Kitabı oku: «From Egypt to Japan», sayfa 19

CHAPTER XXI

CALCUTTA-FAREWELL TO INDIA

It is a good rule in travelling, as in rhetoric, to keep the best to the last, and wind up with a climax. But it would be hard to find a climax in India after seeing the old Mogul capitals, whose palaces and tombs outshine the Alhambra; after climbing the Himalayas, and making a pilgrimage to the holy city. And yet one feels a crescendo of interest in approaching the capital. India has three capitals – Delhi, where once reigned the Great Mogul, and which is still the centre of the Mohammedan faith; Benares, the Mecca of the Hindoos; and Calcutta, the capital of the modern British Empire. The two former we have seen; it is the last which is now before us.

Our route was southeast, along the valley of the Ganges, and through the province of Bengal. What is the magic of a name? From childhood the most vivid association I had with this part of India, was that of Bengal tigers, which were the wonder of every menagerie; and it was not strange if we almost expected to see them crouching in the forest, or gliding away in the long grass of the jungle. But Bengal has other attractions to one who rides over it. This single province of India is five times as large as the State of New York. It is a vast alluvial plain, through which the Ganges pours by a hundred mouths to the sea, its overflow giving to the soil a richness and fertility like that of the valley of the Nile, so that it supports a population equal to that of the whole of the United States. The cultivated fields that we pass show the natural wealth of the country, as the frequent towns show the density of the population. Of these the largest is Patna, the centre of the opium culture. But we did not stop anywhere, for the way was long. From Benares to Calcutta is over four hundred miles, or about as far as from New York city to Niagara Falls. We started at eleven o'clock, and kept steadily travelling all day. Night fell, and the moon rose over the plains and the palm groves, and still we fled on and on, as if pursued by the storm spirits of the Hindoo Kylas, till the morning broke, and found us on the banks of a great river filled with shipping, and opposite to a great city. This was the Hoogly, one of the mouths of the Ganges, and there was Calcutta! A carriage whirled us swiftly across the bridge, and up to the Great Eastern Hotel, where we were glad to rest, after travelling three thousand miles in India, and to exchange even the most luxurious railway carriage for beds and baths, and the comforts of civilization. The hotel stands opposite the Government House, the residence of the Viceroy of India, and supplies everything necessary to the dignity of a "burra Sahib." Soft-footed Hindoos glided silently about, watching our every motion, and profoundly anxious for the honor of being our servants. A stalwart native slept on the mat before my door, and attended on my going out and my coming in, as if I had been a grand dignitary of the Empire.

Calcutta bears a proud name in the East – that of the City of Palaces – from which a traveller is apt to experience a feeling of disappointment. And yet the English portion of the city is sufficiently grand to make it worthy to rank with the second class of European capitals. The Government House, from its very size, has a massive and stately appearance, and the other public buildings are of corresponding proportions. The principal street, called the Chowringhee road, is lined for two miles with the handsome houses of government officials or wealthy English residents. But the beauty of Calcutta is the grand esplanade, called the Maidan – an open space as large as our Central Park in New York; beginning at the Government House, and reaching to Fort William, and beyond it; stretching for two or three miles along the river, and a mile back from it to the mansions of the Chowringhee Road. This is an immense parade-ground for military and other displays. Here and there are statues of men who have distinguished themselves in the history of British India. Tropical plants and trees give to the landscape their rich masses of color and of shade, while under them and around them is spread that carpet of green so dear to the eyes of an Englishman in any part of the world – a wide sweep of soft and smooth English turf. Here at sunset one may witness a scene nowhere equalled except in the great capitals of Europe. In the middle of the day the place is deserted, except by natives, whom, being "children of the sun," he does not "smite by day," though the moon may smite them by night. The English residents are shut closely within doors, where they seek, by the waving of punkas, and by admitting the air only through mats dripping with water, to mitigate the terrible heat. But as the sun declines, and the palms begin to cast their shadows across the plain, and a cool breeze comes in from the sea, the whole English world pours forth. The carriage of the Viceroy rolls out from under the arches of the Government House, and the other officials are abroad. A stranger is surprised at the number of dashing equipages, with postilions and servants in liveries, furnished by this foreign city. These are not all English. Native princes and wealthy baboos vie with Englishmen in the bravery of their equipages, and give to the scene a touch of Oriental splendor. Officers on horseback dash by, accompanied often by fair English faces; while the band from Fort William plays the martial airs of England. It is indeed a brilliant spectacle, which, but for the turbans and the swarthy faces under them, would make the traveller imagine himself in Hyde Park.

