From Egypt to Japan Part 14

No doubt in planting themselves in India, the English have often used the rights of conquerors. No one has denounced their usurpations and oppressions more than their own historians, such as Mill and Macaulay.

The latter, in his eloquent reviews of the lives of Clive and Warren Hastings, has spoken with just severity of the crimes of those extraordinary but unscrupulous men. For such acts no justification can be pleaded whatever. But as between Clive and Surajah Dowlah, the rule of the former was infinitely better. It would be carrying the doctrine of self-government to an absurd extent, to imagine that the monster who shut up English prisoners in the Black Hole had any right which was to be held sacred. The question of right, therefore, is not between the English and the people of India, but between the English and the native princes. Indeed England comes in to protect the people against the princes, when it gives them one strong master in place of a hundred petty tyrants. The King of Oude collecting his taxes by soldiers, is but an instance of that oppression and cruelty which extended all over India, but which is now brought to an end.

And how has England used her power? At first, we must confess, with but little of the feeling of responsibility which should accompany the possession of power. Nearly a hundred years ago, Burke (who was master of all facts relating to the history of India, and to its political condition, more than any other man of his time) bitterly arraigned the English government for its cruel neglect of that great dependency. He denounced his countrymen, the agents of the East India Company, as a horde of plunderers, worse than the soldiers of Tamerlane, and held up their greedy and rapacious administration to the scorn of mankind, showing that they had left no beneficent monuments of their power to compare with those of the splendid reigns of the old Moguls. In a speech in Parliament in 1783, he said:

"England has erected no churches, no palaces, no hospitals, no schools; England has built no bridges, made no high roads, cut no navigations, dug out no reservoirs. Every other conqueror of every other description has left some monument either of State or beneficence behind him. Were we to be driven out of India this day, nothing would remain to tell that it had been possessed, during the inglorious period of our dominion, by anything better than the orang-outang or the tiger."

This is a fearful accusation. What answer can be made to it? Has there been any change for the better since the great impeacher of Warren Hastings went to his grave? How has England governed India since that day? She has not undertaken to govern it like a Model Republic. If she had, her rule would soon have come to an end. She has not given the Hindoos universal suffrage, or representation in Parliament. But she has given them something better--Peace and Order and Law, a trinity of blessings that they never had before. When the native princes ruled in India, they were constantly at war among themselves, and thus overrunning and hara.s.sing the country. Now the English government rules everywhere, and Peace reigns from Cape Comorin to the Himalayas.

Strange to say, this quietness does not suit some of the natives, who have a restless longing for the wild lawlessness of former times. A missionary was one day explaining to a crowd the doctrine of original sin, when he was roughly interrupted by one who said, "I know what is original sin: it is the English rule in India." "You ought not to say that," was the reply, "for if it were not for the English the people of the next village would make a raid on your village, and carry off five thousand sheep." But the other was not to be put down so, and answered promptly, "_I should like that_, for then we would make a raid on them and carry off ten thousand!" This was a blunt way of putting it, but it expresses the feeling of many who would prefer that kind of wild justice which prevails among the Tartar hordes of Central Asia to a state of profound tranquility. They would rather have Asiatic barbarism than European civilization.

With peace between States, England has established order in every community. It has given protection to life and property--a sense of security which is the first condition of the existence of human society. It has abolished heathen customs which were inhuman and cruel. It has extirpated thuggism, and put an end to infanticide and the burning of widows. This was a work of immense difficulty, because these customs, horrid as they were, were supported by religious fanaticism. Mothers cast their children into the Ganges as an offering to the G.o.ds; and widows counted it a happy escape from the sufferings of life to mount the funeral pile. Even to this day there are some who think it hard that they cannot thus sacrifice themselves.

So wedded are the people to their customs, that they are very jealous of the interference of the government, when it prohibits any of their practices on the ground of humanity. Dr. Newton, of Lah.o.r.e, the venerable missionary, told me that he knew a few years ago a fakir, a priest of a temple, who had grown to be very friendly with him. One day the poor man came, with his heart full of trouble, to tell his griefs. He had a complaint against the government. He said that Sir John Lawrence, then Governor of the Punjaub, was very arbitrary. And why? Because he wanted to bury himself alive, and the Governor wouldn't let him! He had got to be a very old man (almost a hundred), and of course must soon leave this world. He had had a tomb prepared in the grounds of the temple (he took Dr. Newton to see what a nice place it was), and there he wished to lie down and breathe his last.

