New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century Part 2

[Sidenote: New religious organisations repudiate caste.]

Of the new religious organisations of educated India, three repudiate caste, namely, the Protestant Christian community, the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j or Theistic a.s.sociation, chiefly found in Bengal, and the [=A]rya Sam[=a]j or Vedic a.s.sociation of the United Provinces and the Punjab. These forces of new religious feeling are marshalled against caste as a social anomaly and a bar to progress. Mahomedanism in its day was a powerful force arrayed against caste, but its regenerating power has long ago evaporated, for in many districts of India caste ideas are found flouris.h.i.+ng among the Mahomedan converts from Hinduism. They have carried over the caste ideas from their old to their new religion.[20]

The Sikhs in the Punjab also repudiate caste, but they too have forgotten their old reforming mission. Notwithstanding, we repeat, Northern India owes an immense debt to these two religions, particularly to Mahomedanism. Let any one who doubts it observe the caste thraldom of Southern India, where Mahomedan rule never established itself.

Irrational as caste is in Northern India, it is tenfold more so in the South, as we have already seen. A noteworthy a.s.sertion of "the rights of men," or more literally of the rights of women, against caste may be noted in that same caste-bound South India. In the Native State of Travancore, caste custom had prohibited the women of the lower castes from wearing clothing above the waist. But about the year 1827, the women who became Christians began to don a loose jacket as the women of higher caste had been in the habit of doing. Bitter persecution of the Christian women followed, but in 1859 the right of these lower-caste women to wear an upper cloth was legally acknowledged.[21]

But the outstanding evidence of new ideas in regard to caste is furnished by the Hindu revivalists who, under the leading of Mrs. Annie Besant and the Theosophists, have established the Hindu College, Benares, as a b.u.t.tress of Hinduism. From the _Text-book of Hindu Religion_ prepared for the College, we learn that these representatives and champions of orthodoxy defend caste only to the extent of the ancient fourfold division of society into brahmans, rulers, merchants and agriculturists (one caste), and servants. What, we may ask, is to become of the 1886 sub-divisions of the brahman caste alone, all mutually exclusive with regard to inter-marriage? The text-book actually quotes sacred texts to show that caste depends on conduct, not on birth, and refers to bygone cases of promotion of heroes to a higher caste without rebirth. Its final p.r.o.nouncement on caste is that "unless the abuses that are interwoven with it can be eliminated, its doom is certain." So far has the opinion of orthodox conservative Hinduism progressed with reference to its fundamental social feature, caste.

CHAPTER IV

THE CHIEF SOLVENT OF THE OLD IDEAS

"Let knowledge grow from more to more, But more of reverence in us dwell; That mind and soul according well, May make one music as before."

TENNYSON, _In Memoriam_.

[Sidenote: English education the chief solvent.]

English education is the chief solvent of old ideas in India and the chief source from which the new are supplied. English is the language of the freest peoples in the world. It is only to be expected, therefore, that with the spread of English education in India the idea of individual freedom and the feeling of nationality should grow and the caste idea decline. The beginning of the process is often witnessed among the boys in Secondary Schools in India. You lay your hand upon the arm of a boy, a new-comer to the school, and you ask him in English, "What cla.s.s?" He answers "Brahman," giving you his caste instead of his cla.s.s in school. The boy will not be long in the English school before he will cla.s.sify himself differently. In a dozen ways each day he is made to feel that the school and the modern world have another standard for boys and men than the caste. Or take another example of the educative effect of a study of English--I can vouch for its genuineness.

In your house in India you get into friendly conversation with a half-educated shopkeeper or native tradesman. You ask in English how many children he has, and his reply is, "I have not any children, I have three daughters." Just a little more reading in English literature would have taught him that elsewhere the daughter is a child of the family equally with the son.

There, in these two examples, the great social problems of India present themselves--caste and the social inferiority of women, and in the English language we see India confronted with ideas different from her own. Take a third ill.u.s.tration from the socio-religious sphere. Few Hindus think of Hinduism as a system of religious practices and doctrines to be justified by reason or by spiritual intuition, or by the spiritual satisfaction it can afford to mankind. No, Hinduism is a thing for Indians, and belongs to the Indian soil. The converse of the idea is that Christianity is a foreign thing, the religion of the intruding ruling race. It is not for Indians. A vigorous patriotic pamphlet, published in 1903, ent.i.tled _The Future of India_, a.s.sumes plainly that _Hindus_ and _Indians_ mean the same thing. The pamphlet speaks of the relations of Indians to "other races, such as Mahomedans, Pa.r.s.ees, and Christians," as if these were less truly Indians than the Hindus. To the writer, manifestly, Hinduism is a racial thing. To him, however, or to the next generation after him, further study of modern history will make clear that only in a slight degree and a few instances is religion a racial thing, and that there are laws and a science of spiritual as of bodily health. Once more, how ill-fitting are, say, the Indian word _mukti_ (deliverance from further lives, the end of transmigrations) and the English word _salvation_, although _mukti_ and _salvation_ are often regarded as equivalents.

