"Let us not put off everything until Swaraj[1] is attained and thus put off Swaraj itself," pleads Gandhi. "Swaraj can be had only by brave and clean people." [2]
[1. Self-government.]
[2. Young India, Nov. 19, 1925, p. 399.]
But, in these days of the former leader's waned influence, it is not for such teachings that he gains ears. From every political platform stream flaming protests of devotion to the death to Mother India; but India's children fit no action to their words. Poor indeed she is, and sick--ignorant and helpless. But, instead of flinging their strength to her rescue, her ablest sons, as they themselves lament, spend their time in quarrels together or else lie idly weeping over their own futility.
Meantime the British Government, in administering the affairs of India, would seem to have reached a set rate of progress, which, if it be not seriously interrupted, might fairly be forecast decade by decade. So many schools constructed, so many hospitals; so many furlongs of highway laid, so many bridges built; so many hundred miles of irrigation canal dug; so many markets made available; so many thousand acres of waste land brought under homestead cultivation; so many wells sunk; so much rice and wheat and millet and cotton added to the country's food and trade resources.
This pace of advance, compared to the huge needs of the country, or compared to like movements in the United States or in Canada, is slow. To hasten it materially, one single element would suffice--the hearty, hard-working and intelligent devotion to the practical job itself, of the educated Indian. Today, however, few signs appear, among Indian public men, of concern for the status of the masses, while they curse the one power which, however little to their liking, is doing practically all of whatever is done for the comfort of sad old Mother India.
The population of all India is reckoned, in round numbers, to be 319,000,000.[3] Setting aside Indian States ruled by Indian princes, that of British India is 247,000,000. Among these peoples live fewer than 200,000 Europeans, counting every man, woman and child in the land, from the Viceroy down to the haberdasher's baby. The British personnel of the Army, including all ranks, numbers fewer than 60,000 men. The British Civilian cadre, inclusive of the Civil Service, the medical men, the engineers, foresters, railway administrators, mint, assay, educational, agricultural and veterinary experts, etc., etc., totals 3,432 men. Of the Indian Police Service, the British membership approximates 4,000. This last figure excludes the subordinate and provincial services, in which the number of Europeans is, however, negligible.
[3. The Indian Year Book, Times Press, Bombay, 1926, p. 13.]
Representing the British man-power in India today, you therefore have these figures:
Army 60,000 Civil Services 3,432 Police 4,000 TOTAL 67,432
This is the entire local strength of the body to whose oppressive presence the Indian attributes what he himself describes as the "slave mentality" of 247,000,000 human beings.
But one must not overlook the fact that, back of Britain's day, India was ever either a chaos of small wars and brigandage, chief preying upon chief, and all upon the people; or else she was the flaccid subject of a foreign rule. If, once and again, a native king arose above the rest and spread his sway, the reign of his house was short, and never covered all of India. Again and again conquering forces came sweeping through the mountain passes down out of Central Asia. And the ancient Hindu stock, softly absorbing each recurrent blow, quivered--and lay still.
Many a reason is advanced to account for these things, as, the devitalizing character of the Hindu religion, with its teachings of the nothingness of things as they seem, of the infinitude of lives--dreams all--to follow this present seeming. And this element, beyond doubt, plays its part. But we, as "hard-headed Americans," may, for a beginning, put such matters aside while we consider points on which we shall admit less room for debate and where we need no interpreter and no glossary.
The whole pyramid of the Hindu's woes, material and spiritual--poverty, sickness, ignorance, political minority, melancholy, ineffectiveness, not forgetting that subconscious conviction of inferiority which he forever bares and advertises by his gnawing and imaginative alertness for social affronts--rests upon a rock-bottom physical base. This base is, simply, his manner of getting into the world and his sex-life thenceforward.
In the great orthodox Hindu majority, the girl looks for motherhood nine months after reaching puberty[4]--or anywhere between the ages of fourteen, and eight The latter age is extreme, although in some sections not exceptional; the former is well above the average. Because of her years and upbringing and because countless generations behind her have been bred even as she, she is frail of body. She is also completely unlettered, her stock of knowledge comprising only the ritual of worship of the household idols, the rites of placation of the wrath of deities and evil spirits, and the detailed ceremony of the service of her husband, who is ritualistically her personal god.
