The New World of Islam Part 18

[235] J. Ramsay Macdonald, _The Government of India_, p. 133 (London, 1920).

[236] In _The Hindustan Review_ (Calcutta), 1917.

[237] Good examples are found in the writings of Mukerjee and Lajpat Rai, already quoted.

[238] G. Lowes d.i.c.kinson, _An Essay on the Civilizations of India, China, and j.a.pan_, pp. 84-85 (London, 1914).

CHAPTER VIII

SOCIAL CHANGE

The momentous nature of the contemporary transformation of the Orient is nowhere better attested than by the changes effected in the lives of its peoples. That dynamic influence of the West which is modifying governmental forms, political concepts, religious beliefs, and economic processes is proving equally potent in the range of social phenomena. In the third chapter of this volume we attempted a general survey of Western influence along all the above lines. In the present chapter we shall attempt a detailed consideration of the social changes which are to-day taking place.

These social changes are very great, albeit many of them may not be so apparent as the changes in other fields. So firm is the hold of custom and tradition on individual, family, and group life in the Orient that superficial observers of the East are p.r.o.ne to a.s.sert that these matters are still substantially unaltered, however p.r.o.nounced may have been the changes on the external, material side. Yet such is not the opinion of the closest students of the Orient, and it is most emphatically not the opinion of Orientals themselves. These generally stress the profound social changes which are going on.

And it is their judgments which seem to be the more correct. To say that the East is advancing "materially" but standing still "socially" is to ignore the elemental truth that social systems are altered quite as much by material things as by abstract ideas. Who that looks below the surface can deny the social, moral, and civilizing power of railroads, post-offices, and telegraph lines? Does it mean nothing socially as well as materially that the East is adopting from the West a myriad innovations, weighty and trivial, important and frivolous, useful and baneful? Does it mean nothing socially as well as materially that the Prophet's tomb at Medina is lit by electricity and that picture post-cards are sold outside the Holy Kaaba at Mecca? It may seem mere grotesque piquancy that the muezzin should ride to the mosque in a tram-car, or that the Moslem business man should emerge from his harem, read his morning paper, motor to an office equipped with a prayer-rug, and turn from his devotions to dictaphone and telephone. Yet why a.s.sume that his life is moulded by mosque, harem, and prayer-rug, and yet deny the things of the West a commensurate share in the shaping of his social existence? Now add to these tangible innovations intangible novelties like scientific education, Occidental amus.e.m.e.nts, and the partial emanc.i.p.ation of women, and we begin to get some idea of the depth and scope of the social transformation which is going on.

In those parts of the Orient most open to Western influences this social transformation has attained notable proportions for more than a generation. When the Hungarian Orientalist Vambery returned to Constantinople in 1896 after forty years' absence, he stood amazed at the changes which had taken place, albeit Constantinople was then subjected to the worst repression of the Hamidian regime. "I had," he writes, "continually to ask myself this question: Is it possible that these are my Turks of 1856; and how can all these transformations have taken place? I was astonished at the aspect of the city; at the stone buildings which had replaced the old wooden ones; at the animation of the streets, in which carriages and tram-cars abounded, whereas forty years before only saddle-animals were used; and when the strident shriek of the locomotive mingled with the melancholy calls from the minarets, all that I saw and heard seemed to me a living protest against the old adage: 'La bidaat fil Islam'--'There is nothing to reform in Islam.' My astonishment became still greater when I entered the houses and was able to appreciate the people, not only by their exteriors but still more by their manner of thought. The effendi cla.s.s[239] of Constantinople seemed to me completely transformed in its conduct, outlook, and att.i.tude toward foreigners."[240]

Vambery stresses the inward as well as outward evolution of the Turkish educated cla.s.ses, for he says: "Not only in his outward aspect, but also in his home-life, the present-day Turk shows a strong inclination to the manners and habits of the West, in such varied matters as furniture, table-manners, s.e.x-relations, and so forth. This is of the very greatest significance. For a people may, to be sure, a.s.similate foreign influences in the intellectual field, if it be persuaded of their utility and advantage; but it gives up with more difficulty customs and habits which are in the blood. One cannot over-estimate the numerous sacrifices which, despite everything, the Turks have made in this line.

