CHAPTER V.

CASTE.

One of the greatest difficulties with which the British have to contend in Hindostan is how to discover the tendencies, how to follow the changes, of native opinion. Your Hindoo is so complaisant a companion, that, whether he is your servant at threepence a day, or the ruler of the State in which you dwell, he is perpetually striving to make his opinions the reflex of your own. You are engaged in a continual struggle to prevent your views from being seen, in order that you may get at his: in this you always fail; a slight hint is enough for a Hindoo, and, if he cannot find even that much of suggestion in your words, he confines himself to commonplace. We should see in this, not so much one of the forms assumed by the cringing slavishness born of centuries of subjection, not so much an example of Oriental cunning, as of the polish of Eastern manners. Even in our rude country it is hardly courteous, whatever your opinions, flatly to contradict the man with whom you happen to be talking; with the Hindoo, it is the height of ill breeding so much as to differ from him. The results of the practice are deplorable; our utter ignorance of the secret history of the rebellion of 1857 is an example of its working, for there must have been a time, before discontent ripened into conspiracy, when we might have been advised and warned. The native newspapers are worse than useless to us; accepted as exponents of Hindoo views by those who know no better, and founded mostly by British capital, they are at once incapable of directing and of acting as indexes to native opinion, and express only the sentiments of half a dozen small merchants at the presidency towns, who give the tone to some two or three papers, which are copied and followed by the remainder.

The result of this difficulty in discovering native opinion is that our officers, however careful, however considerate in their bearing toward the natives, daily wound the feelings of the people who are under their care by acts which, though done in a praiseworthy spirit, appear to the natives deeds of gross stupidity or of outrageous despotism. It is hopeless to attempt to conciliate, it is impossible so much as to govern unless by main force continually displayed, an Eastern people in whose religious thought we are not deeply learned.

Not only are we unacquainted with the feelings of the people, but we are lamentably ignorant of the simplest facts about their religions, their wealth, and their occupations, for no census of all India has yet been taken. A complete census had, indeed, been taken, not long before my visit, in Central India, and another in the Northwest Provinces, but none in Madras, Bombay, the Punjaub, or Bengal. The difficulties in the way of the officials who carried through the arrangements for the two that had been taken were singularly great. In the Central Provinces, the census-papers had to be prepared in five languages; both here and in the Northwest, the purely scientific nature of the inquiry had to be brought home to the minds of the people. In Central India the hill-tribes believed that our object in the census was to pave the way for the collection of the unmarried girls as companions for our wifeless soldiers, so all began marrying forthwith. In the Northwest, the natives took it into their heads that our object was to see how many able-bodied men would be available for a war against Russia, and to collect a poll-tax to pay for the expedition. The numerous tribes that are habitually guilty of infanticide threw every difficulty in the way; Europeans disliked the whole affair, on account of the insult offered to their dignity in ranking them along with natives. It must be admitted, indeed, that the provisions for recording caste distinctions gave an odd shape to the census-papers left at the houses at Secrole, in which European officers were asked to state their “caste or tribe.” The census of the Central Provinces was imperfect enough, but that of the Northwest was the second that had been taken there, and showed signs of scientific arrangement and great care.

The Northwest Provinces include the great towns of Benares, Agra, and Allahabad, and the census fell into my hands at Benares itself, at the Sanscrit College. It was a strange production, and seemed to have brought together a mass of information respecting castes and creeds which was new even to those who had lived long in the Northwest Provinces. All callings in India being hereditary, there were entries recording the presence in certain towns of “hereditary clerks who pray to their inkhorns,” “hereditary beggars,” “hereditary planters of slips or cuttings,” “hereditary grave-diggers,” “hereditary hermits,” and “hereditary hangmen,” for in India a hangmanship descends with as much regularity as a crown. In the single district of the Dehra Valley, there are 1500 “hereditary tomtom men”--drummers at the festivals; 234 Brahmins of Bijnour returned themselves as having for profession “the receipt of presents to avert the influence of evil stars.” In Bijnour, there are also fifteen people of a caste which professes “the pleasing of people by assuming disguises,” while at Benares there is a whole caste--the Bhâts--whose hereditary occupation is to “satirize the enemies of the rich, and to praise their friends.” In the Northwest Provinces, there are 572 distinct castes in all.

The accounts which some castes gave of their origin read strangely in a solemn governmental document: the members of one caste described themselves as “descended from Maicasur, a demon;” but some of the records are less legendary and more historic. One caste in the Dehra Valley sent in a note that they came in 1000 A.D. from the Deccan; another, that they emigrated from Arabia 500 years ago. The Gour Brahmins claim to have been in the district of Moozuffernuggur for 5000 years.

