Indian Unrest

by Sir Valentine Chirol

No doubt the abject ignorance and squalor and the repulsive habits of many of these unfortunate castes help to explain and to perpetuate their ostracism, but they do not exculpate a social system which prescribes or tolerates such a state of things. That if a kindly hand is extended to them, even the lowest of these depressed can be speedily raised to a higher plane has been abundantly shown by the efforts of Christian missionaries. They are only now beginning to extend their activities to the depressed castes of Northern India, but in Southern India important results have already been achieved. The Bishop of Madras claims that within the last 40 years, in the Telugu country alone, some 250,000 Panchamas have become Christians, and in Travancore another 100,000. During the last two decades especially the philanthropic work done by the missionaries in plague and famine time has borne a rich harvest, for the Panchamas have naturally turned a ready ear to the spiritual ministrations of those who stretched out their hands to help them in the hour of extreme need. Bishop Whitehead, who has devoted himself particularly to this question, assures me that, in Southern India at least, the rate at which the elevation of the depressed castes can be achieved depends mainly upon the amount of effort which the Christian missions can put forth. If their organizations can be adequately strengthened and extended so as to deal with the increasing numbers of inquirers and converts, and, above all, to train native teachers, he is convinced that we may be within measurable distance of the reclamation of the whole Panchama population. What the effect would be from the social as well as the religious point of view may be gathered from a recent report of the Telugu Mission, which most lay witnesses would, I believe readily confirm:—

If we look at the signs of moral and spiritual progress during the last 40 years, the results of the mission work have been most encouraging. It is quite true that naturally the Panchamas are poor, dirty, ignorant, and, as a consequence of many centuries of oppression, peculiarly addicted to the more mean and servile vices. But the most hopeful element in their case is that they are conscious of their degradation and eager to escape from it. As a consequence, when formed into congregations under the care of earnest and capable teachers, they make marked progress materially, intellectually, and morally. Their gross ignorance disappears; they become cleaner and more decent in their persons and homes; they give up cattle poisoning and grain stealing, two crimes particularly associated with their class; they abstain from the practice of infant marriage and concubinage, to which almost all classes of Hindu society are addicted; they lose much of the old servile spirit which led them to grovel at the feet of their social superiors, and they acquire more sense of the rights and dignity which belong to them as men. Where they are able to escape their surroundings they prove themselves in no way inferior, either in mental or in moral character, to the best of their fellow-countrymen. Especially is this the case in the Mission Boarding Schools, where the change wrought is a moral miracle. In many schools and colleges Christian lads of Panchama origin are holding their own with, and in not a few cases are actually outstripping, their Brahman competitors. … In one district the Hindus themselves bore striking testimony to the effect of Christian teaching on the pariahs, "Before they became Christians," one of them said, "we had always to lock up our storehouses, and were always having things stolen. But now all that is changed, We can leave our houses open and never lose anything."

In the heyday of the Hindu Social Reform Movement, before it was checked by the inrush of political agitation, the question of the elevation of the depressed castes was often and earnestly discussed by progressive Hindus themselves, but it is only recently that it has again been taken up seriously by some of the Hindu leaders, and notably by Mr. Gokhale. One of the utterances that has produced the greatest impression in Hindu circles is a speech made last year by the Gaekwar of Baroda, a Hindu Prince who not only professes advanced Liberal views, but whose heart naturally goes out to the depressed castes, as the fortunes of his own house were made in the turmoil of the eighteenth century by a Mahratta of humble extraction, if not actually of low-caste origin. His Highness does not attempt to minimize the evils of the system.

The same principles which impel us to ask for political Justice for ourselves should actuate us to show social justice to each other…. By the sincerity of our efforts to uplift the depressed classes we shall be judged fit to achieve the objects of our national desire…. The system which divides us into innumerable castes claiming to rise by minutely graduated steps from the pariah to the Brahman is a whole tissue of injustice, splitting men equal by nature into divisions high and low, based not on the natural standard of personal qualities but on accidents of birth. The eternal struggle between caste and caste for social superiority has become a constant source of ill-feeling…. Want of education is practically universal amongst the depressed classes, but this cannot have been the cause of their fall, for many of the so-called higher classes in India share in the general ignorance. Unlike them, however, they are unable to attend the ordinary schools owing to the idea that it is pollution to touch them. To do so is to commit a sin offensive alike to religion and to conventional morality. Of professions as a means of livelihood these depressed classes have a very small choice. Here, too, the supposed pollution of their touch comes in their way. On every hand we find that the peculiar difficulty from which they suffer, in addition to others that they share with other classes, is their "untouchableness."

