farmers, who fare afield each morning with their so-called plows or
other tools for aiding the growth of their crops. The Indian plow is,
I believe, the crudest I have found in any part of the wide world. It
consists of a simple handle with a knob at the top; a block of wood
with an iron spike in it about an inch thick at one end and tapering
to a point at the other; and a tongue to which the yoke of bullocks
are attached. The pointed spike is, perhaps, sixteen inches long, but
only a fraction of it projects from the wooden block into which it is
fastened, and the ordinary plowing consists only of scratching the two
or three inches of the soil's upper crust.
The Allabahad Exposition was designed mainly to interest the farmers
in better implements, and its Official Handbook, in calling attention
to the exhibit of improved plows, declared:
"The ordinary Indian plow is, for certain purposes, about as
inefficient as it could be. Strictly speaking it is not a plow at
all. It makes a tolerably efficient seed-drill, a somewhat
inefficient cultivator, but it is quite incapable of breaking up
land properly."
The other tools in use on the Indian farm are fit companions for the
primitive plow. Some one has said that 75 cents would buy the complete
cultivating outfit of the Hindu ryot! I saw men cutting up
bullock-feed with a sort of hatchet; the threshing methods are
centuries old; the little sugarcane mills {219} I found in operation
here and there could have been put into bushel baskets. The big ox
carts, which together with camel carts meet all the requirements of
travel and transportation, are also heavy and clumsy, having wheels as
big as we should use on eight-horse log-wagons at home. These wheels
are without metal tires of any kind, and the average cost of one of
the carts, a village carpenter told me, is $25.
As to the other crops grown by the Indian ryot, or farmer, I cannot
perhaps give a better idea than by quoting the latest statistics as to
the number of acres planted to each as I obtained them from the
government authorities in Calcutta.
Rice 73,000,000
Wheat 21,000,000
Barley 8,000,000
Millets 41,000,000
Maize 7,000.000
Other grains 47,000,000
Fodder crops 5,000,000
Oilseeds: linseed,
mustard, sesamum, etc. 14,000,000
Sugarcane 2,250,000
Cotton 13,000,000
Jute 3,000,000
Opium (for China) 416,000
Tobacco 1,000,000
Orchard and garden 5,000,000
It is somewhat surprising to learn that of the 246,000,000 acres under
cultivation to supply 300,000,000 people (the United States last year
cultivated 250,000,000 acres to supply 90,000,000) only 28,000,000
acres were cropped more than once during the year. With the warm
climate of India it would seem that two or more crops might be easily
grown, but the annual dry season makes this less feasible than it
would appear to the traveller. Even in January much artificial
crop-watering must be done, and no one can travel in India long
without growing used to the sight of the irrigation wells. Around them
the earth is piled high, and oxen hitched to the well ropes draw up
the water in collapsible leather bags or buckets. A general system of
elevated ditches then distributes the water where it is needed.
Concerning the drought, a resident of Muttra said to me that {220}
there practically no rain falls from the middle of January to the
middle of June. "In the latter part of the drought," he said, "the
fields assume the appearance of deserts; only the dull green of the
tree-leaves varies the vast, monotonous graybrown of the
far-stretching plains. The streams are dried up; the cattle hunt the
parched fields in vain for a bit of succulence to vary their diet of
dry grass. But at last there comes the monsoon and the rains--and then
the Resurrection Morning. The dead earth wakens to joyous
fruitfulness, and what was but yesterday a desert has become a
veritable Garden of Eden."
But, alas! sometimes the rains are delayed--long, tragically long
delayed! The time for their annual return has come--has passed, and
still the pitiless sun scorches the brown earth as if it would set
afire the grass it has already burned to tinder-dryness. The ryot's
scanty stock of grain is running low, the daily ration has been
reduced until it no longer satisfies the pangs of hunger, and with
each new sunrise gaunt Famine stalks nearer to the occupants of the
mud-dried hut. The poor peasant lifts vain hands to gods who answer
not; unavailingly he sacrifices to Shiva, to Kali, to all the
heartless Hindu deities of destruction and to unnamed demons as well.