I find all Turkish society, even the Mollahs,[241] penetrated with the necessity of a union with Western civilization. Opinions may differ as to the method of a.s.similation: some wish to impress on the foreign civilization a national character; others, on the contrary, are partisans of our intellectual culture, such as it is, and reprobate any kind of modification."[242]

Most significant of all, Vambery found even the secluded women of the harems, "those bulwarks of obscurantism," notably changed. "Yes, I repeat, the life of women in Turkey seems to me to have been radically transformed in the last forty years, and it cannot be denied that this transformation has been produced by internal conviction as much as by external pressure." Noting the spread of female education, and the increasing share of women in reform movements, Vambery remarks: "This is of vital importance, for when women shall begin to act in the family as a factor of modern progress, real reforms, in society as well as in the state, cannot fail to appear."[243]

In India a similar permeation of social life by Westernism is depicted by the Moslem liberal, S. Khuda Bukhsh, albeit Mr. Bukhsh, being an insider, lays greater emphasis upon the painful aspects of the inevitable transition process from old to new. He is not unduly pessimistic, for he recognizes that "the age of transition is necessarily to a certain extent an age of laxity of morals, indifference to religion, superficial culture, and gossiping levity. These are pa.s.sing ills which time itself will cure." Nevertheless, he does not minimize the critical aspects of the present situation, which implies nothing less than the breakdown of the old social system. "The clearest result of this breakdown of our old system of domestic life and social customs under the a.s.sault of European ideas," he says, "is to be found in two directions--in our religious beliefs and in our social life. The old system, with all its faults, had many redeeming virtues." To-day this old system, narrow-minded but G.o.d-fearing, has been replaced by a "strange independence of thought and action. Reverence for age, respect for our elders, deference to the opinions of others, are fast disappearing.... Under the older system the head of the family was the sole guide and friend of its members. His word had the force of law. He was, so to speak, the custodian of the honour and prestige of the family. From this exalted position he is now dislodged, and the most junior member now claims equality with him."[244]

Mr. Bukhsh deplores the current wave of extravagance, due to the wholesale adoption of European customs and modes of living. "What," he asks, "has happened here in India? We have adopted European costume, European ways of living, even the European vices of drinking and gambling, but none of their virtues. This must be remedied. We must learn at the feet of Europe, but not at the sacrifice of our Eastern individuality. But this is precisely what we have not done. We have dabbled a little in English and European history, and we have commenced to despise our religion, our literature, our history, our traditions. We have unlearned the lessons of our history and our civilization, and in their place we have secured nothing solid and substantial to hold society fast in the midst of endless changes." In fine: "Destruction has done its work, but the work of construction has not yet begun."[245]

Like Vambery, Bukhsh lays strong emphasis on the increasing emanc.i.p.ation of women. No longer regarded as mere "child-bearing machines," the Mohammedan women of India "are getting educated day by day, and now a.s.sert their rights. Though the purdah system[246] still prevails, it is no longer that severe, stringent, and unreasonable seclusion of women which existed fifty years ago. It is gradually relaxing, and women are getting, step by step, rights and liberties which must in course of time end in the complete emanc.i.p.ation of Eastern womanhood. Forty years ago women meekly submitted to neglect, indifference, and even harsh treatment from their husbands, but such is the case no longer."[247]

These two descriptions of social conditions in the Near and Middle East respectively enable one to get a fair idea of the process of change which is going on. Of course it must not be forgotten that both writers deal primarily with the educated upper cla.s.ses of the large towns.

Nevertheless, the leaven is working steadily downward, and with every decade is affecting wider strata of the native populations.

The spread of Western education in the East during the past few decades has been truly astonishing, because it is the exact ant.i.thesis of the Oriental educational system. The traditional "education" of the entire Orient, from Morocco to China, was a mere memorizing of sacred texts combined with exercises of religious devotion. The Mohammedan or Hindu student spent long years reciting to his master (a "holy man") interminable pa.s.sages from books which, being written in cla.s.sic Arabic or Sanskrit, were unintelligible to him, so that he usually did not understand a word of what he was saying. No more deadening system for the intellect could possibly have been devised. Every part of the brain except the memory atrophied, and the wonder is that any intellectual initiative or original thinking ever appeared.

