THE SOUTHERN CITY
Madras, the most Oriental of the great Indian cities, is well known
to English people as the first foothold of Elizabethan merchants,
the fortress of Clive, and the coral strand where little English
boys used to convert their patient bearers. But apart from these
associations, the mother city of Southern India has a peculiar
character of her own. Her reformers talk with confidence of the dry
light of reason in Madras. They pride themselves on the logic and
unimpassioned judgment of her mind. They point to the neighbouring
State of Mysore to show what Southern Indians like themselves can
do in the way of political advancement, and to Travancore as the
most highly educated part of India—the State where women have most
freedom, both to gather knowledge and to enjoy their home or leave
it. The whole of South India, but especially the city of Madras
itself, they regard as a reserve of intellectual force, always ready
to support the new spirit that has appeared in the north and west,
and destined ultimately to take the lead in the general movement of
reform.
Certainly I noticed signs of a practical intelligence that might be
called dry. Hour after hour, on a steaming afternoon, I listened to
the Madras members of the municipal corporation arguing in protest
against the English members and officials about the position of
standpipes, and the adulteration of ghee with oil, and of rice with
sand, while the President, in the broadest Scots, kept calling on
them to address the chair, or declaring their motion lost. When
I was in Madras also, the Decentralization Commission, under Mr.
Charles Hobhouse, at that time Under-Secretary for India, began its
session, and the educated citizens followed the chaotic windings
of its questions and evidence with minute accuracy, all the more
eager, perhaps, because Mr. Romesh Dutt, the national authority on
Indian economics, was among the Commissioners. It was even more
significant that Madras, the devoted home of Hinduism and of Vishnu’s
worshippers, should have steadily chosen her leading Mohammedan
citizen as her representative upon the Viceroy’s Council. One may
call this a sign of practical intelligence and the dry light of
reason, because they could not have chosen a better member than Nawab
Syed Mohammed, descendant of our old enemy Tippoo Sultan, and their
deep sense of religion did not deter them from the choice. Calm,
modest, and generally silent but for a few definite words thrown into
a discussion, he seemed an ideal member for any Council.
Yet, though the boast of reason’s dry light is justified, the
pervading tone of Madras, and probably of all Southern India, is
not practical logic, but imaginative religion. One sometimes finds
the two things in attractive combination. I had gone out one early
morning to visit the god in his beautiful temple at Mailapur, not
very far from the widespread “compounds” of park and garden, where
the happy English and a few rich Indians reside, two or three miles
inland from the sea and the jumbled “Black Town” of crowded natives.
There, as I stood by the edge of the temple tank covered with the
lotus, I came upon an elderly Hindu reading at the door of his modest
home. The verandah was partly arranged as a stable for the sacred
cow, partly laid with mats for beggars, wanderers, or religious
teachers who might be seeking a shelter for the night. The man had
bathed in the tank and washed his only garment of a long cotton
cloth, as he did every morning himself, following the cleanly and
chivalrous Indian custom. He was a schoolmaster, with a fixed salary
of £3 6_s._ 8_d._ a month. Upon this he mainly supported his sons and
their wives and children, all of whom lived in his house, under the
direction of his widowed mother, who arranged which of the married
couples should occupy the married quarters in turn, as there was
not room to supply married quarters for all. In gratitude for her
services, and in reverence for motherhood, “which is the centre of
human life,” he told me how every morning members of the family
washed the widow’s feet and covered them with flowers, as though they
were the feet of a divinity.
The day being a religious holiday—a festival of Shiva, destroyer
and healer—he was spending the quiet hours in meditating upon God,
and reading a large volume of Professor William James’s “Principles
of Psychology.” In religion he was inclined to the Monist view that
the spirit of man is identical in essence with the spirit of God,
but admitted that he felt no violent enmity towards the Dualists,
who maintain a difference in essence. He wore on his forehead the
three strong lines of white and vermillion, which represent the
footprint of Vishnu, the maintainer of existence, and pronounce the
wearer to be a reverential servant to the god’s commands. But, here
again, he felt no enmity towards the worshippers of Shiva, who draw
three parallel lines in grey or yellow earth across their brows. His
true interest lay in the region of philosophy, and as a Monist his
conception of the universe hardly differed from Spinozism, unless
it be said that he went beyond Spinoza in his belief in a universal
Consciousness, the subtle waves of which he could himself universally
perceive if only his mind were not too gross an instrument of
perception. All through his life he had striven to purify and
etherialize that instrument by clean feeding and the practice of
concentration. He had never touched flesh or strong drink or tobacco.
