led that remarkable Bengali reformer and intellectual Swami Vivekananda to declare in exasperation in 1897, ‘Was there ever a sillier thing before in the world than what I saw in Malabar country? The poor Pariah is not allowed to pass through the same street as the high-caste man, but if he changes his name to a hodge-podge English name, it is all right; or to a Mohammedan name, it is all right. What inference would you draw except that these Malabaris are all lunatics, their homes so many lunatic asylums, and they are to be treated with derision by every race in India until they mend their
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