Modern India

by William Eleroy Curtis

Occasionally you see American goods, but not often. We sell India comparatively little merchandise except iron and steel, machinery, agricultural implements, sewing machines, typewriters, phonographs and other patented articles. One afternoon four naked Hindus went staggering along the main street in Calcutta carrying an organ made by the Farrand Company of Detroit, which has considerable trade there. American pianos are widely advertised by one of the music dealers. The beef packing houses of Chicago send considerable tinned meat to India, and it is quite popular and useful. Indeed, it would be difficult for the English to get along without it, because native beef is very scarce. It is only served at the hotels one or twice a week. That is due to the fact that cows are sacred and oxen are so valuable for draught purposes. Fresh beef comes all the way from Australia in refrigerator ships and is sold at the fancy markets.

The native bazaars are like those in other Indian cities, although not so interesting. Calcutta has comparatively a small native trade, although it has a million of population. The shops of Delhi, Lahore, Jeypore, Lucknow, Benares and other cities are much more attractive. In the European quarter are some curio dealers, who stop there for the winter and go to Delhi and Simla for the summer, selling brocades, embroideries, shawls, wood and ivory carvings and other native art work which are very tempting to tourists. Several dealers in jewels from Delhi and other cities spend the holidays in order to catch the native princes, who are the greatest purchasers of precious stones in the world. Several of them have collections more valuable and extensive than any of the imperial families of Europe. Prices of all curios, embroideries and objects of art are much higher in Calcutta than in the cities of northern India, and everybody told us it was the poorest place to buy such things.

The most imposing building upon the Chowringhee, the principal street, is the Imperial Museum, which was founded nearly a hundred years ago by the Asiatic Society, and was taken over by the government in 1866. It is a splendid structure around a central quadrangle 300 feet square with colonnades, fountains, plants and flowers. Little effort has been made to obtain contributions from other countries, but no other collection of Indian antiquities, ethnology, archæology, mineralogy and other natural sciences can compare with it. It is under the special patronage of the viceroy, who takes an active interest in extending its usefulness and increasing its treasures, while Lady Curzon is the patroness of the school of design connected with it. In this school about three hundred young men are studying the industrial arts. Comparatively little attention is given to the fine arts. There are a few native portrait painters, and I have seen some clever water colors from the brushes of natives. But in the industrial arts they excel, and this institute is maintained under government patronage for the purpose of training the eyes and the hands of designers and artisans. In the same group of buildings are the geological survey and other scientific bureaus of the government, which are quite as progressive and learned as our own. A little farther up the famous street are the headquarters of the Asiatic Society, one of the oldest and most enterprising learned societies in the world, whose journals and proceedings for the last century are a library in themselves and contain about all that anybody would ever want to know concerning the history, literature, antiquities, resources and people of India. Here also is a collection of nearly twenty thousand manuscripts in Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic, Hindustani and other oriental languages.

There is comparatively little poverty in Calcutta, considering the enormous population and the conditions in which they live. There are, however, several hundred thousand people who would starve to death upon their present incomes if they lived in the United States or in any of the European countries, but there it costs so little to sustain life and a penny goes so far that what an American working man would call abject destitution is an abundance. Give a Hindu a few farthings for food and a sheet of white cotton for clothing and he will be comfortable and contented.

The streets of Calcutta, except in a limited portion of the native section of the city, are wide, well paved, watered and swept. There is an electric tramway system with about twenty miles of track, reaching the principal suburbs, railway stations and business sections, and whether Moline (Ill.) got it from Calcutta or Calcutta borrowed the idea from Moline, both cities use the same method of laying the dust. The tramway company runs an electric tank car up and down its tracks several times a day, throwing water far enough to cover nearly the entire street. Other streets, where there are no tracks, are sprinkled by coolies, who carry upon their backs pig skins and goat skins filled with water and squirt it upon the ground through one of the legs with a twist of the wrist as ingenious and effective as the method used by Chinese laundrymen in sprinkling clothes. No white man can do either. The Hindu sprinkler is an artist in his line, and therefore to be admired, because everybody who excels is worthy of admiration, no matter what he is doing. The street sprinklers belong to the very lowest caste; the same caste as the garbage collectors and the coolies that mend the roads and sweep the sidewalks, but they are stalwart fellows, much superior to the higher class physically, and as they wear very little clothing everybody can see their perfect anatomy and shapely outlines.

