India and the Indians

Misconceptions about India. Hinduism. An "infernal religion." Hindu mythology. Ascetics. Translations of Hindu sacred books. Modern and ancient ways of teaching Christianity. Danger of the incorporation of a false Christ into Hinduism. Hindu India as it really is. Definitions of "What is Hinduism?" from representative Hindus.

India is not really quite so mysterious a country as it appears to be on first acquaintance. But you have to live there a long time before things begin to reveal their real shape. It is only on the ground of long residence, and frequent and often close intercourse with a great variety of Indians, that I venture now and then to give some of my experiences to others. India remains almost an unknown land to a large number of people in spite of all that has been written or spoken about it, and it is hard to dissipate the many misconceptions which exist concerning the country. Some of these misconceptions came into being years ago, but they have become stereotyped. They were presumably the outcome of hasty conclusions drawn from superficial knowledge. But even visitors to India often view the country in the light of preconceived ideas which they have either heard or read of, and they therefore fail to see things as they really are.

It is inevitable in dealing with Indian things that the defects of the people of the country should occupy rather a prominent place. The cause is their misfortune and not their fault. They have many delightful natural characteristics, and the years that I have lived amongst them have only served to increase my deep affection for the people of India, and the real pleasure that I find in their society. The defects of Hindus come from their religion, which is deeply steeped in idolatry, and neither gives them a code of morality, nor grace to keep one if it had been given. The strongest denunciations of Hinduism come from the people themselves. I often repeat what the old Brahmin, who lived and died a Hindu, said when he roared out to me, "It is a most infernal religion." And he proceeded to give instances of its infernal nature which it is impossible to print, but which justified the expression.

A Hindu admits the beauty of a moral life, but puts it aside as impossible of fulfilment. He has no creed, and cannot tell you what he believes. He is in doubt and uncertainty both as regards where man came from, and whither he is going. Nearly every Hindu is an idolater at some time or other, if only to please his wife, or to oblige a friend. Some, nowadays, try to explain away the custom as being merely an ancient tradition, but on that account to be respected; or as edifying for the ignorant, who cannot find God in any other way.

The histories of the gods, like all heathen mythology, consist of tales, some picturesque, some foolish, some dull and childish, some obscene. How far the educated Hindu believes them it is difficult to know. Those that are obviously absurd he will say are allegorical, and in spite of their diversity he will maintain that they are all manifestations of one god. The uneducated rustic, so far as he is familiar with these stories, believes them.

The ascetic life, at any rate as represented by the professional ascetics of India, is not held in admiration by the people of the country. The real character of most of the wandering ascetics is perfectly well known. But the people fear their curse; hence they give them alms, and a measure of outward respect. That their profession and their conduct are so often in contradiction does not apparently excite surprise.

Some English translations of Hindu sacred books must be taken with a certain amount of caution. Enthusiastic and poetically inclined minds have produced translations which can only be said to remotely represent the originals (if we are to accept the opinion of some who are competent to know), into which they have read much more than is really to be found there. Also, terms taken from Christian theology have, of necessity, a much fuller meaning to the minds of Christian people who read them than is to be found in the vernacular expression which they represent. Short extracts, given without the context, are proverbially misleading, according to the individual bias of the extractor, either favourable or the reverse.

Kindly advisers have been urging lately that missionaries should try and discover what is good in Hinduism, and on that foundation gradually build up the truths of Christianity. It would be just as reasonable to expect to draw sweet water from a bitter spring. The old teachers of Christianity in India preached it as a matter of life and death, as indeed it is, and they made converts from amongst the educated men. A Brahmin convert has told me that what impelled him to carry his convictions to their proper conclusion was the belief that if he held back he would be lost.

The apologetic way in which Christianity is sometimes preached at the present day in India, in response to these well-meant but dangerous promptings, may possibly lead to the disastrous result of the incorporation of a kind of false Christ into Hinduism. Our Lord is greatly admired by a large number of intelligent Hindus. The Bible is often quoted by public speakers to illustrate some point in their speech; not always, of course, with accuracy or appropriateness. Now and then a Hindu will say that he is a Christian in heart; and that being so, he pleads to be dispensed from the inconvenient ceremonial of baptism, which would separate him from his own people. The laxity of many Nonconformists, and some others, concerning baptism, gives him some ground for making this petition.

To take a measure of Christian morality into Hinduism, to place the Bible alongside their other sacred books, and to worship Christ along with Krishna, would satisfy modern Hindu aspirations without entailing much practical inconvenience.