After a powerful argument against the theory of "untouchableness" and against priestly intolerance, the Gaekwar urges not only upon Hindus, but upon Government the duty of attacking in all earnestness this formidable problem.

A Government within easy reach of the latest thought, with unlimited moral and material resources, such as there is in India, should not remain content with simply asserting the equality of men under the common law and maintaining order, but must sympathetically see from time to time that the different sections of its subjects are provided with ample means of progress. Many of the Indian States where they are at all alive to the true functions of government, owing to less elevating surroundings or out of nervousness, fear to strike out a new path and find it less troublesome to follow the policy of laisser faire and to walk in the footsteps of the highest Government in India, whose declared policy is to let the social and religious matters of the people alone except where questions of grave importance are involved. When one-sixth of the people are in a chronically depressed and ignorant condition, no Government can afford to ignore the urgent necessity of doing what it can for their elevation.

Can the Government of India afford to disregard so remarkable an appeal? The question is not merely a social and moral question, but also a political one. Whilst some high-caste Hindus are beginning to recognize its urgency, the more prosperous of the socially depressed castes themselves are showing signs of restlessness under the ostracism to which they are subjected. From almost all of these castes a few individuals have always emerged, who acquired wealth and the relative recognition that wealth brings with it, and the numbers of such individuals are increasing. In some cases a whole caste has seen its circumstances improve under new economic conditions entirety beyond its own control—like the Namasudras of Bengal, who, as agriculturists, have had their share of the growing agricultural prosperity of that region. They are materially better off than they used to be, and so they are no longer content with their old social status of inferiority. Not only Christian but Mahomedan missionaries have been at work amongst them, and though the vast majority remain Hindus, they note, like the Panchamas all over India must note, the immediate rise in the social scale of their fellow-caste-men who embrace either Christianity or Islam. For it is one of the anomalies of this peculiar conception that the most untouchable Hindu ceases to be quite as untouchable when he becomes a Christian or a Mahomedan. The Bengalee politician was quick to see the danger of losing hold altogether of the Namasudras, and he set up a propaganda of his own, which I have already described, with the object of winning them over to his side and to his methods of agitation by promising them in return a relaxation of caste stringency. The question with which we are confronted is whether we shall ourselves take a hand in the elevation of the depressed castes or whether we shall leave it to others, many of whom would exploit them for their own purposes. Is not this an opportunity for the Government of India to respond to the Gaekwar's invitation and depart for once from their traditional policy of laisser faire? In the Christian Missions they have an admirable organization ready to hand which merely requires encouragement and support. Though there are manifold dangers in giving official countenance to proselytizing work amongst the higher classes of Indian society, none of those objections can reasonably lie to co-operating in the reclamation of whole classes which the orthodox Hindu regards as beyond the pale of human intercourse. From the religious point of view, this is a matter which should engage the earnest attention of the great missionary societies of this country. The hour seems to be at hand when a great and combined effort is required of them. From the moral and social point of view they may well claim in this connexion the sympathy and support of all denominations and no-denominations that are interested in the welfare and progress of backward races. From the political point of view the conversion of so many millions of the population of India to the faith of their rulers would open up prospects of such moment that I need not expatiate upon them.

CHAPTER XV.

THE NATIVE STATES.

One of the chief features of the original scheme of constitutional reforms submitted to the Secretary of State by the Government of India was the creation of an Imperial Advisory Council composed of ruling chiefs and territorial magnates. The proposal gave rise to a variety of objections, the most serious one being the difficulty of adjusting the relations to the Government of India of a Council in which the most conspicuous members could have had no definite locus standi in regard to the internal affairs of British India—i.e., of the larger part of our Indian dependency under direct British administration. The difficulty was evaded by dropping the proposal. But to evade a difficulty is only to postpone it. Though the constitutional reforms are confined, in their immediate application, to British India, measures of such far-reaching importance must react more or less directly upon the whole of our Indian Empire. Is it therefore politic, or, indeed, possible, to leave out of account the Native States, which occupy altogether about one-third of the total area of India and have an aggregate population of over 68 millions, or to ignore the rulers charged with their administration?