Much of the road mending in India is done by women. They seem to be assigned to all the heavy and laborious jobs. They carry mortar, and bricks and stone where new buildings are being erected; they lay stone blocks in the pavements, hammer the concrete with heavy iron pestles, and you can frequently see them walking along the wayside with loads of lumber or timber carefully balanced on their heads that would be heavy for a mule or an ox. Frequently they carry babies at the same time; never in their arms, but swung over their backs or astride their hips. The infant population of India spend the first two or three years of their lives astride somebody's hips. It may be their mother's, or their sister's, or their brother's, but they are always carried that way, and abound so plentifully that there is no danger of race suicide in that empire.

Next to the Sikh soldier, the nattiest native in India is the postman, who is dressed in a blue uniform with a blue turban of cotton or silk cloth to match, and wears a nickel number over his forehead with the insignia of the postal service, and a girdle with a highly ornamental buckle. The deliveries and collections are much more frequent than with us. It is a mortification to every American who travels abroad to see the superiority of the postal service in other countries. That is about the only feature of civil administration in which the federal government of the United States is inferior, but, compared with India, as well as the European countries, our Postoffice Department is not up to date. You can mail a letter to any part of Calcutta in the morning and, if your correspondent takes the trouble, he can reach you with a reply before dinner. The rates of postage on local matter and on parcels are much lower than with us. I can send a package of books or merchandise or anything else weighing less than four pounds from Calcutta to Chicago for less than half the charge that would be required on a similar package from Evanston or Oak Park.

The best time for a stranger to visit Calcutta is during holiday week, for then the social season is inaugurated by a levee given by the viceroy, a "drawing-room" by the vice-queen and a grand state ball. The annual races are held that week, also, including the great sporting event of the year, which is a contest for a cup offered by the viceroy, and a military parade and review and various other ceremonies and festivities attract people from every part of the empire. The native princes naturally take this opportunity to visit the capital and pay their respects to the representative of imperial power, while every Englishman in the civil and military service, and those of social or sporting proclivities in private life have their vacations at that time and spend the Christmas and New Year's holidays with Calcutta friends. Moreover, the fact that all these people will be there attracts the tourists who happen to be in India at the time, for it gives them a chance to see the most notable and brilliant social features of Indian life. Hence we rushed across the empire with everybody else and assisted to increase the crowd and the enthusiasm. Every hotel, boarding-house and club was crowded. Every family had guests. Cots and beds were placed in offices and wherever else they could be accommodated. Tents were spread on the lawn of the Government House for the benefit of government officials coming in from the provinces, and on the parade grounds at the fort for military visitors. The grounds surrounding the club houses looked like military camps. Sixteen tents were placed upon the roof of the hotel where we were stopping to accommodate the overflow.

Good hotels are needed everywhere in India, as I have several times suggested, and nowhere so much as in Calcutta. The government, the people and all concerned ought to be ashamed of their lack of enterprise in this direction, and everybody admits it without argument. There is not a comfortable hotel in the city, and while it is of course possible for people to survive present conditions they are nevertheless a national disgrace. Calcutta is a city of more than a million inhabitants. Among its residents are many millionaires and other wealthy men. It is frequently called "the city of palaces," and many of the private residences in the foreign quarter are imposing and costly. Hence there is no excuse but indifference and lack of public spirit.

The Government House, which is the residence of the viceroy, is one of the finest palaces in the world, and in architectural beauty, extent and arrangement surpasses many of the royal residences of Europe. None of the many palaces in England and the other European capitals is better adapted for entertaining or has more stately audience chambers, reception rooms, banquet halls and ballrooms. It is truly an imperial residence and was erected more than a hundred years ago by Lord Wellesley, who had an exalted appreciation of the position he occupied, and transplanted to India the ceremonies, formalities and etiquette of the British court. The Government House stands in the center of a beautiful garden of seven acres and is now completely surrounded and almost hidden by groups of noble trees so that it cannot be photographed. It is an enlarged copy of Kedlestone Hall, Derbyshire, and consists of a central group of state apartments crowned with a dome and connected with four wings by long galleries.