Even to-day the old system persists, and millions of young Orientals are still wasting their time at this mind-petrifying nonsense. But alongside the old there has arisen a new system, running the whole educational gamut from kindergartens to universities, where Oriental youth is being educated along Western lines. These new-type educational establishments are of every kind. Besides schools and universities giving a liberal education and fitting students for government service or the professions, there are numerous technical schools turning out skilled agriculturists or engineers, while good normal schools a.s.sure a supply of teachers qualified to instruct coming student-generations. Both public and private effort furthers Western education in the East. All the European governments have favoured Western education in the lands under their control, particularly the British in India and Egypt, while various Christian missionary bodies have covered the East with a network of schools and colleges. Also many Oriental governments like Turkey and the native states of India have made sincere efforts to spread Western education among their peoples.[248]

Of course, as in any new development, the results so far obtained are far from ideal. The vicious traditions of the past handicap or partially pervert the efforts of the present. Eastern students are p.r.o.ne to use their memories rather than their intellects, and seek to cram their way quickly through examinations to coveted posts rather than acquire knowledge and thus really fit themselves for their careers. The result is that many fail, and these unfortunates, half-educated and spoiled for any sort of useful occupation, vegetate miserably, come to hate that Westernism which they do not understand, and give themselves up to anarchistic revolutionary agitation. Sir Alfred Lyall well describes the dark side of Western education in the East when he says of India: "Ignorance is unquestionably the root of many evils; and it was natural that in the last century certain philosophers should have a.s.sumed education to be a certain cure for human delusions; and that statesmen like Macaulay should have declared education to be the best and surest remedy for political discontent and for law-breaking. In any case, it was the clear and imperative duty of the British Government to attempt the intellectual emanc.i.p.ation of India as the best justification of British rule. We have since discovered by experience, that, although education is a sovereign remedy for many ills--is indeed indispensable to healthy progress--yet an indiscriminate or superficial administration of this potent medicine may engender other disorders. It acts upon the frame of an antique society as a powerful dissolvent, heating weak brains, stimulating rash ambitions, raising inordinate expectations of which the disappointment is bitterly resented."[249]

Indeed, some Western observers of the Orient, particularly colonial officials, have been so much impressed by the political and social dangers arising from the existence of this "literate proletariat" of semi-educated failures that they are tempted to condemn the whole venture of Western education in the East as a mistake. Lord Cromer, for example, was decidedly sceptical of the worth of the Western-educated Egyptian,[250] while a prominent Anglo-Indian official names as the chief cause of Indian unrest, "the system of education, which we ourselves introduced--advisedly so far as the limited vision went of those responsible; blindly in view of the inevitable consequences."[251]

Yet these pessimistic judgments do not seem to make due allowance for the inescapable evils attendant on any transition stage. Other observers of the Orient have made due allowance for this factor. Vambery, for instance, notes the high percentage of honest and capable native officials in the British Indian and French North African civil service (the bulk of these officials, of course, Western-educated men), and concludes: "Strictly conservative Orientals, and also fanatically inclined Europeans, think that with the entrance of our culture the primitive virtues of the Asiatics have been destroyed, and that the uncivilized Oriental was more faithful, more honest, and more reliable than the Asiatic educated on European principles. This is a gross error.

It may be true of the half-educated, but not of the Asiatic in whose case the intellectual evolution is founded on the solid basis of a thorough, systematic education."[252]

And, whatever may be the ills attendant upon Western education in the East, is it not the only practicable course to pursue? The impact of Westernism upon the Orient is too ubiquitous to be confined to books.

Granting, therefore, for the sake of argument, that colonial governments could have prevented Western education in the formal sense, would not the Oriental have learned in other ways? Surely it is better that he should learn through good texts under the supervision of qualified teachers, rather than tortuously in perverted--and more dangerous--fashion.

The importance of Western education in the East is nowhere better ill.u.s.trated than in the effects it is producing in ameliorating the status of women. The depressed condition of women throughout the Orient is too well known to need elaboration. Bad enough in Mohammedan countries, it is perhaps at its worst among the Hindus of India, with child-marriage, the virtual enslavement of widows (burned alive till prohibited by English law), and a seclusion more strict even than that of the "harem" of Moslem lands. As an English writer well puts it: "'Ladies first,' we say in the West; in the East it is 'ladies last.'

