India, Old and New

by Sir Valentine Chirol

CHAPTER XI

CROSS CURRENTS IN SOUTHERN INDIA

The elections in the Southern Provinces presented a somewhat different picture though the defeat of "Non-co-operation" was equally complete. The Nerbudda river has been from times immemorial a great dividing line, climatic, racial, and often political, between Northern and Southern India. It still is so. For, whilst with a few relatively unimportant exceptions the whole of British India—save Burma, which, except from an administrative point of view, is not India at all—has been brought with perhaps excessive uniformity within the scope of the new constitutional reforms, many conditions in the Central Provinces and in the great Presidency of Madras differ widely from those prevailing in the other major provinces north of the Nerbudda, and the actual failure of "Non-co-operation" to enforce its boycott of the elections was less noteworthy than some other features in the new situation. In the Central Provinces the elections themselves were fought out on much the same lines as in the north and with very similar results, if allowance is made for the intellectual backwardness of the province. Political activity and agitation had been confined in the past mainly to Nagpur, the capital, and to the western districts, in which a large Mahratta element predominates especially amongst the better-educated classes. Most of Mr. Tilak's former followers there had joined the "Non-co-operation" movement, and their rigid abstention from the elections left the doors of the Provincial Council wide open for the representation of more sober Indian opinion. The Extremists showed their contempt for the new assembly by putting up one or two "freak" candidates in breach of the boycott they were preaching, and actually got in a dhobi, or laundryman, at Jubbulpur. But the elections were overshadowed by the preparations for the Nagpur Congress, which was to be the great Gandhi counterblast to the Reforms, and the Extremists, who poured into the province from the neighbouring Bombay Presidency, concentrated their efforts on the creation of an atmosphere of general unrest favourable to the new line of campaign upon which the rump of the old Indian National Congress was about to enter with the open renunciation of the fundamental article of its original creed—loyalty to the British connection.

It seems one of the strangest of the many anomalies with which the Indian situation teems that the Central Provinces should have been chosen of all others as the scene for a great spectacular demonstration of revolt against the state of "slavery" to which Indians have been reduced by a "Satanic" alien rule. It is one of the precepts of Mr. Gandhi's gospel of "Non-co-operation," though doubtless only as a counsel of perfection, that Indian husbands and wives must cease to bring "slave" children into the world until India has attained Swaraj. Yet in the Central Provinces a larger proportion of Indian children than in any other province are born every year to a state of degradation much more closely akin to slavery, which is not imposed upon them by any alien rulers, but by the ancient traditions of those of their own race and creed whose interest it is to perpetuate at the expense of their less fortunate fellow-countrymen the most cruel form of caste tyranny. Of the total population of the Central Provinces, which numbered some sixteen millions at the last Census in 1911, one-fifth belong to that order of humanity which stands so low in the eyes of Hindus that it is unworthy to be reckoned as possessing any caste at all. These no-castes stand at the very foot of the social ladder of Hinduism, and in theory at least they can never hope to climb even on to its lowest rungs, though in practice the most stringent laws can be gradually circumvented with the help of needy Brahmans or will yield to the pressure of changing economic conditions. They are "untouchable," i.e. that any physical contact with them involves defilement of which the caste Hindu can only cleanse himself by ritual ablutions and other forms of ceremonial purification. Go into a village which is partially inhabited by these unfortunate people, mostly called Mahars in that part of India, and you will find that they are forbidden even to draw water from any but their own wells, as by drawing it from wells used by caste Hindus they would render them impure. In the larger urban schools under Government control British laws, which recognise no caste distinctions, enforce the admission of Mahar boys, some of whom do extremely well. But in a village school you will often see the poor little "untouchables," if admitted at all, relegated to mats on the outside verandah, where they may pick up such scraps of teaching as they can. The Government inspector of schools may remonstrate, but he knows that few teachers will make any serious attempt to mend matters, and that if they did the caste-boys would be withdrawn by their indignant parents.

When I was touring a few years ago in the Central Provinces with a British commissioner, who was carrying on an inquiry into certain grievances of the peasantry in connection with irrigation, the villagers from the more remote villages were frequently collected along the road to tell their story, and they brought with them their land-records. These the "untouchables" had to lay on the ground at the feet of the Brahman subordinate, who would have been defiled had he taken them straight out of their hands, and only after they had withdrawn a few paces did he condescend to pick up the books and verify them before passing them on to his British superior. The latter, on the other hand, though the representative, according to Congress orators, of a "Satanic" Government that has reduced Indians to "slavery," never hesitated to question the poor "untouchables" closely and good-humouredly, not merely about the particular matter at issue, but about the condition of their crops or the health of their village, and sometimes gave a friendly pat on the back to the youngsters who accompanied their elders, whilst the Brahman stood by in stony and disgusted silence.