With the Hindoos it is an act of religious merit to bury one's self alive, and on this the old man had set his heart. If he could do this, he would go straight to Paradise, but the hard English Governor, insensible to such considerations, would not permit it. Was it not too bad that he could not be allowed to go to heaven in his own way?

Breaking up these old barbarities--suicide, infanticide, and the burning of widows--the government has steadily aimed to introduce a better system for the administration of justice, in which, with due regard to Hindoo customs and prejudices, shall be incorporated, as far as possible, the principles of English law. For twenty years the ablest men that could be found in India or in England, have been engaged in perfecting an elaborate Indian Code, in which there is one law for prince and pariah. What must be the effect on the Hindoo mind of such a system, founded in justice, and enforced by a power which they cannot resist? Such laws administered by English magistrates, will educate the Hindoos to the idea of justice, which, outside of English colonies, can hardly be said to exist in Asia.

The English are the Romans of the modern world. Wherever the Roman legions marched, they ruled with a strong hand, but they established law and order, the first conditions of human society. So with the English in all their Asiatic dependencies. Wherever they come, they put an end to anarchy, and give to all men that sense of protection and security, that feeling of personal safety--safety both to life and property--without which there is no motive to human effort, and no possibility of human progress.

The English are like the Romans in another feature of their administration, in the building of roads. The Romans were the great road-builders of antiquity. Highways which began at Rome, and thus radiated from a common centre, led to the most distant provinces. Not only in Italy, but in Spain and Gaul and Germany, did the ancient masters of the world leave these enduring monuments of their power.

Following this example, England, before the days of railroads, built a broad macadamized road from Calcutta to Peshawur, over 1,500 miles.

This may have been for a military purpose; but no matter, it serves the ends of peace more than of war. It becomes a great avenue of commerce; it opens communication between distant parts of India, and brings together men of different races, speaking different languages; and thus, by promoting peaceful and friendly intercourse, it becomes a highway of civilization.

Nor is this the only great road in this country. Everywhere I have found the public highways in excellent condition. Indeed I have not found a bad road in India--not one which gave me such a "shaking up"

as I have sometimes had when riding over the "corduroys" through the Western forests of America. Around the large towns the roads are especially fine--broad and well paved, and often planted with trees.

The cities are embellished with parks, like cities in England, with botanical and zoological gardens. The streets are kept clean, and strict sanitary regulations are enforced--a matter of the utmost moment in this hot climate, and in a dense population, where a sudden outbreak of cholera would sweep off thousands in a few days or hours.

The streets are well lighted and well policed, so that one may go about at any hour of day or night with as much safety as in London or New York. If these are the effects of foreign rule, even the most determined grumbler must confess that it has proved a material and substantial benefit to the people of India.

Less than twenty years ago the internal improvements of India received a sudden and enormous development, when to the building of roads succeeded that of railroads. Lord Dalhousie, when Governor-General, had projected a great railroad system, but it was not till after the Mutiny, and perhaps in consequence of the lessons learned by that terrible experience, that the work was undertaken on a large scale.

The government guaranteed five per cent. interest for a term of years, and the capital was supplied from England. Labor was abundant and cheap, and the works were pushed on with unrelaxing energy, till India was belted from Bombay to Calcutta, and trunk lines were running up and down the country, with branches to every large city. Thus, to English foresight and sagacity, to English wealth and engineering skill, India owes that vast system of railroads which now spreads over the whole peninsula.

In no part of the world are railroads more used than in India. Of course the first-cla.s.s carriages are occupied chiefly by English travellers, or natives of high rank; and the second-cla.s.s by those less wealthy. But there are trains for the people, run at very low fares. There are huge cars, built with two stories, and carrying a hundred pa.s.sengers each, and these two-deckers are often very closely packed. The Hindoos have even learned to make pilgrimages by steam, and find it much cheaper, as well as easier, than to go afoot. When one considers the long journeys they have been accustomed to undertake under the burning sun of India, the amount of suffering relieved by a mode of locomotion so cool and swift is beyond computation.

Will anybody tell me that the people of India, if left alone, would have built their own railways? Perhaps in the course of ages, but not in our day. The Asiatic nature is torpid and slow to move, and cannot rouse itself to great exertion. In the whole Empire of China there is not a railroad, except at Shanghai, where a few months ago was opened a little "one-horse concern," a dozen miles long, built by the foreigners for the convenience of that English settlement. This may show how rapid would have been the progress of railroads in India, if left wholly to native "enterprise." It would have taken hundreds of years to accomplish what the English have wrought in one generation.