From this single picture it is easy to see why Calcutta is to an Englishman the most attractive place of residence in India, or in all the East. It is more like London. It is a great capital – the capital of the Indian Empire; the seat of government; the residence of the Viceroy, around whom is assembled a kind of viceregal court, composed of all the high officials, both civil and military. There is an Army and Navy Club, where one may meet many old soldiers who have seen service in the Indian wars, or who hold high appointments in the present force. The assemblage of such a number of notable men makes a large and brilliant English society.

Nor is it confined to army officers or government officials. Connected with the different colleges are men who are distinguished Oriental scholars. Then there is a Bishop of Calcutta, who is the Primate of India, with his clergy, and English and American missionaries, who make altogether a very miscellaneous society.⁸ Here Macaulay lived for three years as a member of the Governor's Council, and was the centre of a society which, if it lacked other attractions, must have found a constant stimulus in his marvellous conversation.

And yet with all these attractions of Calcutta, English residents still pine for England. One can hardly converse with an English officer, without finding that it is his dream to get through with his term of service as soon as he may, and return to spend the rest of his days in his dear native island. Even Macaulay – with all the resources that he had in himself, with all that he found Anglo-Indian society, and all that he made it – regarded life in India as only a splendid exile.

The climate is a terrible drawback. Think of a country, where in the hot season the mercury rises to 117-120° in the shade; while if the thermometer be exposed to the sun, it quickly mounts to 150, 160, or even 170°! – a heat to which no European can be exposed for half an hour without danger of sunstroke. Such is the heat that it drives the government out of Calcutta for half the year. For six months the Viceroy and his staff emigrate, bag and baggage, going up the country twelve hundred miles to Simla, on the first range of the Himalayas, which is about as if the President of the United States and his Cabinet should leave Washington on the first of May, and transfer the seat of government to some high point in the Rocky Mountains.

But the climate is not the only, nor the chief, drawback to life in India. It is the absence from home, from one's country and people, which makes it seem indeed like exile. Make the best of it, Calcutta is not London. What a man like Macaulay misses, is not the English climate, with its rains and fogs, but the intellectual life, which centres in the British capital. It was this which made him write to his sister that "A lodgings up three pairs of stairs in London was better than a palace in a compound at Chowringhee." I confess I cannot understand how any man, who has a respectable position in his own country, should choose Calcutta, or any other part of India, as a place of residence, except for a time; as a merchant goes abroad for a few years, in the hope of such gain as shall enable him to return and live in independence in England or America; or as a soldier goes to a post of duty ("Not his to ask the reason why"); or as a missionary, with the purely benevolent desire of doing good, for which he accepts this voluntary exile.

But if a man has grown, by any mental or moral process, to the idea that life is not given him merely for enjoyment; that its chief end is not to make himself comfortable – to sit at home in England, and hear the storm roar around the British Islands, and thank God that he is safe, though all the rest of the world should perish; if he but once recognize the fact that he has duties, not only to himself, but to mankind; then for such a man there is not on the round globe a broader or nobler field of labor than India. For an English statesman, however great his talents or boundless his ambition, one cannot conceive of a higher place on the earth than that of the Viceroy of India. He is a ruler over more than two hundred millions of human beings, to whose welfare he may contribute by a wise and just administration. What immeasurable good may be wrought by a Governor-General like Lord William Bentinck, of whom it was said that "he was William Penn on the throne of the Great Mogul." A share in this beneficent rule belongs to every Englishman who holds a place in the government of India. He is in a position of power, and therefore of responsibility. To such men is entrusted the protection, the safety, the comfort, and the happiness of multitudes of their fellow-men, to whom they are bound, if not by national ties, yet by the ties of a common humanity.

And for those who have no official position, who have neither place nor power, but who have intelligence and a desire to do good on a wide scale, India offers a field as broad as their ambition, where, either as moral or intellectual instructors, as professors of science or teachers of religion, they may contribute to the welfare of a great people. India is a country where, more than in almost any other in the world, European civilization comes in contact with Asiatic barbarism. Its geographical position illustrates its moral and intellectual position. It is a peninsula stretched out from the lower part of Asia into the Indian Ocean, and great seas dash against it on one side and on the other. So, intellectually and morally, is it placed "where two seas meet," where modern science attacks Hindooism on one side, and Christianity attacks it on the other.

