The caste system, which deals with different classes of equal rank, bears no relation whatsoever to the attitude of Hindus to the "untouchables," or pariahs. We will study later on Gandhi's passionate appeals for the pariahs. His campaign in favor of the "suppressed classes" is one of the most appealing phases of his apostleship. Gandhi regards the pariah system as a blot on Hinduism; it is a vile deformation of the real doctrine, and he suffers intolerably by it.
I would rather be torn to pieces than disown my brothers of the suppressed classes.... I do not want to be reborn, but if I have to be reborn, I should be "untouchable" so that I may share their sorrows, sufferings and the affronts leveled at them in order that I may endeavor to free them from their miserable condition.
And he adopts a little "untouchable" girl and speaks with emotion of this charming little imp of seven who rules the household with her gay prattle.
§ 6
I have said enough to show Gandhi's great evangelical heart beating under his Hindu creed. Gandhi is a Tolstoi in a more gentle, appeased, and, if I dared, I would say, in a more Christian sense, for Tolstoi is not so much a Christian by nature as by force of will.
The resemblance between the two men is greatest, or perhaps Tolstoi's influence has been strongest, in their condemnation of European and Occidental civilization.
Ever since Rousseau our Western civilization has been attacked by the freest and broadest minds of Europe. When Asia began to wake to a realization of her own power and revolt against Western oppression, she had only to peer into Europe's own files to compile formidable records of the iniquity of her so-called civilized invaders. Gandhi did not fail to do so, and in his "Hind Swaraj" he cites a list of books, many of which were written by Englishmen, condemning European civilization. But the document to which there can be no rejoinder is that which Europe herself has traced in the lifeblood of races oppressed and despoiled in the name of lying principles and, above all, in the brazen revelation of Europe's lies, greed, and ferocity as unfolded during the last war, called the "War for Civilization." And in it Europe sank to such depths that in her insanity she even invited the peoples of Asia and Africa to contemplate her nudity. They saw her and judged her.
The last war has shown as nothing else has the Satanic[40] nature of the civilization that dominates Europe to-day. Every canon of public morality has been broken by the victors in the name of virtue. No lie has been considered too foul to be uttered. The motive behind every crime is not religious or spiritual but grossly material... Europe to-day is only nominally Christian. In reality it is worshipping Mammon.[41]
You will find sentiments such as these expressed again and again, during the last five years, both in India and Japan. Leaders too prudent to voice them openly show by their attitude that such is their inmost conviction. This is not the least disastrous result of the Pyrrhic victory of 1918.
Gandhi, however, had seen the real face of Western civilization long before 1914. It had revealed itself to him unmasked during his twenty years' campaign in South Africa, and in 1908, in his "Hind Swaraj," he calls modern civilization the "great vice."