Page:An Essay On Hinduism.pdf/171

taken into consideration then, first of all, making non-Hindus into Hindus simply means raising the foreign races to the status of an Ārya.

How is this work accomplished? By contact merely. Take a number of Hindus, let them come into contact with uncivilized people, and become dominant among them. In the course of time the uncivilized tribes will adopt Hindu ways and manners and become what the world would call "Hindu low castes." Although this method has succeeded with uncivilized tribes, it has failed to "Hinduize" more cultured foreign races. It does not mean that Mohamedans and Christians in India do not resemble Hindus in manners, customs and ideas. In fact, they do, and yet the fact is that they do not consider themselves Hindus. For, the acceptance of the social system of the Hindu by them as their own would make them in theory simply low castes of the Hindu community. To uncivilized races there is no alternative, but that is not the case with Mohamedans and Christians. They have a desire to consider themselves apart from the Hindu community.

Hinduism does not make any distinction between refined Europeans and foreign civilized nations, like the Chinese and the Japanese, on one hand, and the savage tribes in India on the other, like Bhils, Todas, and Garos. They all are mlechchhas, or barbarians, for there is only one civilization in the world and that is Hindu or Brāhmaṇical; the rest are barbarisms, defilements, or practices of the excluded communities.

Under these circumstances there is only one method possible whereby members of respectable foreign communities could become members of the Hindu society, and it is by their joining the sampradāyas, like the Ārya-samāja