In trying to describe everyday life in India, we shall at every turn meet with instances of the effect that Hinduism has in warping and marring natures which otherwise have so much which is attractive. But the sole purpose of this book is to try and depict Hindu India as it really is. People will only be stimulated to pray and work for the country with the energy and fullness of purpose which the case demands, when they have realised that the matter is vital and urgent. People will understand how greatly Christian Indians need the prayers of others when they realise that they have to lead their lives in the midst of evil, inconceivably great, and with the weight of inherited tendencies of wrong hindering their efforts to do right. Nor will charitable persons be forgetful to pray for those who have to try and shepherd these sheep and lambs, whilst they themselves have to live in the midst of an atmosphere of evil influences, such as those who live in Christian countries know little of.

It is satisfactory and significant to note that one of the most pronounced of the agitators in favour of teaching Christianity through Hinduism has become one of the most determined and persuasive preachers of pure Christianity, with a corresponding increase of far-reaching and productive influence.

The following definitions of what is Hinduism from certain leading and representative Hindus will be of interest as showing that what has been said of its nebulous nature is not an exaggeration. The editor of an Indian paper called the Leader, asked the following question:-"What are the beliefs and practices indispensable in one professing the Hindu faith, as distinguished from what may be called non-essentials, which it is left to one's option to believe and to adopt?"

Some of the answers were quoted in the Delhi Mission News, vol. iv., p. 108, from which the following extracts are taken. They are slightly abridged, but the original sense has been carefully preserved.

Sir Guru Das Banerjee, an orthodox Hindu of Bengal, of great ability and eminence, says:-"Owing to the highly tolerant character of Hinduism and to the great diversity of opinion on the point, it is not easy to answer the question with any great degree of definiteness. I think that the beliefs that are generally considered indispensable in a Hindu are: Belief in God, in a future state, and in the authority of the Vedas. The practices that are generally considered indispensable are: The rules prohibiting marriage in a different caste; forbidding dining with a person of an inferior caste; and the rule relating to forbidden food, especially beef. But courts of justice have gone much further, and held dissenting sects which have sprung out of the Hindu community, such as the Sikhs, to be Hindus, although they do not believe in the authority of the Vedas and do not observe any distinction of caste. And Hindu society now practically admits within its pale all persons who are Hindu by birth, whatever their beliefs and practices may be, provided they have not openly abjured Hinduism or married outside of Hindu society."

Mr Satyendra Nath Tagore, another Bengali Hindu, whose family is among the most distinguished in India, writes:-"There are no dogmas in Hinduism. You may believe in any doctrine you choose, even in atheism, without ceasing to be a Hindu. You, as a Hindu, must in theory accept the Vedas as the revealed religion, but you may put your own interpretation on the Vedic texts. This leaves a loophole for you to escape from the thraldom of dogmatism. It is the adherence to certain practices-rites and ceremonies-that Hinduism imperatively demands. Chief of these is the system of caste as at present constituted, the slightest deviation from which cuts one off from the community. In determining the question proposed, the text is, What is it that entails excommunication of a Hindu? Surely not any specific article of belief, but a deviation from established usages and customs-such, for instance, as the remarriage of widows, etc. Again, non-observance of the prevailing modes of worship, non-observance of idol worship, especially on ceremonial occasions, might entail serious consequences. It is true that certain articles of belief obtain among the large body of Hindus, but they are by no means universal or essential to Hinduism. You may renounce the belief, provided you conform to the ceremony which is the outcome of such belief. For instance, it will not do to discountenance the practice of making funeral offerings to deceased ancestors, although you have no faith in the immortality of the soul."

Mr P. T. Srinivas Iyengar is principal of a college in Vizagapatam. He writes:-"The evolution of religion in India has not provided the Hindus with any belief or practice common to all who now go by that name. The pre-Aryan tribes had their own religious beliefs and practices, on which were superimposed those of the Aryans. The Vedic age, the post-Vedic times, the Buddhist age, and the age of the Paranas, have each contributed innumerable ideas and customs. The religion of each one of us contains relics of all these strata, but not one of these can be called essential to the Hindu religion, because every belief or practice that is considered absolutely necessary by Hindus of one corner of India is unknown or ignored by some other corner. It is true that the various schools of Hindu philosophy agree in regarding a few fundamental ideas as axiomatic, but philosophy is not religion. The Mohammedans are one because they have a common religion and a common law. The Christians are one, because at least one point of faith is common. But the Hindus have neither faith, nor practice, nor law to distinguish them from others. I should therefore define a Hindu to be one born in India, whose parents so far as people can remember were not foreigners, or did not profess a foreign religion like Mohammedanism or Christianity, and who himself has not embraced such religions."

