From Adam's Peak to Elephanta

by Edward Carpenter

I fancy, with all respect to the genuine good intention shown in these zenana missions, medical education funds, etc., there must be something rather comical to the natives themselves in philanthropic efforts of this kind, made by a people who understand the country so little as the English do; just as there is something rather comical to the masses at home in the toy “charities” and missions of the lady and gentleman here, and suggestive of an old parable about a mote and a beam. In a lecture given by the Maharajah of Benares, in July, 1888, he chaffed these philanthropists somewhat—recounting how one such lady “actually regretted that the peasant cultivators could not provide themselves with boots! while another had a long conversation with a Rani on the ill effects of infant marriage, and was surprised to hear that the Rani had been married at the age of seven, and had sons and grandsons, all of whom were happy and contented. The Rani then turned to the lady, and observing that her hair was turning grey, inquired whether no one had ever offered her proposals of marriage, and suggested that the English laws required some modification to insure ladies against remaining so long in a state of single blessedness.”

But the most interesting people, to me, whom I have met here, are a little côterie of Bengalis who live quite away in the native part of the city. Chundi Churn B. is a schoolmaster, and keeps a small school of thirty or forty boys, which lies back in a tangle of narrow lanes and alleys, but is quite a civilised little place with benches and desks just like an English school—except that like all the schools in this part of the world it is quite open to the street (with trellised sides in this case), so that passers-by can quite easily see and be seen. Chundi Churn told me that he started the school on purely native lines, but had poor success until he introduced the English curriculum—English history, science, Euclid, Algebra, etc.—when he soon got as many boys as he wanted. As in all the Indian schools they work what appear to us frightfully long hours, 7–9 a.m.; then an hour for breakfast; 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., and then an hour for dinner; and again from 3 till 6. I fancy they must take it fairly easy; and then it is certain that the native boys—though they have active little brains—are much more quiescent than the English, are content to sit still, and the master has little trouble in keeping order.

CHUNDI CHURN B.

I have been round several evenings after school hours and chatted with Chundi Churn and his brother and various friends that dropped in—an intelligent little community. Two of them are Brahman fellows of about thirty, with the eager tense look that the Brahmans mostly have, but good imaginative faces. We discuss the Indian Congress, English and Indian customs, the child-marriage question (which is raging just now), and the great question of Caste. They insist on my eating various sweet cakes of native preparation, but will not eat with me; and they smoke hubble-bubble pipes, which they pass round—but the Brahmans must have a hubble-bubble to themselves! At the same time they are careful to explain that “no one believes in all this now”; but as they are at home, and only trellis-work between us and the lane, it would not do to violate the rules. And this, I believe, is largely the state of affairs. The anglicising population, for the sake of parents’ feelings (and they are tender on this point), or respectability, or commercial connection, keep up a show of caste rules which they have ceased or are ceasing to believe in; and it is an open secret that Brahman gentlemen of high standing in their caste, not unfrequently when traveling, or in places where they are not known, resort to British hotels and have a high feed of beefsteaks and champagne!

One of the Brahmans is clerk in a mercantile establishment in the English part of Calcutta, and some of the others are students at the Metropolitan College. Western education is going on at a tremendous rate—so much so that there will soon be an educated proletariat (what Grant Duff calls “the worst of evils”) in the great cities of India. Two or three of the party are very quick at mathematics—which seems to be a subject in which the Bengalis excel—and readily picked up the key to one or two little problems which I presented to them. They all seem to be much impressed with the greatness of Western civilisation—for the present at any rate, but will react probably before so very long. Finding I knew something of astronomy they pelted me with questions about the stars, and insisted on going out at night and trying to hunt up the ecliptic among the constellations! Then after a time they would relapse into tale-telling and music. The fellows still show a truly Oriental love of long stories, and would listen with rapt attention to one of their party relating some ancient yarn about the child of a king who was exposed in the woods and ultimately came back after many convolutions of adventure and claimed his kingdom—just as if they had not heard it before; or about the chaste Draupatha (in the Mahabhárata) who—when Duriyodhana, desiring to insult her before a large assembly, gave orders that she should be stripped of her cloth—thought of Vishnu, and her cloth went on lengthening and unwinding indefinitely—their stories lengthening and unwinding like Draupatha’s cloth, in a way that would have delighted the heart of William Morris.

PANNA LALL B.

Panna Lall, Chundi Churn’s brother, is a bright-mannered youth of about twenty, of a modest affectionate disposition, and with a certain grace and dignity of bearing. He doesn’t care about books, but has a good ear and plays one or two musical instruments in an easy unstudied way; lives in quite primitive style with his father down in one of these back lanes—but has a tiny little room of his own where he takes me to sit and chat with friends. There is no furniture, but you squat cross-legged on the floor—so there is plenty of room for quite a party. There may be a box or two in a corner, and on the walls some shelves and a few prints. Indeed it gives one a curious sensation to see crude colored woodcuts, framed under glass and exactly resembling the pictures of the Virgin or of Christ common in Catholic countries, and then on nearer approach to find that they represent Siva or Parvati, or among the Bengalis Chaitanya, or some other incarnation of the divinity, standing or seated on a lotus flower and with benign head encircled by an aureole. These pictures are printed in Calcutta.

Panna Lall is quite an athlete, and interested in anything in that line. He took me one day to a little bit of ground where he and some friends have their horizontal bars, etc.; they did some good tumbling and tight-rope walking, and with their golden-brown skins and muscular bodies looked well when stripped. The Bengali Babu is often of a lightish-brown colour. The people generally wear more clothing than in South India, and at this time of year throw a brown woollen shawl over their shoulders, toga fashion; their heads are almost always bare, but they have taken a great fancy lately in Calcutta to wearing narrow-toed patent-leather shoes, which look sufficiently absurd and must be fearfully uncomfortable on their well-developed broad feet. Only it is a mark of distinction and civilisation! Panna Lall every now and then, when walking, entreats me to stop and rest under a tree, and then takes off his shoes and waggles his toes about to soothe and refresh them! I am never tired of admiring the foot in its native state. It is so broad and free and full and muscular, with a good concave curve on the inner line, and the toes standing well apart from each other—so different from the ill-nourished unsightly thing we are accustomed to. I sometimes think we can never attain to a broad free and full life on our present understandings in the West.