That sums up succinctly the difference in the domestic ideas of the two civilizations."[253]

Under these circ.u.mstances it might seem as though no breath of the West could yet have reached these jealously secluded creatures. Yet, as a matter of fact, Western influences have already profoundly affected the women of the upper cla.s.ses, and female education, while far behind that of the males, has attained considerable proportions. In the more advanced parts of the Orient like Constantinople, Cairo, and the cities of India, distinctly "modern" types of women have appeared, the self-supporting, self-respecting--and respected--woman school-teacher being especially in evidence.

The social consequences of this rising status of women, not only to women themselves but also to the community at large, are very important.

In the East the harem is, as Vambery well says, the "bulwark of obscurantism."[254] Ignorant and fanatical herself, the harem woman implants her ignorance and fanaticism in her sons as well as in her daughters. What could be a worse handicap for the Eastern "intellectual"

than his boyhood years spent "behind the veil"? No wonder that enlightened Oriental fathers have been in the habit of sending their boys to school at the earliest possible age in order to get them as soon as possible out of the stultifying atmosphere of harem life. Yet even this has proved merely a palliative. Childhood impressions are ever the most lasting, and so long as one-half of the Orient remained untouched by progressive influences Oriental progress had to be begun again _de novo_ with every succeeding generation.

The increasing number of enlightened Oriental women is remedying this fatal defect. As a Western writer well says: "Give the mothers education and the whole situation is transformed. Girls who are learning other things than the unintelligible phrases of the Koran are certain to impart such knowledge, as daughters, sisters, and mothers, to their respective households. Women who learn housewifery, methods of modern cooking, sewing, and sanitation in the domestic-economy schools, are bound to cast about the home upon their return the atmosphere of a civilized community. The old-time picture of the Oriental woman spending her hours upon divans, eating sweetmeats, and indulging in petty and degrading gossip with the servants, or with women as ignorant as herself, will be changed. The new woman will be a companion rather than a slave or a toy of her husband. Marriage will advance from the stage of a paltry trade in bodies to something like a real union, involving respect towards the woman by both sons and fathers, while in a new pride of relationship the woman herself will be discovered."[255]

These men and women of the newer Orient reflect their changing ideas in their changing standards of living. Although this is most evident among the wealthier elements of the towns, it is perceptible in all cla.s.ses of the population. Rich and poor, urban and rural, the Orientals are altering their living standards towards those of the West. And this involves social changes of the most far-reaching character, because few ant.i.theses could be sharper than the living conditions prevailing respectively in the traditional East and in the modern Western world.

This basic difference lies, not in wealth (the East, like the West, knows great riches as well as great poverty), but rather in _comfort_--using the word in its broad sense. The wealthy Oriental of the old school spends most of his money on Oriental luxuries, like fine raiment, jewels, women, horses, and a great retinue of attendants, and then h.o.a.rds the rest. But of "comfort," in the Western sense, he knows virtually nothing, and it is safe to say that he lives under domestic conditions which a Western artisan would despise.[256]

To-day, however, the Oriental is discovering "comfort." And, high or low, he likes it very well. All the myriad things which make our lives easier and more agreeable--lamps, electric light, sewing-machines, clocks, whisky, umbrellas, sanitary plumbing, and a thousand others: all these things, which to us are more or less matters of course, are to the Oriental so many delightful discoveries, of irresistible appeal. He wants them, and he gets them in ever-increasing quant.i.ties. But this produces some rather serious complications. His private economy is more or less thrown out of gear. This opening of a whole vista of new wants means a portentous rise in his standard of living. And where is he going to find the money to pay for it? If he be poor, he has to skimp on his bare necessities. If he be rich, he hates to forgo his traditional luxuries. The upshot is a universal growth of extravagance. And, in this connection, it is well to bear in mind that the peoples of the Near and Middle East, taken as a whole, have never been really thrifty. Poor the ma.s.ses may have been, and thus obliged to live frugally, but they have always proved themselves "good spenders" when opportunity offers. The way in which a Turkish peasant or a Hindu ryot will squander his savings and run into debt over festivals, marriages, funerals, and other social events is astounding to Western observers.[257] Now add to all this the fact that in the Orient, as in the rest of the world, the cost of the basic necessaries of life--food, clothing, fuel, and shelter, has risen greatly during the past two decades, and we can realize the gravity of the problem which higher Oriental living-standards involves.[258]

