New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century Part 5

[Sidenote: High-minded Anglo-Indians.]

The new Social Ideas of India have a.s.serted themselves in spite of opposing ideas, deep-rooted; on the other hand, the new Political Ideas are in accordance with the natural ambition of educated Indians, and have had no difficulty in expanding and spreading. In comparison with the new social ideas, in consequence, the new political ideas are a somewhat rank and artificial growth, forced by editors and politicians, and warped by ignorance and prejudice. The widely current idea that, owing to British rule, the poverty of the Indian people is now greater, and that the famines are more frequent and severe than in former dynasties, is the outstanding instance of the rank growth. Neither the allegation of greater poverty nor the causes of the acknowledged low standard of living have been studied except in the fas.h.i.+on of party politicians. Another of the ideas, as widely current, is that every ton of rice or wheat exported is an injury to the poor. A third is that the payments made in Britain by the Government of India are virtually tribute, meanly exacted, instead of honest payment for cash received and for services rendered. Again, what can be the remedy? In the early part of the nineteenth century, the Foreign Mission Committee of the Church of Scotland objected to Dr. Duff, their missionary, teaching Political Economy in the Church's Mission College, the General a.s.sembly's Inst.i.tution, Calcutta. They feared lest the East India Company would deem it an interference in politics.[46] In 1897, after the Tilak case already referred to, the writer on Indian affairs in _The Times_ complained of the teaching of historical half-truths and untruths in Indian schools and colleges, instancing the partisan writings of Burke and Macaulay, and many Indian text-books full of glaring historical perversions. The remedy for such erroneous ideas is certainly not to withhold the present dole of knowledge, but to teach the whole truth.

The recent History of India and Political Economy with reference to India should be compulsory subjects for every student in an Indian University. It ought to be the policy of Government to select the ablest men for professors and teachers of such subjects. If, along with that remedy, more Anglo-Indians would take a high view of their mission to India, and of their residence in that country, much of that regrettable bias and bitterness on the part of Indians would surely pa.s.s away. If instead of adopting the att.i.tude of exiles, thinking only of the termination of the exile and how to while away the interval, Anglo-Indians would take some interest in something Indian outside their business, much would be gained! The best Anglo-Indians are eager to promote intercourse between Europeans and Indians, but many Anglo-Indians, whatever the cause, seem incapable of friendly intercourse. On the matters that should interest both them and their fellow-citizens in India, they have in them nothing save unreasoned feelings. These form the numerous cla.s.s, of whom Sir Henry Cotton spoke in an address in London in February 1904, to whom it is an offence to travel in the same railway-carriage with Indians. These are the corrupters of good feeling between Britons and Indians, as sympathetic men are the salt that preserves what good feeling may still exist. In every Indian sphere the men of the latter cla.s.s are well known to the native community, and are always spoken of with cordiality. The writer remembers trying to have a talk with a British soldier about the generals of the army, and how the man seemed unable to do more than say, with enthusiasm, of Lord Roberts and General Wauchope and others, "Yon was a man!" and as depreciatorily of others again, "Yon was no man at all." Such sympathetic "men," instinctively discerned, India has much need of, if this anti-British feeling, so far as it is not inevitable, is to be checked. In such "men" the new Indian feelings of manhood and citizens.h.i.+p and nationality will find recognition and response, in spite of displeasing accompaniments, for such feelings we must look for under British rule and from English and Christian education. From such "men,"

also, the new Indians will accept frank condemnation of social irrationalities or political exaggerations, as _e.g._ the notion that those have right to claim full share in the British Empire's management who would outcaste a fellow-Indian for visiting Britain, even had he gone to state their case before the House of Commons. To speak of laymen only, there are no Anglo-Indians more trusted than those who make no secret of their desire for the advancement of India's welfare through a religious reformation, who hold that this purely pro-Indian national feeling is as yet imperfect because divorced from the idea of the unity of mankind and the concomitant idea of the progress of the whole race.

CHAPTER IX

NEW RELIGIOUS IDEAS--ARE THERE ANY?

"From low to high doth dissolution climb.

Truth fails not; but her outward forms that bear The longest date do melt like frosty rime, That in the morning whitened hill and plain And is no more; drop like the tower sublime Of yesterday, which royally did wear His crown of weeds, but could not even sustain Some casual shout that broke the silent air, Or the unimaginable touch of Time."

WORDSWORTH.

[Sidenote: A Renaissance without a reformation.]

