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64 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
cohabited at the proper seasons with these women, who in consequence became pregnant, and brought forth valiant Kshatriya boys and girls, to continue the Kshatriya stock. Thus was the Kshatriya race virtuously begotten by Brahmins on Kshatriya women, and became multiplied and long lived. Thence there arose four castes inferior to the Brahmins.”
No country has such a dismal record of class war as Hindustan. It was the proud boast of the Brahmin Parsuram that he exterminated the Kshatriyas twenty one times from the face of Hindustan and recreated them by Brahmans cohabiting with the widows of the Kshatriyas.
It must not be supposed that this Class War in India is a matter of ancient History. It has been present all along. Its existence was very much noticeable in Maharashtra during the Maratha Rule. It destroyed the Maratha Empire. It must not be supposed that these class Wars were like ordinary wars which are a momentary phenomena which come and go and which leave no permanent chasms to divide the peoples of the different nations. In India the class war is a permanent phenomenon which is silently but surely working its way. It is a grain in the life and it has become genius of the Hindus.
These facts it will not be denied are symptomatic in the sense they indicate health and character. Do they suggest that there is fraternity among Hindus? In the face of these facts I am sure it would be impossible to give an affirmative answer.
What is the explanation of this absence of fraternity among the Hindus ? It is Hinduism and its philosophy that is responsible for it. The sentiment of fraternity as Mill said is natural but it is a plant which grows only where the soil is propitious and the conditions for its growth exist. The fundamental condition for the growth of the sentiment of fraternity is not preaching that we are children of God or the realization that one’s life is dependent upon others. It is too rational to give rise to a sentiment. The condition for the growth of this sentiment of fraternity lies in sharing in the vital processes of life. It is sharing in the joys and sorrows of birth, death, marriage and food. Those who participate in these come to feel as brothers. Prof. Smith very rightly emphasizes the importance of sharing food as a prime factor in the creation of community feeling when he says;
“The sacrificial meal was an appropriate expression of the antique ideal of religious life, not merely because it was a social act and in which the God and his worshippers were conceived as partaking together, but because, as has already been said, the very