While the immediate cause of the outbreak was the quarrel over the mosques, about which we told you last week, it seems that the anger against Europeans is really due to the measures which have been taken to stamp out the plague.
In India there are many races of people who, while they all live under the same rule, have each their own special habits and customs.
These curious customs are rigidly observed. Some must not drink milk, some must not touch lard, none of them must eat food prepared by persons who are not of their religion, and many of them must not leave their own country.
If they neglect these customs they are said to lose caste—which means that they lose their social position among their special tribe, family, and friends.
To lose caste is a very serious thing to a native of India.
Europeans are, as a rule, very careful not to offend the natives in these matters, and are most particular to observe all the customs in regard to caste. But at the time of the plague it was not possible to exercise this care.
When human lives were in danger the doctors did not try to find out what caste sick persons belonged to, but did what they thought best for them.
We know for ourselves, in our own families, that the rules of the Health Board in regard to sickness are not always agreeable to us.
We submit to having our invalids taken to hospitals when they have contagious diseases because we know that we must not endanger other lives.
Imagine, then, how the ignorant Indian natives must have felt, when, for reasons that they could not be made to understand, their sick were carried away by Europeans, and put into hospitals with people of every tribe and caste, all to be treated alike, and forced to eat the food prepared by foreigners.