The Classes and the Masses
"We speak of work done against the force of
gravitation. If the magnitude of a force can be
estimated in any sense by the resistance which it
has to overcome, then verily there is no land
under the sun more calculated than India to
display the Grand Forces of God's Omnipotent
Grace. For here it has to face and overcome the
_combined resistances_ of the Caste system,
entrenched heathenism, and deeply subtle
philosophies. Praise God! it can and will be done.
Thou, who alone doest wondrous things, work on.
'So will we sing and praise Thy power.'"
_Rev. T. Walker, India._
PERHAPS it would help towards the better understanding of these letters
if we stopped and explained things a little. Some may have been
wondering, as they read, how it is that while the South Indian fields
are constantly quoted as among the most fruitful in the world, we seem
to be dealing with a class where fruit is very rare, and so subject to
blighting influences after it has appeared, that we hardly like to speak
of it till it is ripe and reaped and safe in the heavenly garner. I
think it will be easier to understand all this if we view Hindu Tamil
South India (with which alone this book deals) from the outside, and let
it fall into two divisions the Classes and the Masses. There is, of
course, the border line between, crossed over on either side by some who
belong to the Classes but are almost of the Masses, and by some who
belong to the Masses but are almost of the Classes. Broadly speaking,
however, there is a distinct difference between the two. As to their
attitude towards the Gospel, the Classes and the Masses unite; they are
wholly indifferent to it.
In a paper read at the Student Volunteers' Conference in 1900, a South
Indian missionary summed up the matter in a comprehensive sentence:
"Shut in for millenniums by the gigantic wall of the Himalayas on the
North, and by the impassable ocean on the South, they have lived in
seclusion from the rest of the world, and have developed social
institutions and conceptions of the universe, and of right and wrong,
quite their own. Their own religion and traditionary customs are
accepted as sufficiently meeting their needs, and they are not conscious
of needing any teaching from foreigners. They will always listen
courteously to what we say, and this constitutes an open door for the
Gospel, but of conscious need and hungering for the Gospel there is
little or none. So long as it is only a matter of preaching, there are
in the world no more patient listeners than the Hindus. But as soon as a
case arises of one of their number abandoning the Caste customs and
traditionary worship, all their hostility is aroused, and the whole
community feels it a duty of patriotism to do its utmost to deprive that
individual of liberty of action, and to defend the vested rights of
Hinduism."
For the true Hindu is fervently Hindu. His religion "may be described as
bound up in the bundle of his everyday existence." His intense belief in
it, and in his Caste, which is part of it, gives edge to the blade with
which he fights the entrance of a new religion to his home. This new
religion he conceives of as something inherently antagonistic to his
Caste, and as Caste is at every point connected with Hinduism, a thing
interwoven with it, as if Hinduism were the warp and Caste the woof of
the fabric of Indian life, we cannot say he is mistaken in regarding
Christianity as a foe to be fought if he would continue a Caste Hindu.
So far, in South Indian religious history, we have no example on a large
scale of anything approaching the Bramo Samâj of the North. In the more
conservative South there is almost no compromise with, and little
assimilation of, the doctrine which makes all men one in Christ.
To return to the division--Classes and Masses--the Classes comprise
members of what are known as the higher Castes, and in speaking of towns
and villages where these dwell, and of converts from among them, the
prefix "Caste" is sometimes used. Among the Classes we find women of
much tenderness of feeling and a culture of their own, but their minds
are narrowed by the petty lives they live, lives in many instances
bounded by no wider horizon than thoughts concerning their husbands and
children and jewels and curries, and always their next-door neighbour's
squabbles and the gossip of the place. Much of this gossip deals with
matters which are not of an elevating character. It takes us years to
understand it, because most of the conversation is carried on in
allusion or innuendo. But it is understood by the children. One of our
converts told me that she often prays for power to forget the words she
heard, and the things she saw, and the games she played, when she was a
little child in her mother's room.
[Illustration: This old man is the Hindu village schoolmaster. The boys
write on a strip of palm leaf with an iron style. These little lads come
to us every Sunday afternoon. Will some one remember them?]
The young girls belonging to the higher Castes are kept in strict
seclusion. During these formative years they are shut up within the
courtyard walls to the dwarfing life within, and as a result they get
dwarfed, and lose in resourcefulness and independence of mind, and above
all in courage; and this tells terribly in our work, making it so
difficult to persuade such a one to think for herself or dare to decide
to believe. Such seclusion is not felt as imprisonment; a girl is
trained to regard it as the proper thing, and we never find any desire
among those so secluded to break bounds and rush out into the free, open
air. They do not feel it cramped as we should; it is their custom.
It is this custom which makes work among girls exceedingly slow and
unresultful. They have to be reached one by one, and it takes many
months of teaching before the mind opens enough to understand that it
may be free. The reaction of the physical upon the mental is never more
clearly illustrated than in such cases. Sometimes it seems as if the
mind _could_ not go out beyond the cramping walls; but when it has, by
God's illumination, received light enough to see into the darkness of
the soul, and the glory that waits to shine in on it, conceive of the
tremendous upheaval, the shock of finding solid ground sink, as
gradually or suddenly the conviction comes upon such a one that if she
acts upon this new knowledge there is no place for her at home. She must
give everything up--_everything_!