Under the title of “occupations,” the heads of families alone were given, and not the number of those dependent on them, whence it comes that in the whole province only “11,000 tomtom players” were set down. The habits and tastes of the people are easily seen in the entries: “3600 firework manufacturers,” “45 makers of crowns for idols,” “4353 gold-bangle makers,” “29,136 glass-bangle makers,” “1123 astrologers.” There are also 145 “ear-cleaners,” besides “kite-makers,” “ear-piercers,” “pedigree-makers,” “makers of caste-marks,” “cow-dung sellers,” and “hereditary painters of horses with spots.” There was no backwardness in the followers of maligned pursuits: 974 people in Allahabad described themselves as “low blackguards,” 35 as “men who beg with threats of violence,” 25 as “hereditary robbers,” 479,015 as “beggars,” 29 as “howlers at funerals,” 226 as “flatterers for gain;” “vagabonds,” “charmers,” “informers” were all set down, and 1100 returned themselves as “hereditary buffoons,” while 2000 styled themselves “conjurers,” 4000 “acrobats,” and 6372 “poets.” In one district alone, there were 777 “soothsayers and astrologers” by profession.

It is worthy of notice that, although there are in the Northwest Provinces half a million of beggars in a population of thirty millions, they seem never to beg of Europeans--at least, I was not once asked for alms during my stay in India. If the smallest service be performed, there comes a howl of “O Bauks-heece!” from all quarters, but at other times natives seem afraid to beg of Englishmen.

The number of fakeers, soothsayers, charmers, and other “religious” vagabonds is enormous, but the dense ignorance of the people renders them a prey to witchcraft, evil-eye, devil-influence, and all such folly. In Central India, there are whole districts which are looked upon as witch-tracts or haunted places, and which are never approached by man, but set aside as homes for devils. A gentleman who was lately engaged there on the railroad survey found that night after night his men were frightened out of their wits by “fire-fiends,” or blazing demons. He insisted that they should take him to the spot where these strange sights were seen, and to his amazement he, too, saw the fire-devil; at least, he saw a blaze of light moving slowly through the jungle. Gathering himself up for a chase, he rushed at the devil with a club, when the light suddenly disappeared, and instantly shone out from another spot, a hundred yards from the former place. Seeing that there was some trickery at work, he hid himself, and after some hours caught his devil, who, to escape from a sound drubbing, gave an explanation of the whole affair. The man said that the natives of the surveyor‘s party had stolen his mangoes for several nights, but that at last he had hit on a plan for frightening them away. He and his sons went out at dark with pots of blazing oil upon their heads, and, when approached by thieves, the leading one put a cover on his pot, and became invisible, while the second uncovered his. The surveying party got the drubbing, and the devil escaped scot-free; but the surveyor, with short-sighted wisdom, told his men, who had not seen him catch the fire-bearer, that he had had the honor of an interview with the devil himself, who had joyfully informed him of the thefts committed by the men. The surveyor did not admit that he was from this time forward worshiped by his party, but it is not unlikely that such was the case. One of the hill-tribes of Madras worships Colonel Palmer, a British officer who died some seventy years ago, just as Drake was worshiped in America, and Captain Cook in Hawaii. It was one of these tribes that invented the well-known worshiping machine, or “praying-wheel.”

The hill-tribes are less refined, but hardly more ignorant in their fanaticism than are the Hindoos. At Bombay, upon the beach where the dead are buried, or rather tossed to the wild beasts, I saw a filthy and holy Hindoo saint, whose claim to veneration consists in his having spent the whole of the days and portions of the nights for twenty years in a stone box in which he can neither stand, nor lie, nor sit, nor sleep. These saintly fakeers have still much influence with the Hindoo mass, but in old times their power and their insolence were alike unbounded. Agra itself was founded to please one of them. The great Emperor Akbar, who, although a lax Mohammedan, was in no sense a Hindoo, kept nevertheless a Hindoo saint for political purposes, and gave him the foremost position in his train. When the emperor was beginning to fortify Futtehpore Sikri, where he lived, the saint sent for him, and said that the work must be stopped, as the noise disturbed him at his prayers. The emperor offered him new rooms away from the site of the proposed walls, but the saint replied that, whether Akbar went on with his works or no, he should leave Futtehpore. To pacify him, Akbar founded Agra, and dismantled Futtehpore Sikri.