By practising for an increasing time every day, he had been able
to fix his mind on eternal truths with such absorption that the
transitory things no longer disturbed his meditation, and he had
acquired new and subtle powers, enabling him dimly to perceive a
consciousness in the air and so-called inanimate objects. He could
sometimes even feel the impalpable workings of Karma—the influence of
man’s reputed good or evil deeds working upon his own destiny, and
affecting even the infinitesimal atoms of the universe.
[Illustration: A SERVANT OF VISHNU.
[_Face p. 106._
]
He now longed to retire from the world, to lay aside his sacred
thread—the triple thread of Brahmans—and devote to contemplation the
few years left. But the size of his patriarchal household, and the
necessity of making that 16_s._ 8_d._ a week restrained him, and, of
course, his motives were laudable. Nevertheless, as usually happens,
it would have been better for himself and his family if he had flung
away his obvious duties and followed the call of his higher thoughts
alone. For as I came away after receiving sour milk, and the usual
pan leaf enclosing a bit of spice and beetel-nut to chew, one of his
sons—an inferior telegraph clerk—stole after me to ask my advice
about £2, which he had forwarded to a swindling Trust Company that
plays the confidence trick with Congo Bonds and other ludicrous
impostures. It was pitiful to think that the £2, now probably
greasing the dirty works of Belgian brothels and gambling-hells,
might have secured the philosopher nearly three weeks’ leisure
from his school-teaching for the contemplation of the Monistic
Essence, and but for his sense of family duty his son could not have
squandered it.
[Illustration: THE END OF MAN.]
[Illustration: OFFERINGS TO THE DEAD.
[_Face p. 108._
]
But among the common multitudes of the city, the dry light of this
philosophic spirit is not conspicuous. It has never arisen, and the
religious fervour of their existence remains misty, dark, and warm.
Relics of far older beliefs mingle with their Hinduism. In one of
their burning-grounds I met a little procession carrying milk in
brazen bowls to wash the bones of the dead burnt yesterday, and to
pour an offering for the spirit’s consolation. Round another grave a
group of mourners were seated, offering yellow flowers, and pouring
water on the dust that was alive last week. Two of them beat cymbals,
and at long intervals a man raised a large white conch-shell to
his lips and blew a melancholy note. Why will not the dead listen
when they are called? Why will they not give one word of answer to
trumpet, prayers, and love? And all the while, one of the mourners,
regardless of the world, swayed to and fro chanting the undying
truth that man must die, for life is a shadow, and he vanishes;
those who stand beside a grave know this truth undying; they know
that they too shall vanish like a shade, yet they go back to the
city and sin, and sin again, forgetting that they too shall vanish
like a shade. So the lamentation went on, the water was poured, the
milk was offered, the conch-shell sounded its last vain summons, and
the living returned to their life of numbered days. In the middle
of Africa I have witnessed a yearning ceremonial exactly the same.
It was the same that brought Electra out to Agamemnon’s tomb. It is
the same that one may still see on All Saints’ Day, in any primitive
region of Europe, and in the cemeteries of Paris herself. For it
springs from the common longing of all mankind not to be forgotten,
and, if only it were possible, never to forget. The same truth has
been beautifully expressed with regard to the Bulgarian villagers of
Macedonia by Mr. Brailsford in his book upon that country:—
“The real religion of the Balkans is older and more elemental than
Christianity itself; more permanent even than the Byzantine rite.
It bridges the intervening centuries and links in pious succession
the modern peasant to his heathen ancestor, who wore the same
costumes and led the same life in the same fields. It is based on a
primitive sorrow before the amazing fact of death, which no mystery
of the Resurrection has ever softened. It is neither a rite nor a
creed, but only that yearning love of the living for the dead which
is deeper than any creed.”[30]
In the service of the living, the fervent religious spirit of the
South takes other forms, some of adoration, some only ritualistic.
