Security had been unaccountably tight for a shipment of lead. Vasant Rao had insisted that all carts be kept within the perimeter of the camp, inside the circle of guards. No one, neither drivers nor guards, had been allowed to touch the contents of the carts: sealed packages individually wrapped and lashed in bricks.
"Did you grow up around here?" Hawksworth tried to widen the opening.
"No, of course not." He laughed sharply. "Only a feringhi would ask that. I was born in the foothills of the Himalayas, hundreds of kos north of Agra. In a Rajput village. The villages in the Surat district are ruled by Brahmins."
"Are Rajput villages like this?"
"All villages are more or less the same, Captain. How could it be otherwise? They're all Hindu. This is the real India, my friend. Muslims and Moghuls, and now Christians, come and go. This stays the same. These villages will endure long after the marble cities of the Moghuls are dust. That's why I feel peace here. Knowing this cannot be destroyed, no matter who rules in Agra."
Hawksworth looked about the village. It seemed to be ruled by cattle. They roamed freely, arrogantly, secure in the centuries-old instinct that they were sacred and inviolable. Naked children had begun to swarm after the carts, and a few young women paused to cast discreet glances at the handsome Rajput horsemen. But the main work pressed monotonously forward. It was a place untouched by the world beyond its horizons.
"You said this was a Brahmin village. Are all the men here priests?"
"Of course not." Vasant Rao grunted a laugh and gestured toward the fields beyond. "Who would do the work? There must be the other castes, or the Brahmins would starve. Brahmins and Rajputs are forbidden by the laws of caste from working the land. I meant this village is ruled by Brahmins, although I'd guess no more than one family in ten is high caste. The brick and plaster homes there in the center of the village probably belong to Brahmins. The villages of India, Captain Hawksworth, are not ruled by the Moghuls.They're ruled by the high castes. Here, the Brahmins, in other villages, the Rajputs. These, together with some merchants called Banias, make up the high-caste Hindus, the wearers of the sacred thread of the twice born, the real owners and rules of India. All the other castes exist to serve them."
"I thought there were only four castes."
Hawksworth remembered that Mukarrab Khan had once described the caste system of the Hindus with obvious Muslim disgust. There are four castes, he had explained, each striving to exploit those below. The greatest exploiters called themselves Brahmin, probably Aryan invaders who had arrived thousands of years past and now proclaimed themselves "preservers of tradition." That tradition, which they invented, was mainly subjugation of all the others. Next came the Kshatriya, the warrior caste, which had been claimed by Rajput tribes who also had invaded India, probably well after the Brahmins. The third caste, also "high," was called Vaisya, and was supposed to be made up of society's producers of foods and goods. Now it was the caste claimed by rich, grasping Hindu merchants. Below all these were the Sudra, who were in effect the servants and laborers for the powerful "high" castes. But even the Sudra had someone to exploit, for beneath them were the Untouchables, those unfortunates in whose veins probably ran the blood of the original inhabitants of India. The Untouchables had no caste. The part that annoyed Mukarrab Khan the most was that high-caste Hindus regarded all Muslims as part of the mass of Untouchables.