hinduism is undisputed.

The question of the admission of foreigners into the fold has not been sufficiently brought forward, but the question of the "reclamation of the fallen," that is, readmitting those men who have given up Hinduism and have joined Christianity, or other ignoble (anārya) sampradāyas, has received considerable attention. Though attention has been brought to this question no rational methods have been adopted. At present this subject is one of those on which "social reformers" can display their zeal by eloquence, but how such a reclamation can be accomplished has hardly been understood by them.

The observation of facts solves the question in itself. If a man is converted to the Christian theophratry and wishes to return to Hinduism, all that he is anxious to do is give up his connexion with "the Christian caste" and enter his caste back again. In this case the proper authority to