Edward Fenton Elwin

Indian squalor. The Indian's house; how he takes his meals; no home life; physical results. Contrast of the Brahmin doctor's home; his little sons. But without a religion. The Hindu contractor; his visit to the Church; his pathetic position.

Whether the sometimes so-called "simplicity" of Indian native life is really a thing to be desired, is a question which it may be well to ask. It is, undoubtedly, a right general principle that each person's life should be kept as homely and simple as circumstances will allow. There is, however, a distinction between simplicity and the squalor of sordid poverty.

A poor Indian lives as he does chiefly because he cannot help himself, and partly, perhaps, because he has no other ideal. But it is at best an unlovely and cramping form of existence. Though he can sustain life on a remarkably small wage, he is nearly always hungry, and has so little stamina that he easily succumbs under serious sickness. He wears but little clothing, and his young children none at all. But he suffers much in the rains because he has no change of garments, and in the cold weather because his flimsy dress is no protection; and if he gets a little money he gladly buys a blanket, or a warm coat. He has no lamp in his dwelling because he cannot afford it, and after the early nightfall he has to pass his evening hours sitting in the dark, when there is no moon. In almost all the houses of a country village in western India, and in many of the houses in towns, there is no furniture at all. Sometimes there is a small cot for the baby, hung from one of the rafters; and now and then a somewhat larger wooden frame, suspended in the same fashion, is used by the grown-up members of the family to sit or sleep upon. But, as a rule, everybody sits and sleeps on the ground. The floors of the houses are invariably made of earth, beaten down hard, and smeared periodically with a decoction of cow-dung.

Even a well-to-do Indian takes his food sitting on the ground in the place where the food was cooked, which is often a dark lean-to building, attached to the main dwelling. He takes off all his clothing except his dhota, and eats with his fingers in silence. Sociality at such a time is out of place; it diverts the mind from the business in hand, which is that of "filling the belly," as the Indian himself commonly expresses it. The women of the household never sit down to dinner with the rest of the family. They wait on the men, and then take their own meal afterwards by themselves. There is nothing elevating in the process.

The meal of an average Indian Christian family is a complete contrast. Poverty probably compels simplicity and frugality; but father and mother and children sit down together, and there is much sociality. The desire to sit on chairs merely as a mark of distinction is a foolish aspiration. Nevertheless, as an Indian Christian once expressed it to me, "The wish to come off the floor means that we are growing in refinement and politeness."

There are usually no windows in most of the older houses of the poorer people. Modern houses have sometimes several windows, but they are barred and shuttered, and from long habit are usually kept closed by preference. The only movable articles in the houses of the bulk of the Indian population are the brass and copper, or earthenware, cooking pots and pans, and the prosperity of the household can be pretty accurately gauged by the quality, number, and condition of these utensils. A few people own besides an old box or two, generally containing an accumulation of old rags, which nearly all Indians seem to take an interest in collecting. Extra clothes, when they have any, are hung on large wooden pegs, which are fixed into the walls of most rooms in Indian dwellings.

One result of the comfortless and dreary aspect of the interior of an Indian's house is that very few of them have any home life, as we understand it. The Indian does not sit indoors, unless compelled to do so by sickness, or stress of weather. And though the majority are satisfied so to live, because no other manner of life is known to them, there is nothing beautiful about it. Even from a purely physical point of view, it is an unwholesome state of things. The airless, lightless houses are most unsavoury, and in times of sickness and childbirth this is intensified. It cannot be wondered at that plague, or cholera, or malignant fevers, often make frightful ravages in families. Nor does it tend to elevate the character to sit on a mud floor dozing in the dark, or telling scandalous stories with the children drinking in every word.

By way of contrast, I recall the country home of a Brahmin doctor, who has built himself a house at Yerandawana as a haven of refuge in time of plague. It is surrounded by a little garden, radiant with flowers. It lacks the neatness of an English garden, nevertheless it is something far away ahead of anything which any of his neighbours have attempted. His name means "seven sons." He has already got six, and is hoping for the seventh. These six little sons are dressed in ordinary English boys' dress. They are frequent visitors at the Mission bungalow. It may, of course, be only English prejudice which makes this dress appear to me better for the boys themselves than the scant garments of the Indian. Instead of the usual shorn head and small pigtail, their glossy hair, very neat in the case of the elder boys, tumbled about in the case of the younger ones, is a delightful contrast.

But to look in at the open door in the evening at their home life, as I have often done, is entirely convincing. A table is in the middle of the room covered with a red cloth; there is a bright lamp, a few pictures are on the walls, and the party of cheerful boys are sitting round the table. Some are playing games, others are drawing, some are looking at books. Though in such a different clime, the sight brought back the memory of winter evenings in boyish days at home.

This Hindu doctor has practically parted with his religion. There are probably no objects of worship in his country home, except a Tulsi plant on a pedestal in the back compound. This plant is a good deal venerated by women, and no doubt was provided for the benefit of the ladies of his household. But although it is some gain to have given up idolatrous customs, and to have adopted some of the refinements of civilised life, he and his little family are in the unhappy condition at present of being without a religion.

A Hindu contractor, who was visiting the church one day, surprised me by saying, as he turned towards one of the pictures hanging on the walls: "This is the baptism of Christ—the river is the Jordan. He was baptized by John." I asked him how he knew all these facts. He replied that he had been educated at a Jesuit school, and that he had learnt them there. I said that, having been brought up under such circumstances, and having learnt so much and being now well advanced in years, how was it that he was still a Hindu. He answered: "I cannot tell. All I know is that now I do not know what I am."

He asked many intelligent questions. Amongst the rest, did we hear confessions? He was a type of a constantly increasing number of educated men, who, although outwardly appearing as Hindus, only practise the minimum of religious observances, and have no belief at all. Amongst these are men, like the Brahmin doctor, who have imbibed something of the spirit of Christianity from what they have heard and seen, and are distinctly the better for having dropped so much of their Hinduism. But their position is a pathetic one, because so few of them have the courage to act upon the considerable measure of truth which has come home to them.