It would be interesting to speculate what the Renaissance of the sixteenth century would have done for Europe had it been unaccompanied by a Reformation of religion. Without the Reformation, we may aver there would have been for the British nation no Bible of 1611, no Pilgrim Fathers to America, and no Revolution of 1688, along with all that these things imply of progress many-fold. What might have been, however, although interesting as a speculation, is too uncertain to be discussed further with profit. I only desire to give a general idea of the religious situation in India at the close of the nineteenth century.

There has been a Renaissance without a Reformation.

Into the new intellectual world the Hindu mind has willingly entered, but progress in religious ideas has been slow and reluctant. The new _political_ idea of the unity of India and the consciousness of citizens.h.i.+p were pleasing discoveries that met with no opposition; but that same new Indian national consciousness resented any departure from the old _social_ and _religious_ ideas.

[Sidenote: Meaning of the term _religious_.]

In speaking of the development of religious ideas in India, I use the term _religious_ in the modern sense. Under religion, in India is comprehended much that in Europe would be reckoned within the _social_ sphere. In India all questions of inter-marriage and of eating together, many questions regarding occupations and the relations of earning members of a family to idle members, are religious not social questions.

The case was similar among the Jews, we may remember. As recorded in the fifteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, two of the three injunctions of the Jerusalem Church to the Gentile Church at Antioch deal with these same socio-religious matters. Blood and animals killed by strangling were to be prohibited as food, and certain marriages also were forbidden.

Perhaps among Europeans the question of burial _v_. cremation may be instanced as a matter of social custom that has been made a religious question. But in no country more than in India have customs, _mores_, come also to mean morals. A halo of religious sanct.i.ty encircles the things that have been and are. Taking "religion," however, in the modern sense, we ask: Although there has not been any great Reformation of religion, have religious ideas undergone no noteworthy development? It is well to put the question definitely with regard to religion, although in the opening chapter abundant testimony to a general change in ideas has already been cited. There _is_ no lack of specific evidence as to religious changes, and the adoption of certain Christian ideas.

Sir Alfred Lyall's observations let us first of all recall, for he possesses all the experience of an Indian Civil Servant and Governor of a Province--the United Provinces. He speaks both for officials and for Europeans conversant with India.[47] Speaking in the person of an orthodox brahman surveying the moral and material changes that English rule is producing in India, he says: "We are parting rapidly under ...

this Public Instruction with our religious beliefs." The old brahman warns the British Government that the old deities are being dethroned, and that the responsibility for famines, formerly imputed to the G.o.ds, is being cast upon the British Government. Another official witness speaks still more plainly. _The Bengal Government Report_ upon the publications of the year 1899 a.s.serts: "All this revolution in the religious belief of the educated Hindu has been brought about as much by the dissemination of Christian thought by missionaries as by the study of Hindu scriptures; for Christian influence is detectable in many of the Hindu publications of the year." The writer of the _Report_ is a Hindu gentleman. The _Report of the Census of India_, 1901, declares that "the influence of Christian teaching is ... far reaching, and that there are many whose acts and opinions have been greatly modified thereby." After these statements from secular and official writers, we may refrain from quoting from Mission authorities more than the statement of the Decennial Conference of representative missionaries from all India in 1902. The statement refers to South India.

"Christianity," we are told, "is in the air. The higher cla.s.ses are a.s.similating its ideas."[48] Thus from East and North and South, from officials and non-officials, from Europeans and natives, comes concurrent testimony. There is no declared Reformation, but Christian and Western religious ideas are leavening India.

[Sidenote: Variety of religious ideas in India.]

