INDIAN HOSPITALITY
Hospitality limited by caste rules. Feasts. The Hindu's
guest-house. Laws of hospitality; observed by Indian
Christians; their generosity to each other. Indian respect
for the mother; retained through life; observed by Indian
Christians. Swithun's mother. Indian affection shallow,
except for the mother.
The peoples of the East are proverbial for their hospitality, and
certainly Indians in all parts of their country are true to this
excellent tradition, although the caste system of Hindus, which in so
many ways hinders their good purposes from producing their legitimate
result, restricts their hospitable efforts, within their own dwelling,
to the sometimes narrow limits of their own particular caste.
Invitations to members of castes above their own would not be
accepted. And if, in some cases, a broad-minded Hindu would be not
unwilling to invite to dinner a friend belonging to a caste lower than
his own, his good intentions would be almost certainly checkmated by
the ladies of his household, who would refuse to cook for the
intruder.
Rich men give feasts out of doors to a variety of people, who sit in
groups according to their caste. Even lepers and beggars are not
unfrequently fed in this fashion on a large scale by those who are
wealthy. Such feasts, however, do not come exactly under the laws of
hospitality, because they are held according to the fancy of the
giver. It is practically a matter of obligation to feast people
bountifully in connection with marriages and deaths and some other
ceremonies.
Any actual breach of the Indian code of hospitality is regarded as a
serious lapse, and even within the limits of the family and caste, the
burden of hospitality can become a very heavy one. A well-to-do Hindu
in Poona city built a new three-storied house in a corner of his large
compound. As he had already got a house of apparently ample
dimensions, I asked him what was the object of this new one. He said
that it was for his guests; and he then proceeded to give me a good
deal of information concerning Hindu customs connected with
hospitality.
He said that guests who come to stay usually arrive without
invitation, or previous notice. They are often attended by wife and
children and other relations, and remain for an indefinite time. A
visit of even two or three months' duration is quite usual. I asked if
it was not possible to hint that it was time that the visit came to a
close. But he said that to do so would be considered very rude, and a
great breach of hospitality, and that it was never done. People who
are not well off, often pay these long visits for the sake of the
free rations; and, on account of their poverty, it is impossible to
pay them back in their own coin by going to stay a corresponding time
with them.
Indian Christians retain strongly these national ideas concerning the
laws of hospitality, and are generous in their entertainment of each
other, even although it means that their monthly supply of grain will
run short, and that they will be hard put to it, and have to live on
short commons during the last days of the month. People
holiday-making, or out of work, will forage about in search of free
meals, and will drop in here and there just about dinner time without
much thought as to whether their company is welcome or not. Even the
poorest persons will cheerfully produce all that they have got in
order to feed these chance comers, with whom perhaps they have only a
slight acquaintance. Christians are also generous with their money in
helping other Christians who are in difficulties, or out of work. Some
who may have got good appointments are, nevertheless, often kept poor
by their efforts to help relations who, on their part, seem to have no
delicacy about making urgent demands for assistance. Even mothers will
prey without compunction on married children who can ill afford to
render help.
But the petition of the mother is never rejected. In Hindu family life
the respect and affection which the son has for his mother is a most
touching and beautiful characteristic, which only intensifies the
older he grows. The Indian boy is often wilful and disobedient and
rude to his mother, but he makes up for this by his dutiful conduct
when he grows to manhood. It is almost comical to find Hindus of
mature years referring everything to their mother, and even in small
matters of daily life saying that they must ask their mother before
they can do this or that. This filial conduct does not arise from fear
of the maternal wrath, but because of the son's deep respect for his
mother as such.
Many a Hindu has said to me, when discussing the possibility of
acceptance of Christianity, "It would grieve my mother, and I cannot
do that." When conversions have taken place, the final and most bitter
struggle has nearly always been when the lamentations and entreaties
of the mother had to be faced, and some men have not been able to
stand this pressure, and have turned back on that ground alone. The
tears of the wife are of small account compared with the distress of
the mother.
It must be added that the Hindu mother appears to accept the
considerate regard of her sons very much as a matter of course, and
that if she looks upon them with equal affection, her manner of
displaying it is, at any rate, different from the English ideal.
Happily Christian boys and men retain much of the same reverential
feeling concerning their mother. The Indian equivalent of the English
parish clerk at the village church at Yerandawana was about to be
married in Bombay, where his bride resided, 120 miles away. His mother
was a curious, cross-grained old woman, not yet a Christian. As he had
not much money, I suggested that there was no need to take his mother
to this distant city for the wedding, but that she could be ready to
greet the bride at their new home in the village when they returned.
But Swithun assured me that it was absolutely essential that his
mother should go with him, and that if he was married without taking
care to secure her presence, he would be for ever branded as an
undutiful son. She was not at all grateful for his kind consideration,
and made herself very disagreeable all through the wedding-day, but
the guests treated her with a good deal of respect and regard solely
on the score of her being the bride-groom's mother, and on that
account a person to be honoured.
Indian affection is quite real as far as it goes, but it does not go
very deep, so that it does not long outlive the removal of the object
of regard, either through death or any other cause. Nor will Indian
affection bear much strain. Petty complications in family life,
trivial misunderstandings between friends of long standing, or amongst
Christians some little hitch with the authorities of a mission, will
sometimes result in life-long separations or bitter animosity between
those who, for the time being, were objects of real, but shallow,
affection. But the Indian puts up with anything rather than quarrel
with his mother, and her memory remains fresh and green long after
other departed relations and friends have been lost in oblivion.
[Illustration: SWITHUN'S "NEW HOME IN THE VILLAGE."]