The first branch of the society was established in Bombay by Dayananda himself in 1875, but its real strength now lies in the Punjab and United Provinces, in both of which together it numbers about 250,000 members. The two parties into which the Samaj in Lahore is to some extent divided, as I said, both unite in rejecting idols, and in condemning the seclusion or “purdah” of women, the dangerous prerogatives of the priesthood, and all restrictions of caste, except such rights and obligations as are the due of character or intellect. Both unite in maintaining the unity of God, the eternal trinity of God, Soul, and Matter, and the universal wisdom revealed for all races in the Vedas. The differences that divide them are, perhaps, rather of temperament than of doctrine. The party that worships in the city claims to be more democratic in its appeal, to be stricter in life and discipline, but at the same time freer from “purdah”; and, indeed, its women are allowed to attend divine service in a gallery unveiled, while the women of the other party have a service to themselves, with a woman preacher, whose sermons I was, unhappily, unable to attend. The city party has been called the Culture Section, in which name, I think, there lies a covert sneer. But it briskly retaliated by calling the suburban party the Vulture Section, in which the sneer is not covert at all, but palpably due to a backsliding from vegetarianism. Not that the extra-mural party itself dreams of backsliding. It only aims at progress and increasing freedom in social life; for, like other great movements of religious reform, it maintains that the kingdom of heaven is not meat and drink. The differences, in fact, have never been serious, though a few years ago there was the same tender hostility as used to prevail between Newton Hall and Lamb’s Conduit Street, when Positivists turned their criticism from Christians to each other. But of late persecution, which makes all its victims friends, has brought them together again, and few of the outside world are now aware of any division. It was the deportation of Lajpat Rai that gave the final touch to reconcilement. That a man of austere and generous life, one who had given up great worldly success for the service of the poor and unlearned, should be spirited away without warning and without trial for venturing to criticize official injustice—that was the touch to kindle the indignant fire which welds men into one.