[4. Cf. post., Chapter IV.]
As to the husband, he may be a child scarcely older than herself or he may be a widower of fifty, when first he requires of her his conjugal rights. In any case, whether from immaturity or from exhaustion, he has small vitality to transmit.
The little mother goes through a destructive pregnancy, ending in a confinement whose peculiar tortures will not be imagined unless in detail explained.
The infant that survives the birth-strain--a feeble creature at best, bankrupt in bone-stuff and vitality, often venereally poisoned, always predisposed to any malady that may be afloat--must look to his child-mother for care. Ignorant of the laws of hygiene, guided only by the most primitive superstitions, she has no helpers in her task other than the older women of the household, whose knowledge, despite their years, is little greater than hers. Because of her place in the social system, child-bearing and matters of procreation are the woman's one interest in life, her one subject of conversation, be her caste high or low. Therefore, the child growing up in the home learns, from earliest grasp of word and act, to dwell upon sex relations.
Siva, one of the greatest of the Hindu deities, is represented, on highroad shrines, in the temples, on the little altar of the home, or in personal amulets, by the image of the male generative organ, in which shape he receives the daily sacrifices of the devout. The followers of Vishnu, multitudinous in the south, from their childhood wear painted upon their foreheads the sign of the function of generation.[5] And although it is accepted that the ancient inventors of these and kindred emblems intended them as aids to the climbing of spiritual heights, practice and extremely detailed narratives of the intimacies of the gods, preserved in the hymns of the fireside, give them literal meaning and suggestive power, as well as religious sanction in the common mind.[6]
[5. Fanciful interpretations of this symbol are sometimes given.]
[6. Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Abbé J. A. Dubois, 1821. Edited and corrected by H. K. Beauchamp. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1924, pp. Hi-112, 628-31, etc.]
"Fools," says a modern teacher of the spiritual sense of the phallic cult, "do not understand, and they never will, for they look at it only from the physical side."[7]
[7. Swarni Vivekananda, in Bhakti Yoga. For a brief and liberal discussion of the topic see Chapter XIII in The Heart of Aryavarta, by the Earl of Ronaldshay, Constable & Co., Ltd., London, 1925.]
But, despite the scorn of the sage, practical observation in India forces one to the conclusion that a re- , ligion adapted to the wise alone leaves most of the sheep unshepherded.
And, even though the sex-symbols themselves were not present, there are the sculptures and paintings on temple walls and temple chariots, on palace doors and street-wall frescoes, realistically demonstrating every conceivable aspect and humor of sex contact; there are the eternal songs on the lips of the women of the household; there is, in brief, the occupation and preoccupation of the whole human world within the child's vision, to predispose thought.
It is true that, to conform to the International Convention for the Suppression of the Circulation of and Traffic in Obscene Publications, signed in Geneva on September 12, 1923, the Indian Legislature duly amended the Indian Penal Code and Code of Criminal Procedure; and that this amendment duly prescribes set penalties for "whoever sells, lets to hire, distributes, publicly exhibits...conveys...or receives profit from any obscene object, book, representation or figure." But its enactment unqualified, although welcome to the Muhammadans, would have wrought havoc with the religious belongings, the ancient traditions and customs and the priestly prerogatives dear to the Hindu majority. Therefore the Indian Legislature, preponderantly Hindu, saddled the amendment with an exception, which reads:[8]
This section does not extend to any book, pamphlet, writing, drawing or painting kept or used bona fide for religious purposes or any representation sculptured, engraved, painted or otherwise represented on or in any temple, or on any car used for the conveyance of idols, or kept or used for any religious purpose.
[8. Indian Penal Code, Act No. VIII of 1925, Section 292.]
In many parts of the country, north and south, the little boy, his mind so prepared, is likely, if physically attractive, to be drafted for the satisfaction of grown men, or to be regularly attached to a temple, in the capacity of prostitute. Neither parent as a rule sees any harm in this, but is, rather, flattered that the son has been found pleasing.