To the student of Comparative Religion, or of Christianity, or of the general progress of nations, that testimony from India is particularly interesting. To the student of Comparative Religion, India presents a particularly attractive field. Not hidden away in sacred cla.s.sics or in the records of travellers, but as elements of existing religions, professed by men around, are ill.u.s.trations of most of the types of religious thought and practice. There are the pantheism of certain Hindu ascetics, the polytheism of the ma.s.ses, the animism of aboriginal races, and the varieties of theism of Christians, Mahomedans, and the new Hindus respectively. There are the curious phenomena of G.o.ddesses as well as G.o.ds, and of distinctive features in the character and wors.h.i.+p of the female deities. There is the whole scale of wors.h.i.+p up from b.l.o.o.d.y sacrifices and self-tortures and from wors.h.i.+p where the priest is everything, to wors.h.i.+p like that of Mahomedans and of Protestant Christians, where a mediatory priesthood is virtually repudiated. There is the stage, still farther beyond, at which the wors.h.i.+pper is supposed to be able to say of himself "I am G.o.d." Of the first and last stages, India may be called the special fields, for probably nowhere else in the world are so many animals killed in sacrifice as at the temple of Kalighat in Calcutta; and the last stage, as an observable religious phenomenon, is peculiar to India. In India there is presented to us salvation in the attainment of an eternal existence along with G.o.d, as among Christians and Mahomedans and many of the less educated Hindus; and there is salvation in deliverance from further lives, as among those Hindus who hold the doctrine of transmigration. In India all these varieties of religious thought and practice are actual, perceptible phenomena, ready for first-hand observation by the student of Comparative Religion. But still more interesting to him is that they are there in mutual contact, and telling upon each other. For in the sphere of human beliefs, the student is much more than an outside observer and cla.s.sifier. He has his own conception of truth, and is interested in observing how far in each case there is a convergence towards truth or a divergence from it. In the sphere of human beliefs he holds further, that, given opportunity, the nearer to truth the greater certainty of survival. Given opportunity, as already postulated, the law of beliefs is the survival of the truest. Truth will prevail.

[Sidenote: Dynamical elements of Christianity.]

[Sidenote: Dynamical doctrines in other spheres]

To the student of Christianity, again, that same concurrent testimony is profoundly interesting. Certain Christian ideas are being a.s.similated in India. Certain cardinal aspects of Christianity are proving themselves possessed of inherent force and attractiveness. They are showing that they possess force not from authority, or tradition, or as part of a system of doctrine, or as racially fitting, but when presented in new and often very unfavourable surroundings. Borrowing an expression from physical science, certain elements of Christianity are proving _themselves dynamical_. For in non-Christian India, ecclesiastical authority or tradition and the system of Christian doctrine as such, possess no force. By ill.u.s.trations from other spheres, let us make clear what is meant by such dynamical elements of Christianity. The doctrine of the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection was put before the world by Darwin in 1859, and within the half century has been accepted almost as an axiom by the whole civilised world. Undoubtedly that doctrine has proved itself dynamical. On the other hand, a few years earlier than the publication of _The Origin of Species_, another body of new doctrine was propounded to Britain and the world, and strongly urged by its upholders, namely, the doctrine of Free Trade--the advantage to the community of buying in the cheapest market. True or false, that body of doctrine has not proved dynamical among the nations, for the great majority of peoples still repudiate the doctrines of Free Trade. Similarly certain elements of Christianity are commending themselves to new India, and certain others are failing to do so at this time.

[Sidenote: Ill.u.s.trations from the history of Christianity.]

From century to century these dynamical elements of Christianity may vary; and it is profoundly interesting to the student of the history of religious beliefs to observe the variation. In the early apostolic times, when the apostles and disciples were "scattered abroad," we see plainly in the Acts of the Apostles that the dynamical element of Christianity is the Resurrection of Our Lord. It is that which tells, and His coming reign--with Jewish audiences in particular. It was, _e.g._, the manifestation of Christ to St. Paul on his way to Damascus that completed the conversion of his life. And so, repeatedly throughout the record of the Acts of the Apostles, they are described as witness--bearers of the resurrection to the outside world. [Greek: Megale dynamei], "_with great power_ gave the apostles their witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus; and great grace was upon them all."[49] And yet--dynamical elements vary--in the different atmosphere of Athens (we are twice told in so many words) this same resurrection of Christ dug a gulf between St. Paul and the Athenians.[50] Pa.s.sing to a very different period, the latter half of the eighteenth century, the period of the rise of Methodism and the revival of religion in England, the period of new interest in the inmates of prisons, of agitation for the abolition of slavery, of the foundation of all the great missionary societies, the period of the French Revolution and the demand at home for extension of the franchise, all outcome of the same inspiration,--what was the strong epidemic thought? Reading the religious history of the time, we feel that the power that pa.s.sed from soul to soul was a tremulously intense realisation of the family of G.o.d and the love of G.o.d for men, represented in Christ's voluntary death upon the cross, love for the neglected and the enslaved in their sins and their sorrows. And again in our own day, when we are tempted to say that the consciousness of G.o.d and the eternal, the primary religious instincts, are fading, what by common consent is really dynamical among educated men? a.s.suredly not the s.h.i.+bboleths of High or Low Church. It is the person of Jesus Christ that is dynamical; what He was on earth, what He has been ever since in the hearts of individuals and in the Church.

In a real sense we are starting again from and with Himself.

