LONG before Mr. Macmillan thought of the phrase, the
Indian villager had been talking of 'the winds of change',
for underneath their unchanging appearance the villages
of India are being revolutionised day by day. The winds of
change blow fiercely, if patchily, upon the fabric of Hindu
society. Already this is beginning to produce changes in
the attitudes of the castes and sub-castes to each other.
The outsider notices mainly the stresses this creates;
peaceful transitions, like happy couples, have no history.
Nevertheless many of the transitions are in fact peaceful,
hardly noticed even by those who are undergoing them.

We shall consider the causes of change in the next chapter;
in this chapter I will attempt to sketch some of the beginnings
of the breakdown of caste as it takes place, from the remote
village to the most fashionable Delhi drawing-room.

First, it is important to stress that change is possible
only when there has been both a loss of belief in the right-
ness of ritual, and external circumstances which permit the
individual to act on his loss of belief; particularly, he must
have economic independence and there must be some reason
other than caste position, education for example, why people
should listen to him. Thus the Brahmin who becomes a
doctor can do so only if he ceases to believe in those taboos
of his caste which relate to pollution by contact with Un-
touchable people and polluting parts of the human body;
had he continued to believe in the whole ritual he could not
have become a doctor. But once he has done so, he has the
independence and the influence to be able to break the rules
himself, and to provide an example of change to others. The
loss of belief does not have to extend to the fundamentals of
the Hindu religion. It need not go beyond a willingness
to take liberties with the ritual rules. These liberties will

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