From Egypt to Japan

by Henry M. Field

Thus India is a land of missions, and has been from the very beginnings of history. It was traversed by missionaries of its ancient faith ages before Tamerlane descended the passes of the Himalayas with the sword in one hand and the Koran in the other; or Francis Xavier, the Apostle of the Indies, laid his bones in the Cathedral of Goa. If then Buddhists and Brahmins, and Moslems and Romanists, have so long disputed the land, there is certainly no reason why we should condemn at the very outset the entrance of Protestant Christianity.

Beside this great fact in the history of India place another: that there is no country in the world where religion is such a power, such an element in the life of the people. The Hindoos are not only religious, they are intensely so. They have not indeed the fierce fanaticism of the Moslems, for their creed tolerates all religions, but what they believe they believe strongly. They have a subtle philosophy which pervades all their thinking, which digs the very channels in which their thoughts run, and cannot overflow; and this philosophy, which is imbedded in their religious creed, fixes their castes and customs, as rigidly as it does their forms of worship. Religion is therefore the chief element in the national life. It has more to do in moulding the ideas and habits, the manners and customs, of the people, than laws or government, or any other human institution. Thus India furnishes the most imposing illustration on earth of the power of Religion to shape the destiny of a country or a race.

Whether there be anything to justify a friendly invasion of India, and the attempt to convert its people to a better religion, may appear if we ask, What is Hindooism? Is it a good or bad faith? Does it make men better or worse—happy or unhappy? Does it promote the welfare of human beings, or is it a system which is false in belief and deadly in its effects, and against which we have a right to wage a holy war?

Hindooism has a thousand shapes, spreading out its arms like a mighty banyan tree, but its root is one—Pantheism. When an old fakir at the Méla at Allahabad said to me, "You are God and I am God!" he did not utter a wild rhapsody, but expressed the essence of Hindoo philosophy, according to which all beings that exist are but One Being; all thoughts are but the pulse-beats of One Infinite Mind; all acts are but the manifestation of One Universal Life.

Some may think this theory a mere abstraction, which has no practical bearing. But carried out to its logical consequences, it overthrows all morality. If all acts of men are God's acts, then they are all equally good or bad; or rather, they are neither good nor bad. Thus moral distinctions are destroyed, and vice and virtue are together banished from the world. Hence Hindooism as a religion has nothing whatever to do with morality or virtue, but is only a means of propitiating angry deities. It is a religion of terror and fear. It is also unspeakably vile. It is the worship of obscene gods by obscene rites. Its very gods and goddesses commit adultery and incest. Thus vice is deified. Such a mythology pollutes the imaginations of the people, whereby their very mind and conscience are defiled. Not only the heart, but even the intellect is depraved by the loathsome objects set up in their temples. The most common object of worship in India is an obscene image. Indeed, so well understood is this, that when a law was passed by the Government against the exhibition of obscene images, an express exception was made in favor of those exposed in temples, and which were objects of religious worship. Thus Hindooism has the privilege of indecency, and is allowed to break over all restraints. It is the licensed harlot, that is permitted, in deference to its religious pretensions, to disregard the common decencies of mankind. The effect of this on public morals can be imagined. The stream cannot rise higher than its source. How can a people be pure, when their very religion is a fountain of pollution? But this is a subject on which we cannot enlarge. It is an abyss into which no one would wish to look. It is sufficient to indicate what we cannot for very loathing undertake to describe.

There is another element in the Hindoo religion, which cannot be ignored, and which gives it a tremendous power for good or evil. It is Caste. Every Hindoo child is born in a certain caste, out of which he cannot escape. When I landed at Bombay I observed that every native had upon his forehead a mark freshly made, as if with a stroke of the finger, which indicated the god he worshipped or the caste to which he belonged. Of these there are four principal ones—the Priest, or Brahmin caste, which issued out of the mouth of Brahm; the Warrior caste, which sprung from his arms and breast; the Merchant caste, from his thighs; and the Shoodras, or Servile caste, which crawled out from between his feet; beside the Pariahs, who are below all caste. These divisions are absolute and unchangeable. To say that they are maintained by the force of ancient custom is not enough: they are fixed as by a law of nature. The strata of society are as immovable as the strata of the rock-ribbed hills. No man can stir out of his place. If he is up he stays up by no virtue of his own; and if he is down, he stays down, beyond any power of man to deliver him. No gift of genius, or height of virtue, can ever raise up one of a low caste into a higher, for caste is a matter of birth. Upon these sub-strata this fixity of caste rests with crushing weight. It holds them down as with the force of gravitation, as if the Himalayas were rolled upon them to press them to the earth.

Against this oppression there is no power of resistance, no lifting up from beneath to throw it off. One would suppose that the people themselves would revolt at this servitude, that every manly instinct would rise up in rebellion against such a degradation. But so ingrained is it in the very life of the people, that they cannot cast it out any more than they can cast out a poison in their blood. Indeed they seem to glory in it. The lower castes crouch and bow down that others may pass over them. A Brahmin, who had become a Christian, told me that the people had often asked him to wash his feet in the water of the street, that they might drink it!

Caste is a cold and cruel thing, which hardens the heart against natural compassion. I know it is said that high caste is only an aristocracy of birth, and that, as such, it fosters a certain nobility of feeling, and also a mutual friendliness between those who belong to the same order. A caste is only a larger family, and in it there is the same feeling, a mixture of pride and affection, which binds the family together. Perhaps it may nurture to some extent a kind of clannishness, but it does this at the sacrifice of the broader and nobler sentiment of humanity. It hardens the heart into coldness and cruelty against all without one sacred pale. The Brahmin feels nothing for the sufferings of the Pariah, who is of another order of being as truly as if he were one of the lower animals. Thus the feeling of caste extinguishes the sentiment of human brotherhood.

Taking all these elements together, Hindooism must rank as the most despotic, the most cruel, and the vilest of all that is called religion among men. There is no other that so completely upturns moral distinctions, and makes evil good and good evil. Other religions, even though false, have some sentiment that ennobles them, but Hindooism, the product of a land fertile in strange births, is the lowest and basest, the most truly earth-born, of all the religions that curse mankind.

And what burdens does it lay upon a poor, patient, and suffering people, in prayers, penances, and pilgrimages! The faith of Hindooism is not a mild and harmless form of human credulity. It exacts a terrible service, that must be paid with sweat and blood. Millions of Hindoos go every year on pilgrimages. The traveller sees them thronging the roads, dragging their weary feet over the hot plains, many literally crawling over the burning earth, to appease the wrath of angry gods! A religion which exacts such service is not a mere creature of the imagination—it is a tremendous reality, which makes its presence felt at every moment. It is therefore not a matter of practical indifference. It is not a mere exhibition of human folly, which, however absurd, does no harm to anybody. It is a despotism which grinds the people to powder.