The last answer, which reads the vaguest of any, is from Mr T. Sadasivier, who is a Sessions Judge of Ganjam. He writes as follows:-"One professing the Hindu faith has only to have the following belief, namely, that the four Vedas contain moral and spiritual truth, which are not less valid than any other spoken or written words. He might believe in other spoken or written words (like the Bhagavad-gita) as of equal authority with the Vedas, but he ought not, if he is a Hindu, to believe such to be superior, so far as moral and religious truth is concerned. Out-castes are Hindus so long as they believe the Vedas to contain the highest moral and religious truths. As regards practices, a Hindu ought to follow those he believes to be in conformity with and not opposed to, the Vedas. He can follow his own conscience and desires in ordinary matters, so long as he believes that they are not opposed to the Vedas. Human nature being liable to sin, even if he contravenes the practices believed by him to be Vedic, if he admits he ought to follow only practices enjoined by the Vedas, he is a Hindu, even if he cannot study and read the Vedas. If he believes that the Vedas inculcate certain practices for him and that he ought to follow them, he is and remains a Hindu."

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Hospitality limited by caste rules. Feasts. The Hindu's guest-house. Laws of hospitality; observed by Indian Christians; their generosity to each other. Indian respect for the mother; retained through life; observed by Indian Christians. Swithun's mother. Indian affection shallow, except for the mother.

The peoples of the East are proverbial for their hospitality, and certainly Indians in all parts of their country are true to this excellent tradition, although the caste system of Hindus, which in so many ways hinders their good purposes from producing their legitimate result, restricts their hospitable efforts, within their own dwelling, to the sometimes narrow limits of their own particular caste. Invitations to members of castes above their own would not be accepted. And if, in some cases, a broad-minded Hindu would be not unwilling to invite to dinner a friend belonging to a caste lower than his own, his good intentions would be almost certainly checkmated by the ladies of his household, who would refuse to cook for the intruder.

Rich men give feasts out of doors to a variety of people, who sit in groups according to their caste. Even lepers and beggars are not unfrequently fed in this fashion on a large scale by those who are wealthy. Such feasts, however, do not come exactly under the laws of hospitality, because they are held according to the fancy of the giver. It is practically a matter of obligation to feast people bountifully in connection with marriages and deaths and some other ceremonies.

Any actual breach of the Indian code of hospitality is regarded as a serious lapse, and even within the limits of the family and caste, the burden of hospitality can become a very heavy one. A well-to-do Hindu in Poona city built a new three-storied house in a corner of his large compound. As he had already got a house of apparently ample dimensions, I asked him what was the object of this new one. He said that it was for his guests; and he then proceeded to give me a good deal of information concerning Hindu customs connected with hospitality.

He said that guests who come to stay usually arrive without invitation, or previous notice. They are often attended by wife and children and other relations, and remain for an indefinite time. A visit of even two or three months' duration is quite usual. I asked if it was not possible to hint that it was time that the visit came to a close. But he said that to do so would be considered very rude, and a great breach of hospitality, and that it was never done. People who are not well off, often pay these long visits for the sake of the free rations; and, on account of their poverty, it is impossible to pay them back in their own coin by going to stay a corresponding time with them.

Indian Christians retain strongly these national ideas concerning the laws of hospitality, and are generous in their entertainment of each other, even although it means that their monthly supply of grain will run short, and that they will be hard put to it, and have to live on short commons during the last days of the month. People holiday-making, or out of work, will forage about in search of free meals, and will drop in here and there just about dinner time without much thought as to whether their company is welcome or not. Even the poorest persons will cheerfully produce all that they have got in order to feed these chance comers, with whom perhaps they have only a slight acquaintance. Christians are also generous with their money in helping other Christians who are in difficulties, or out of work. Some who may have got good appointments are, nevertheless, often kept poor by their efforts to help relations who, on their part, seem to have no delicacy about making urgent demands for assistance. Even mothers will prey without compunction on married children who can ill afford to render help.

But the petition of the mother is never rejected. In Hindu family life the respect and affection which the son has for his mother is a most touching and beautiful characteristic, which only intensifies the older he grows. The Indian boy is often wilful and disobedient and rude to his mother, but he makes up for this by his dutiful conduct when he grows to manhood. It is almost comical to find Hindus of mature years referring everything to their mother, and even in small matters of daily life saying that they must ask their mother before they can do this or that. This filial conduct does not arise from fear of the maternal wrath, but because of the son's deep respect for his mother as such.