To the man instructed in English, such contrasts are always being presented, tacitly inviting him to compare and to modify. We can put ourselves in the place of many a youth of sixteen or seventeen, hope of the village school, going up to enter a college in one of the larger towns of India. He is entering the new world. Should he be of brahman caste, it may profit him a little, for he will still meet with many non-brahman householders ready to find him in food and lodging simply because he is a poor brahman student. Of course he is looking forward to one of the new professions, Law, or Medicine, or Engineering, or Teaching, or Government Service. In _these_ it is patent to him that caste is of no account. High caste or low, he and all his fellow-students are aware they must prove themselves and fight their way up. The leading place at the bar is no more a high-caste man's privilege than it is his privilege to be exempted from standing in the dock or suffering the extreme penalty of the law. We have already referred to the effect of the a.s.sertion of the equality of men before the law in 1775 in the hanging of the brahman, Nandak.u.mar, for forgery. Now, looking back at the dissolving of the old ideas of artificial rank and privileges, we may reckon also the equality of men in the great modern professions, foremost in India being Law, as among the chief dissolving agencies.

[Sidenote: Extent of English education.]

[Sidenote: English words naturalised.]

It is easy to give _figures_ at least for the vast agency now at work in the spread of English education in India. Higher English education for natives began with the founding of the Hindu College in Calcutta in 1817; in the year 1902 there were in India five Universities, the examinations of which are conducted in English; and affiliated to these examining Universities were 188 teaching colleges containing 23,009 undergraduates; and preparing for the Matriculation Examination (in the year 1896-97) were 5267 Secondary Schools, containing 535,155 pupils.

From these Secondary Schools in the year 1901, 21,750 candidates appeared at the Matriculation Examinations of the Universities professing to be able to write their answers in English, and of these nearly 8000 pa.s.sed. That figure is a measure of the process of leavening India with modern ideas through English education--8000 fresh recruits a year. That is the measure of the confusion introduced into the old social organism. A small number, no doubt, compared with the ten million of unleavened youth born in the same year, and yet they are the pick of the middle cla.s.ses and must become the leaders of the ma.s.ses. The ma.s.ses in China, it is alleged, would not be anti-foreign were it not for the influence of their literati, and the thoughts of these Indian literati must also become the thoughts of the Indian ma.s.ses. It is the mind of these literati, mainly, which we are trying to gauge. According to the census of 1901 their total number approached one million, being those who could read and write English. Descending below the English-reading literati, I have noted about three hundred English words naturalised in two of the chief vernaculars of India, an indication, if not a measure, of the new influence among the ma.s.ses.

[Sidenote: Too sanguine prophecies of progress.]

Yet having tabulated figures, once more, ere we proceed, we enjoin upon ourselves and our readers a cautious estimate of the progress of ideas.

The European hood and gown of the Indian student may merely _drape_ an _unchanged_ being. Writing in 1823 about the encouragement of education and the teaching of English and the translation of English books, the Governor of Bombay, Mountstuart Elphinstone, declared too confidently that "the conversion of the natives _must_ result from the diffusion of knowledge among them." Macaulay, similarly, writing from India in 1836 to his father, the well-known philanthropist, declares: "It is my firm belief that if our plans of[English] education are followed up, there will not be a single idolater among the respectable cla.s.ses in Bengal thirty years hence." Omar Khayyam's words suggest themselves as the other extreme of opinion regarding English education in India, inside of which the truth will be found:

"Myself when young did eagerly frequent Doctor and saint, and heard great argument About it and about, but evermore Came out by that same door wherein I went."

The lines express the view of many Anglo-Indians. We may reply that anywhere only a few individuals are positively liberalised by a liberal education. We must patiently wait while their standpoint becomes the lore and tradition of the community.

[Sidenote: Reformers are English-speaking; reactionaries are ignorant of English.]

The part played by English education in the introduction of new ideas is apparent whenever we enumerate the leading reformers of the nineteenth century. One and all have received a modern English education, and several of them have made some name by addresses and publications in English. Of Indian reformers, distinguished also as English scholars, may be named with all honour:

1. Rammohan Roy, a great opponent of Suttee and Idolatry, who also dared to make the voyage to England. He died at Bristol in 1833.

2. Iswar Chunder Vidyasagar, a great upholder of the right of widows to remarry and an advocate of education, both elementary and higher. He died at Calcutta in 1891.

3. K.M. Banerjea, D.L., C.I.E., an opponent of the caste system, the greatest scholar among Indian Christians. He died at Calcutta in 1885.