Antic.i.p.ating, let us say that these two elements most recently dynamical in Britain have had force likewise in India.

[Sidenote: India a new touch-stone of Christianity.]

India in the nineteenth century has been indeed a new touchstone to the Christian religion; and, in brief, to make plain how far Christianity has proved its force and its fitness to survive will occupy the remaining chapters of this book. What has been the nature and extent of the impact of Christian and modern thought upon India, and particularly upon Hinduism? Of course I am thinking particularly of the educated native Hindu community that has sprung up during the century just closed. The dynamic of Christianity, which it is our task to test, implies a measure of conscious and intelligent approval. j.a.pan is another such testing ground. Indeed the only large fields where Christianity is presented to bodies of non-Christian men able to yield approval or refuse it on intelligent grounds, of which they are conscious, are India and j.a.pan. In China also there are no doubt large bodies of literati, but as a cla.s.s they have not yet come into the modern world and into contact with Christianity. Even down to the Boxer rising of 1900, the wall of conservative patriotism shut off the literati in China from the outer civilisation and religions.

[Sidenote: Indians themselves to be our witnesses.]

Fortunately for students of India, her new literati are not merely in touch with the modern world, but express their minds readily in public meetings and in print. From themselves we shall chiefly quote in justifying the statements that will be made regarding the former or the modern religious opinions of India. To non-Christian or secular writers, also, we shall chiefly go, that the bias may rather be against than for the acknowledgment of change and progress. Our plan is to p.r.o.nounce as little as possible upon either the Christian or the Hindu positions. We are observers of the religious ideas of modern India, and desire our readers to come into touch with modern Indians and to see for themselves.

[Sidenote: Obstacles to changes in religion.]

[Sidenote: Education strips new Indians of belief.]

Truth is great and will prevail, but let us not under-estimate the difficulties in the way of new opinions in India, where these do not appeal to the natural desires for power or status or comfort. I have already referred to the deep-rooted notion that Hinduism is of the soil of India, and adherence to it bound up with the national honour. I refer to it here again only to glance at a kindred notion, common among Anglo-Indians, that the Indian religion is the outcome of Indian environment, and is "consequently" the best religion for India. That superficial fallacy, undoubtedly, alienates the sympathy of many Anglo-Indians from religious and social progress in India. Thrice at least did one of the most distinguished viceroys, when addressing native audiences, advise them to stick to their own beliefs, using these or very similar words. He was addressing Mahomedans at one place, Hindus at the second place, and Buddhists at the third, and we leave his advice at one place to contradict his advice at another. Certainly let us allow for variation in local usage, and in subjective opinion, while we are insisting on the universality and objectivity of truth. For in spite of new and strange environment, in spite of that prevailing notion that religion is a racial thing, of the natural disinclination to change, of modern agnosticism and materialism when the old ideas do give way--in spite of these things, some of the cardinal features of Christianity are commending themselves to educated India. Far from religion being racial, the recent religious evolution of India suggests that in respect of the religious instinct and the religious faculty, mankind are one, not divided. _A priori_, therefore, we might antic.i.p.ate that the elements of Christianity which have proved dynamical with new India will be the same that have proved their dynamic with educated men at home. So far as the situation in India has been created by the destructive influence of modern education, and by what may be called the modern spirit, the same influences are telling both in Europe and in India; they have come from Europe to India. There is the same unwillingness to believe in the supernatural, and the same demand that religion shall satisfy ethical and utilitarian tests. One difference, however, we may note. The educated men of India may not be living so entirely in the modern atmosphere as the men of Europe and America; but in India the modern spirit finds usages and systems of thought more inconsistent with modern ideas. As a consequence, where in India the modern spirit _has_ come, it has stripped men barer of belief. Listen to the following curious conglomeration, showing the influences at work, constructive and destructive. It is a pa.s.sage from the pamphlet already referred to, _The Future of India_; the author is arguing for what he calls "practical recognition of the Fatherhood of G.o.d"--one new positive idea. That idea he takes to mean that "G.o.d is the Father of all nations and religions,"

and that _therefore_ "it does not matter much to what religion a man belongs, so far as the future of his soul is concerned." Does not that signify that he himself is stripped bare of belief? From which modern notion, that religion does not matter much, he next argues that a man ought to deny himself the luxury and "satisfaction of breaking his religious fetters," _i.e._ of seceding from his own faith and joining another. He ought to stick to his community, says this writer, and "have the satisfaction of working for the elevation of his countrymen." There we have the new political consciousness. The writer, it should be added, says some plain things about the need of social reform.