From the census it appears that there are, in the Northwest Provinces, no less than twenty-two newspapers under government inspection, of which five are published at Agra. The circulation of these papers is extremely small, and as the government itself takes 3500 of the 12,000 copies which they issue, its hold over them, without exertion of force, is great. Of the other 8500, 8000 go to native and 500 to European subscribers. All the native papers are skillful at catering for their double public, but those which are printed half in a native tongue and half in English stand in the first rank for unscrupulousness. One of these papers gave, while I was in India, some French speech in abuse of the English. This was headed on the English side, “_Interesting_ Account of the English,” but on the native side, “_Excellent_ Account of the English.” The “English correspondence” and English news of these native papers are so absurdly concocted by the editors out of their own brains that it is a question whether it would not be advisable to send them weekly a column of European news, and even to withhold government patronage from them unless they gave it room, leaving them to qualify and explain the facts as best they could. Their favorite statements are that Russia is going to invade India forthwith, that the Queen has become a Catholic or a Mohammedan, and that the whole population of India is to be converted to Christianity by force. The external appearance of the native papers is sometimes as comical as their matter. The _Umritsur Commercial Advertiser_, of which nothing is English but the title, gives, for instance, the time-tables of the Punjaub Railway on its back sheet. The page, which is a mere maze of dots and crooked lines, has at the top a cut of a railway train, in which guards apparently cocked-hatted, but probably meant to be wearing pith helmets, are represented sitting on the top of each carriage, with their legs dangling down in front of the windows.

Neither Christianity nor native reformed religions make much show in the Northwestern census. The Christians are strongest in the South of India, the Hindoo reformers in the Punjaub. The Sikhs themselves, and the Kookhas, Nirunkarees, Goolab Dasseas, Naukeeka-punth, and many other Punjaubee sects, all show more or less hostility to caste; but in the Northwest Provinces caste distinctions flourish, although in reality they have no doubt lost strength. The high-caste men are beginning to find their caste a drawback to their success in life, and are given to concealing it. Just as with ourselves kings go _incognito_ when they travel for pleasure, so the Bengal sepoy hides his Brahminical string under his cloth, in order that he may be sent on foreign service without its being known that by crossing the seas he will lose caste.

Judging by the unanimous opinion of the native press on the doings of the Maharajahs of Bombay, and on the licentiousness of the Koolin Brahmins, many of our civilians have come to think that Hindooism in its present shape has lost the support of a large number of the more intelligent Hindoos; but there is little reason to believe that this is the case. In Calcutta, the Church of Hindoo Deists is gaining ground, and one of their leaders is said to have met with some successes during a recent expedition to the Northwest, but of this there is no proof. The little regard that many high-caste natives show for caste except as a matter of talk merely means that caste is less an affair of religion than of custom, but that it is a matter of custom does not show that its force is slight: on the contrary, custom is the lord of India.

The success of Mohammedanism in India should show that caste has never been strong except so far as caste is custom. It is true that the peasants in Orissa starved by the side of the sacred cows, but this was custom too: any one man killing the cow would have been at once killed by his also starving neighbors for breaking custom; but once change the custom by force, and there is no tendency to return to the former state of things. The Portuguese and the Mohammedans alike made converts by compulsion, yet when the pressure was removed there was no return to the earlier faith. Of the nature of caste we had an excellent example in the behavior of the troopers of a Bengal cavalry regiment three weeks before the outbreak of the mutiny of 1857, when they said that for their part they knew that their cartridges were not greased with the fat of cows, but that, as they looked as though they were, it came to the same thing, for they should lose caste if their friends saw them touch the cartridges in question.

It was the cry of infringement of custom that was raised against us by the mutineers: “They aim at subverting our institutions; they have put down the suttee of the Brahmins, the infanticide of the Marattas, caste and adoption are despised; they aim at destroying all our religious customs,” was the most powerful cry that could be raised. It is one against which we shall never be wholly safe; but it is the custom and not the religion which is the people‘s especial care.

There is one point in which caste forms a singular difficulty in our way, which has not yet been brought sufficiently home to us. The comparatively fair treatment which is now extended to the low-caste and no-caste men is itself an insult to the high-caste nobility; and while the no-caste men care little how we treat them, provided we pay them well, and the bunnya, or shop-keeping class, encouraged by the improvement, cry out loudly that the government wrongs them in not treating them as Europeans, the high-caste men are equally disgusted with our good treatment both of middle-class and inferior Hindoos. These things are stumbling-blocks in our way, chiefly because no amount of acquaintance with the various phases of caste feeling is sufficient to bring home its importance to Englishmen. The Indian is essentially the caste man, the Saxon as characteristically the no-caste man, and it is difficult to produce a mutual understanding. Just as in England the people are too democratic for the government, in India the government is too democratic for the people.

