Gandhi Wedding

Because he was so imprudent as to fill his slack old stomach with a few dates soaked in water, St. Gandhi lay on a couch last week speechless from stomach ache at the wedding of his plump son Devadas to Miss Luxmi Raja Gopal Achariar, daughter of a Nationalist Congress leader.

The bride was a Brahman, highest of the four Hindu castes.* The Gandhis belong to the Vaishya or shopkeeper caste. While many marvelled, Devadas Gandhi knelt before a roaring fire in a ceremony of purification, was married by a saffron-robed priest who mumbled that henceforth he would be entitled to worship and act as a Brahman. Hindus in the audience knew that no matter what the priest said Devadas Gandhi will always be considered a Vaishya.

Though the ceremony was hailed as "revolutionary," though Brahman sticklers feel themselves polluted should the shadow of an Untouchable fall across their food, marriages between the three upper classes are not unknown, orthodox Hindus being less scandalized when the bride is of the higher caste as was the case last week.

*Brahman, the intellectual; Kshatrya, the soldier; Vaishya, the merchant; Sudra, the laborer. The Untouchables, fifth social class, are not strictly a caste.

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