India and the Indians

by Edward Fenton Elwin

CHAPTER XLVII

EAST AND WEST ON BOARD SHIP

Christians and Hindu customs. The carpentry instructor; A taint of Hinduism; he retains his pigtail. Indians on their way to Europe; perplexities about bath and food. The Jain sect; their views. The Sikhs. Going to Germany for Sanskrit. Conversation of English-speaking Hindus. Indians on deck. East and West pull together. No room for the theosophist.

Some missionaries advocate the retention by Christian converts of such Hindu customs as are not directly connected with idolatry, especially in connection with marriage ceremonies. Others maintain that it is impossible really to distinguish between what is innocent and what is not, and that the only safe course is to come out altogether and be separate. The elaborate restrictions concerning food, given to the children of Israel, were apparently chiefly designed to prevent them from mixing socially with the idolatrous people with whom they were surrounded, lest they should drop back into any of the old evil ways. For the same reason it would seem necessary in India for the Christian convert to separate himself from everything which is in any way distinctive of Hinduism, quite apart from whether the thing itself is harmful or not. It is certain that lapses back to Hinduism have been most frequent amongst Christians of those Missions where the laxer view has prevailed.

An illustration somewhat to the point may be found in the case of the carpentry instructor in the Poona City Mission, who was a convert from Hinduism. He received the name of Bhumya at his baptism—his full name being Bhumya Virappa Chondikar. The second name was that of his father, which, according to Hindu custom, is always borne by the son, and the last was his family or surname. He did not improve his financial status by becoming a Christian. He was carpenter-master before, and continued to be so for many years afterwards. But his change of religion cut him off from any possibility of inheritance from Hindu relations, of whom he had several in rather prosperous circumstances. It also made such a ferment in his own household, where he had a wife and mother-in-law and little son, that he had to leave his home and lodge elsewhere so that he might not "pollute" them, as they would express it, by eating with them. Two years after his own baptism, however, he had the joy of seeing his wife and now two little children, baptized, and the home life was happily resumed. Eventually even his mother-in-law became a Christian.

But in spite of his own undoubted earnestness, his devout use of the sacraments, his constant attendance at all the services of the church, a sort of taint of Hinduism clung to him all through life and to some extent dimmed his Christian joy, and prevented his example, in many ways so edifying, from bearing the fruit that might otherwise have been the case. None of his numerous Hindu friends were led to Christianity through his influence, and none of his own relations followed his example, nor was it possible to use him much in evangelistic work, in spite of his readiness to help. He had a theory that Christianity had somehow been evolved out of Hinduism, and though even his intimate friends could never get to the bottom of his strange ideas, his preaching was sufficiently unorthodox to make it necessary that he should be a silent member of the preaching party in the streets of the city.

The retention of Hindu ideas which thus warped his Christian life, and prevented it from influencing his fellow-countrymen as it otherwise might have done, may partly be accounted for by the fact that he not only retained in every particular after his baptism the outward garb of a Hindu and wore no Christian symbol, but his partially shaved head, and rather long pigtail which he continued to wear, were so definitely the outward tokens of Hinduism that he was often taken for a Hindu, and several people at various times were startled to see a heathen man, as they thought, collecting the alms in church.

The chief moral value of Bhumya's life is to be found in the fact that, in spite of Hindu memories continuing to have some mysterious attraction for him, he was both in life and death unswerving and unshaken in his allegiance to Christianity.

Certainly a P. & O. steamer can no longer be described as a "white man's ship," as the young officer expressed it when he complained of the presence of Indians on board. The number of Easterns who go to Europe for educational and other purposes increases so rapidly that they now form a distinct element on many steamers. One autumn when coming to England, half the passengers in the second saloon were Easterns on their way westwards, chiefly for educational purposes, and travelling at that season in order to be in time for the classes and colleges, which begin their new course or term in October. We calculated that there were nearly twenty different languages being talked amongst us, and there were few phases of religion unrepresented.

In the first saloon were a few wealthy Indian lads on their way to English public schools, clad in the most approved English boys' dress, and nearly all these travellers were in full European costume, though a few retained the turban. Some of the combinations of colour in the shape of socks and ties were rather startling. But Indians quickly correct any mistakes of this kind after they have reached England, and have had time to observe what well-dressed people usually wear. Many of them were at first in great perplexity how to perform their ablutions in English baths, and the first morning or two they might be seen wandering about in the region of the baths with anxious faces. But they somehow found some solution to their difficulties, and ultimately distracted the man in charge of the baths by staying in long beyond the regulation ten minutes. "Too long," I heard the bathman say to one of these Indian gentlemen, who had been taking his bath in the leisurely fashion to which he had been accustomed in his own home. "Not too long," was the laconic reply.