One often reads of such things, yet somehow without quite realising them; certainly the sight of this deliberate and lifelong mutilation of the human body gave me a painful feeling—which was by no means removed by the expression of the face, with its stultified sadness, and brutishness not without deceit. His extended right hand demanded a coin, which I gladly gave him, and after invoking some kind of blessing he turned away through the crowd—his poor dwindled hand and half-closed fingers visible for some time over the heads of the people. Poor fellow! how little spiritual good his sufferings had done him. His heavy-browed face haunted me for some time. For the rest he was well-liking enough, and it must be said that these fellows for the most part make a fair living out of the pious charity of the people, though I would not be understood to say that all of them adopt this mode of life with that object.
When Panna came up out of the water and had dressed himself, and I had satisfied the curiosity of one or two bystanders who wanted to know whether I had come with him all the way on this pilgrimage out of friendship, we went up to the temple above—where a little band was playing strange and grisly music, and a few devotees were chanting before an image of Siva—and having made an offering returned to our hotel.
CHAPTER XV.
THE ANGLO-INDIAN AND THE OYSTER.
Allahabad.—It certainly is a very difficult thing to see the real India, the real life of the people. You arrive at a railway station, give the name of a hotel, and are driven there. When you wake up in the morning you find yourself in a region of straight shady avenues, villa residences, hotels and churches, lawn-tennis and whisky pegs. Except that the residences are houses of one storey instead of three, and that the sun is rather glaring for February, you might just as well be at Wandsworth or Kew. In some alarm you ask for the native city and find that it is four miles off! You cannot possibly walk there along the dusty roads, and there is nothing for it but to drive. If there is anything of the nature of a “sight” in the city you are of course beset by drivers; in any case you ultimately have to undergo the ignominy of being jogged through the town in a two-horse conveyance, stared at by the people, followed by guides, pestered for bakshish, and are glad to get back to the shelter of your hotel.
If you go and stay with your Anglo-Indian friend in his villa-bungalow, you are only a shade worse off instead of better. He is hospitality itself and will introduce you cordially to all the other good folk, whom (and their ways) you have seen more than once before at Wandsworth and at Kew; but as to the people of the country, why, you are no nearer them physically, and morally you are farther off because you are in the midst of a society where it is the correct thing to damn the oyster, and all that is connected with him.
The more one sees of the world the more one is impressed, I think, by the profundity and the impassibility of the gulf of race-difference. Two races may touch, may mingle, may occupy for a time the same land; they may recognise each other’s excellencies, may admire and imitate each other; individuals may even cross the dividing line and be absorbed on either side; but ultimately the gulf reasserts itself, the deepset difference makes itself felt, and for reasons which neither party very clearly understands they cease to tolerate each other. They separate, like oil and water; or break into flame and fierce conflict; or the one perishes withering from the touch of the other. There are a few souls, born travelers and such like, for whom race-barriers do not exist, and who are everywhere at home, but they are rare. For the world at large the great race-divisions are very deep, very insuperable. Here is a vast problem. The social problem which to-day hangs over the Western lands is a great one; but this looms behind it, even vaster. Anyhow in India the barrier is plain enough to be seen—more than physical, more than intellectual, more than moral—a deepset ineradicable incompatibility.
Take that difference in the conception of Duty, to which I have already alluded. The central core of the orthodox Englishman, or at any rate of the public-school boy who ultimately becomes our most accepted type, is perhaps to be found in that word. It is that which makes him the dull, narrow-minded, noble, fearless, reliable man that he is. The moving forces of the Hindu are quite different; they are, first, Religion; and second, Affection; and it is these which make him so hopelessly unpractical, so abominably resigned, yet withal so tender and imaginative of heart. Abstract duty to the Hindu has but little meaning. He may perform his religious exercises and his caste injunctions carefully enough, but it is because he realises clearly the expediency of so doing. And what can the Englishman understand of this man who sits on his haunches at a railway station for a whole day meditating on the desirability of not being born again! They do not and they cannot understand each other.
Many of the I.C.S. are very able, disinterested, hardworking men, but one feels that they work from basic assumptions which are quite alien to the Hindu mind, and they can only see with sorrow that their work takes no hold upon the people and its affections. The materialistic and commercial spirit of Western rule can never blend with the profoundly religious character of the social organisation normal to India. We undertake the most obviously useful works, the administration of justice, the construction of tanks and railways, in a genuine spirit of material expediency and with a genuine anxiety to secure a 5 per cent. return; to the Hindu all this is as nothing—it does not touch him in the least. Unfortunately, since the substitution of mere open competition for the remains of noblesse oblige, which survived in the former patronage appointments to the I.C.S., and with the general growth of commercialism in England, the commercial character of our rule has only increased during the last thirty years. There is less belief in justice and honor, more in 5 per cent. and expediency—less anxiety to understand the people and to govern them well, more to make a good income and to retire to England with an affluence at an early date.
Curious that we have the same problem of race-difference still utterly unsolved in the United States. After all the ardor of the Abolitionists, the fury of civil war, the emancipation of the slaves, the granting of the ballot and political equality, and the prophecies of the enthusiasts of humanity—still remains the fact that in the parts where negroes exist in any numbers the white man will not even ride in the same car with his brother, or drink at the bar where he drinks. So long does it take to surpass and overcome these dividing lines. We all know that they have to be surpassed—we all know that the ultimate and common humanity must disentangle itself and rise superior to them in the end. The Gñáni knows it—it is almost the central fact of his religious philosophy and practice; the Western democrat knows it—it is also the central fact of his creed. But the way to its realisation is long and intricate and bewildering.
We must not therefore be too ready to find fault with the Anglo-Indian if he only (so to speak) touches the native with the tongs. He may think, doubtless, that he acts so because the oyster is a poor despicable creature, quite untrustworthy, incapable, etc.—all of which may be true enough, only we must not forget that the oyster has a corresponding list of charges against the Anglo—but the real truth on both sides is something deeper, something deeper perhaps than can easily be expressed—a rooted dislike and difference between the two peoples. Providence, for its own good reasons, seems to have put them together for a season in order that they may torment each other, and there is nothing more to be said.