Now and then it turns to practical utility—the hope that religion
will bring some temporal good to the worshipper. There is a belief
almost universal, I suppose, in our own country and in Europe
that religious thoughts, prayers, and observances ensure outward
well-being, health, protection, or prosperity of some kind. In the
East it is probably not so common, for religion is there elevated to
its proper sphere of the inmost soul, where the comforts and external
advantages of life disappear into insignificance compared with the
glory that is revealed. But, deeply religious as the Hindu mind can
be, I found the people in the streets of Madras directing religious
ecstasy to the rather trivial object of healing disease, much as
though they had been mere Faith-healers or Christian Scientists.
The festival of Shiva lasted three or four days, and at any hour of
the burning sunlight, one could meet little processions parading
through Black Town with some sort of shrine or image, accompanied by
pipes and drums, dancing and praying crowds. The sick were caught up
from the doors into the pious orgies and with holy revelry danced
themselves into a state of ecstatic self-forgetfulness which was
unquestionably wholesome. Few diseases, I think, could stand against
such treatment, provided only that the patient survived. It might
be tried with miraculous results in the streets of our bath-chair
watering-places. But if the triumph and proof of religion depended on
mere miracles of healing the sick and raising the dead, it would be a
pity to waste a minute’s thought upon the subject.
Far more fruitful was the unmixed and disinterested adoration that
thronged the temples in the evening. One night I found myself at a
beautiful temple in the southern part of the town. It is a Vishnu
temple: here is his tank, here his chariot. But the people there
were celebrating the festival of Shiva all the same, and among the
deep orange columns of the external portico, dim figures in white or
Indian red moved silently about, hardly revealed in the purple night
by rare lanterns and tiny lamps. Being accompanied by a Brahman who
was guardian of the temple, I was admitted through brazen doors into
a vast courtyard leading up to the inner shrine on which no alien
may look. Here the worshippers stood in an almost continuous crowd,
silent, slowly moving in dubious obscurity. I caught one gleam of
yellow light on prostrate forms among columns beyond, but a priest
led me quietly into a vast chamber at the side, where were stabled
the mystic figures of a dragon large as life, a flying kite and an
elephant, all awaiting the great day when the god takes to his car
and moves in glory through the streets, seated beneath the mystic
tree, which also was standing there. From a hidden and cavernous safe
the priest then displayed a flashing wealth of emeralds and rubies,
unnumbered as the Milky Way and, possibly, surpassing their own value
by their holiness. Disappearing for a while, after shutting the safe,
he returned with a pink garland, thick as a liner’s hawser, and hung
it round my neck, where already two white garlands hung, for I had
been received with honour by a political club just before I came. But
this new pink garland nearly touched my feet. It had been an offering
to the shrine, and came to me cold from the neck of the god himself.
Thus sanctified and adorned, I passed back into the throng of
worshippers in the temple court, and presently felt among them a
peculiar stir of excitement, which I naturally attributed to my
unusual appearance, just visible in the darkness. But when I was
conducted by the Brahman to a large private house overlooking the
precincts, for the first time in India I failed to receive the usual
Hindu welcome. The rooms and courtyards glimmered with little lamps.
Seated in the verandah before the door, a band of pipers, blowing
as they pleased, drove dull care away—far away, one hoped, for her
sake. Gods, kites, and elephants of painted alabaster were arranged
in neat rows upon the table of an inner room, and little girls,
dressed in the gorgeous silks and embroideries of Southern India,
tended them with lights and flowers. But the master of the house,
himself a temple guardian, politely expressed an unwillingness to
receive the foreigner, and when I turned back among the excited crowd
that swarmed round me under the temple colonnade, I heard for the
first time the wild shout of “Bande Mataram! Bande Mataram!” (Hail
to the Motherland!) rising on every side. If a Brahman had not been
my guide, I should have supposed the outcry to be due to religious
indignation. He told me afterwards it was in compliment to my Liberal
opinions. But I think it was not in compliment to my English clothes,
which were far more conspicuous than my Liberal opinions.
