Life in India does not tend to the elevation of British morals, and this not because of the climate, as some contend. The industrial conditions are all against good morals, and are closely analogous to the conditions that prevailed in the Southern States of America before the Civil War. Wages are so low in India as to constitute the native the virtual slave of the Anglo-Saxon. By means of the pitiful wages paid for work, not one-half the comfort is provided by white masters to Indian servants that was secured to the black men in America, by the few of those owners of slaves who were really humane. The very fact that the slave was a rather scarce article and a good price paid for him in America, made it to the interest of his owner to look after his health and comfort to a certain extent. We are not defending slavery—it is an abomination in the sight of God, whether it exists under the disguise of abnormally low wages or shows itself openly; and slavery is always a greater moral curse to the master than to the oppressed. England virtually owns a whole nation of slaves in her control of India, and the effect of this fact upon the morals of that country will depend wholly upon whether she rules to redeem her subjects or to enrich herself. The worst feature of all in slavery is the appropriation of women by their masters. And this form of villainy is always excusing itself by slandering the oppressed women.
“This life is not a life of shame in the sense in which this is true in England. Most of these women are prostitutes by caste and can feel no desire to give it up,” says the Report of the Special Commission of 1893. “They are accepted as safeguards to society, and are not themselves ashamed of their calling,” says a high military officer. “They feel no shame about this; they are never recruited from seduced girls, as in England,” says another of these high and mighty officers, who know so much better how these girls feel and what they desire than do the poor slaves themselves. To be sure, they sob and cry and petition for deliverance, and protest their outraged feelings against the examinations; but that merely proves what hypocrites they are, and how cleverly they can play a part. “They are as artful as a waggon-load of monkeys,” said one Anglo-Indian to us; the “most vicious and degraded of the population,” says another. And yet they are, many of them, the offspring of British men. One would imagine them gray-haired in the service of Satan, from these accounts, and yet General Viscount Frankfort states in the Report of the Special Commission of 1893: “It is roughly estimated that 50 per cent. [of the girls of the chakla] are of the age of fourteen to sixteen or so;” and in reply to our evidence as to some of the girls being as young as “from fifteen to sixteen years of age,” Major General Sir W. Elles, K.C.B., replies, “The probability is that prostitution is practised at even younger ages than this.” In reply to our further statement that many girls are kept at the point of starvation, are always in debt, and cannot escape on this account, even if otherwise the way might be open, Colonel T. G. Crawley, commanding Allahabad District, makes the following calculation (page 360, Departmental Committee Report of 1893):—
“It stands to reason that the women could not be in debt, for if a woman only received six men daily for twenty-three days in a month, at the rate of only four annas [about fourpence] per visit, that would represent thirty-four rupees eight annas, and even allowing one-fourth of this to go to the mahaldarni, rent two rupees, and food at the rate of four annas daily for thirty days, a woman would have fully seventeen rupees
This for the health of British soldiers and their “future wives” and “unborn offspring” in England! and fifty per cent. of these victims from fourteen to sixteen years of age! And will women physicians be induced to attempt the task of keeping these mere children in health under such conditions?
Anglo-Indian sentiment would not long content itself with the loss of its highly prized C. D. Acts. The military officials had professed to abrogate them when they hid them away under the cloak of the Indian Cantonment Acts, and then again when they hid them under the cloak of the Cantonments Act of 1889; but they were at last fairly caught by the Cantonments Act Amendment Act of 1895, which tore away from them the pretence of “only treating this as any other contagious disease.”
Regulation had been in operation in India, in one form or another, for the largest part of a century, and statistics show a steady increase of disease, with slight variations, during all that time. And the Army Sanitary Commission, the highest British medical authority, had in 1894 pronounced this prolonged experiment with licensed vice a failure, in the following unequivocal language:—
“The facts, so far as we can ascertain them, lead us to the conclusion that a compulsory Lock Hospital system in India has proved a failure, and that its re-institution cannot consequently be advocated on sanitary grounds. In stating this conclusion, we may add that we are merely repeating the opinions which the Army Sanitary Commission have uniformly held, that venereal diseases in the army of India could not be repressed by such restrictive measures, and in support of this statement, we may refer to the Memoranda on the Indian Sanitary Reports which have issued from this office for many years.”
Yet a Departmental Committee was secured in November, 1896, by Anglo-Indian influence brought to bear upon the Government, to examine into the matter and report on the prevalence of diseases due to vice; and it reported, as was expected, in favour of a return to the system of legalized vice. The Departmental Committee reported at the beginning of the year 1897, on statistics no later than the year 1895. Now the Cantonments Act Amendment Act became a law in India, February 8, 1895, and how much time elapsed before this Amendment Act came into practical operation remains yet to be shown; yet an attempt is made to show that incalculable mischief has been done during these eleven months of the actual existence of the law which abolished licensed prostitution. The official statistics of which they make use do not at all justify the calculations and conclusions they have drawn therefrom.
At about the time of the report of the Departmental Committee, there was formed in England an association with the object of securing the re-establishment of legalized vice in India. The names of high British military officials make up its membership list, in large part. The association printed a pamphlet, based upon the Departmental Committee’s Report in favour of a return to the old conditions, a Report that was calculated to frighten the public, if possible, into acceding to their demands, on the supposition that a fearful scourge was upon them, and that no time was to be lost in getting it under check. Then Lord George Hamilton, on March 26, 1897, sent a dispatch to the Government of India, calling attention to the Report of the Departmental Committee, and ordering stricter measures for the suppression of diseases due to vice, but adding: “There must be no provision of women, … no registration, … no compulsory examination of women,” etc., but urging that it was “imperatively necessary that this disease should not be exempted from the measures adopted to prevent the spread of other contagious diseases.” “If there be any compulsion, it is precisely of the same kind as that which has been accepted as necessary and enforced without any objection in the case of diphtheria or typhoid fever.”