१३४ महात्मा फुले : समग्र वाङ्मय treatment which he receives is askin to what the meanest reptile gets. Instead of his case receiving a patient and careful hearing, a choice lot of abuse is showered on his devoted head, and his prayer is set aside on some pretext or other. Whereas if one of his own castemen were to repair to the Court on the self-same business, he is received with all courtesy and there is hardly any time lost in getting the matter right. If we go up still higher to the Collector's and Revenue Commissioner's Courts and to the other Department of the Public Services, the Engineering, Educational etc. the same system is carried out on a smaller or greater scale. The higher European officers generally view men and things through Brahmin spectacles, and hence the deplorable ignorance they often exhabit in forming a correct estimate of them. I have tried to place before my readers in the concluding portions of this book what expedients are employed by these Brahmin officials for fleecing the Kunbee in the various department to which business or his necessities induce him to resort. Anyone knowing intimately the working of the different departments, and the secret springs which are in motion, will unhesitatingly concur with me in saying that what I have described in the following pages is not one hundredth part of the regueries that are generally practised on my poor, illiterate and ignorant Sudra breathren. Though the Brahmin of the old Peshwa school is not quite the same as the Brahmin of the present day, though the march of Westen idea and civilization is undoubtedly telling on his superstition and biogotry, he has not as yet abandoned his time-cherished notions of superiority or the dishonesty of his ways. The Beef, the Mutton, the intoxicating beverages stronger and more fiery than the famed Somarasa, which their ancestors once relished, as the veriest dainties are fast findinginnunerable votaries among them. The Brahmin of the present time finds to some extent, like Othello, that his occupation is gone. But knowing full well this state of affairs is the Brahmin inclined to makes atonement for his past selfishness ? Perhaps, it would have been useless to repine over what has been suffered and what has passed away, had the present state been all that is desirable. We know perfectly well that the Brahmin will not descend from his self- raised high pedestal and meet his Kunbee and low castes brethren on an equal footing without a struggle. Even the