Certain it is that the struggle for existence is growing keener and that the pressure of poverty is getting more severe. With the basic necessaries rising in price, and with many things considered necessities which were considered luxuries or entirely unheard of a generation ago, the Oriental peasant or town working-man is finding it harder and harder to make both ends meet. As one writer well phrases it: "These altered economic conditions have not as yet brought the ability to meet them.

The cost of living has increased faster than the resources of the people."[259]

One of the main (though not sufficiently recognized) causes of the economic-social crisis through which the Orient is to-day pa.s.sing is over-population. The quick breeding tendencies of Oriental peoples have always been proverbial, and have been due not merely to strong s.e.xual appet.i.tes but also to economic reasons like the harsh exploitation of women and children, and perhaps even more to religious doctrines enjoining early marriage and the begetting of numerous sons. As a result, Oriental populations have always pressed close upon the limits of subsistence. In the past, however, this pressure was automatically lightened by factors like war, misgovernment, pestilence, and famine, which swept off such mult.i.tudes of people that, despite high birth-rates, populations remained at substantially a fixed level. But here, as in every other phase of Eastern life, Western influences have radically altered the situation. The extension of European political control over Eastern lands has meant the putting down of internal strife, the diminution of governmental abuses, the decrease of disease, and the lessening of the blight of famine. In other words, those "natural" checks which previously kept down the population have been diminished or abolished, and in response to the life-saving activities of the West, the enormous death-rate which in the past has kept Oriental populations from excessive multiplication is falling to proportions comparable with the low death-rate of Western nations. But to lower the Orient's prodigious birth-rate is quite another matter. As a matter of fact, that birth-rate keeps up with undiminished vigour, and the consequence has been a portentous increase of population in nearly every portion of the Orient under Western political control. In fact, even those Oriental countries which have maintained their independence have more or less adopted Western life-conserving methods, and have experienced in greater or less degree an accelerated increase of population.

The phenomena of over-population are best seen in India. Most of India has been under British control for the greater part of a century. Even a century ago, India was densely populated, yet in the intervening hundred years the population has increased between two and three fold.[260] Of course, factors like improved agriculture, irrigation, railways, and the introduction of modern industry enable India to support a much larger population than it could have done at the time of the British Conquest. Nevertheless, the evidence is clear that excessive multiplication has taken place. Nearly all qualified students of the problem concur on this point. Forty years ago the Duke of Argyll stated: "Where there is no store, no acc.u.mulation, no wealth; where the people live from hand to mouth from season to season on a low diet; and where, nevertheless, they breed and multiply at such a rate; there we can at least see that this power and force of multiplication is no evidence even of safety, far less of comfort." Towards the close of the last century, Sir William Hunter termed population India's "fundamental problem," and continued: "The result of civilized rule in India has been to produce a strain on the food-producing powers of the country such as it had never before to bear. It has become a truism of Indian statistics that the removal of the old cruel checks on population in an Asiatic country is by no means an unmixed blessing to an Asiatic people."[261]

Lord Cromer remarks of India's poverty: "Not only cannot it be remedied by mere philanthropy, but it is absolutely certain--cruel and paradoxical though it may appear to say so--that philanthropy enhances the evil. In the days of Akhbar or Shah Jehan, cholera, famine, and internal strife kept down the population. Only the fittest survived. Now internal strife is forbidden, and philanthropy steps in and says that no single life shall be sacrificed if science and Western energy or skill can save it. Hence the growth of a highly congested population, vast numbers of whom are living on a bare margin of subsistence. The fact that one of the greatest difficulties of governing the teeming ma.s.ses of the East is caused by good and humane government should be recognized.

