That Eurasian

by Aleph Bey

One reflection of mine was, what a story the Monument on the Maidan could tell if it only had a voice? It must have heard and seen so much of wrong-doing that if it had any feelings it must have had many a heart ache.

Professor Hitchcock, writing upon light in the formation of pictures, says: “It seems then, that this photographic influence pervades all nature, nor can we say where it stops. We do not know, but it may imprint upon the world around us our features as they are modified by various passions, and thus fill nature with daguerrotype impressions of all our actions; it may be too, that there are tests by which nature, more skillful than any photographist, can bring out and fix these portraits so that acuter senses than ours shall see them as on a great canvas spread over the material universe? Perhaps, too, they may never fade from that canvas, but become specimens in the great picture gallery of eternity.”

What if the monument has photographs and phonographs of all it has seen and heard and some day, some acuter scientist than now living comes along and reproduces all these scenes and voices in a historical panorama! What a consternation it would produce! What worse hell could there be to some people than the eternal possession of such a picture in which they would appear in their real characters stripped of all disguises and hypocrisies?

Omitting other things I was greatly interested in the Eurasian question. It appeared that there were about twenty-two thousand in Calcutta. A very few were in Government service, few others in shops, factories and minor employments, the great majority living, no not that, but existing when and how, God and the Devil only knew. I follow the religious orthodox fashion in giving the Devil a place along with God in managing the world.

I did some slumming, for it was to the slums I went, to the disgust of my sense of smell, and the detriment of my boots and clothes. I had never been to such places, and if any one had told me that Christian human beings existed in such conditions, I would have thought he was stuffing me. The little court in which I was compelled to see my first daylight, with its mud-walled huts, yet clean, was a palace compared to the filthy, odorous, dingy holes where many of the Eurasians stay. And the poverty! That was hardly the name for it. Absolute want of rags for covering their nakedness, and the total absence of the coarsest, cheapest stuff that the lowest animals could eat. I was told that when one went out to look for employment, or do a little work, he would either go barefooted or borrow a pair of boots from one, different articles of cheap apparel from others, and the lenders would have to wait in their nakedness, or with a rag around them until he returned. There were children, grown up young men and women, skinny old people, all wan and cadaverous, as if they had never enjoyed a good meal in their lives. Some of the poor children were packed off to some charity school to spend the whole day, where an attempt was made to cram their heads with knowledge, when there was not a particle of food in their stomachs. What a farce is this kind of civilization and Christian charity!

I could not help thinking of the comfort and happiness of my heathen villagers compared to the condition of these so-styled Christians. The longer I live the more I conclude that more food and less knowledge, less religion and more justice, is what the world needs. Stop building expensive cathedrals and churches, throw down the palaces of the archbishops and bishops, and give them and their brethren a chance to imitate Jesus, who had not a place where to lay his head, and let them go about doing good as he did. Melt down the gold and silver of the churches, the tiaras, crosses, amulets and jewelry of the altars and idols, and lay up treasures in Heaven by taking care of the bodies of the poor as well as trying to save their souls.

And the rooms of these wretches, holes, places in which grown up young men and women were huddled together! What chance for modesty or virtue to be retained under such conditions? Is it any wonder that many Eurasians are not better than they are, brought up in such adverse degrading circumstances? Of what use is prayer to them in Church, one hour of one day in seven, when every day and hour of the whole week the devils of poverty, misery and uncleanness reside and exist in their homes?

What are the chances, the outlook for these people? The Government refuses to enlist them as soldiers. The railway companies put up notices, “No Eurasians need apply.” Few of them are in Government offices. There are almost none in the banks. The mercantile firms will have none of them. A very few are in the shops. The factories prefer cheap labor. The Government provides schools for the natives, but leaves the Eurasians to take care of themselves. The natives will not favor them. They provide for their own, leaving the Christians to appear that they are worse than the heathen in not providing for those of their own households. These people are outcasts, accursed by the Europeans and natives, placed between the Devil and the deep sea, and probably the best thing for them to do would be to take to the sea, either to cross it, and get into some country where they might get, at least enough to eat, or else to go down into it, and end their misery and disgrace with their lives.

The bone that sticks in my throat in all this is, that many of these unfortunates are the descendants of lust and crime, as I was one, and still am. They were begotten or their ancestors, of Christian gentlemen. This is one of my reasons for wanting to know what the word Christian means, and also that of gentleman, in connection with the wretched condition of these people. They, who by no fault of their own, are in this miserable existence, the children of Christian gentlemen, should be the special proteges of the Government, of the Church and of the European people, are cast out and despised as social dregs.

It may be said that these gentlemen were not Christians when they sinned. This reminds me of the story of an English fox hunting priest. When he was asked how he could reconcile such sport with his profession, he replied that he did not hunt as a priest, but as a man. “But,” asked his questioner, “when the Devil gets the man, where will the priest be?” So one might ask, “When the Devil gets these sinners, where will they be as Christians or gentlemen?”