There is no part of India where the anti-English feeling was less to
be expected than in Madras. Here the Hindu is seen at his mildest,
here he asks least of this fleeting world, and accepts destiny with
the gentlest quietude. If ever there was a country easy to govern,
it should be Southern India; and in time past no part of India has
surrendered itself more unreservedly to British rule or trusted
more confidently to British justice. Much of this friendliness
has been due to the influence of our missionaries, represented by
some very remarkable men in Madras. I do not know their statistics
of conversion: I think they must be very low, especially as the
Bishop of Madras, during my visit, was expressing his despair of
ever converting educated Indians, and was urging his clergy to pay
attention only to the lowest castes. But the missionary influence
upon education itself has been very large. It has created one famous
and excellent institution, and a popular restaurant besides. It is
chiefly the cause, I suppose, of the widespread knowledge of English
among all classes in the city. More than this, I found that in Madras
and other parts of India, as I had seen in Nigeria, Central Africa,
and South Africa—even in Macedonia and Armenia also—the missionaries
do maintain a certain standard of justice to the credit of the “White
Man,” or “European,” and that the oppressed and destitute, even among
the classes below the protection of any caste, do actually turn to
them with the assurance of finding a quality of mercy and sympathetic
understanding not very remote from their profession of brotherhood in
Christ. It is easy to join in the taunt about “Famine Christians,”
and to point to the curve of conversions varying directly with the
price of food. But if we were starving, I suppose most of us would
gladly profess any religion in the world for a prospect of regular
meals, and the important thing is that by the missionaries no class
is neglected or left to feel itself outcast from humanity—not even
the poor fishers on the sands south of the town, or the dwellers
in savage huts that let at fourpence a month, and are sublet among
different families.
Missionaries have done much, and so has a succession of good
governors, from the time of Sir Thomas Munro, to whose memory the
temple bell still rings a special chime before service. Our own
people have forgotten him for three generations now, but I have
seen the Hindu women drop their baskets and bow their heads as they
passed his equestrian statue on “the Island”—an honour seldom paid
to equestrian statues at home. He it was who reduced the taxes and
watered the land and executed justice; and so his memory lives.
Taught by his example, the people used to recognize that there were
some things we English could do: we could organize drainage, and
build bridges to stand, and decide quarrels without taking bribes.
So they were content to leave these comparatively unimportant
concerns in our hands, while they devoted themselves to the only two
occupations that matter much—the growth of food and the worship of
God. If their faith in our peculiar powers is declining, and they are
themselves making new claims upon government and public life, the
change is due to underlying causes, which are affecting the whole of
India in varying degrees, and have already produced a new sense of
unity in opposition.
Unhappily, the grievance of Anglo-Indian manners is not peculiar
to Madras. The attitude of the vulgar among Anglo-Indians towards
the people of the country would be incredible to any one who had
not seen it, and the vulgar are a large and increasing class. They
increase by a kind of infection, and the deterioration of a new-comer
who has been sent out with the usual instincts of our educated
classes in favour of politeness and decency, is often as unconscious
as it is rapid. The pressure of his social surroundings is almost
irresistible. If he does not wish to cut himself off altogether from
the society and amusements of his own people, he will be driven to
conform to the code of insolence established among them. To stand
alone against feminine dislike and masculine views of good-form
requires a toughness of character and an indifference to personal
reputation or advancement which one cannot expect from many of the
young Englishmen and Englishwomen who come out. These usually spring
from a caste bred upon rather rigid observances, and they look to
the opinion of their own caste almost entirely for the sanction of
conduct. At first they are astonished that Anglo-Indian opinion not
only permits but imposes so ill-bred a manner in intercourse with
“natives,” but the astonishment soon wears off, and the infection
of arrogance catches them as a matter of course. The Governor of
Bombay once told me it was impossible to convert “bounders” into
gentlemen by Act of Parliament, and, unfortunately, that is true;
else we might enjoy a more enviable reputation in the world. But I
was astonished to find how easily an apparent gentleman may become
entirely the opposite if he finds himself set up as one of a superior
race among a polite and gentle people, always too much inclined to
submit to rudeness with reverential astonishment.