It is too often ignored."[262]

William Archer well states the matter when, in answer to the query why improved external conditions have not brought India prosperity, he says: "The reason, in my view, is simple: namely, that the benefit of good government is, in part at any rate, nullified, when the people take advantage of it, not to save and raise their standard of living, but to breed to the very margin of subsistence. Henry George used to point out that every mouth that came into the world brought two hands along with it; but though the physiological fact is undeniable, the economic deduction suggested will not hold good except in conditions that permit of the profitable employment of the two hands.... If mouths increase in a greater ratio than food, the tendency must be towards greater poverty."[263]

It is one of the most unfortunate aspects of the situation that very few Oriental thinkers yet realize that over-population is a prime cause of Oriental poverty. Almost without exception they lay the blame to political factors, especially to Western political control. In fact, the only case that I know of where an Eastern thinker has boldly faced the problem and has courageously advocated birth-control is in the book published five years ago by P. K. Wattal, a native official of the Indian Finance Department, ent.i.tled, _The Population Problem of India_.[264] This pioneer volume is written with such ability and is of such apparent significance as an indication of the awakening of Orientals to a more rational att.i.tude, that it merits special attention.

Mr. Wattal begins his book by a plea to his fellow-countrymen to look at the problem rationally and without prejudice. "This essay," he says, "should not be const.i.tuted into an attack on the spiritual civilization of our country, or even indirectly into a glorification of the materialism of the West. The object in view is that we should take a somewhat more matter-of-fact view of the main problem of life, viz., how to live in this world. We are a poor people; the fact is indisputable.

Our poverty is, perhaps, due to a great many causes. But I put it to every one of us whether he has not at some of the most momentous periods of his life been handicapped by having to support a large family, and whether this enc.u.mbrance has not seriously affected the chances of advancement warranted by early promise and exceptional endowment. This question should be viewed by itself. It is a physical fact, and has nothing to do with political environment or religious obligation. If we have suffered from the consequences of that mistake, is it not a duty that we owe to ourselves and to our progeny that its evil effects shall be mitigated as far as possible? There is no greater curse than poverty--I say this with due respect to our spiritualism. It is not in a spirit of reproach that restraint in married life is urged in these pages. It is solely from a vivid realization of the hardships caused by large families and a profound sympathy with the difficulties under which large numbers of respectable persons struggle through life in this country that I have made bold to speak in plain terms what comes to every young man, but which he does not care to give utterance to in a manner that would prevent the recurrence of the evil."[265]

After this appeal to reason in his readers, Mr. Wattal develops his thesis. The first prime cause of over-population in India, he a.s.serts, is early marriage. Contrary to Western lands, where population is kept down by prudential marriages and by birth-control, "for the Hindus marriage is a sacrament which must be performed, regardless of the fitness of the parties to bear the responsibilities of a mated existence. A Hindu male must marry and beget children--sons, if you please--to perform his funeral rites lest his spirit wander uneasily in the waste places of the earth. The very name of son, 'putra,' means one who saves his father's soul from the h.e.l.l called Puta. A Hindu maiden unmarried at p.u.b.erty is a source of social obloquy to her family and of d.a.m.nation to her ancestors. Among the Mohammedans, who are not handicapped by such penalties, the married state is equally common, partly owing to Hindu example and partly to the general conditions of primitive society, where a wife is almost a necessity both as a domestic drudge and as a helpmate in field work."[266] The worst of the matter is that, despite the efforts of social reformers child-marriage seems to be increasing. The census of 1911 showed that during the decade 1901-10 the numbers of married females per 1000 of ages 0-5 years rose from 13 to 14; of ages 5-10 from 102 to 105; of 10-15 from 423 to 430, and of 15-20 from 770 to 800. In other words, in the year 1911, out of every 1000 Indian girls, over one-tenth were married before they were 10 years old, nearly one-half before they were 15, and four-fifths before they were 20.[267]

The result of all this is a tremendous birth-rate, but this is "no matter for congratulation. We have heard so often of our high death-rate and the means for combating it, but can it be seriously believed that with a birth-rate of 30 per 1000 it is possible to go on as we are doing with the death-rate brought down to the level of England or Scotland? Is there room enough in the country for the population to increase so fast as 20 per 1000 every year? We are paying the inevitable penalty of bringing into this world more persons than can be properly cared for, and therefore if we wish fewer deaths to occur in this country the births must be reduced to the level of the countries where the death-rate is low. It is, therefore, our high birth-rate that is the social danger; the high death-rate, however regrettable, is merely an incident of our high birth-rate."[268]