The Ancient Terror of India approaches; from time immemorial the
vengeful drought has slain her people in herds, like plague-stricken
cattle, not by hundreds and thousands, but by tens of thousands and
hundreds of thousands. In Calcutta I saw several young men whom the
mission school rescued from starvation in the last great famine of
1901-02 and heard moving stories of that terrible time. Many readers
will recall the aid that America then sent to the suffering, but in
spite of the combined efforts of the British Government and
philanthropic Christendom, 1,236,855 people lost their lives. To get a
better grasp upon the significance of these figures it may be
mentioned that if every man, woman, and child in eight American states
and territories at that time (Delaware, Utah, Idaho, New Mexico,
Arizona, Montana, Wyoming, and Nevada) had been {221} swallowed up in
a night, the total loss of life would not have been so great as in
this one Indian famine.
Appalling as these facts are, it must nevertheless be remembered that
the loss would have been vastly greater but for the excellent system
of famine relief which the British Government has now worked out. It
has built railways all over India, so that no longer will it be
possible for any great area to suffer while another district having
abundance is unable to share its bounty because of absence of
transportation. In the second place, the government has wisely
arranged to give work at low wages to famine sufferers--road building,
railroad building, or something of the kind--instead of dispensing a
reckless charity which too often pauperizes those it is intended to
help. Before the British occupation India was scourged both by famine
and by frequent, if not almost constant, wars between neighboring
states. The fighting it has stopped entirely, the loss by drought it
has greatly reduced; and some authority has stated (I regret that I
have not been able to get the exact figures myself) that for a century
before the British assumed control, war and famine kept the population
practically stationary, while since then the number of inhabitants has
practically trebled.
Not unworthy of mention, even in connection with its work in relieving
famine sufferers, is the excellent work the British Government is
doing in enabling the farmers to free themselves from debt. The
visitor to India comes to a keener appreciation of Rudyard Kipling's
stories and poems of Indian life because of the accuracy with which
they picture conditions; and the second "Maxim of Hafiz" is only one
of many that have gained new meaning for me since my coming:
"Yes, though a Kafir die, to him is remitted Jehannum,
If he borrowed in life from a native at 60 per cent. per annum."'
When I first heard of "60 per cent, per annum," and even of 70 per
cent, or 80 per cent., as the ordinary rate of interest paid {222} by
the Indian ryot to the merchant or money-lender, I could not believe
it, but further investigation proved the statement true. In the United
Provinces I found that in some cases the ryot has been little better
than a serf. The merchant has "furnished him supplies," adding
interest at the rate of one anna on each rupee at the end of each
month--6-1/4 per cent., not a year but a month, and that compounded
every 30 days! In one case that came to my attention, two orphan boys
twenty years ago, in arranging the marriage of their sister, borrowed
100 rupees at 50 per cent, interest. For seventeen years thereafter
they paid 50 rupees each year as interest, until an American
missionary took up the account at 5 per cent, instead of 50, and in
two years they had paid it off with only 7 rupees more than they had
formerly paid as annual tribute to the money-lender. In many such
cases debts have been handed down from generation to generation, for
the Hindu code of honor will not permit a son to repudiate the debts
of his father; and son, grandson, and great-grandson have, staggered
under burdens they were unable to get rid of.
In this situation the cooperative credit societies organized under
government supervision have proved a godsend to the people, and
thousands of ryots through their aid are now getting free of debt for
the first time in their lives, and their families for perhaps the
first time in generations. Each member of a cooperative credit society
has some interest in it; the government will lend at 4 per cent, an
amount not greater than the total amount deposited by all the members;
stringent regulations as to loans and their security, deposit of
surplus funds, accounting, etc., are in force, and altogether the plan
is working remarkably well. The latest report I have shows that in a
single twelvemonth the total working capital of these societies
increased more than 300 per cent.
The United States seems to be about the only fairly civilized country
in which some form of cooperative credit society, with government aid,
has not been worked out.