Nor does English engineering skill expend itself on railroads alone.

It has dug ca.n.a.ls that are like rivers in their length. The Ganges Ca.n.a.l in Upper India is a work equal to our Erie Ca.n.a.l. Other ca.n.a.ls have been opened, both for commerce and for irrigation. The latter is a matter vital to India. The food of the Hindoos is rice, and rice cannot be cultivated except in fields well watered. A drought in the rice fields means a famine in the province. Such a calamity is now averted in many places by this artificial irrigation. The overflow from these streams, which are truly "fountains in the desert," has kept whole districts from being burnt up, by which in former years millions perished by famine.

While thus caring for the material comfort and safety of the people of India, England has also shown regard to their enlightenment in providing a magnificent system of National Education. Every town in India has its government school, while many a large city has its college or its university. Indeed, so far has this matter of education been carried, that I heard a fear expressed that it was being overdone--at least the higher education--because the young men so educated were unfitted for anything else than the employ of the government. All minor places in India are filled by natives, and well filled too. But there are not enough for all. And hence many, finding no profession to enter, and educated above the ordinary occupations of natives, are left stranded on the sh.o.r.e.

These great changes in India, these schools and colleges, the better administration of the laws, and these vast internal improvements, have been almost wholly the work of the generation now living. In the first century of its dominion the English rule perhaps deserved the bitter censure of Burke, but

"If 'twere so, it were a grievous fault, And grievously hath Caesar answered it."

England has paid for the misgovernment of India in the blood of her children, and within the last few years she has striven n.o.bly to repair the errors of former times. Thus one generation makes atonement for the wrongs of another. She has learned that justice is the highest wisdom, and the truest political economy. The change is due in part to the constant pressure of the Christian sentiment of England upon its government, which has compelled justice to India, and wrought those vast changes which we see with wonder and admiration.

Thus stretching out her mighty arm over India, England rules the land from sea to sea. I say not that she rules it in absolute righteousness--that her government is one of ideal perfection, but it is immeasurably better than that of the old native tyrants which it displaced. It at least respects the forms of law, and while it establishes peace, it endeavors also to maintain justice. The railroads that pierce the vast interior quicken the internal commerce of the country, while the waters that are caused to flow over the rice-fields of Bengal abate the horrors of pestilence and famine. Thus England gives to her Asiatic empire the substantial benefits of modern civilization; while in her schools and colleges she brings the subtle Hindoo mind into contact with the science and learning of the West. At so many points does this foreign rule touch the very life of India, and infuse the best blood of Europe into her languid veins.

With such results of English rule, who would not wish that it might continue? It is not that we love the Hindoo less, but the cause of humanity more. The question of English rule in India is a question of civilization against barbarism. These are the two forces now in conflict for the mastery of Asia. India is the place where the two seas meet. Shall she be left to herself, shut up between her seas and her mountains? That would be an unspeakable calamity, not only to her present inhabitants, but to unborn millions. I believe in modern civilization, as I believe in Christianity. These are the great forces which are to conquer the world. In conquering Asia, they will redeem it and raise it to a new life. The only hope of Asia is from Europe:

"Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay;"

and the only hope of India is from England. So whatever contests may yet arise for the control of this vast peninsula, with its two hundred millions of people, our sympathies must always be against Asiatic barbarism, and on the side of European civilization.

CHAPTER XIX.

MISSIONS IN INDIA--DO MISSIONARIES DO ANY GOOD?

"Is it not all a farce?" said a Major in the Bengal Staff Corps, as we came down from Upper India. We were talking of Missions. He did not speak of them with hatred, but only with contempt. The missionaries "meant well," but they were engaged in an enterprise which was so utterly hopeless, that no man in his senses could regard it as other than supreme and almost incredible folly. In this he spoke the opinion of half the military men of India. They have no personal dislike to missionaries--indeed many an officer in an out-of-the-way district, who has a missionary family for almost his only neighbors, will acknowledge that they are "a great addition to the English society."

But as for their doing any good, as an officer once said to me: "They might as well go and stand on the sh.o.r.e of the sea and preach to the fishes, as to think to convert the Hindoos!" Their success, of which so much is said in England and America, is "infinitesimally small."