Mr. Wattal then describes the cruel items in India's death-rate; the tremendous female mortality, due largely to too early childbirth, and the equally terrible infant mortality, nearly 50 per cent. of infant deaths being due to premature birth or debility at birth. These are the inevitable penalties of early and universal marriage. For, in India, "everybody marries, fit or unfit, and is a parent at the earliest possible age permitted by nature." This process is highly disgenic; it is plainly lowering the quality and sapping the vigour of the race. It is the lower elements of the population, the negroid aboriginal tribes and the Pariahs or Outcastes, who are gaining the fastest. Also the vitality of the whole population seems to be lowering. The census figures show that the number of elderly persons is decreasing, and that the average statistical expectation of life is falling. "The coming generation is severely handicapped at start in life. And the chances of living to a good old age are considerably smaller than they were, say thirty or forty years ago. Have we ever paused to consider what it means to us in the life of the nation as a whole? It means that the people who alone by weight of experience and wisdom are fitted for the posts of command in the various public activities of the country are s.n.a.t.c.hed away by death; and that the guidance and leadership which belongs to age and mature judgment in the countries of the West fall in India to younger and consequently to less trustworthy persons."[269]

After warning his fellow-countrymen that neither improved methods of agriculture, the growth of industry, nor emigration can afford any real relief to the growing pressure of population on means of subsistence, he notes a few hopeful signs that, despite the hold of religion and custom, the people are beginning to realize the situation and that in certain parts of India there are foreshadowings of birth-control. For example, he quotes from the census report for 1901 this official explanation of a slight drop in the birth-rate of Bengal: "The postponement of the age of marriage cannot wholly account for the diminished rate of reproduction. The deliberate avoidance of child-bearing must also be partly responsible.... It is a matter of common belief that among the tea-garden coolies of a.s.sam means are frequently taken to prevent conception, or to procure abortion." And the report of the Sanitary Commissioner of a.s.sam for 1913 states: "An important factor in producing the defective birth-rate appears to be due to voluntary limitation of birth."[270]

However, these beginnings of birth-control are too local and partial to afford any immediate relief to India's growing over-population. Wider appreciation of the situation and prompt action are needed. "The conclusion is irresistible. We can no longer afford to shut our eyes to the social canker in our midst. In the land of the bullock-cart, the motor has come to stay. The compet.i.tion is now with the more advanced races of the West, and we cannot tell them what Diogenes said to Alexander: 'Stand out of my sunshine.' After the close of this gigantic World War theories of population will perhaps be revised and a reversion in favour of early marriage and larger families may be counted upon.

But, (1) that will be no solution to our own population problem, and (2) this reaction will be only for a time.... The law of population may be arrested in its operation, but there is no way of escaping it."[271]

So concludes this striking little book. Furthermore, we must remember that, although India may be the acutest sufferer from over-population, conditions in the entire Orient are basically the same, prudential checks and rational birth-control being everywhere virtually absent.[272] Remembering also that, besides over-population, there are other economic and social evils previously discussed, we cannot be surprised to find in all Eastern lands much acute poverty and social degradation.

Both the rural and urban ma.s.ses usually live on the bare margin of subsistence. The English economist Brailsford thus describes the condition of the Egyptian peasantry: "The villages exhibited a poverty such as I have never seen even in the mountains of anarchical Macedonia or among the bogs of Donegal.... The villages are crowded slums of mud hovels, without a tree, a flower, or a garden. The huts, often without a window or a levelled floor, are minute dungeons of baked mud, usually of two small rooms neither whitewashed nor carpeted. Those which I entered were bare of any visible property, save a few cooking utensils, a mat to serve as a bed, and a jar which held the staple food of maize."[273] As for the poorer Indian peasants, a British sanitary official thus depicts their mode of life: "One has actually to see the interior of the houses, in which each family is often compelled to live in a single small cell, made of mud walls and with a mud floor; containing small yards littered with rubbish, often crowded with cattle; possessing wells permeated by rain soaking through this filthy surface; and frequently jumbled together in inchoate ma.s.ses called towns and cities."[274]