{223}
Of great help to the small farmer also has been the action of the
government in regulating land-rents in crowded districts. The courts
see to it that no landlord raises rents unfairly. One Brahmin
freeholder I met in a small village (he owned 250 acres, worth from
$130 to $275 per acre) told me his rents were 32 to 40 rupees (or from
$10 to $13) per acre. He grows wheat and cotton, and appeared to be
quite intelligent as well as prosperous, although he wore nothing save
a turban and an abbreviated lower garment not quite stretching from
his loins to his knees, the rest of his body being entirely naked.
That the day laborer in India can have but small hope of buying land
at $100 to $300 an acre (and I think these prices general) is
indicated by the fact that when I asked, in the next village, the wage
per month, I was told, "Four or five rupees ($1.28 to $1.60), the
laborer boarding himself."
"And how much is paid per day when a single day's labor is wanted?" I
asked.
"Two annas and bread," was the reply. (An anna is 2 cents.)
My informant was the schoolmaster of Khera Kalan village. At his
school he told me that the children of farmers were allowed tuition
free; the children of the village people pay 1 to 3 annas a month. But
so hard is the struggle to get enough coarse grain to keep soul and
body together (the peasant can seldom afford to eat rice or wheat)
that few farm children are free from work long enough to learn to read
and write.
It is heartbreaking to see the thousands and thousands of bright-eyed
boys and girls growing up amid such hopeless surroundings. I shall not
soon forget the picture of one little group whom I found squatted
around a missionary's knees in a little mud-walled yard just before I
left Khera Kalan that afternoon. Outside a score of camels were
cropping the leaves from the banyan trees (the only regular
communication with the outside world is by camel cart) and the men of
the village {224} were grinding sugarcane on the edge of the
far-reaching fields of green wheat and yellow-blossomed mustard. Not
far away was a Hindu temple; not far away, too, the historic Grand
Trunk Road which leads through Khyber Pass into the strange land of
Afghanistan. It is the road, by the way, over which Alexander the
Great marched his victorious legions into India, and over which
centuries later Tamerlane came on his terror-spreading invasion. But
this has nothing to do with the little half-naked boys and girls we
are now concerned with. They had gathered around the Padre to recite
the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer in Hindustani. I asked how
many had been to school (only one responded), asked something about
their games, told them something about America, and then their
instructor inquired (interpreting all the time for me, of course):
"And what message would you like for the Sahib to give the boys and
girls of America for you?"
"Tell them, Salaam," was the quick chorus in reply.
"And that is good enough, I guess," remarked the American who is now
giving his life to the Indian people, "for Salaam means. Peace be to
you."
So indeed I pass on the message to the fortunate boys and girls of the
United States who read this article. "Salaam,"--Peace be to you.
Little Ones. You will never even know how favored of Heaven you are in
having been born in a land where famine never threatens death to you
and your kindred, where the poor have homes that would seem almost
palatial to the average Indian child; where educational opportunities
are within the reach of all; where the religion of the people is an
aid to moral living and high ideals instead of being a hindrance to
them; where no caste system decrees that the poorest children shall
not rise above the condition of their parents; where a wage-scale
higher far than six cents a day enables the poorest to have comforts
and cherish ambitions; and where the humblest "boy born in a log
cabin" may dream of the Presidency instead {225} of being an outcast
whose very touch the upper orders would account more polluting than
the touch of a beast.
Ah, the little fate-cursed Indian brats, some of them wearing rings in
their noses and not much else, who send the message through me to
you--think of them to-night and be glad that to you the lines have
fallen in pleasanter places.
Salaam, indeed, O happy little folk of my own homeland across the
seas! Peace be to you!
Jeypore, India.