In this conflict English intelligence has already done much for the intellectual emancipation of the people from childish ignorance and folly. In Calcutta there are a number of English schools and colleges, which are thronged with young Bengalees, the flower of the city and the province, who are instructed in the principles of modern science and philosophy. The effect on the mind of Young Bengal has been very great. An English education has accomplished all that was expected from it, except the overthrow of idolatry, and here it has conspicuously failed.

When Macaulay was in India, he devoted much of his time to perfecting the system of National Education, from which he expected the greatest results; which he believed would not only fill the ignorant and vacant minds of the Hindoos with the knowledge of modern science, but would uproot the old idolatry. In the recently published volumes of his letters is one to his father, dated Calcutta, Oct. 12, 1836, in which he says:

"Our English schools are flourishing wonderfully. We find it difficult – in some places impossible – to provide instruction for all who want it. At the single town of Hoogly 1400 boys are learning English. The effect of this education on the Hindoos is prodigious. No Hindoo who has received an English education ever remains sincerely attached to his religion. Some continue to profess it as a matter of policy; but many profess themselves pure Deists, and some embrace Christianity. It is my firm belief that, if our plans of education are followed up, there will not be a single idolater among the reputable classes in Bengal thirty years hence. And this will be effected without any efforts to proselytize; without the smallest interference with religious liberty; merely by the natural operation of knowledge and reflection."

These sanguine expectations have been utterly disappointed. Since that letter was written, forty years have passed, and every year has turned out great numbers of educated young men, instructed in all the principles of modern science; and yet the hold of Hindooism seems as strong as ever. I find it here in the capital, as well as in the provinces, and I do not find that it is any better by coming in contact with modern civilization. Nothing at Benares was more repulsive and disgusting than what one sees here. The deity most worshipped in Calcutta is the goddess Kali, who indeed gives name to the city, which is Anglicized from Kali-ghat. She delights in blood, and is propitiated only by constant sacrifices. As one takes his morning drive along the streets leading to her shrine, he sees them filled with young goats, who are driven to the sacred enclosure, which is like a butcher's shambles, so constantly are the heads dropping on the pavement, which is kept wet with blood. She is the patron of thieves and robbers, the one to whom the Thugs always made offerings, in setting out on their expeditions for murder. No doubt the young men educated in the English colleges despise this horrid worship. Yet in their indifference to all religion, they think it better to keep up an outward show of conformity, to retain the respect, or at least the good will, of their Hindoo countrymen, among whom it is the very first condition of any social recognition whatever, that they shall not break away from the religion of their ancestors.

How then are they to be reached? The Christian schools educate the very young; and the orphanages take neglected children and train them from the beginning. But for young men who are already educated in the government colleges, is there any way of reaching them? None, except that of open, direct, manly argument. Several years since President Seelye of Amherst College visited India, and here addressed the educated Hindoos, both in Calcutta and Bombay, on the claims of the Christian religion. He was received with perfect courtesy. Large audiences assembled to hear him, and listened with the utmost respect. What impression he produced, I cannot say; but it seems to me that this is "the way to do it," or at least one way, and a way which gives good hope of success.

In fighting this battle against idolatry, I think we should welcome aid from any quarter, whether it be evangelical or not. While in Calcutta, I paid a visit to Keshoob Chunder Sen, whose name is well known in England from a visit which he made some years ago, as the leader of the Brahmo Somaj. I found him surrounded by his pupils, to whom he was giving instruction. He at once interrupted his teaching for the pleasure of a conversation, to which all listened apparently with great interest. He is in his creed an Unitarian, so far as he adopts the Christian faith. He recognizes the unity of God, and gives supreme importance to prayer. The interview impressed me both with his ability and his sincerity. I cannot agree with some of my missionary friends who look upon him with suspicion, because he does not go far enough. On the contrary, I think it a matter of congratulation that he has come as far as he has, and I should be glad if he could get Young Bengal to follow him. But I do not think the Brahmo Somaj has made great progress. It has scattered adherents in different parts of India, but the whole number of followers is small compared with the masses that cling to their idols. He frankly confessed that the struggle was very unequal, that the power of the old idolatry was tremendous, and especially that the despotism of caste was terrific. To break away from it, required a degree of moral courage that was very rare. The great obstacle to its overthrow was a social one, and grew out of the extreme anxiety of Hindoo parents for the marriage of their children. If they once broke away from caste, it was all over with them. They were literally outcasts. Nobody would speak to them, and they and their children were delivered over to one common curse. This social ostracism impending over them, is a terror which even educated Hindoos dare not face. And so they conform outwardly, while they despise inwardly. Hence, Keshoob Chunder Sen deserves all honor for the stand he has taken, and ought to receive the cordial support of the English and Christian community.