Many a Hindu has said to me, when discussing the possibility of acceptance of Christianity, "It would grieve my mother, and I cannot do that." When conversions have taken place, the final and most bitter struggle has nearly always been when the lamentations and entreaties of the mother had to be faced, and some men have not been able to stand this pressure, and have turned back on that ground alone. The tears of the wife are of small account compared with the distress of the mother.

It must be added that the Hindu mother appears to accept the considerate regard of her sons very much as a matter of course, and that if she looks upon them with equal affection, her manner of displaying it is, at any rate, different from the English ideal.

Happily Christian boys and men retain much of the same reverential feeling concerning their mother. The Indian equivalent of the English parish clerk at the village church at Yerandawana was about to be married in Bombay, where his bride resided, 120 miles away. His mother was a curious, cross-grained old woman, not yet a Christian. As he had not much money, I suggested that there was no need to take his mother to this distant city for the wedding, but that she could be ready to greet the bride at their new home in the village when they returned.

But Swithun assured me that it was absolutely essential that his mother should go with him, and that if he was married without taking care to secure her presence, he would be for ever branded as an undutiful son. She was not at all grateful for his kind consideration, and made herself very disagreeable all through the wedding-day, but the guests treated her with a good deal of respect and regard solely on the score of her being the bride-groom's mother, and on that account a person to be honoured.

Indian affection is quite real as far as it goes, but it does not go very deep, so that it does not long outlive the removal of the object of regard, either through death or any other cause. Nor will Indian affection bear much strain. Petty complications in family life, trivial misunderstandings between friends of long standing, or amongst Christians some little hitch with the authorities of a mission, will sometimes result in life-long separations or bitter animosity between those who, for the time being, were objects of real, but shallow, affection. But the Indian puts up with anything rather than quarrel with his mother, and her memory remains fresh and green long after other departed relations and friends have been lost in oblivion.

Swithun's "New Home in the Village."

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Indians oblivious to scenery. The beauties of Nature. Results of learning drawing. Hindus' offerings of flowers; their garlands. Pictures of flowers. The new village church attracts; impressed by its interior; schoolboys visit it. Visitors from the Hindu college. A party from the Widows' Home. Brahmin ladies admire the embroidery. The "religious bath."

Almost all Indians are apparently oblivious to beautiful scenery. You rarely see them looking at a gorgeous sunset, or hear them speak about it. You will seldom hear them make any reference to the beauty or otherwise of their surroundings. As they travel along the road you will not see them looking round about them. Some passengers gaze listlessly out of the windows of the train, but to all appearance without much interest, except at stations where there is a crowd on the platform. Even the buildings or shop windows of a city only attract a languid amount of attention; but a street quarrel, or a war of words between two excited females, will soon draw a large crowd.

The brightness of the moon and the glory of the stars, astonishingly brilliant as they are when seen through the clear Indian atmosphere, does not seem to excite admiration, in spite of the divine attributes which Hindus ascribe to such objects. Even ordinary secular education does not do much to stimulate appreciation of the beauties in Nature. Christianity does something in this direction by extending the range of mental vision to the possibilities of the heavenly country, and the knowledge of God as the Creator excites a measure of interest in the objects of His creation. But even amongst Indian Christians any keen perception of the beauty of scenery by land or on the sea-coast is defective.

Drawing is a subject which is now extensively taught in schools in India, and it is a branch of education which is helping to train the Indian mind to observe and appreciate form and colour. At one time the many lads who came to the Mission-house for old Christmas cards scornfully rejected even the most beautiful pictures of flowers as being of no worth. Pictures of birds, or beasts, or people they sought for eagerly, because such objects came within their range of appreciation, but the beauty of a flower as such they did not understand.

Loose flowers without stalk or leaves are offered in temples, or they are strung on a thread and hung on the god like a necklace. But the value of the offering is in the scent of the flower, and not in the beauty of its colour or form. The Yerandawana village children often come to the church with their cap or pocket filled with flowers plucked in this fashion, which they present as an offering. We have a large brass bowl in which we receive such gifts, which is then placed on the altar, with the prayer that those who have thus shown their goodwill may be led on to give their own hearts to God.

The elaborate garlands which are used so largely as a complimentary gift to those whom it is thought desirable to honour are also valued for their scent rather than for any intrinsic beauty which they may possess. If the flowers happen to be defective in this respect the defect is corrected by the addition amongst their petals of powerfully smelling attar of roses. So little is the natural beauty of the flower recognised that in the more elaborate garlands small round looking-glasses in tawdry brass frames are strung at intervals, producing a painful incongruity.

