We had now one rupee left for food, but still we were not left in want, for when that was finished the Goanese cooks came and inquired about us and gave us a share of their own dinner. At Karachi the steamers anchor out in the harbour a considerable distance from the landing wharves, and passengers are taken ashore in native boats, a number of which crowd alongside the moment the ship is moored. But these boatmen naturally require remuneration, and we had none to give, so that it now seemed as though we should have greater difficulty in getting off the steamer than we had in getting on. Just then a launch came alongside for the mails, and a ship’s officer came up and asked if we would like to go ashore on it. Of course we accepted the offer with alacrity, had our machines on board in a trice, and were safely on terra firma again before the native boats had got away from the steamer.
This pilgrimage gave me many opportunities for philosophizing on the rôle that a man’s clothes play in gaining him a reception or a rejection. My missionary brethren took various views on the subject. Most exhibited incredulity as to the expediency of donning native garb, while showing some sympathetic interest; few were antagonistic on principle, though one missionary brother, indeed, weighed the matter a long time before admitting us into his house. He thought that the gulf between East and West was a priori unbridgeable; therefore no attempt should be made to bridge it, and that the relation between a missionary and his native associates should be sympathetic (patronizing?), but not familiar. To go about with an Indian brother, sharing the same plate and same lodging, seemed to him the height of unwisdom, even to shake hands being to go beyond the bounds of propriety; while as for an Englishman donning native clothes, he was dimming the glamour of the British name in India, which in his eyes was next door to undermining the British rule itself. My mind had been made up on this subject before I had been very long in India, and on no occasion did circumstances tend to weaken my own opinion that the gulf is by no means unbridgeable, and that the sooner and the more heartily we set about bridging it, the better it will be for the promotion of the kingdom of Christ in this land.
Sympathy cannot be wholly made to order: it is largely dependent on extraneous and adventitious circumstances, and I believe that the adoption of native dress increases that sympathy on both sides—on the side of the missionary, because it enables him to realize more vividly what treatment is often meted out to our native brethren and how they feel under it, and on the part of the Indians because the restraint which they usually feel—at least, in country districts—in approaching a Sahib is removed.
No doubt one reason why Indian Christians are so largely adopting Western dress is that they receive much more courtesy, conspicuously so when travelling on the railway. I had occasion to make some inquiries in Batala Station office. I might have drummed my heels on the threshold till I was tired had I not been fortunate in meeting an Indian brother wearing English dress, who walked in without diffidence, though when I attempted to follow him, I was met with a push and a “Nikal jao!” (Get out!). On another occasion, travelling by the night mail from Lahore, I was anxious to get some sleep, and I saw that the native compartment was crowded, while in the European compartment there was only a single English soldier. He barred my entrance with a “Can’t you see this is only for Europeans?” I humbly suggested that I belonged to that category, but his prompt “Don’t tell me any blooming lies!” made me think it better to seek my night’s rest in another compartment. While at Lucknow I essayed to visit the European cemetery at the old Residency, but the custodian would not hear of admitting me, utterly discrediting my statement that I was a European. Surely this unnecessary and most offensive restriction might be removed. I can readily judge from my own feelings at the time how naturally and greatly self-respecting Indians would resent this piece of racial antipathy, which permits a common gate-keeper to subject any Indian to indignity.
One naturally associates with those who give the heartiest welcome, and when in native garb the attraction is to those for the sake of whom we have come out to this land, while, on the other hand, there is danger that, when dressed for the drawing-room or the tennis-courts, we may spend too much of our time on that side of the gulf. If we English realized how much pain we often cause our Indian brethren, not so much by what we say or do as by the way we say or do it and the way we act towards them, a great cause of racial misunderstanding and ill-feeling would be removed.
Suppose a Sahib is seated in his study, and the bearer announces “A Sahib has come to call,” the answer is given at once: “Ask him into the drawing-room.” A moment after an Indian gentleman arrives, and the bearer is told to give him a chair in the verandah, or he may be even left standing in the sun, as happened to me more than once, till the Sahib had finished eating his lunch or writing his letters. At more than one bungalow, whether it belonged to a missionary or an official, the bearer would not even report my presence till he had catechized me as to who I was and what I wanted. I have had to wait as long as two hours before the Sahib found leisure to see me, being left meanwhile without a seat except God’s good earth, in the wind and cold, or in the heat and sun, as the case might be. A missionary, of all people, should not have a room set apart and tacitly understood to be “for English visitors only,” or make a habit of receiving the two kinds of visitors in altogether different style, or allow his menial servants to hustle and hector the already diffident and nervous native visitor.
When I was on my pilgrimage with my disciple, how our hearts opened to those true friends who received both of us alike, and did not chill us at the outset with the suggestion, “I suppose your friend would like to be taken to the house of the catechist.” Why, forsooth? Many a time we were both the guests of the humblest of our Indian brothers, and perfectly happy in unrestrained communion with them; others, too, of stations high above our own received us both with an unreserved hospitality, in which nothing was allowed to show that any difference was made between English and Indian, and we honoured and loved them for it. Why, then, should others be at pains to show that they had one treatment for the Englishman and another for the Indian, or perhaps conceal that feeling so poorly that we were never able to feel at ease with them? Which, I ask, is more likely to remove racial antipathy and unrest, and to make our Indian brethren feel that the Christianity which we preach is really genuine and means what it says?