Some even go so far as to say that the missionaries do great mischief; that they stir up bad blood in the native population, and perpetuate an animosity of races. Far better would it be to leave the "mild Hindoo" to his G.o.ds; to let him worship his sacred cows, and monkeys and serpents, and his hideous idols, so long as he is a quiet and inoffensive subject of the government.

If one were preaching a sermon to a Christian congregation, he might disdain a reply to objections which seem to come out of the mouths of unbelievers; it would be enough to repeat the words of Him who said, "Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature." But I am not preaching, but conversing with an intelligent gentleman, who has lived long in India, and might well a.s.sume that he knows far more about the actual situation than I do. Such men are not to be put down.

They represent a large part of the Anglo-Indian population. We may therefore as well recognize the fact that Modern Missions, like any other enterprise which is proposed in the interest of civilization, are now on trial before the world. We may look upon them as too sacred for criticism; but in this irreverent age nothing is too sacred; everything that is holy has to be judged by reason, and by practical results, and by these to be justified or to be condemned. I would not therefore claim anything on the ground of authority, but speak of missions as I would of national education, or even of the railroad system of India.

The question here raised I think deserves a larger and more candid treatment than it commonly receives either from the advocates or the opponents of missions. It is not to be settled merely by pious feeling, by unreasoning sentiment on the one hand, nor by sneers on the other. To convert a whole country from one religion to another, is an undertaking so vast that it is not to be lightly entered upon. The very attempt a.s.sumes a superior wisdom on the part of those who make it, which is itself almost an offence. If it be not "a grand impertinence," an intrusion into matters with which no stranger has a right to intermeddle, it is at least taking a great liberty to thrust upon a man our opinion in censure of his own. We may think him very ignorant, and in need of being enlightened. But he may have a poor opinion of our ability to enlighten him. We think him a fool, and he returns the compliment. At any rate, right or wrong, he is ent.i.tled to the freedom of his opinion as much as we are to ours. If a stranger were to come to us day by day, to argue with us, and to force his opinions upon us, either in politics or religion, we might listen civilly and patiently at first, but we should end by turning him out of doors. What right have we to p.r.o.nounce on his opinions and conduct any more than he upon ours?

In the domain of religion, especially, a man's opinions are sacred.

They are between himself and G.o.d. There is no greater offence against courtesy, against that mutual concession of perfect freedom, which is the first law of all human intercourse, than to interfere wantonly with the opinions--nay, if you please, with the false opinions, with the errors and prejudices--of mankind. Nothing but the most imperative call of humanity--a plea of "necessity or mercy"--can justify a crusade against the ancestral faith of a whole people.

I state the case as strongly as I can, that we may look upon it as an English officer, or even an intelligent Hindoo, looks upon it, and I admit frankly that we have no more right to force our religion upon the people of India, than to force upon them a republican form of government, unless we can give a reason for it, which shall be recognized at the bar of the intelligent judgment of mankind.

Is there then any good reason--any _raison d'etre_--for the establishment of missions in India? If there be not some very solid and substantial ground for their existence, they are not to be justified merely because their motive is good. Is there then any reason whatever which can justify any man, or body of men, in invading this country with a new religion, and attacking the ancient faith of the people?

All students of history will acknowledge that there are certain great revolutions in the opinions of mankind, which are epochs in history, and turning points in the life of nations. India has had many such revolutions, dating far back before the Christian era. Centuries before Christ was born, Buddha preached his new faith on the banks of the Ganges. For a time it conquered the country, driving out the old Brahminism, which however came back and conquered in its turn, till Buddhism, retiring slowly from the plains of India, planted its paG.o.das on the sh.o.r.es of Burmah and among the mountains of Ceylon.

Thus India is a land of missions, and has been from the very beginnings of history. It was traversed by missionaries of its ancient faith ages before Tamerlane descended the pa.s.ses of the Himalayas with the sword in one hand and the Koran in the other; or Francis Xavier, the Apostle of the Indies, laid his bones in the Cathedral of Goa. If then Buddhists and Brahmins, and Moslems and Romanists, have so long disputed the land, there is certainly no reason why we should condemn at the very outset the entrance of Protestant Christianity.

Beside this great fact in the history of India place another: that there is no country in the world where religion is such a power, such an element in the life of the people. The Hindoos are not only religious, they are intensely so. They have not indeed the fierce fanaticism of the Moslems, for their creed tolerates all religions, but what they believe they believe strongly. They have a subtle philosophy which pervades all their thinking, which digs the very channels in which their thoughts run, and cannot overflow; and this philosophy, which is imbedded in their religious creed, fixes their castes and customs, as rigidly as it does their forms of worship.

