So brothers and sisters, nephews and nieces, cousins to the tenth removal, were gathered together in the joy of a kinship that regards the smallest trace of common blood as absolute and unquestioned claim to lifelong support under a common roof. No Workhouse or Industrial School for them! As long as one of the kin has pancakes and a cow, there is always a certainty of a crumb and a sup of milk all round. In honour of such riches and family love, the ceilings of the rooms and the verandahs fluttered with pink and yellow flags; the windows and doors were hung with festoons of orange marigolds on a string; upon the entrance pavement neat patterns in whitewash were drawn by hand-rollers; and, as the streets turned blue with evening, the children, draped in all the gorgeous crimsons and golds their mothers could afford, lighted the tiny oil lamps on window-sill and doorstep, or threw the spurting fires under the very noses of sacred bulls that wander for their living from shop to shop. To be sure, other helpful powers beside Lakshmi have a share in the honour (for who can tell under which form he loves God best?), and it is the temples of Durga and Vishnu, of Siva and Parvati, lady of the far-off mountain snow, that make the sacred hill of Parbati outside the city sparkle like an illuminated birthday cake, for at least one night during the Diwali feast of brotherhood.
A Street in Poona.
[Face p. 32.
The sad thing was that in the beautiful streets where Mahratta nobles had built their simple palaces under the Peshwas a century ago, many of the houses now stood dark and empty, in terror of the plague. Hardly eleven years had passed since the pestilence first appeared, imported from Hongkong as people thought, and in those eleven years it had killed nearly six millions of India’s inhabitants. Six millions out of three hundred millions may not sound very much; it is only two in every hundred spread over eleven years. But the loss was not equally distributed, and when I was told that within those eleven years the inhabitants of Poona had been reduced to nearly one-third, I knew why so many homes were dark on a night of lamps and family affection. At the time, the plague was striking down from twelve to fifteen, or at the highest twenty, so that its visitation was regarded as light. But I remember the panic when a single case was reported in London, or even at the more comfortable distance of Marseilles, and so it was natural to find that many families had gone to live on selected open spaces outside the city. There among rocks and withered grass they kindled their little lamps and celebrated family joy in any hut of wicker, matting, canvas, petroleum tins, old boxes, boards, or branches which they and the Imperial Government could manage to rig up between them. Many shopmen had even transferred their little stores of grain, sweets, and cottons to this countrified scene, and the general effect was like a scrappy Derby Day without the races.
Having crossed a bridge, to the left of which thin columns of smoke still rose from the smouldering bodies of yesterday’s dead, I passed through one of these Health Camps, as official language fondly calls them, and found before me a partly finished building of solid stone—unfinished, but with something already monastic and grave in its straight-roofed hall and line of cloistral habitations. It was the rising home of the “Servants of India Society,” and in front of his own small house the founder and “First Member” of the Society was standing to receive me.
Mr. Gopal Krishna Gokhale is one of the very few Indians whose name is known in England to a certain number of people outside the score or two that pay attention to Indian affairs. Born a Mahratta Brahman of the highest caste and of ordinary poverty in the small town of Kolhapur, he threw away the caste and retained the poverty. While a student at the Elphinstone College in Bombay, he came under the influence of Justice Ranade, also a Mahratta Brahman and judge of the High Court, famous already for social reform, and at that time combining with others to establish the National Congress, which held its first meeting in 1885. Mr. Gokhale had taken his degree the year before. Lord Ripon had just left the country, honoured and regretted among Indians as no other Viceroy has been, and the air was full of schemes for political emancipation under the favour and encouragement of British statesmen. Among the reformers of that time, when all were moderate, Ranade was distinguished for moderation, and when Mr. Gokhale in his student days chose him as his “guru,” or spiritual guide, he fixed for life his own characteristics of moderation, and a certain sweet reasonableness, not only of manner, but of aim.
Mr. Gokhale and Servants of India.
[Face p. 34.