Protestant Christianity has not been sufficiently long in India to develop and foster an Indian type of character of its own. And yet we see it rapidly working towards that consummation. A century is too brief a time for this purpose. Moreover, native Christian life in that land is too much under the dominance and guidance of the West to enjoy a large degree of spontaneity; and without spontaneity life is not natural.
Nevertheless, the century that has passed has brought into existence the fourth generation of Protestant native Christians in India; and we are able to see, to some extent, among these descendants [pg 115] of native Christians that tendency and bent which will ere long develop into a definite and settled type of its own. For the time being we can only study the native Christian as a prophecy—a prophecy not for many years to be fulfilled in all its details, and yet worthy of study both in itself and for what it suggests.
Let us consider, then, these types of the two faiths which we see in that land.
1. And First, The Hindu.
The Hindu Devotee is a genuine product of his religion, wrought out during thirty centuries on its native heath. He stands before us as a distinct type whose characteristics differentiate him from the followers of any other religion.
It is well to remember here that that modern product—the Hindu of Western culture who is so much in evidence today in India and who sometimes comes West in flowing orange robes and turban to urge his mongrel philosophy upon our fellow-countrymen—is not the type of Hindu appreciated by, or representing, the people of that land. Neither in life nor in teaching does he represent the faith whose name he bears. He is a man who has studied Western thought and religion under the guidance and inspiration, perhaps, of the Christian missionary; and then in an ingenious way strives to interpret his own faith in the light of his Western attainments. He presents to us not orthodox Hinduism, but a mongrel doctrine and philosophy which are as foreign to the teaching of the orthodox Hindu pundit and as alien to the Hindu Scriptures as they are to [pg 116] Western philosophy and faith. It is a significant fact that all these Western-travelled Hindus have first to violate a fundamental injunction of their own religion—namely, that which prohibits sea travelling to a Hindu—before they can visit the West in order to commend their faith. And when they return to their native country they do so as the outcastes of their religion, and can be reinstated only after performing a work of atonement which includes the disgusting act of eating the five products of the cow!
The real Hindu, who stands today as the true exponent of his faith, is a very different man. He would no more cross the seas than he would cut off his right arm; for he knows that he can remain a true Hindu only so long as he remains at home. He is a conservative of the stiffest kind. He thinks on ancient lines and swears by the rishis of old.
Idol Worship.