Where Half The World Is Waking Up Part 18

{212 continued}

The streets, if such they may be called, are often little more than crooked water-rutted paths, so narrow that one may reach from the mud walls of the houses on one side to the mud walls on the other, and so crooked that you are likely to meet yourself coming back before you get to the end. Or perhaps you wind up unexpectedly in some _mahullah_--a group of huts representing several families of kinsfolk.

Enclosed by a mud wall, the little brown bright-eyed, black-haired, half-naked children are playing together in the little opening around which the houses are bunched, and the barefooted mothers are cooking _chapatis_, spinning cotton on knee-high spinning wheels, weaving in some wonderfully primitive way, gathering fuel, or are engaged in other household tasks. The equipment of one of these human ant-hills, called a home, is about as primitive as the building itself. There is, of course, a bed or cot: it is about {215} half knee-high, and the heavy twine or light rope knitted together after the fashion of a very coa.r.s.e fish-net is the only mattress. The coa.r.s.e grain which serves for food is stored in jars; the meagre supply of clothing hangs in one corner of the room; there are no chairs, knives or forks. The stove or fireplace is a sort of small clay box for the fire, with an opening on top for the kettle or oven. In one corner of the room is the fuel: a few small sticks and dried refuse from cow stalls that Americans use for fertilizing their fields. "We have found rather bad results," a missionary told me, "from providing Indian girls with mattresses, chairs, knives, forks, etc., at our mission schools. Later, when they marry our native workers, the $5-a-month income of the family (which is about all they can expect) is insufficient to provide these luxuries, and the girl's recollections of former comforts are likely to prove a source of dissatisfaction to her."

At first you ask, "But why are there no windows in the houses? Surely the people could leave openings in the clay walls that would give light and ventilation?" The answer is that most of the year the weather is so hot that the hope of the owner is to get as nearly cave-like conditions as possible; to find, as it were, a cool place in the earth, untouched by the fiery glare of the burning sun outside.

Even in north central India in the houses of the white men, where everything has been done to reduce the temperature and with every punkah-fan swinging the room's length to make a breeze, the temperature in May and June is 106 or higher, and at midnight in the open air the thermometer may reach 105. "It is then no uncommon thing," a friend in Agra told me, "to find even natives struck down dead by the roadside; and the railways have men designated to take and burn the bodies of those who succ.u.mb to the heat in travel by the cars."

In such a warm climate the dress of the people, as has already been suggested, is not very elaborate. In fact, the garb of the adult man is likely to be somewhat like the uniform of the {216} Gunga Din (the Indian _bhisti_ or water-carrier for the British regiment):

"The uniform 'e wore Was nothin' much before An' rather less than 'arf o' that be'ind-- For a twisty piece o' rag And a goatskin water-bag Was all the field equipment 'e could find."

In cold weather, however, the majority of the men are rather fully covered, and in any case they add a turban or cap of some gaudy hue to the uniform just suggested.

As for the dress of the women, a typical woman's outfit will consist of, say, a crimson skirt with a green border, a navy-blue piece of cloth as large as a sheet draped loosely (and quite incompletely) around the head and upper part of the body, and a breast-cloth or possibly a waist of brilliant yellow. This combination of hues, of course, is only a specimen. The actual colors are variable but the brilliancy is invariable.

Furthermore, the celebrated Old Lady of Banbury Cross, who boasted of rings, on her fingers and bells on her toes, would find her glory vanish in a twinkling should she visit India. Not content with these preliminary beginnings of adornment, the barefooted Hindu woman wears--if she can afford it--a band or two of anklets, bracelets halfway from wrist to elbow, armlets beyond the elbow, ear-rings of immense size, a necklace or two, toe-rings and a bejewelled nose-ring as big around as a turnip. Sometimes the jewelry on a woman's feet will rattle as she walks like the trace-chains on a plow-horse on the way to the barn.

This barbaric display of jewelry, it should be said, is not made solely for purposes of show. The truth is that the native has not grown used to the idea of savings banks (although the government is now gradually convincing him that the postal savings inst.i.tutions are safe), and when he earns a spare rupee he puts it into jewelry to adorn the person of himself or {217} his wife. If all the idle treasures which the poor of India now carry on their legs, arms, ears, and noses were put into productive industry, a good deal might be done to alleviate the misery for which the agitators profess to blame the British Government.

Calcutta, India.

{218}

XXII

HINDU FARMING AND FARM LIFE

In the rural villages, of course, the majority of the inhabitants are 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 k.n.o.b 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 a.s.sume 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 gra.s.s. 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 pa.s.sed, and still the pitiless sun scorches the brown earth as if it would set afire the gra.s.s 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 G.o.ds 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 a.s.sumed 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 G.o.dsend 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 coa.r.s.e 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 Pa.s.s 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 pa.s.s 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}