THE CHANCE OF CHANGE IN INDIA.
" DO you think," asked a lady of the writer, who was sup- posed to know something of the matter, "that a great and rapid change in Hindoo thought will ever be pos-
sible ? " "No," was the reply, given with some confidence ; "nothing changes in Asia, except indeed as there may be change, imperceptible change, in the position of a glacier." Recent events in Japan have modified that opinion, or at least diminished the rather conceited certainty with which it was held ; and glancing over a book by an Indian gentleman, "A History of Hindu Civilisation during British Rule," by Pramatha N. Bose, published by Kegan. Paul and Co., the writer was surprised to find himself indulging in speculations as to the force which, in spite of the experience of ages, might still work not only a change in India, but a change as rapid as the one which men of this generation have seen in Japan. Pramatha N. Bose is one of the few Indians who have taken to English, rather than Asiatic, methods of advancement, and who, as a leading officer in the geological survey of India, has seemed, in spite of great literary attainments, to think like a European rather than a Hindoo. His decision about his countrymen is, however, the same as that of the purely theological native, whom we quoted with some admiration on January 5th of this year. Like him, Pramatha N. Bose, though doubtless himself of a most "practical" mind, or he could not have risen to be Acting Superintendent of the Geological Survey, holds that the Indian mind is thoroughly penetrated and dominated by the " religious " spirit; the intense desire to know and act on truths which are not material. This wish, apparently instinctive, and proceeding from racial causes wholly beyond our ken, has affected every grade of Hindoo society, and profoundly modified its civilisation. From the highest to the lowest, from the Raja to the coolie, every Hindoo Indian believes that the spiritual life is the only real life, and that everything else is more or less illusory and tran- sitional :—
" To the Hindu, the world is illusory. He has sought to sub- ordinate the animal to the spiritual wants of life. He has sought happiness by self-denial rather than self-indulgence, by curtailing the wants of life, rather than by increasing them, by suppressing de aires, rather than by gratifying them, by lowering the standard of material comfort, rather than by raising it The progress as well as the backwardness of the Hindu, his virtues as well as vices, all that is good and all that is bad in him and in his society, are in a great measure attributable to this sovereignty of religion
over him Even now after nearly a century of contact with an essentially material civilisation like the Western, the inherited spirituality of the Hindu is manifested in the recent reaction in favour of what may be called rationalistic Hinduism and other religious movements. We find educated men sitting at the feet of comparatively illiterate devotees or singing the praises of Hari in the streets of Calcutta and other towns."
This is true even of the body of the people. Men who seem in some aspects hardly above the beasts of the field, are still entirely governed in every act of their daily lives by non- material thoughts, and never eat or drink, move or sit, except with a view to what they consider spiritual advance- ment. Of coarse their view is constantly a hopelessly superstitious one, that is a view which seems to the Euro- pean pure folly, but still it is non-material, and entirely unconnected with dinner or comfort, or what we Westerns think of when we speak of "getting on." Stir that impulse, and the lowest Hindoo will go without dinner, will suffer to the physical limits of suffering, will change almost in a moment habits which seem to be parts of his inmost and most immovable nature. He will give up the pursuit of money, renounce any vice, forego any habitual pleasure, and behave, in the fullest sense, like a man under the influence of what the most religions Englishmen term "conversion." The institution of caste which binds him in fetters of steel, riveted by sanctions as strong as those which support the secret agrarian laws of Ireland or the Bordelais, has been shattered suddenly among scores of thousands who, accepting the teaching of Nannk or Chaitanya, or any other of the hundred heresiarchs whom Hindooism has produced, have stood forward in a moment new men. Villages have been known to accept Mahommedanism en masse, and to have become in a year so changed in habits, character, and ways of living that those who have closely observed them have despaired of explaining the change, and have described it as more nearly miraculous than any incident of which they have ever read. We can personally testify to have known outcasts—wretches scarcely within the pale of humanity—who have become Mahommedans, and, in a way, gentlemen ; and we have talked with low-caste Hindoos who, becoming Christians, have seemed to shed the Asiatic system of feeling like a skin. Pramatha N. Bose gives a perfect, concrete illustration of what we mean. A Hindoo who drinks is often a drunkard past all European experience. Nothing will keep him sober, no suffering from his vice will wean him for a day from its indulgence :— "From the time of the Upanishads, the aim of the Hindu
has been to know the One by calm meditation undisturbed by mundane thoughts, or. in later times to be lost in ecstatic
love for Him. To the practical European, a Ramkrishna spend- ing his whole life in meditation and devotional exercises in calm retirement, or a Chaitanya dancing in the streets in frenzied
love for his Deity, may appear as, at best, a visionary enthusiast. These dreamers,' however, have a philosophy of their own, which would make out the practical European engaged in a perpetual struggle for the betterment of his fortune as a hunter after shadows. The extent of the influence still exercised by such 'dreamers' is not known. They rarely, if ever, appear in news- papers ; what they do is done in silence and secrecy. We were surprised to find last year, that the Gonds of an extensive tract in the Rewah State (Central India) had given up drinking ; and on enquiry we found out the reason to be the fiat of a Yogi who had visited the State the year before. His order had gone forth from village to village, and the Gonds without question had become total abstainers. No crusade against intemperance could have produced such a wonderful and widespread result."