Dr. Lefroy, the Bishop of Lahore, who for a quarter of a century
has striven with constancy and some success to restore the higher
tradition of our race, has said that, but for railways, all might
be well. And it is quite true that the commonest and most flagrant
instances of Anglo-Indian vulgarity are to be found in trains. But
that is chiefly because it is most often in trains that the two races
meet on terms of nominal equality. On almost every railway journey
one sees instances of ill-manners that would appear too outrageous
for belief at home. But it is the same throughout. In hotels,
clubs, bungalows, and official chambers, the people of the country,
and especially the educated classes, are treated with an habitual
contumely more exasperating than savage persecution. I gladly admit
that in every part of India I found Englishmen who still retained the
courtesy and sensitiveness of ordinary good manners. But one’s mere
delight in finding them proved their rarity. Anglo-Indians tell us
constantly that our first thought must be to maintain our national
prestige, and if arrogance will do it, our prestige is safe. But when
I watched the Anglo-Indian behaviour towards Indians themselves, I
often wondered whether prestige is really to be secured by manners
such as we should hardly find among “bounders” at home. For myself,
I should have thought Lord Morley was right when he said that “bad
manners, overbearing manners, are very disagreeable in all countries,
but India is the only country where bad and overbearing manners are a
political crime.”[31]
Unhappily, the justice of Indian complaints on this subject was not
new to me, when I came to Madras. Every one finds proofs of it from
the moment of landing in Bombay, and, in fact, even on board ship.
The social estrangement between the two races rapidly increases
after Port Said is left. But in Madras I found another cause of deep
dissatisfaction. In spite of all I had heard about injustice in
particular cases, in spite of the old demand for police reform and
the separation of the judicial and executive functions now combined
in the District Magistrate, it was disconcerting to discover a
prevailing and uneasy suspicion that British justice could not safely
be trusted. Certainly, much disquietude had recently been roused
by a few special instances, at Rawal Pindi, Lahore, and elsewhere.
“Killing no murder, outrage no crime, when Indians are concerned and
Englishmen the culprits”: that was the common conclusion, and it was
not unnatural.
But the suspicion arose from more general and permanent causes
as well. There remains the standing sense of wrong, because an
Englishman has the right to a different form of trial from an
Indian. A magistrate with power to inflict a two years’ sentence
on an Indian, may inflict only six months on a European. No Indian
may try a criminal case against a European, and in criminal cases a
European may claim a jury, with a majority of Europeans on it. Lord
Ripon’s attempt gradually to modify these distinctions is one of the
well-remembered events of his famous Viceroyalty—one of the many
reasons which have endeared his name to India as no other Viceroy’s
is endeared—but his endeavour was thwarted.
As to the separation of functions, the Viceroy’s Council, through Sir
Harvey Adamson, has lately (March, 1908) promised an experiment with
this purpose in Eastern Bengal; but in India generally the District
Magistrate who tries cases himself, or arranges for their trial by
his subordinates, also controls the police, and in nearly all cases
the police bring the charge. The injustice of this arrangement, with
all its opportunities for official influence on legal decisions, has
long been so obvious that one would have thought the cost of the
change was the only obstacle to it. But while I did not hear much
about the danger of increased cost, I heard a great deal about the
danger of diminished dignity, if the District Magistrate lost either
half of his functions. After a battle of over half a century, we may
hope, however, that this grievance is now to disappear.
On the other hand, I found that the old scandals about the police had
survived Sir Andrew Fraser’s commission of inquiry (1902). Promotion
still went in practice by the number of convictions obtained, and
convictions too often depended on evidence derived by the police
from the accused themselves—so-called “confessions,” extorted by
means which, rightly or wrongly, were spoken of with horror among
the people, and even among Anglo-Indians. Between his arrest and
his sentence the prisoner was left in the hands of the police, and
at their mercy, thus giving them the opportunity of compelling him
to give evidence to his own detriment. Wherever I went in India I
heard the same complaint of the unscrupulousness and corruption of
the police. Some of the British police officers with whom I became
intimate, appeared to be experienced and sympathetic men, struggling
rather hopefully on the side of reform. But the pay of the ordinary
native policeman is so ludicrously small (from 8_s._ to 10_s._ a
month), even when the low scale of wages in India is considered,
that the constant temptation to extortion can hardly be resisted,
especially among a population so indifferent to this world and so
deferential to authority, that even the innocent will volunteer
bribes in hopes of being left in peace.
