SOUTHERN INDIA.
Unrest in its most dangerous forms has hitherto been almost entirely
confined to the Deccan, Bengal, and the Punjab. It has spread to some
extent from the Bombay Presidency into the Central Provinces, which,
indeed, include part of the Deccan, and it has overflowed both from
Bengal and from the Punjab into some of the neighbouring districts of
the United Provinces. But thanks very largely to the firm and
experienced hands in which the administration of the Central Provinces
under their Commissioner, Mr. Craddock, and that of the United Provinces
under their Lieutenant-Governor, Sir John Hewett, have rested during
these troublous years, the situation there has never got seriously out
of hand. Except in Peshawar, where the political propaganda of a
somewhat militant colony of Bengalees has stimulated the latent
antagonism between Hindus and Mahomedans, our difficulties in the new
Frontier Province, as well as along the whole North-West frontier, are
of quite a different order, and though the turbulence of Pathan tribes
and the occasional outbreaks of Moslem fanaticism amongst them are a
cause of constantly recurring anxiety to the Government of India, it is
not amongst those hardy and only half-tamed hillsmen that the cry of
_Swadeshi_ and _Swaraj_ from Bengal or of "Arya for the Aryans" from the
Punjab is likely to elicit any response. Such echoes of far away
sedition as may reach their mountain fastnesses provoke only vague
wonder at the forbearance and leniency of British rulers, and if ever
the British _Raj_ were in jeopardy, Pathan and Baluch would be the first
to sharpen their swords and shoulder their rifles either in response to
our call or in order to descend on their own account, as their forbears
have done before, into the fair plains of Hindustan and carve out
kingdoms for themselves from the chaos that would follow the collapse of
British power. Along the North-East frontier British India marches with
semi-independent States that have little or nothing in common with the
rest of India. Nepal, Bhutan, and Sikkim are Himalayan highlands
inhabited chiefly by Mongolian Buddhists, who have far more affinity
with Tibetans and Chinese than with their Indian neighbours to the
south. Assam is little more than an administrative dependency of Eastern
Bengal, whilst Burma has been even more accurately described as a mere
appendage of India, attached for purposes of administrative convenience
to our Indian Empire, but otherwise as effectively divided from it by
race, religion, customs, and tradition as by the waters of the Bay of
Bengal and the dense jungles of the Patkai Mountains.
In none of these borderlands has Hinduism ever struck root, and in none
of them, therefore, is Indian Nationalism, which is so largely bound up
with Hinduism, likely to find a congenial soil. But that Southern India
where Hinduism is supreme should have remained hitherto so little
affected by the political agitation which has swept across India further
north from the Deccan to Bengal may at first sight cause some surprise.
Yet the explanation is not far to seek, if one bears in mind the
profound differences which nature itself has imposed upon this vast
sub-continent. Southern India, which may be defined as including the
whole of the Madras Presidency and the three native States of Mysore,
Cochin, and Travancore, differs, indeed, almost immeasurably from
Central and Northern India. South of the high, sun-scorched plateau of
the Deccan, from the mouth of the Kistna to the Indian Ocean, the great
Indian peninsula rapidly narrows. Tempered by more frequent rains and
the moist breezes which sweep across it from both the Malabar and the
Coromandel coasts, the climate is more equable and the heat, though more
continuous, is less fierce. The whole character of the country is
luxuriantly tropical, and though the lowlands are not more fertile than
the matchless delta of the Ganges, the more varied prodigality of nature
shows itself alike in the waving forests of cocoanut, which are common
all along the coast, in the rich tobacco-fields of Madura and
Coimbatore, in the plantations of cinchona, pepper, cardamoms, and other
spices on the slopes of the Nilgiri highlands, and in the splendid
growths of teak, ebony, and sandalwood that clothe the Western Ghats.
The population, which in some parts attains extraordinary density and
lives almost exclusively on the fruits of the soil, is of the old
Dravidian stock, industrious and frugal as in other parts of India, and
of a placid and gentle temper. Nowhere else in India does one come into
such close contact with its original non-Aryan peoples; and nowhere else
has the earliest type of religious and social institutions evolved by
the superior civilization of the Aryans been so completely preserved
from the disturbing influences of later ages. And yet--such are the
curious contrasts which abound in this strange country--nowhere else
does one find so many living survivals of the intercourse which occurred
from time to time between India and the West, many centuries before
Europe turned her eyes towards that Terra Incognita. Nowhere, for
instance, has Christianity made more converts of recent years, perhaps
because in Southern India there may still be found indigenous Christian
communities which trace their origin back to the first centuries of the
Christian era. Even if there be no historical foundation for the
tradition that it was St. Thomas the Apostle who himself first
evangelized Southern India, and was ultimately martyred at St. Thomas's
Mount near Madras, there is good authority for believing that
Christianity was imported not many centuries later into Southern India
by the Nestorian or Chaldæan missionaries from Persia and Mesopotamia,
whose apostolic zeal ranged all over Asia, even into Tibet and Tartary.
