Two main facts appear from the very beginning of any study on traditional Indian society. One is the very particular organization of society, which has been responsible for the balance that has enabled Hindu civilization to survive all invasions and to develop without revolutions or important changes, throughout more than four millennia, with a continuity that is unique in history. The other is the aptitude of this society to assimilate new elements, whether whole populations of conquerors or conquered, or technical, philosophical, religious, and scientific developments, corresponding to the successive contributions of the various ages of mankind. In our own time, this power of integration has been at work in the apparently rigid society of the princely states of India, which, while respecting the norms and principles of the Hindu hierarchy, adapted themselves more efficiently to modern technology than did the provinces of British—and subsequently Republican—India, where the attempts to destroy the Hindu social order have made modernization inefficient and aberrant.

Wherever modernization has taken place in the framework of India's traditional society, it has been easier, more effective, more complete, and more durable than when it has been tied to Islamic or Western-type social transformation.

A serious and impartial study of Hindu society shows that its principles are among the most modern and most adaptable in the world, enabling it to offer solutions to problems that plague other civilizations. Some aspects of Hindu society appear rigid to our eyes because for more than a thousand years it has withdrawn into itself as a result of successive domination by Muslims and Europeans, whose influences are still felt, the present governing class being entirely trained by Western standards. Until independence, only the princely states were in a position to maintain the essential bases of social order. This is no longer so.

Hinduism is a religion without dogmas. Since its origin, Hindu society has been built on rational bases by sages who sought to comprehend man's nature and role in creation as a whole. They organized society in such a way as to facilitate the development of each human being, taking into account his inner nature and the reasons for his existence, since for the Hindus the world is not merely the result of a series of chances but the realization of a divine plan in which all aspects are interconnected. An examination of the principles that have guided the organization of Hindu society may therefore be of interest. Instead of the slogans on which modern society seeks to build itself, we find an effort to try to understand social realities and the roles of the various races, as well as of the various kinds of human beings, in creation as a whole — an effort that alone can enable us to adjust to problems that would otherwise be insoluble.

In the Hindu view, the West has disseminated disorder and confusion everywhere by refusing to recognize the Creator's will in giving men different aptitudes, even going so far as to refuse to admit any difference in the duties, aptitudes, functions, and ethics of males and females, who are the very manifestation of cosmic opposites. For the Hindu, such leveling is indicative of the suicidal tendency of a species, inasmuch as the intensity of life is based on its wide range of differences, while leveling in any order of things is always the symbol of death itself.

It is not easy to explain the structure of one civilization in terms of another. Every social organization presents seeming injustices, unsolved human problems, and dissimulated or accepted forms of cruelty. We are easily shocked when the habits of other peoples differ from our own but remain unconscious of the defects of our own social structures, which are accepted as inevitable, in the pious hope that the future may find some solution for them. We usually seek to reform our institutions on the basis of political ambitions, which tend to replace one injustice with another, merely changing the status of the victims. The recent history of the West is most eloquent on this point.

If we do not know ourselves, we cannot understand the outside world. The key to the macrocosm lies in the microcosm, since it is only in our own being, by introspection, that we can finally attain access to the Cosmos, without being limited by the barrier of our senses. This is true not only for the individual but also for mankind collectively. Nothing can be understood about social man and his nature, behavior, real needs, and destiny without placing him accurately in the context of universal phenomena, without understanding the role and function of man in the world.

Hindu society is the result of an attempt to situate man in the plan of creation and to understand the nature and utility of his various aspects, including race, degree of development and mental possibilities, the diversity of individuals and their tendencies, and the implications of this diversity in intergroup relations. The society set up by the Hindus seeks to conform to a general order—a universal plan that governs the birth of worlds, the birth of life itself, the movements of the stars, and the currents of thought — that gives mankind a reason for being other than mere material progress from which only a few can benefit.

In the application of such a plan, if not in its very gestation, some errors of postulation may inevitably be made. Society realizes that these errors do not fully represent the real order of things or reflect the nature of the world exactly as it appeared in the mind of the Cosmic Being. It is probable that, more than any other, the Hindus' concept of society has taken into account the reality of the various human, material, mental, spiritual, individual, and social levels, while prudently avoiding the theoretical and imprecise speculations that have caused the decline and fall of other civilizations. The absence of dogmatism inherent in Hindu thought always leaves the door open to technical improvements corresponding to progress in discovering the subtle nature of the world and things.