Probably for a thousand years that tribe will never drink again. A religious idea, the notion that a spiritual authority has revealed something, has touched them, and a habit, the strength of which we in Europe should know, has instantly died away.
It is here, and only here, that the chance of a great and sudden change in Hindooism lives, but unquestionably it does exist. A great teacher, a great preacher, an ascetic reverenced as a yogi for his mastery of the flesh by the spirit, may suddenly arise, may make thousands of converts, may send out every convert as a missionary, and may in one generation or even more quickly, make the whole Hindoo world Mahommedan or Christian, or more probably than either Hindoo with new governing ideas. The thing has occurred already, new and powerful sects suddenly arising in Hindooism itself, the devotees once at least, in the instance of Nanuk's followers, being so changed in character, that simple peasants became the iron soldiers whom we know as Sikhs ; and many times villages of wretched, down-trodden peasants accepting the tenets of Wahabeeism, and starting up as " Ferazees," have shown themselves men with whom no landlord or .policeman dares to meddle. There is no reason in the world why a Christian convert, possessed of the secret of persuasion, as other founders of sects in India have possessed it, should not make a million of converts in a year, or why a teacher, once be- lieved in, should not change every social institution throughout whole provinces. The Hindoo's action follows his thought as -a shadow the body, provided only the thought appears to him to affect his spiritual life, and if he believed poverty divine he would at once part with wealth—this occurs even now with individuals every day—or if he believed untruth a guilty thing he would utter the truth if it led him instantly to the stake. The followers of the New Hindooism, of which Pramatha N. Bose writes in this book in so confused yet so interesting a fashion, do, as it is, often face moral torture, and they would face physical torture just as readily. Suppose -the great though erroneous idea of non-resistance to seize on Hindoos, they would carry it straight out to its logical conse- quences, yield to the oppressor without a shiver, and witness the consequent crash of civilisation around them without even the 'beginning of an idea that the material result of their view in this particular stage of the soul's progress signified one straw. What " consequences " can be so effective as hunger, thirst, and pain P and the better Sunyasee will endure all of these to their extremity without once imagining that they of them- selves show his theory to be false, or at best but doubtful. The good SunTasee is not seeking civilisation or comfort, or a good social arrangement, but following his call towards the light as faithfully as any martyr ever did.
Whether any such teacher capable of stirring Hindoos, or any movement productive of great consequences, will arise in our time, we of course cannot tell ; but a great crack in the ice of centuries is no more impossible in India than in Japan, and owing to the carelessness of the people about material advantage, would, if it came, spread even faster than the thirst for the material progress of the West has spread among the Japanese. What form the new movement will take, or what its direction may be, we have of course no means of prophesying, but when it comes its centre will be some -dominant religious idea — possibly monotheism, the im- personal All being transmuted into a sentient individuality —and will be accompanied by a rigid code which will be -obeyed in defiance of all consequences. The more fervid -Christian missionaries expect, and expect with strong faith, that it will take the direction of their thought; the 21ussulman preachers believe entirely that its basis will be the acceptance of the Fatiha ; and Pramatha N. Bose, if we -understand him, of which we are not quite sure, thinks it will take the line of a throwing-off of all shackles that impede -social development. We should ourselves expect rather the rise of an original faith with a code of rigid abstentions and a formidable spirit of defiance to all law which impeded, or seemed to impede, the creed ; but that is beside our thesis of to-day, which is, that owing to the religious temperament of the Indian, Hindooism, which has taken ages to rear, may go down, as it were, in a night with incalculable consequences. A new Avatar, for example, might be believed in, and if he were, would have powers not possessed by any Sovereign in the world. It -is improbable; but all Hindoo India is seething with restless- ness, and we who write have seen Joe Smith make a separate community which might have become a political power, and have known a Mahal with sway enough to hurl the savages of an African desert on to a British square. We English ex- pect endless continuousness in India with much too easy a credulity, just as we fancied that Japan would remain always a land of gentleness and art. Is a great Hindoo leader so much more impossible than the present attitude of the Mikado to the Asiatic world would have seemed ten years ago ?
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