[Sidenote: Three dynamical elements of Christianity.]

As proved by observation in India, the dynamical elements of Christianity may be briefly enumerated as follows. Monotheism, tending more and more to the distinctively Christian idea of G.o.d, Our Father, is commending itself, and being widely accepted. Secondly, in a remarkable degree, Jesus Christ Himself is being recognised and receiving general homage. In a less degree, and yet notably, the Christian conception of the Here and Hereafter is commending itself to the minds of the new-educated Hindus. In the new religious organisations also, the Christian manner of wors.h.i.+p and of public wors.h.i.+p commends itself almost as a matter of course. In none of these spheres am I describing the outcome of visible conflict or of any loud controversy. Rather, Christianity brought close to the religious instincts and the religious ideas of India has been like a great magnet introduced among a number of kindred but non-magnetised bodies lying loosely around. In the presence, simply, of these dynamical elements, or in contact with them, Indian religious thought is becoming polarised. Towards and away from the same great points, Indian religious thought is setting. These dynamical elements of Christianity, and the ill.u.s.tration of their power, will be considered in the following chapters.

Of the elements of Christianity that have proved themselves dynamical, we may note the natural order in which they have come. The order in which I have stated them is the order in which they a.s.serted themselves, first "G.o.d Our Father," then "Jesus Christ Himself." First, of this world in which we find ourselves, when our _minds_ awake, we must have some satisfying conception. The belief in one G.o.d, in Him for whom we can find no better name than "Our Father," approved itself to awakened India, to the _intellectually_ enlightened, and in the first place to small groups of enlightened men in the large towns, the centres of modern education and Christian influence. Then came an advance of a different nature altogether. To those spiritually minded and more intense men who needed a religious master, a hero, to whom their _hearts_ might go out, there came, after certain obstacles had been broken down, some knowledge of the actual historical Jesus Christ. The first stage satisfied the _mind_ of modern educated India; the second stage concerns the highest affections and the lives. We know the step, when in the Apostles' Creed we pa.s.s from "I believe in G.o.d the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth," to the words "and in Jesus Christ." Thereat we have brought theology down from heaven to earth; or rather, in these days we would say, in Jesus Christ we have obtained on earth, in actual history, in our affections, a foundation on which to rear our system of actual and motive-giving belief.

CHAPTER X

THE NEW RELIGIOUS ORGANISATIONS OF INDIA IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

THE INDIAN CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND THE BR[=A]HMAS

Children of one family.

[Sidenote: Two physical changes on the face of a country.]

When we consider how the face of a country has been altered during the lapse of time, two great changes may be noticed, both of them due to the action of man. First we may observe that the whole general character of the country has undergone transformation. Gone are the ancient forests of Scotland, which of old in many districts clad the whole countryside, and with them have gone the wild animals which they sheltered. The forests destroyed, and the rainfall in consequence less abundant, the surface marshes and lakes have in many places vanished, taking the old agues and fevers in their train. Instead of the strongholds of chieftains in their fastnesses, surrounded by bands of their clansmen and retainers, has come the sober, peaceful, life of independent tenants, agricultural or artisan. And so on, down through the general changes wrought on the face of a land by modern conditions of life, we might watch the evolution of new features of the landscape. But we turn to the other kind of change, which is more noticeable at first sight, and is more directly due to the action of man. Great, laboriously cultivated, fields now stretch where formerly there was only waste or forest, or at best small spa.r.s.ely scattered patches; and the very products of the soil in these new s.p.a.cious fields are in many cases new.

Where, for example, even in Britain before the close of the seventeenth century, were the great fields of potatoes and turnips and red clover, and even of wheat, which now meet the eye everywhere as the seasons return? Where in India before the British period were the vast areas now under tea and coffee, jute and cotton, although the two last have been grown and manufactured in India from time immemorial? "It might almost be said that, from Calcutta to Lah.o.r.e, 50 per cent. of the prevalent vegetation, cultivated and wild, has been imported into India within historic times."[51]

[Sidenote: Two similar changes in the religious thought of India.]

All that, of course, is a parable. Likewise, in the new India we are studying, product of new modern influences direct and indirect, two kinds of religious changes impress us. There is, first, the gradual change coming over the whole thought of the people, a transformation like that wrought upon the face and climate of many lands. There is, further, the religious change, more immediately evident, in the new Indian religious organisations of the past century, a.n.a.logous to the new, cultivated, products of the soil.