{226}
XXIII
THE CASTE SYSTEM IN INDIA
Of Hinduism as a religious or ecclesiastical institution we had
something to say in another chapter; of Hinduism as Social Fact bare
mention was made. And yet it is in its social aspects, in its
enslavement of all the women and the majority of the men who come
within its reach, that Hinduism presents its most terrible phases. For
Hinduism is Caste and Caste is Hinduism. Upon the innate,
Heaven-ordained superiority of the Brahmin and the other twice-born
castes, and upon the consequent inferiority of the lower castes, the
whole system of Brahminism rests.
Originally there were but four castes: The Brahmin or priest caste who
were supposed to have sprung from the head of Brahma or God; the
Kshatriya or warrior caste who sprang from his arms, the Vasiya or
merchant and farmer class who sprang from his thigh, and the Sudra or
servant and handicraftsmen class who came from his feet. The idea of
superiority by birth having once been accepted as fundamental,
however, these primary castes were themselves divided and subdivided
along real or imaginary lines of superiority or inferiority until
to-day the official government statistics show 2378 castes in India.
You cannot marry into any one of the other 2377 classes of Hindus; you
cannot eat with any of them, nor can you touch any of them.
Thus Caste is the Curse of India. It is the very antithesis of
democracy--blighting, benumbing, paralyzing to all aspiration and all
effort at change or improvement.
{227}
No man may rise to a higher caste than that into which he is born; but
he may fall to a lower one.
There is no opportunity for progress; the only way to move is
backward. Don't kick against the pricks therefore. You were born a
Brahmin with wealth and power because you won the favor of the gods in
some previous existence; or you were born a Sudra, predestined to a
life of suffering and semi-starvation, because in your previous
existence you failed to merit better treatment from the gods. If you
are only a sweeper, be glad that you were not born a pig or a cobra.
Kismet, Fate, has fixed at birth your changeless station in this life;
and, more than this, it has written on your brow the things which must
happen to you throughout your whole existence.
The Brahmin put himself into a position of superiority and then said
to all the other classes: Rebel not at the inequalities of life. They
are ordained of the gods. The good that the higher castes enjoy is the
reward of their having conducted themselves properly in previous
existences. Submit yourself to your lot in the hope that with
obedience to what the Brahmins tell you, you may possibly likewise win
birth into a higher caste next time. But strike a Brahmin even so much
as with a blade of grass and your soul shall be reborn into twenty and
one lives of impure animals before it assumes human shape again.
Never in human history has the ingenuity of a ruling class devised a
cleverer or a crueller mode of perpetuating its supremacy. Never has
there been a religion more depressing, more hopeless, more deadening
to all initiative. "_Jo hota so hota_,"--"What is happening was to
happen"--so said the wounded men who had gone to the Bombay hospital
to have their limbs amputated a few days before I got there. "It is
written on my forehead," a man will often say with stoical
indifference when some calamity overtakes him, in allusion to the
belief that on the sixth night after birth Vidhata writes on every
man's forehead the main events of his life-to-be, and no act {228} of
his can change them. "I was impelled of the gods to do the deed," a
criminal will say in the courts. "And I am impelled of the gods to
punish you for it," the judge will sometimes answer. If plague comes,
the natives can only be brought by force to observe precautions
against it. "If we are to die, we shall die; why offend the gods by
attempting interference with their plans?" The fatalism of the East as
expressed by Omar Khayyam is the daily creed of India's millions:
"We are no other than a Moving Row
Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go. . . .
"But helpless Pieces of the Game He plays
Upon this Checkerboard of Nights and Days."
It is in this fatalistic conception of life that caste is rooted; but
for this belief that all things are predestined, no people would ever
have been so spiritless as to submit to the tyranny of the caste
system. Perhaps it should also be added that the belief in the
transmigration of the soul has also had a not inconsiderable
influence. Though you have fared ill in this life, a million rebirths
may be yours ere you finally win absorption into Brahma, and in these
million future lives the gods may deal more prodigally with you.
Indeed, the things you most desire may be yours in your rebirth. "You
are interested in India; therefore you may have your next life as an
Indian," an eminent Hindu said to me. But Heaven forbid!