Do you wonder that few are found willing to "follow so far"? Do you
wonder that our hearts nearly break sometimes, as we realize the cost
for them? Do you wonder that, knowing how each is set as a target for
the archer who shoots at souls, we fear to say much about them, lest we
should set the targets clearer in his sight?
The men and boys of the Classes live a more liberal life, and here you
find all varying shades of refinement. There is education, too, and a
great respect for learning, and reverence for their classic literature
and language, a language so ancient that we find certain Tamil words in
the Hebrew Scriptures, and so rich, that while "nearly all the
vernaculars of India have been greatly enriched from the Sanscrit,
Sanscrit has borrowed from Tamil." Almost every Caste village has its
own little school, and every town has many, where the boys are taught
reading, writing, poetry, and mental arithmetic.
There is not much education among the Masses. Here and there a man
stands out who has fought his way through the ignorance of centuries, up
into the light of the knowledge of books. Such a man is greatly
respected by the whole community. The women have the same kindly nature
as the women of the Classes, and there is surprising responsiveness
sometimes, where one would least expect it. We have known a Tamil woman,
distinctly of the Masses, never secluded in her girlhood, but left to
bloom as a wild flower in the field, as sensitive in spirit as any lady
born. The people are rough and rustic in their ways, but there are
certain laws observed which show a spirit of refinement latent among
them; there are customs which compare favourably with the customs of the
masses at home. As a whole, they are like the masses of other lands,
with good points and bad points in strong relief, and just the same
souls to be saved.
Converts from among the Masses, as a general rule, are able to live at
home. There is persecution, but they are not turned out of village,
street, or house. Often they come in groups, two or three families
together perhaps, or a whole village led by its headman comes over.
There is less of the single one-by-one conversion and confession, though
there is an increasing number of such, and they are the best we have.
It is easy to understand how much more rapidly Christianity spreads
under such conditions than among those prevailing among the Classes; we
see it illustrated over and over again. For example, in a certain
high-caste Hindu town some miles distant from our station on the Eastern
side, a young man heard the Gospel preached at an open-air meeting; he
believed, and confessed in baptism, thus breaking Caste and becoming an
alien to his own people. He has never been able to live at home since,
and so there has been no witness borne, no chance to let the life show
out the love of God. The men of that household doubtless know something
of the truth; they know enough, at least, to make them responsible for
refusing it; but what can the women know? Only that the son of the house
has disgraced his house and name; only that he has destroyed his Caste
and broken his mother's heart. "Shame upon him," they cry with one
voice, "and curses on the cause of the shame, the 'Way' of Jesus
Christ!" It is useless to say they are merely women, and do not count;
they _do_ count. Their influence counts for a very great deal.
Theoretically, women in India are nothing where religion is concerned;
practically, they are the heart of the Hindu religion, as the men are
its sinew and brain. There has never been a convert in that town since
that young man was banished from it, out-casted by his Caste.
But in a village only a few miles from that town a heathen lad believed,
and was baptised, and returned home, not so welcome as before, but not
considered too defiled to be reckoned a son of the household still. His
father is dead, his mother is a bitter opponent, but his brother has
come since, and within a stone's-throw another; and so it goes on: the
life has a chance to tell. Almost every time we have gone to that
village we have found some ready for baptism, and though none of the
mothers have been won, they witness to the change in the life of their
sons. "My boy's heart is as white as milk now," said one, who had stood
by and seen that boy tied up and flogged for Christ's sake. They rarely
"change their religion," these staunch old souls; "let me go where my
husband is; he would have none of it!" said one, and nothing seems to
move them; but they let their boys live at home, and perhaps, even yet,
the love will break down their resistance. They are giving it a chance.
I think this one illustration explains more than many words would the
difference between work among the Classes and the Masses, and why it is
that one form of work is so much more fruitful than the other.
The Masses must not be understood as a vast casteless Mass, out-casted
by the Classes, for the Caste system runs down to the very lowest
stratum, but their Caste rules allow of freer intercourse with others.
We may visit in their houses more freely, enter more freely into their
thoughts, share more freely in the interests of their lives. We are less
outside, as it were. But the main difference between the one set of
people and the other lies deeper; it is a difference underground. It
works out, however, into something all can see. Among the Masses, "mass
movements" are of common occurrence; among the Classes, with rare
exceptions, each one must come out alone.
[Illustration: A village woman of the Shanar Caste. The photo shows the
baby's ears being prepared for the jewels her mother hopes will fill
them by and by. Holes are made first and filled with cotton wool,
graduated leaden weights are added till the lobes are long enough.]
This is often forgotten by observers of the Indian Field from the home
side. There are parts of that field where the labourers seem to be
always binding up sheaves and singing harvest songs; and from other
parts come fewer songs, for the sheaves are fewer there, or it may be
there are none at all, only a few poor ears of corn, and they had to be
gathered one by one, and they do not show in the field.