What I have seen in Calcutta and elsewhere satisfies me that in all wise plans for the regeneration of India, Christian missions must be a necessary part. One cannot remember but with a feeling of shame, how slow was England to receive missionaries into her Indian Empire. The first attempt of the English Church to send a few men to India was met with an outcry of disapprobation. Sydney Smith hoped the Government would send the missionaries home. When Carey first landed on these shores, he could not stay in British territory, but had to take refuge at Serampore, a Danish settlement a few miles from Calcutta, where he wrought a work which makes that a place of pilgrimage to every Christian traveller in India. We spent a day there, going over the field of his labor. He is dead, but his work survives. There he opened schools and founded a college, the first of its kind in India (unless it were the government college of Fort William in Calcutta, in which he was also a professor), and which led the way for the establishment of that magnificent system of National Education which is now the glory of India.

What Carey was in his day, Dr. Duff in Calcutta and Dr. Wilson in Bombay were a generation later, vigorous advocates of education as an indispensable means to quicken the torpid mind of India. They were the trusted advisers and counsellors of the government in organizing the present system of National Education. This is but one of many benefits for which this country has to thank missionaries. And if ever India is to be so renovated as to enter into the family of civilized and Christian nations, it will be largely by their labors. One thing is certain, that mere education will not convert the Hindoo. The experiment has been tried and failed. Some other and more powerful means must be taken to quicken the conscience of a nation deadened by ages of false religion – a religion utterly fatal to spiritual life. That such a change may come speedily, is devoutly to be wished. No intelligent traveller can visit India, and spend here two months, without feeling the deepest interest in the country and its people. Our interest grew with every week of our stay, and was strongest as we were about to leave.

The last night that we were in Calcutta, it was my privilege to address the students at one of the Scotch colleges. The hall was crowded, and I have seldom, if ever, spoken to a finer body of young men. These young Bengalees had many of them heads of an almost classical beauty; and with their grace of person heightened by their flowing white robes, they presented a beautiful array of young scholars, such as might delight the eyes of any instructor who should have to teach them "Divine philosophy." My heart "went out" to them very warmly, and as that was my last impression of India, I left it with a very different feeling from that with which I entered it – with a degree of respect for its people, and of interest in them, which I humbly conceive is the very first condition of doing them any good.

It was Sunday evening: the ship on which we were to embark for Burmah was to sail at daybreak, and it was necessary to go on board at once. So hardly had we returned from our evening service, before we drove down to the river. The steamer lay off in the stream, the tide was out, and even the native boats could not come up to where we could step on board. But the inevitable coolies were there, their long naked legs sinking in the mud, who took us on their brawny backs, and carried us to the boats, and in this dignified manner we took our departure from India.

The next morning, as we went on deck, the steamer was dropping down the river. The guns of Fort William were firing a salute; at Garden Reach we passed the palace of the King of Oude, where this deposed Indian sovereign still keeps his royal state among his serpents and his tigers. We were all day long steaming down the Hoogly. The country is very flat; there is nothing to break the monotony of its swamps and jungles, its villages of mud standing amid rice fields and palm groves. As we approach the sea the river divides into many channels, like the lagoons of Venice. All around are low lying islands, which now and then are swept by terrible cyclones that come up from the Bay of Bengal. At present their shores are overgrown with jungles, the home of wild beasts, of serpents, and crocodiles, of all slimy and deadly things, the monsters of the land and sea. Through a net-work of such lagoons, we glide out into the deep; slowly the receding shores sink till they are submerged, as if they were drowned; we have left India behind, and all around is only a watery horizon.