But of late years quite a number of the more advanced students have called at the Mission-house expressly seeking pictures of flowers as drawing studies, and their discriminating remarks, and their admiration of pictures of special beauty, and the excellence of some of their own efforts in the production of drawings of natural objects, shows that at any rate this department of education is bringing about the desired results.

When the church at Yerandawana was building, the first indication that its unusual design commended itself to the Indian mind was that passers-by began to stop and look at it. You need to be familiar with the Indian's state of oblivion concerning his surroundings, already referred to, in order to understand the force of this. To pause and gaze at a big building in process of erection is, with most people, a natural and obvious thing to do; especially if time is of no object and the design of the building a novelty. But not so the Indian. To gradually slacken his pace, to turn and look, to pause and discuss, was an indication that new and unwonted impressions were being made on the Indian mind. The effect increased as the building approached completion. Few people passed without regarding it attentively. Many looked back to take another view before they had got out of sight. And although, to the villagers at any rate, the church is now a familiar object, many of them still seem to find a pleasure in looking up at it as they go by.

Yerandawana Church from a Distance.

Its interior never fails to impress Hindus of whatever age or station, and it has become a valuable agent in the work of pioneer evangelisation. People who enter the church in an easygoing way are impelled to reverence and subdued tones at the sight of its domes, and the many arches in the massive walls, combined with its extreme simplicity. Controversial Hindus drop their controversy, and find themselves uttering expressions of surprised pleasure. Young children are so attracted by the church that they ask to visit it again and again. Often when a Hindu boy comes and asks for pictures for the first time, some of the old stagers will suggest that he must see the church, and they are eager to display their knowledge of our religious ways by explaining to him the meaning of what he finds there.

The English stories which are given as text-books in the upper classes of Indian schools sometimes present great difficulties to the Hindu masters, who have to explain the meaning of words and phrases. Miss Yonge's Little Duke was being read in some of the Poona City High Schools one year. Even the Christian and surname of the author, pronounced with exact reference to the spelling, produced such a mysterious result that it was some time before I recognised the real name buried up in strange sounds. Miss Yonge's references to churches were often particularly perplexing, and a boy asking what was meant by "the chancel," his master wisely advised his pupil to pay a visit to a Christian church and see for himself. Quite a number of young students at this period came and asked to be shown over the church, and to have its various parts explained to them. Some of the questions were not easy to answer, considering that the questioners were Hindus. What is meant by "Holy Communion?" asked one of these young men. And later on another, having had the font explained to him, said, "And how about the ceremony of bread and wine?"

Even a little party of seven or eight female students from a Hindu college, escorted by the one Christian girl in the establishment, came to see the church. Some of them were carefully dressed with due regard to Hindu fashion, but one or two were advanced women of the modern school, who had introduced several innovations, especially as regards a freer way of arranging the hair. There was something almost pathetic in their interest in what they saw, because the hope of their ever being otherwise than outsiders was, to say the least of it, very distant. It was, however, a distinct mark of progress that the Christian girl who brought them was not only tolerated as a boarder in the college amongst high-caste girls, but she was evidently popular and looked up to.

About a dozen Hindu widows came over one morning to see the church from their home in the next village. They displayed a curious combination of curiosity, apprehension, and interest. One oldish widow literally fled to the other side of the church when she suddenly realised that I was standing behind her. The other women were a good deal amused at her alarm. It was evident that everything that they saw was an enigma to them. Naturally Hindu visitors constantly ask, "Where is the God?" and they are a good deal astonished to find that there is no visible God. The widows were naturally interested in the needlework of the altar cloths and hangings, and asked several questions about it and admired it. Like the lady visitors from the Hindu college, they showed some diversity of taste and opinion in their dress and ornaments and arrangement of hair.

When plague was bad in Poona City many of the well-to-do people left their homes and camped round about Yerandawana. In the evening, when Brahmin ladies were taking a walk with their children, or returning from their daily visit to the Hindu temple in the village, a party of them would now and then come into the church and study it at leisure with great interest. The beautiful figure of the Crucifixion, with Our Lady and St John, above the high altar, worked in silk and gold, they looked at and discussed with much appreciation of the skilled needlework and the richness of the materials. How far the picture itself appealed to them it was difficult to say. Finally, they would gather round the great font, sometimes with caution till they saw that there was no water in it, and listened respectfully to the description of its use.

"Yes, I see, it is for a religious bath," said one of them; and we wondered how long it might be before some of these good women would again gather round the font to receive their own baptism.

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