At any rate, with this double layer of nourishing earth--the belief,
first, that what you are now is the result of your actions in previous
lives, and, secondly, that there are plenty more rebirths in which any
merit you possess may have its just recompense of reward, the caste
system has flourished like the Psalmist's green bay tree, though its
influence has been more like that of the deadly upas.
If you are a high-caste man you may not only refuse to eat with or
touch a low-caste man, your equal perhaps in {229} intelligence and in
morals, but in some cases you may even demand that the low-caste man
shall not pollute you by coming too near you on the road. On page 540
of the 1901 "Census of India Report" will be found a table showing at
what distances the presence of certain inferior classes become
contaminating to a Brahmin! Moreover, the low-caste man, offensive to
men, is taught that he is equally offensive to the gods. He must not
worship in the temples; must not even approach them. Usually it is
taken for granted that no Pariah will take such a liberty, but in some
places I have seen signs in English posted on the temple gates warning
tourists who have low-caste servants that these servants cannot enter
the sacred buildings.
Not only are these creatures of inferior orders vile in themselves,
but the work which they do has also come to be regarded as degrading.
A high-caste man will not be caught doing any work which is "beneath
him." The cook will not sweep; the messenger boy would not pick up a
book from the floor. The liveried Brahmin who takes your card at the
American Consulate in Calcutta once lost his place rather than pick up
a slipper; rather than humiliate himself in such fashion he would walk
half a mile to get some other servant for the duty. It is no uncommon
thing to find that your servant will carry a package for you, but will
hire another servant if a small package of his own is to be moved. "I
had a boy for thirteen years, the best boy I ever had, till he died of
the plague," a Bombay Englishman said to me, "and he shaved me
regularly all the time. But when I gave him a razor with which to
shave himself, I found it did no good. He would have 'lost caste' if
he had done barber's work for anybody but a European!"
"I have a good sweeper servant," a Calcutta minister told me, "but if
I should attempt to promote him beyond his caste and make a
house-servant of him, every other servant I have would leave,
including my cook, who has been a Christian twenty years!"
The absurdities into which the caste system runs are well {230}
illustrated by some facts which came to my notice on a visit to a
school for the Dom caste conducted by some English people in Benares.
The Doms burn the bodies of the dead at the Ganges ghats, and do other
"dirty work." Incidentally they form the "thief caste" in Benares, and
whenever a robbery occurs, the instant presumption is that some Dom is
guilty. For this reason a great number of Doms (they belong to the
Gypsy class and have no houses anywhere) make it a practice to sleep
on the ground just outside the police station nearly all the year
round, reporting to the authorities so as to be able to prove an alibi
in case of a robbery. So low are the Doms that to touch anything
belonging to one works defilement; consequently they leave their most
valuable possessions unguarded about their tents or shacks, knowing
full well that not even a thief of a higher caste will touch them.
"We had a servant," a Benares lady said to me, "who lost his place
rather than take up one end of a forty-foot carpet while a Dom had
hold of the other end. The new bearer, his successor, did risk helping
move a box with a Dom handling the other side of it, but he was
outcasted for the action, and it cost him 25 rupees to be reinstated.
And until reinstated, of course, he could not visit kinsmen or friends
nor could friends or kinsmen have visited him even to help at a
funeral; his priest, his barber, and his washerman would have shunned
him. Again, our bearer, who is himself an outcast in the eyes of the
Brahmins, will not take a letter from the hands of our Dom chiprassi
or messenger boy. Instead, the messenger boy drops the letter on the
floor, and the bearer picks it up and thus escapes the pollution that
would come from actual contact with the chiprassi." Moreover, there
are social gradations even among the Doms. One Dom proudly confided to
this lady that he was a sort of superior being because the business of
his family was to collect the bones of dead animals, a more
respectable work than that in which some other Doms engaged!
Similarly, Mrs. Lee of the Memorial Mission in Calcutta {231} tells
how one day when a dead cat had to be moved from her yard her sweeper
proudly pulled himself up and assured her that, though the lowest
among all servants, he was still too high to touch the body of a dead
animal!