Although caste has hitherto been but little shaken, there are forces at work which must in time produce the most grave results. The return to their homes of natives who have emigrated and worked at sugar-planting in Mauritius and coffee-growing in Ceylon, mixing with negroes and with Europeans, will gradually aid in the subversion of caste distinctions, and the Parsees will give their help toward the creation of a healthier feeling. The young men of the merchant-class--who are all pure deists--set an example of doing away with caste distinctions which will gradually affect the whole population of the towns; railways will act upon the laborers and agriculturists; a closer intercourse with Europe will possibly go hand in hand with universal instruction in the English tongue, and the indirect results of Christian teaching will continue to be, as they have been, great.

The positive results of missionary work in India have hitherto been small. Taking the census as a guide, in the district of Mooradabad we find but 107 Christians in 1,100,000 people; in Budaon, 64 “Christians, Europeans, and Eurasians” (half-castes) out of 900,000 people; in Bareilly, 137 native Christians in a million and a half of people; in Shajehanpoor, 98 in a million people; in Turrai, none in a million people; in Etah, no native Christians, and only twenty Europeans to 614,000 people; in the Banda district, thirteen native Christians out of three-quarters of a million of people; in Goruckpoor, 100 native Christians out of three and a half millions of people. Not to multiply instances, this proportion is preserved throughout the whole of the districts, and the native Christians in the Northwest are proved to form but an insignificant fraction of the population.

The number of native Christians in India is extremely small. Twenty-three societies, having three hundred Protestant missionary stations, more than three hundred native missionary churches, and five hundred European preachers, costing with their assistants two hundred thousand pounds a year, profess to show only a hundred and fifty thousand converts, of whom one-seventh are communicants. The majority of the converts who are not communicants are converts only upon paper, and it may be said that of real native non-Catholic Christians there are not in India more than 40,000, of whom half are to be found among the devil-worshipers of Madras. The so-called “aboriginal” hill-tribes, having no elaborate religious system of their own, are not tied down to the creed of their birth in the same way as are Mohammedans and Hindoos, among whom our missionaries make no way whatever. The native Protestant‘s position is a fearful one, except in such a city as Madras, for he wholly loses caste, and becomes an outlaw from his people. The native Catholic continues to be a caste man, and sometimes an idol-worshiper, and the priests have made a million converts in Southern India.

Besides revealing the fewness of the native Christians, the Northwestern census has shown us plainly the weakness of the Europeans. In the district of Mooradabad, 1,100,000 people are ruled by thirty-eight Europeans. In many places, two Europeans watch over 200,000 people. The Eurasians are about as numerous as the Europeans, to which class they may for some purposes be regarded as belonging, for the natives reject their society, and refuse them a place in every caste. The Eurasians are a much-despised race, the butt of every Indian story, but as a community they are not to be ranked high. That they should be ill educated, vain, and cringing, is perhaps only what we might expect of persons placed in their difficult position; nevertheless, that they are so tends to lessen, in spite of our better feelings, the pity that we should otherwise extend toward them.

The census had not only its revelations, but its results. One effect of the census-taking is to check the practice of infanticide, by pointing out to the notice of our officers the castes and the districts in which it exists. The deaths of three or four hundred children are credited to the wolves in the Umritsur district of the Punjaub alone, but it is remarked that the “wolves” pick out the female infants. The great disproportion of the sexes is itself partly to be explained as the result of infanticide.

One weighty drawback to our influence upon Hindoo morals, is that in the case of many abuses we legislate without effect, our laws being evaded where they are outwardly obeyed. The practice of infanticide exists in all parts of India, but especially in Rajpootana, and the girls are killed chiefly in order to save the cost of marrying them--or, rather, of buying husbands for them. Now we have “suppressed” infanticide--which means that children are smothered or starved, instead of being exposed. It is no easy task to bring about reforms in the customs of the people of India.

The many improvements in the moral condition of the people which the census chronicles are steps in a great march. Those who have known India long are aware that a remarkable change has come over the country in the last few years. Small as have been the positive visible results of Christian teaching, the indirect effects have been enormous. Among the Sikhs and Marattas, a spirit of reflection, of earnest thought, unusual in natives, has been aroused; in Bengal it has taken the form of pure deism, but then Bengal is not India. The spirit rather than the doctrinal teaching of Christianity has been imbibed: a love of truth appeals more to the feelings of the upright natives than do the whole of the nine-and-thirty Articles. Here, as elsewhere, the natives look to deeds, not words; the example of a Frere is worth the teaching of a hundred missionaries, painstaking and earnest though they be.