Religion is therefore the chief element in the national life. It has more to do in moulding the ideas and habits, the manners and customs, of the people, than laws or government, or any other human inst.i.tution. Thus India furnishes the most imposing ill.u.s.tration on earth of the power of Religion to shape the destiny of a country or a race.

Whether there be anything to justify a friendly invasion of India, and the attempt to convert its people to a better religion, may appear if we ask, What is Hindooism? Is it a good or bad faith? Does it make men better or worse--happy or unhappy? Does it promote the welfare of human beings, or is it a system which is false in belief and deadly in its effects, and against which we have a right to wage a holy war?

Hindooism has a thousand shapes, spreading out its arms like a mighty banyan tree, but its root is one--Pantheism. When an old fakir at the Mela at Allahabad said to me, "You are G.o.d and I am G.o.d!" he did not utter a wild rhapsody, but expressed the essence of Hindoo philosophy, according to which all beings that exist are but One Being; all thoughts are but the pulse-beats of One Infinite Mind; all acts are but the manifestation of One Universal Life.

Some may think this theory a mere abstraction, which has no practical bearing. But carried out to its logical consequences, it overthrows all morality. If all acts of men are G.o.d's acts, then they are all equally good or bad; or rather, they are neither good nor bad. Thus moral distinctions are destroyed, and vice and virtue are together banished from the world. Hence Hindooism as a religion has nothing whatever to do with morality or virtue, but is only a means of propitiating angry deities. It is a religion of terror and fear. It is also unspeakably vile. It is the worship of obscene G.o.ds by obscene rites. Its very G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses commit adultery and incest. Thus vice is deified. Such a mythology pollutes the imaginations of the people, whereby their very mind and conscience are defiled. Not only the heart, but even the intellect is depraved by the loathsome objects set up in their temples. The most common object of worship in India is an obscene image. Indeed, so well understood is this, that when a law was pa.s.sed by the Government against the exhibition of obscene images, an express exception was made in favor of those exposed in temples, and which were objects of religious worship. Thus Hindooism has the privilege of indecency, and is allowed to break over all restraints.

It is the licensed harlot, that is permitted, in deference to its religious pretensions, to disregard the common decencies of mankind.

The effect of this on public morals can be imagined. The stream cannot rise higher than its source. How can a people be pure, when their very religion is a fountain of pollution? But this is a subject on which we cannot enlarge. It is an abyss into which no one would wish to look.

It is sufficient to indicate what we cannot for very loathing undertake to describe.

There is another element in the Hindoo religion, which cannot be ignored, and which gives it a tremendous power for good or evil. It is Caste. Every Hindoo child is born in a certain caste, out of which he cannot escape. When I landed at Bombay I observed that every native had upon his forehead a mark freshly made, as if with a stroke of the finger, which indicated the G.o.d he worshipped or the caste to which he belonged. Of these there are four princ.i.p.al ones--the Priest, or Brahmin caste, which issued out of the mouth of Brahm; the Warrior caste, which sprung from his arms and breast; the Merchant caste, from his thighs; and the Shoodras, or Servile caste, which crawled out from between his feet; beside the Pariahs, who are below all caste. These divisions are absolute and unchangeable. To say that they are maintained by the force of ancient custom is not enough: they are fixed as by a law of nature. The strata of society are as immovable as the strata of the rock-ribbed hills. No man can stir out of his place.

If he is up he stays up by no virtue of his own; and if he is down, he stays down, beyond any power of man to deliver him. No gift of genius, or height of virtue, can ever raise up one of a low caste into a higher, for caste is a matter of birth. Upon these sub-strata this fixity of caste rests with crushing weight. It holds them down as with the force of gravitation, as if the Himalayas were rolled upon them to press them to the earth.

Against this oppression there is no power of resistance, no lifting up from beneath to throw it off. One would suppose that the people themselves would revolt at this servitude, that every manly instinct would rise up in rebellion against such a degradation. But so ingrained is it in the very life of the people, that they cannot cast it out any more than they can cast out a poison in their blood. Indeed they seem to glory in it. The lower castes crouch and bow down that others may pa.s.s over them. A Brahmin, who had become a Christian, told me that the people had often asked him to wash his feet in the water of the street, that they might drink it!