In any society, rigid systems lead to abuse and injustice, but prudence is necessary to avoid rapid judgements. The same cruelties and inequalities are found in all social systems, because they reflect a particular aspect of the nature of creation and themselves belong to the nature of things. Such injustices are, moreover, more dangerous when they are wilfully ignored and considered accidental or inevitable. The only differences in the hierarchy of injustice, in the degradation of the human being, are usually merely of moment and procedure but are sufficient to make us all blind to the defects of our own social order and alive to those of others. For example, no society, even those practicing slavery, treats human beings with greater harshness and contempt for their inner dignity or with more vulgar tyranny than conscripts are treated in most European armies. Yet most citizens appear to find it natural to subject their sons—and curiously not their daughters—to this treatment against their own will. Should one of these military slaves revolt, should he have the dignity to strike a superior who insults him and forces him to perform useless and degrading work, he will in all probability pass the rest of his days in one of those charming rest homes known as convict prisons, unless he is shot, the war season permitting. The so-called pariahs of India have never been subjected to such outrage and have never been required, even temporarily, to strip themselves of their dignity and personality in such a way. In India, the military career is strictly reserved to
the warrior caste, to which kings belong. This caste is the highest after the priestly caste, and its social privileges are a compensation for the risks run in defending the other castes.

Every civilization has professions that are more or less noble, or more or less disparaged. Only the method of selecting individuals for them varies, and it is not always easy to discern which is best. Street-sweepers are rarely invited to lunch with middle-class families, yet virtuous Europeans are often heard decrying caste injustice and the odious Brahman who will not share his meal with the butcher or allow the sweeper or the tanner to draw water from his well.

Contrary to what is taught on human equality, the Brahman believes that all men are equal in their possibilities and rights on the level of spiritual realization, but that on the human level each has a function, that they are born with different duties to fulfil and aptitudes that differ, and that such differences are not aberrations due to an irresponsible creator but correspond to the fundamental necessities of the species. It is necessary to understand these differences in all individuals if their earthly life is to bear fruit. By creating strict limits that take into account the various aptitudes of different men, Hindu society has eliminated an unequal free-for-all competition in which the weakest is always the victim. Caste society gives each man a place among his equals, after which the caste takes its place in society. Even if such a place is not much, it is impregnable and certain. In all cases it is much more comfortable and enriching than whatever the isolated caste could have created for itself in its environment and original conditions of life. The individual leaves his group only if he has sufficient merit to make himself a place above and outside the castes.

It should not be forgotten that the greatest poets, such as Sura Dasa, Kabir, and Rama Dasa; the most venerated saints; and the famous artists who sculpted the images in the great temples of India often came from the humblest classes of society.

The West can boast no advantage here, no effectual superiority. Wherever they survive in theoretically egalitarian societies, institutions like the castes always give such isolated groups, even when they are ill-treated and
unjustly persecuted, the possibility of working usefully for the very society that isolates them. In this connection, one of the most important contributions by the ex-slaves of the New World to modern civilization — jazz — would probably never have developed if the blacks had not at the same time formed a separate caste by their work, playing a functional role in the development of American society. If they had been directly assimilated by white society, they might well not have contributed anything of importance to the culture of the United States or to the world in general. On the other hand, if racial groups are isolated, crowded into reserves like the American Indians or Australian aborigines, they can only atrophy and disappear.

Historically, all attempts to establish the equality of men without taking castes into account have led to the destruction of the weak by the strong—if not always physically, at least culturally, socially, and religiously. This is inevitable, since each group cherishes its institutions, customs, social laws, religion, culture, and language and in fact thinks and acts like a caste. If one group is unable to impose its way of life and thinking on the rest, it can be sure that in a casteless society, sooner or later, it will see the triumph of the culture, religion, and customs of one of its adversaries, or at the very least a mixture will be produced and a compromise imposed. Islam, which in theory and doctrine recognizes no social or racial distinction in religion or state should, by definition, be the most democratic. In reality it has been the most intolerant and destructive. Wherever Islam has passed, only ruins and deserts can be seen and whole peoples annihilated. Presiding over the disaster is democratic Islam, which treats the few survivors of the civilizations destroyed, who have submitted body and soul to its physical and spiritual conquest, with a considerable sense of equality and justice. Of them it may be said what Tacitus said of the Romans: "They create a desert and say they have established peace." It was also to impose their ideal of equality, so profoundly contrary to that of liberty, that the Western peoples sought to impose their ideas, culture, religion, language, and ways of living and thinking on the peoples of their empires who preferred to live and think differently.

Whole races and civilizations have been destroyed by the European conqueror so that he can preserve the illusion of living in a world of justice, equality, and democracy. In reality, so long as the Western world does not take into account a system of mutual guarantees allowing different races, cultures, and religious forms to coexist, and prohibiting proselytism and mixtures, it will never be able to form nations or empires in which the various racial elements can collaborate without any of them feeling the need to destroy another or reduce it to impotence.

The apparent decadence of contemporary India is not, as is sometimes believed, ascribable to the nonadaptability of a social and religious tradition that paralyzes every modern development. On the contrary, it is due to the destruction of the ethical and social balance of a system and its replacement with concepts belonging to other civilizations, which have only led to the spreading of disorder under the pretext of a necessary adaptation to new conditions. It seems probable, however, that India will again find prosperity and harmony when external pressures cease to paralyze its development