This, also, is a matter neither of rank nor of special ignorance. In fact, so far are they from seeing good and evil as we see good and evil, that the mother, high caste or low caste, will practice upon her children--the girl "to make her sleep well," the boy "to make him manly," an abuse which the boy, at least, is apt to continue daily for the rest of his life.
This last point should be noticed. Highest medical authority in widely scattered sections attests that practically every child brought under observation, for whatever reason, bears on its body the signs of this habit. Whatever opinion may be held as to its physical effects during childhood, its effect upon early thought-training cannot be overlooked. And, when constantly practiced during mature life, its devastation of body and nerves will scarcely be questioned.
Ancient Hindu religious teachings are cited to prove that the marriage of the immature has not original Scriptural sanction. Text is flung against text, in each recurrence of the argument. Pundits radically disagree. But against the fog evoked in their dispute stand sharp and clear the facts of daily usage. Hindu custom demands that a man have a legitimate son at the earliest possible moment--a son to perform the proper religious ceremonies at and after the death of the father and to crack the father's skull on the funeral pyre, according to his caste's ritual. For this reason as well as from inclination, the beginning of the average boy's sexual commerce barely awaits his ability. Neither general habit nor public opinion confines that commerce to his wife or wives.
Mr. Gandhi has recorded that he lived with his wife, as such, when he was thirteen years old, and adds that if he had not, unlike his brother in similar case, left her presence for a certain period each day to go to school, he "would either have fallen a prey to disease and premature death, or have led [thenceforth] a burdensome existence."[9]
[9. Young India, Jan. 7, 1926.]
Forced up by western influences, the subject of child marriages has been much discussed of latter years and a sentiment of uneasiness concerning it is perceptibly rising in the Indian mind. But as yet this finds small translation into act, and the orthodox Hindu majority fights in strength on the side of the ancient practice.
Little in the popular Hindu code suggests self-restraint in any direction, least of all in sex relations. "My father," said a certain eminent Hindu barrister, one of the best men in his province, "taught me wisely, in my boyhood, how to avoid infection."
"Would it not have been better," I asked, "had he taught you continence?"
"Ah--but we know that to be impossible."
"No question of right or wrong can be involved in any aspect of such matters," a famous Hindu mystic, himself the venerated teacher of multitudes, explained to me. "I forget the act the moment I have finished it. I merely do it not to be unkind to my wife, who is less illumined than I. To do it or not to do it, signifies nothing. Such things belong only to the world of illusion."
After the rough outline just given, small surprise will meet the statement that from one end of the land to the other the average male Hindu of thirty years, provided he has means to command his pleasure, is an old man; and that from seven to eight out of every ten such males between the ages of twenty-five and thirty are impotent. These figures are not random, and are affected by little save the proviso above given ; a cultivator of the soil, because of his poverty and his life of wholesome physical exertion during a part of the year, is less liable than the man of means, or the city dweller. A sidelight will be found by a glance down the advertisement space of Indian-owned newspapers. Magical drugs and mechanical contrivances, whether "for princes and rich men only," or the humbler and not less familiar "32 Pillars of Strength to prop up your decaying body for One Rupee[10] only," crowd the columns and support the facts.
[10. The market value of the rupee fluctuates with other international exchanges. But for the purpose of this book, one rupee is taken to be worth 33 1/3 cents, three rupees one dollar, United States currency.]
In the Punjab alone, between December 29, 1922, and December 4, 1925, Government prosecuted vernacular papers eleven separate times for carrying ultra-indecent advertisements. In seven cases the publications were Hindu, thrice Muhammadan, once Sikh. The fines imposed ranged from twenty-five to two hundred rupees, in one case plus ninety days rigorous imprisonment. And it should be duly noted that such prosecutions are never undertaken save where the advertisement gives the grossest physical details in plain and unmistakable language.
Following the eleventh prosecution, Government sent out a note to the press informing the editors of this last conviction with its relatively high fine, and advising them to scrutinize advertisements before publication. Upon this suggestion the editorial comment of the Brahman Samachar[11] emitted an informing ray:
"Government wants that such advertisements should not be published and that the editors should go through them before publishing them. It would have been better if the Information Bureau had published the obscene advertisement along with its report so that the subject matter and the manner of writing of the advertisement would have become known."