According to the Saxon chronicle, our own King Alfred sent alms to India
in 883 for St. Thomas and St. Bartholomew, and at that date there
certainly existed, besides some small Christian communities on the
Coromandel coast, two flourishing communities on the Malabar coast,
where the so-called Syrian Church has maintained itself to the present
day. Another curious and perhaps equally ancient link with the West may
still be seen to survive to-day in the small community of white Jews at
Cochin, which, according to their own tradition, was founded when their
forefathers were driven out of Palestine after the destruction of the
second Temple. To the charter which they still have in their possession,
inscribed, like most west coast title deeds, on copper plates, the date
assigned by the best authorities is about 700 A.D., and the powers and
privileges which were specifically conferred upon their ancestors show
that at that period already they had acquired in a remarkable degree the
confidence and friendship of the Hindu Kings of Malabar. The decline of
both Christian and Jewish communities seems to have begun, indeed, with
the appearance of the first Portuguese invaders from Europe, whose
incursions destroyed the peace and tolerance which Christian and Jew had
enjoyed in the days of undisturbed Hindu rule.
To what period the subjection of the old Dravidian stock to the superior
civilization of the Aryans dates back, or in what manner it was
continued, there is little as yet to show. All that is actually known is
that at some very remote period Aryan Hinduism was imported into
Southern India by Brahmans from the north, who established it in the
first place probably by force, and whose descendants have ever since
maintained the claims of their sacred caste to a position of religious
and social pre-eminence even greater than that which any other Brahmans
of the present day have succeeded in retaining. Nowhere else in India
does the Brahman, as such, wield the power and assert the prerogatives
which the Namputri Brahman enjoys on the Malabar coast. Even the
Maharajahs of Travancore, who by birth belong to the Kshatrya or warrior
caste, have to be "born again" by a peculiar and costly ceremony into
the superior caste before they ascend the throne, and one sept of the
Namputri Brahmans successfully exacts in the person of the head of the
Azhvancheri family recognition of its spiritual overlordship by personal
homage from the Maharajah once in every six years. Nothing, perhaps,
conveys more graphically the extraordinary sanctity which attaches to
the Brahman caste than the uncompromising manner in which all along the
Malabar coast they have enforced and maintained the laws of ceremonial
"pollution." Nowhere else have such stringent rules been enacted to fix
the precise distance at which the bodily presence of a member of the
lower castes is held to defile the sacred person of the Brahman. A Bazar
may approach, but must not touch him; a Chogan may not approach him
within 24 feet, nor a Kanisan within 36, nor a Pulayan within 64, nor a
Nayadi within 72 feet. Equally definite and elaborate are the manifold
restrictions on marriage, commensality, occupation, food, ceremonial
observances and personal conduct which affect the mutual relations not
only between the different castes but also between the innumerable
sub-castes into which the higher castes especially have in turns split
up. The laws which govern marriage, descent, and inheritance amongst the
more important castes throw a peculiarly interesting light on the
archaic type of society which has survived in Southern India. Under the
matriarchal system of _Manumakkathayam_, which on the Malabar coast
obtains to the present day, descent is traced only through the female
line. The male member of the family inherits, but he does so only as
the son of a female member of the family through whom he may justly
claim kinship, or, to put it in another form, a man's natural heir is
not his son, or his brother's son, or the descendant of a common male
ancestor, but his sister's, or his sister's daughter's son, or the
descendant of a common female ancestress. In the event of failure of
heirs through the female line, adoption is permissible, but the adoption
must be of females, through whose subsequent offspring the line of
natural descent may be carried on. With this ancient system are bound up
forms of matrimonial union and tenure of property into the complicated
and peculiar nature of which I need not enter here.
