SERVANTS IN INDIA
Government officials and missions. The honest native
Christian. Christian servants. Housekeeping in India. The
heathen butler. The _Dasara_ festival. Countenance of
Hinduism. The visitors to Parbatti. The festival of the
cattle. S. Anthony's Day.
There are a few Government officials in India who are not disposed to
smile on missionary enterprise, or on those engaged in it. They think
that natives had better be left to themselves, so far as religion is
concerned, and that the efforts of the missionary are a disturbing
element; and his reasonable complaints to officials of this type about
ordinary matters, such as the state of the roads in his district, or
the supply of water, often meet with slight recognition, or none at
all. How far this attitude on the part of the official may be due to
the faults, or want of tact of the missionary, I cannot say. Want of
appreciation of what missions are doing for the people of a country
often arises merely from lack of knowledge, and most Government
officials show generous recognition of the work, and give it their
kindly aid, when they come into real contact with it and its results.
It was a pleasant relief from the stereotyped "board-ship" saying,
that all native Christians are rascals, to hear the following from one
of the engineers of the great irrigation system of the Panjab. In the
course of ordinary conversation he happened to say that, in all his
experiences, he had only met with one really honest native, and that
he was a Christian. "In fact," he went on to say, "the other men led
him such a life, just because he was honest, that I had to transfer
him to a new district." This testimony was the more significant,
because there is no sphere in which there are greater opportunities of
exacting unlawful commission than in the department which deals with
the distribution of water.
[Illustration: THE INDIAN BUTLER.]
The common criticism of the casual Englishman, when he is talking
about missions, that a Hindu servant is better than a Christian one,
has an element of truth in it. That is to say, the Christian servant
will not be so submissive as the heathen one. His Christianity has
developed his grit, and he will be less willing to put up with
injustice, or violent language, or the habit, once common but now
almost universally reprobated, of cutting his pay as a punishment for
offences real or imaginary. He will not be quite so ready to be on
duty for unlimited periods at his master's pleasure, and he will
expect to be allowed time to go to church. Some of these new
characteristics may be of the nature of defects, but they also mean
that he is more of a man than he was in his heathen days. And as
regards honesty and general trustworthiness, although every Indian
Christian is not altogether impeccable, he is on a completely
different plane to his heathen comrade. It is also an unspeakable
relief, to anyone whose Christianity is something more than form, to
have Christian servants round about you.
Housekeeping in India is either difficult or very easy, according to
the view that is taken of the moral responsibility of a householder.
If you feel it a duty, or if poverty compels you, to endeavour not to
allow yourself to be cheated, the process of housekeeping will become
a contest between you and your heathen servants in which, in spite of
your vigilance, you will be continually worsted. If, on the other
hand, you are reconciled not to worry much about prices, and if you do
not grudge the traditional gifts of certain seasons, you can obtain
what is probably the most efficient and devoted service in the world.
Your head-servant will take the entire responsibility of your
establishment. When he has learnt what your wishes are, he will see
that his underlings carry them out to the letter. Meals will be
admirably served, and you will be waited on noiselessly and
graciously. Your own unpunctuality, your unreasonableness, the sudden
arrival of unexpected guests, none of these things will disturb the
admirable serenity of your Hindu or Mohammedan Indian butler. And
whatever the emergency, you will find him equal to the occasion. But
in return for this, you must not grumble because at every turn, and in
every transaction, he is privately supplementing his official income.
Those who employ Christian servants would do well to remember that
they ought to take care to pay them somewhat in excess of the small
wages which will satisfy a Hindu. Otherwise they will find it
difficult to live, and may be tempted to practise the same methods by
which the heathen servant probably doubles his receipts.
There is a popular Hindu festival called the _Dasara_, and this is one
of the days when stable-servants expect to be tipped, unless they know
that their master disapproves of Hindu ceremonies. On that day horses
are decorated and garlanded, and the grooms bring them round to the
front verandah of the bungalow in order to obtain the expected
recognition. Care needs to be taken to see that, in the desire to be
kind, a sort of tacit countenance of Hinduism is not involved. English
visitors to India unthinkingly are sometimes remiss in this respect.
There is a hill just outside Poona City called Parbatti. It is a
well-known centre of idol worship, and for this reason many visitors
climb up it out of curiosity, but also to see the view. One of the
custodians of the temples, after showing an English priest the idols,
etc., asked for a contribution towards "the support of the temple," as
he expressed it. And in spite of the terms in which the request was
couched, the priest gave an offering, to the astonishment of his
better instructed lay companion.
Hindus have a festal day for their cattle, called _Bile polar_, on
which they give them extra food; their horns are coloured and
decorated with gold paper and long tassels made of the fibrous roots
of a shrub, and a variety of devices are imprinted on their bodies in
red paint, generally circles or the outstretched hand. The biggest
bull of the chief man of the village sometimes wears a sort of crown,
or some farmer who is well-to-do drapes his best cattle in ornamental
cloths, reaching nearly to the ground on each side. The people also
set up clay models of cattle in their houses at this season, to which
they do reverence. When the cattle have been decorated they are
driven, with shouting and noise, up to a temple; and the fact that it
is their festal day does not save them from the whacks which the boys
bestow upon them freely in order to hurry them on. Some of their
owners go into the temple and worship the god, and soon afterwards the
cattle are driven back with the same demonstrations to their
respective homes.
It used to be the custom (and perhaps may be still) for horses to be
driven past the Pope on the Feast of S. Anthony (the patron saint of
animals), and he blessed them as they went by. It is good that the
creatures who do us faithful service should be gratefully remembered.
The Hindu festival of the animals might possibly be Christianised.
Their generous rations and their gay decorations, with the exception
of the paint marks on their bodies, are customs which might be
retained, and they might be brought in joyful procession to the church
door on S. Anthony's Day to be blessed by the parish priest.