CHAPTER IV.
BRAHMANISM AND DISAFFECTION IN THE DECCAN.
Fundamental as is the antagonism between the civilization represented by the British _Raj_ and the essential spirit of Brahmanism.

It is not, of course, always or everywhere equally acute, for there is no more uniformity about Brahmanism than about any other Indian growth.

But in the Deccan Brahmanism has remained more fiercely militant than in any other part of India, chiefly perhaps because nowhere had it wielded such absolute power within times which may still be called recent.

Far into the eighteenth century Poona had been the capital of a theocratic State in which behind the throne of the Peshwas both spiritual and secular authority were concentrated in the hands of the Brahmans.

Such memories are slow to die and least of all in an ancient and conservative country like India, and there was one sept of Brahmans, at any rate, who were determined not to let them die.
The Chitpavan Brahmans are undoubtedly the most powerful and the most able of all the Brahmans of the Deccan.