4. Keshub Chunder Sen, religious reformer, an advocate of a higher marriage age for girls. He died at Calcutta in 1884.

5. Mr. Behramji Malabari, an advocate of a higher marriage age for girls--of the Bombay side of India.

6. The late Mr. Justice M.G. Ranade, a social reformer of Bombay.

7. The late Mr. Justice K.T. Telang, C.I.E., an opponent of child marriages and a social reformer of Bombay.

8. The late Raja Sir T. Madhava Rao, K.C.S.I., a social reformer, of the Madras Presidency--died in 1891.

Pandita Ramabhai, it may be noted, had entered upon her career as a champion of female education before she began the study of English.

[Sidenote: Sanguine estimate of progress.]

In striking contrast with all these in this respect are the men who represent the extreme conservative or reactionary spirit, who as a rule are as ignorant of English as the great reformers are the reverse. We may cite, in ill.u.s.tration:

1. Dyanand Saraswati, founder of the new sect of [=A]ryas in the United Provinces and Punjab. Their chief doctrine, the infallibility of the Vedas or earliest Hindu scriptures, is reactionary, although a number of reforms are inculcated in the name of a return to the Vedas.

2. The late Ramkrishna Paramhansa, a famous Bengali ascetic of high spiritual tone, but of the old type.

3. The gentleman already referred to, who as University lecturer on Hindu Philosophy in Calcutta insisted that none but Hindus be admitted to the exposition of the sacred texts, shutting out the Chancellor, the Vice-Chancellor, and many Fellows of the University.

4. Sanscrit pundits, very conservative as a cla.s.s, and generally unfamiliar with English.

New Hinduism in contact with the modern educational influences was most interestingly manifest in the person of Swami Vivekananda (_Reverend Rational-bliss_ we may render his adopted name), representative of Hinduism at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893. The representative Hindu was not even a member of the priestly caste, as we have already told. It were tedious to a.n.a.lyse his Hinduism, as set forth at Chicago and elsewhere, into what was Christianity or modern thought, and what, on the other hand, was Hinduism. Suffice it to say that as Narendra Nath Dutt, B.A., he figures on the roll of graduates of the Church of Scotland's College in Calcutta. While a student there, he sat at the feet of two teachers representing the new and the old, the West and the East. In the College cla.s.sroom he received religious instruction from Dr. Hastie, the distinguished theologian who afterwards taught Scottish students of theology in the University of Glasgow. At the same time he was in the habit of visiting the famous Bengali ascetic, Ramkrishna Paramhansa, already mentioned, and of communing with him.

Returning from Chicago crowned with the honour which his earnestness, his eloquence, his power of reasoning, his attractive manner, and his striking physique and dress called forth, Young India lionised him; Old India met in Calcutta and resolved that Mr. Dutt of kayasth caste must drop the brahman t.i.tle _Swami_, which he had a.s.sumed, before _they_ could recognise him. In 1895, having gone to Dakhineswar, the old residence of his Hindu master, Ramkrishna, Swami Vivekananda was actually expelled from the temple where his master had been wont to wors.h.i.+p. The Chicago representative of Hinduism had been guilty of the sins of crossing the sea and of living like a European, and so he must be disowned and the temple purged of his presence. After a few years, Swami Vivekananda bravely settled down to un.o.btrusive, philanthropic work, one had almost said _Christian philanthropic work_, in a suburb of Calcutta, denouncing caste and idolatry and the outcasting of those who had crossed the sea, and recommending the Hindus to take to flesh-eating. There, and while so engaged, in 1902 he died. How shall we ticket that strange personage? Kayasth caste as he was born, or new brahman? Swami or B.A. of a Mission College of the modern Calcutta University? A conservative or a reformer? Hindu ascetic or Christian philanthropist? He stands for India in transition, old and new ideas commingling. He is a typical product of the English and Christian education given to mult.i.tudes in India to-day.

CHAPTER V

WOMAN'S PLACE

"To lift the woman's fallen divinity Upon an equal pedestal with man's."

"The woman's cause is man's; they rise or sink Together, dwarfed or G.o.dlike, bond or free."

TENNYSON, _The Princess_.

[Sidenote: Social inferiority of women.]

Next to caste, the chief social feature of India is the position of women in the community. Hindus and Mahomedans alike a.s.sign to the female s.e.x an inferior position. In Mahomedan mosques, for example, no woman is ever seen at prayer; she would not be permitted to take part. Only by the neglect of female children in India, and the special disadvantages from which women suffer there, can it be explained why in India in 1901 there were only 963 females to every 1000 males. In India, as in Europe and all the world over, more boys than girls are born, but in the course of life the balance is soon redressed, and in the whole population in every country in Europe, except Italy[22] and Bulgaria, the females actually outnumber the males. Why are the Indian figures so different?