The drink question in Madras is much the same as in the rest of
India. In a sense, it is worse even than in England, for we see one
of the most temperate and frugal populations of the world gradually
taking to drink as a new habit.[32] The increase of drink is largely
due to education, largely to the example of Europeans and of Indians
lately returned from Europe; partly, in Madras at all events, to
Christianized Indians who claim the right of casting off all the old
restrictions of Indian behaviour. As in England, the Government does
not escape its share of blame, owing to the large revenue derived
from the drink trade. The Excise or “Abkari” Department sells the
licences by auction, the bidding is keen, and it is difficult to
prevent the purchaser of a licence from setting up business in the
most lucrative position he can find. By a series of resolutions
in February, 1890, the Government of India declared its intention
of reducing the drink traffic, especially by the restriction of
shops. Nevertheless, the traffic has very largely increased, and
if the number of shops has not increased in proportion, they have
been opened near market places, bathing ghats, schools, hospitals,
temples, factories, and other places of common resort, where, as Sir
Frederic Lely has said, they serve as “veritable traps to catch the
weak, the thirsty, and the tired.”
It is difficult to define how far the most paternal of Governments
is responsible for the excesses of its children, to whom it refuses
the common rights of grown men. The evils of the drink traffic in
India were not to be compared with the evils I had seen in West and
Central Africa, nor were they so pronounced in Madras as in Calcutta.
But the growth of the drinking habit—mainly European in origin—must
be added to the other more prominent causes of unrest, even among a
population so peaceful and backward as Madras is considered to be in
comparison with Poona. Hatred of drink as something equally deadly
and foreign was one of the causes why the Swadeshi movement, starting
from Eastern Bengal, had spread in less than two years throughout the
whole country. Of that movement I had already seen many evidences.
In Bombay I had seen the Indian cotton-mills working against time to
meet the demand for _saris_ and _dhotis_ (women’s and men’s cloths)
free from the taint of foreign profit. And now in Madras I found the
Swadeshi movement very strong. “None but Swadeshi goods,” “Buy our
Nationalist cottons,” “Try our Bande Mataram cigarettes,” were the
most telling advertisements a shop could write up or insert in the
native newspapers, which are particularly strong and excellent in
Madras.
[Illustration: DANCE OF HIGH CASTE GIRLS IN MADRAS.
[_Face p. 122._
]
One wealthy Hindu had ventured even in manufacture to follow the
extreme party which said: “Let the English go their way. We will ask
no share in their government and take none. We will neither appeal
to their law courts nor accept salaries as their officials. We must
pay their taxes, but otherwise we will forget that these foreigners
are among us at all.” He had determined to set up a cotton works
without the aid even of imported machinery. Collecting members of
the old weaving caste, he erected a bamboo factory of hand-looms,
where they were turning out the beautiful fabrics of Indian work,
little more expensive than the English machine-made stuffs and four
times as durable. The experiment is exposed to some of the dangers of
conscious revivals—the dangers of “Arts and Crafts.” But hand-loom
weaving still retains a quite natural life in many parts of India,
in spite of the British manufacturers’ long endeavours to kill the
Indian weaving industry. When I visited his simple factory among the
palms north of Madras, he told me he could not keep pace with the
demands of the Hindu women. And if the women who buy cotton cloth for
their _saris_ and children’s bits of clothing are willing to give a
few farthings more for native and national work, in a district where
they have to toil all day for a wage of twopence, it shows that
the national spirit, even in philosophic and devotional Madras, is
reaching far beyond the limits of the class that our own most highly
educated classes taunt and sneer at as “educated Indians.”
FOOTNOTES:
[30] “Macedonia,” by H. N. Brailsford, p. 75.
[31] Speech at Arbroath, October 21, 1907.
[32] This increase is probably shown in the rapid increase of the
Excise Revenue, which rose from £3,742,800 in 1897 to £5,687,820 in
1906. Of the latter sum “country spirits” yielded nearly £3,000,000,
and “toddy” (the popular drink made from the toddy palm), £874,000.