In the wild hill countries weird remnants of the most primitive races
still survive that have not yet been brought within the pale of
Hinduism, and here and there a sprinkling of Mahomedans remains as a
reminder of the shortlived incursions of Moslem conquerors from the
north. But ninety per cent. of the population consists of Hindus, and
the social and religious supremacy of Hinduism has never been seriously
assailed. Nowhere has Hindu architecture taken such majestic shape, the
massive pylons of Madura and Tanjore recalling the imperishable grandeur
of the noblest Egyptian temples on the Nile. Southern India is in fact a
land of stately shrines which dominate the whole country just as our own
great cathedrals dominated England in the Middle Ages. Yet in Southern
India, Hinduism has not assumed the aggressive character which it has
developed in other regions. Perhaps it feels too secure of the
unchallenged supremacy which it has enjoyed through the ages as a social
and religious force without ever aspiring to direct political
ascendancy. Perhaps the admixture of Dravidian blood has imparted to it
a more serene tolerance. Perhaps it appreciates more fully the relief
from the turmoils strife, and bloodshed which was brought to Southern
India by the advent of British rule. Compare the legend of a pre-British
"golden age" propagated by Tilak and his disciples in the Deccan and in
Bengal with the remarkable picture of the condition of Southern India at
the time when the British power first appeared on the scene which was
drawn by a Madras Brahman, the late Mr. Srinivasaraghava Iyangar:--
Southern India had been devastated by wars, famines,
and bands of plunderers; the cultivating classes were ground
down by oppressive taxation, by the illegal exactions of the
officers of Government, of the renters employed to collect
the Government dues, and of the sowkars without whose
assistance the ryots could not subsist and carry on their
calling, and who kept them in a state little removed from
perpetual bondage; trade was hampered by insecurity of
property, defective communications, and onerous transit
duties; the vast majority of the population suffered extreme
hardships when there was even a partial failure of crops in
small tracts, owing to the great difficulty and cost of obtaining
supplies of grain from more favoured regions; the peasantry
and even possessors of considerable landed property, when not
holding office under Government themselves, were cowering
before the pettiest Government officer and submitting to
tortures and degrading personal ill-treatment inflicted on the
slightest pretext; persons who had chanced to acquire
wealth, if they belonged to the lower classes, dared not openly
use it for purposes of enjoyment or display for fear of being
plundered by the classes above them; the agricultural classes
as a whole had few wants beyond those imposed by the
necessity for bare subsistence, no ambition or enterprise to
try untrodden ways, and no example to stimulate them to
endeavour to better their condition, while the rigid usages
of castes and communities in which society was organized
repressed all freedom of action and restricted the scope for
individual initiative. To understand the full significance
of the change which has come over the country one has to
contrast what he sees at present, unsatisfactory as it may
appear from some points of view, with the state of things
described above.... Remembering that methods of
progress calculated to evoke national feeling and religious
enthusiasm are unavailable under the conditions of the case,
the progress that has been made ... is little short of
marvellous.
It was from Madras that the British power set forth on its
unpremeditated course of conquest which was destined ultimately to
reach from Tuticorin to the Himalayas. Since the beginning of the
nineteenth century the Madras Presidency has been in the fortunate
position of having no history. Its northern rivals call it despitefully
the "benighted" Presidency. No epithet, however, could be more
undeserved, for if its annals for the last hundred years have been
unsensational, its record in respect of education, intelligent
administration, material prosperity, and all that goes with peaceful
continuous progress would entitle it rather to be called the "Model"
Presidency. The Native States of Southern India, and above all Mysore,
which was for many years under direct British administration, will
equally bear favourable comparison with any of the Native States of
Central or Northern India. From the standpoint of education, Southern
India has long held and probably still holds the lead, thanks in a great
measure to the large Christian communities which comprise more than
two-thirds of the whole Christian population of India. But in the
statistics of literacy based on the last census, the Brahmans figure at
the head of all the Hindu castes with the very creditable proportion of
578 males and 40 females per mille. The Western-educated classes in
Southern India, whilst as progressive as in any other part, show greater
mental balance than in Bengal, and less reactionary tendencies than in
the Deccan. Western education has been a steady and perhaps on the whole
a more solid growth in Southern India. It has produced a large number of
able and distinguished public servants of unimpeachable loyalty to the
British _raj_. The harvest yielded by the ingermination of Western ideas
has produced fewer tares. Educated Hindus of the higher castes have
played an important part in social reform, and many of them have been
associated with the moderate section of the Indian National Congress.
The enthusiastic reception given to Mr. Bepin Chandra Pal, during his
short crusade at Madras three years ago on behalf of _Swaraj_, showed
that, especially amongst the younger generation, there is at least an
appreciable minority who are ready to listen to the doctrines of
advanced Nationalism, and the existence of inflammable materials was
revealed in the riots which occurred not long afterwards at Tinnevelly
and Tuticorin, and again a year later at Guntur. But these appear to
have been merely sporadic outbreaks which were promptly quelled, and the
undisturbed peace which has prevailed since then throughout Southern
India, at a time when whole provinces in other parts have been
honeycombed with sedition, is one of the most encouraging features of
the situation. There is in the Hinduism of Southern India a peculiar
element of conservative quietism to which lawlessness in any form seems
to be repugnant. Probably also the racial cry of "Arya for the Aryans"
raised in the North of India as the watchword of an anti-British
movement is not calculated to rouse the blood of a purely Dravidian
population, however powerful the ties created by a common social and
religious system.