INDIAN POVERTY
Indian squalor. The Indian's house; how he takes his meals;
no home life; physical results. Contrast of the Brahmin
doctor's home; his little sons. But without a religion. The
Hindu contractor; his visit to the Church; his pathetic
position.
Whether the sometimes so-called "simplicity" of Indian native life is
really a thing to be desired, is a question which it may be well to
ask. It is, undoubtedly, a right general principle that each person's
life should be kept as homely and simple as circumstances will allow.
There is, however, a distinction between simplicity and the squalor of
sordid poverty.
A poor Indian lives as he does chiefly because he cannot help himself,
and partly, perhaps, because he has no other ideal. But it is at best
an unlovely and cramping form of existence. Though he can sustain life
on a remarkably small wage, he is nearly always hungry, and has so
little stamina that he easily succumbs under serious sickness. He
wears but little clothing, and his young children none at all. But he
suffers much in the rains because he has no change of garments, and
in the cold weather because his flimsy dress is no protection; and if
he gets a little money he gladly buys a blanket, or a warm coat. He
has no lamp in his dwelling because he cannot afford it, and after the
early nightfall he has to pass his evening hours sitting in the dark,
when there is no moon. In almost all the houses of a country village
in western India, and in many of the houses in towns, there is no
furniture at all. Sometimes there is a small cot for the baby, hung
from one of the rafters; and now and then a somewhat larger wooden
frame, suspended in the same fashion, is used by the grown-up members
of the family to sit or sleep upon. But, as a rule, everybody sits and
sleeps on the ground. The floors of the houses are invariably made of
earth, beaten down hard, and smeared periodically with a decoction of
cow-dung.
Even a well-to-do Indian takes his food sitting on the ground in the
place where the food was cooked, which is often a dark lean-to
building, attached to the main dwelling. He takes off all his clothing
except his _dhota_, and eats with his fingers in silence. Sociality at
such a time is out of place; it diverts the mind from the business in
hand, which is that of "filling the belly," as the Indian himself
commonly expresses it. The women of the household never sit down to
dinner with the rest of the family. They wait on the men, and then
take their own meal afterwards by themselves. There is nothing
elevating in the process.
The meal of an average Indian Christian family is a complete contrast.
Poverty probably compels simplicity and frugality; but father and
mother and children sit down together, and there is much sociality.
The desire to sit on chairs merely as a mark of distinction is a
foolish aspiration. Nevertheless, as an Indian Christian once
expressed it to me, "The wish to come off the floor means that we are
growing in refinement and politeness."
There are usually no windows in most of the older houses of the poorer
people. Modern houses have sometimes several windows, but they are
barred and shuttered, and from long habit are usually kept closed by
preference. The only movable articles in the houses of the bulk of the
Indian population are the brass and copper, or earthenware, cooking
pots and pans, and the prosperity of the household can be pretty
accurately gauged by the quality, number, and condition of these
utensils. A few people own besides an old box or two, generally
containing an accumulation of old rags, which nearly all Indians seem
to take an interest in collecting. Extra clothes, when they have any,
are hung on large wooden pegs, which are fixed into the walls of most
rooms in Indian dwellings.
One result of the comfortless and dreary aspect of the interior of an
Indian's house is that very few of them have any home life, as we
understand it. The Indian does not sit indoors, unless compelled to
do so by sickness, or stress of weather. And though the majority are
satisfied so to live, because no other manner of life is known to
them, there is nothing beautiful about it. Even from a purely physical
point of view, it is an unwholesome state of things. The airless,
lightless houses are most unsavoury, and in times of sickness and
childbirth this is intensified. It cannot be wondered at that plague,
or cholera, or malignant fevers, often make frightful ravages in
families. Nor does it tend to elevate the character to sit on a mud
floor dozing in the dark, or telling scandalous stories with the
children drinking in every word.
By way of contrast, I recall the country home of a Brahmin doctor, who
has built himself a house at Yerandawana as a haven of refuge in time
of plague. It is surrounded by a little garden, radiant with flowers.
It lacks the neatness of an English garden, nevertheless it is
something far away ahead of anything which any of his neighbours have
attempted. His name means "seven sons." He has already got six, and is
hoping for the seventh. These six little sons are dressed in ordinary
English boys' dress. They are frequent visitors at the Mission
bungalow. It may, of course, be only English prejudice which makes
this dress appear to me better for the boys themselves than the scant
garments of the Indian. Instead of the usual shorn head and small
pigtail, their glossy hair, very neat in the case of the elder boys,
tumbled about in the case of the younger ones, is a delightful
contrast.
But to look in at the open door in the evening at their home life, as
I have often done, is entirely convincing. A table is in the middle of
the room covered with a red cloth; there is a bright lamp, a few
pictures are on the walls, and the party of cheerful boys are sitting
round the table. Some are playing games, others are drawing, some are
looking at books. Though in such a different clime, the sight brought
back the memory of winter evenings in boyish days at home.
This Hindu doctor has practically parted with his religion. There are
probably no objects of worship in his country home, except a Tulsi
plant on a pedestal in the back compound. This plant is a good deal
venerated by women, and no doubt was provided for the benefit of the
ladies of his household. But although it is some gain to have given up
idolatrous customs, and to have adopted some of the refinements of
civilised life, he and his little family are in the unhappy condition
at present of being without a religion.
A Hindu contractor, who was visiting the church one day, surprised me
by saying, as he turned towards one of the pictures hanging on the
walls: "This is the baptism of Christ--the river is the Jordan. He was
baptized by John." I asked him how he knew all these facts. He replied
that he had been educated at a Jesuit school, and that he had learnt
them there. I said that, having been brought up under such
circumstances, and having learnt so much and being now well advanced
in years, how was it that he was still a Hindu. He answered: "I cannot
tell. All I know is that now I do not know what I am."
He asked many intelligent questions. Amongst the rest, did we hear
confessions? He was a type of a constantly increasing number of
educated men, who, although outwardly appearing as Hindus, only
practise the minimum of religious observances, and have no belief at
all. Amongst these are men, like the Brahmin doctor, who have imbibed
something of the spirit of Christianity from what they have heard and
seen, and are distinctly the better for having dropped so much of
their Hinduism. But their position is a pathetic one, because so few
of them have the courage to act upon the considerable measure of truth
which has come home to them.