CHAPTER 4
Symbols of Hinduism
There are 37 pages under this title. The chapter seems incomplete. However this relates to the topic No. 7 of the original plan. All these pages are tagged along with the pages of “India and Communism” into One register. We are reproducing the text of this typed copy along with the table of contents written by Dr. Ambedkar.
A photo copy of the plan of a proposed book ‘Can I be a Hindu ?’ is also reproduced from the original (moth- eaten). —Editors
Is there anything peculiar in the social organization of the Hindus ? An unsophisticated Hindu who is unaware of investigations conducted by scholars will say that there is nothing peculiar, abnormal or unnatural in the organization of the Hindu society. This is quite natural. People who live their lives in isolation are seldom conscious of the peculiarities of their ways and manners. People have gone on from generation to generation without stopping to give themselves a name. But how does the social organization of the Hindus strike the outiders, the non-Hindus ? Did it appear to them as normal and natural as it appears to the Hindus?
Megasthenese who came to India as the ambassador of the Greek King Seleukos Nickator to the Court of Chandragupta Maurya some time about the year 305 B.C. did feel that the social organization of the Hindus was of a very strange sort. Otherwise, he would not have taken such particular care to describe the peculiar features of the Hindu social organization. He has recorded:
“The population of India is divided into seven parts. The philosophers are first in rank, but form the smallest class in point of