Though our castes and institutions are apparently linked with our religion, they are not so. These institutions have been necessary to protect us as a nation, and when this necessity for self-preservation will no more exist, they will die a natural death. But the older I grow, the better I seem to think of these time-honoured institutions. I now seem to feel diffidence in cursing any one of them, for each one of them is the embodiment of the experience of centuries.