Page:The leather-workers of Daryaganj.djvu/16

12 they would have completely broken up and gone off again to their old life. But by the grace of God it was not so, but rather this fighting, resulting legitimately as one may almost say it did from their equivocal and undecided position, proved the means of bringing them forward another step in the right direction of decision for Christ. The night after I left as they were talking together somebody, I know not who, recognising the true cause of their troubles, suggested that—instead of falling back into their old position, and so, to put it on no higher ground, bringing on themselves the ridicule of all Christians and Chamárs alike—they should take another step forward and definitely break off connection with their old brotherhood. It was obviously the true and the only true solution of the difficulty, but to act upon it required a degree of determination and courage of which there had been previously but little trace among them. For of course the step would involve the loss of whatever position they had hitherto held among their caste fellows. It is true that this was at all considerable only in the case of one man, the chaudri or headman to whom I have already referred, and who held a similar position amongst a small section of the Daryaganj Chamars. The honour had been purchased by his grandfather, as such honours mostly are among these people, at the expense of a feast involving an outlay of some six or seven hundred rupees, after which the dignity passes on from father to son, and is regarded as a very real and very important part of the family property. To voluntarily relinquish this would of course cost any man an effort, but even in the case of the others who held a merely subordinate position of full membership in the caste it must have seemed a somewhat formidable proposal to convene a meeting of all the older and most respected members of their community, to whom they had always been accustomed to defer, and whose collective opinion was final in all internal disputes affecting members of the caste, and then standing up before them renounce publicly all further allegiance or connection. This is the way, and the only recognised way, in which such severance can be effected. You will not therefore be surprised that the proposal to take this step met with but faint approval at the time, and was followed by several days of anxious and conflicting counsels. Rather I think one has reason to be thankfully surprised and to trace the direct working of the Holy Spirit in the fact that the higher view did ultimately prevail, and our tenants settled to convoke such a meeting as that I have described, and then and there