[11. A Hindu paper of Lahore, issue of Feb. 16, 1926.]
Mr. Gandhi in his newspaper has, it is true, recorded his disapproving cognizance. "Drugs and mechanical contrivances," he writes, "may keep the body in a tolerable condition, but they sap the mind."[12]
[12. Young India, Sept. 2, 1926, p. 309.]
But a far more characteristic general attitude was that evidenced in the recent action of a Hindu of high position whereby, before giving his daughter in marriage, he demanded from his would-be son-in-law a British doctor's certificate attesting that he, the would-be son-in-law, was venereally infected. The explanation is simple: a barren wife casts embarrassment upon her parents; and barren marriages, although commonly laid to the wife, are often due to the husband's inability. The father in this case was merely taking practical precaution. He did not want his daughter, through fault not her own, to be either supplanted or returned upon his hands. And no reproach whatevei attaches to the infected condition. No public opinion works on the other side.
In case, however, of the continued failure of the wife--any wife--to give him a child, the Hindu husband has a last recourse; he may send his wife on a pilgrimage to a temple, bearing gifts. And, it is affirmed, some castes habitually save time by doing this on the first night after the marriage. At the temple by day, the woman must beseech the god for a son, and at night she must sleep within the sacred precincts. Morning come, she has a tale to tell the priest of what befell her under the veil of darkness.
"Give praise, O daughter of honor!" he replies. "It was the god!"
And so she returns to her home.
If a child comes, and it lives, a year later she re~ visits the temple, carrying, with other gifts, the hair from her child's head.[13]
[13. Cf. Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, pp. 593-4.]
Visitors to the temples today sometimes notice a tree whose boughs are hung with hundreds of little packets bound in dingy rags; around the roots of that tree lies a thick mat of short black locks of human hair. It is the votive tree of the god. It declares his benefits. To maintain the honor of the shrine, the priests of this attribute are carefully chosen from stout new brethren.
Every one, seemingly, understands all about it. The utmost piety, nevertheless, truly imbues the suppliant's mind and contents the family.
As to the general subject, enough has now, perhaps, been said to explain and to substantiate the Hindu's bitter lament of his own "slave mentality."
It may also suggest why he develops no real or lasting leaders, and why such men as from time to time aspire to that rank are able only for a brief interval ta hold the flitting minds of their followers.
The Indian perceives, to a certain degree, the condition; but he rarely goes all the way to the bottom thereof. Nor does he recognize its full significance and relate it to its consequences. "Why do our best men--those who should lead us--die so young?" he repeats despondently, implying that the only possible answer is: "Karma--Kismet--an enigmatic fate." "The average life of our inhabitants is 23 years," says the Hindu Doctor Hariprasad[14]--and lays the blame to bad sanitation. Another characteristic Indian view is expressed by Manilal C. Parekh,[15] treating with dismay of the inroads of tuberculosis--an infection that finds ideal encouragement in the unresisting bodies and depleting habits of the people:
One need not think just now of the causes of this frightful increase...The present writer wishes Swaraj to come to India as early as possible in order that the people of the land may be able to deal with this tremendously big problem...
[14. Young India, Nov. 5, 1925, p. 375.]
[15. Servants of India, April 8, 1926, p. 124.]
Thus they still contrive to shift the burden and avoid the fact.
Yet it was one of the most distinguished of Indian medical men, a Bombay Brahman, physician and pathologist, who gave me the following appraisal:
My people continually miss the association of their mental and material poverty with their physical extravagance. Yet our undeniable race deterioration, our natural lack of power of concentration, of initiative and of continuity of purpose cannot be dissociated from our expenditure of all vital energy on the single line of sexual indulgence.
Once more, then, one is driven to the original conclusion: Given men who enter the world physical bankrupts out of bankrupt stock, rear them through childhood in influences and practices that devour their vitality; launch them at the dawn of maturity on an unrestrained outpouring of their whole provision of creative energy in one single direction; find them, at the age when the Anglo-Saxon is just coming into full glory of manhood, broken-nerved, low-spirited, petulant ancients; and need you, while this remains unchanged, seek for other reasons why they are poor and sick and dying and why their hands are too weak, too fluttering, to seize or to hold the reins of Government?