These caste discriminations doubtless originated in remote ages when the Aryan conquerors from the north gradually subdued the aboriginal Dravidian populations. The "untouchables" are mostly remnants of that population, some of them still very primitive jungle folk whom the Census classes as "animists," or nature-worshippers, i.e. they still worship trees and stones and the spirits that are supposed to dwell in them. But they tend gradually to include in their worship some of the gods and goddesses of the Hindu Pantheon, especially those who are credited with power to avert the worst scourges to which the people happen to be subject. Under a sacred roadside tree I have seen in one place a rude stone, roughly shaped to represent the Goddess of Small-pox, and alongside of it a clay image of a tiger that had killed a man on that very spot, set up in the hope of averting further manifestations of its wrath, and also of appeasing the dead man's soul so that he might remain quietly within the tiger and become a kindly protector to the village. The appropriation of Hindu deities is usually the first step towards their absorption into the Hindu social structure. Others, the more progressive, have settled down as cultivators, a few occasionally becoming quite considerable land-owners. Others, again, have taken to weaving and to petty trade. Under British rule they have progressed all along the line. A Mahar regiment has been raised, officered by Mahomedans from the north, as no Hindu would think of serving with "untouchables," and though Hindu sepoys must not be brought into proximity with it, it has always behaved very creditably. Some Mahars are now well educated, and in favour of two of them the Governor of the Central Provinces has exercised the right conferred upon him to nominate a certain number of members to the Provincial Legislative Council in order to give some representation to communities too backward to secure any for themselves under the existing franchise.

One of the best results of British governance and of Western education has been to stimulate even amongst the "untouchables" a new sense of self-respect and self-reliance and a wholesome desire to emerge from the degradation to which the custom of centuries has condemned them. It is amongst them that of late years Christian and even Mahomedan missionaries have found all over India their most fruitful field, and in some provinces mass-movements to Christianity have taken place, which are admittedly due in the first place to a desire for social emancipation, but will steadily lead, if properly handled, to moral and religious advancement. One of the great problems now before the missionary societies of all Christian denominations is how these tens of thousands of converts can be taught and trained, and it is of great promise for the future that a Commission of Inquiry composed of British and American and Indian Christian missionaries has recently issued a report on Village Education in India which has approached this problem, amongst others, with a broad-minded appreciation of its economic and social as well as purely religious aspects.

Is it surprising that when the Indian National Congress, that has hitherto done nothing for them beyond embodying in its programme vague expressions of sympathy, is agitating for the severance of the British connection, and Extremist orators perambulate the country to preach a boycott of British officials, the Mahars should have sent in petitions imploring the Governor not to abandon them or surrender the power which has alone done something to raise them out of the slough of despond? Mr. Gandhi, however, who would be a great social reformer had he not preferred to plunge into a dangerous political agitation, is not himself blind to such an awful blot as "untouchability" has made on Hindu civilisation, and some of his followers, prompted perhaps less than he is himself by a generous reforming spirit, have not been slow to see what abundant materials lie ready to their hand in these vast masses, profoundly ignorant and superstitious, if they can only be drawn into the turbid stream of "Non-co-operation" by some novel and ingenious appeal to their fears or to their appetites.

In the Madras Presidency, never swept to the same degree as Bengal or Bombay by the waves of political unrest, the electoral struggle assumed a form, peculiar to Southern Indian conditions, in which "Non-co-operation" entered very little. For Southern India has its own life-history which differentiates it in many respects from other parts of India, and in none more so than in the survival of the Brahman's ancient ascendancy, until recently almost unchallenged in this stronghold of Hinduism.

Mostly of the primitive Dravidian stock that inhabited the peninsula before the great Aryan inflow from the north, and still speaking Dravidian languages, the people of Southern India have preserved in its most archaic form the social system of Hinduism which the Aryan conquerors, probably never more than a small minority, imposed upon them by the relative superiority of their civilisation quite as much as by force of arms. Of a much fairer complexion, the Aryans became the ruling "white" race of those days, and to preserve their racial prestige they enforced the most rigid laws for the differentiation of caste—which originally meant colour. The Brahmans, being the law-givers, naturally framed laws to secure the pre-eminence of their own caste, and to the present day, for instance, in the more remote parts of Southern India, men of the lower castes may be seen retiring hastily from the road at his approach, lest they should pollute the air he breathes by coming within a forbidden distance of him.