"MOTHER INDIA" [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sia,—Europeans in
India grow indignant when pictures are put on the screen depicting sides of Western life which are likely to damage in the East the prestige of European people and Western civilization in general: Some are very truthful so far as they gin, but they depict the manners and customs of a particular class or set and are therefore untrue as regards the general civilization of Europe or America.
If it is legitimate for the European to object to a crook picture displayed in India because of the effect it might have 'on the Indian mind, is it not equally legitimate for the Indian to object to a book because of the atrocious generalizations it makes from diseased cases in hospitals and police court pro- ceedings—to the exclusion of anything that is good and noble in Indians ? About sexual aberrations the less said the better. We in India sometimes get hold of, say, Havelock Ellis's Psychology of the Sexes or Kraft Ebbing's Psychopathia- Sexualis, and thereby come to know of some of Europe's aberrations in the matter. Would it be fair to take them for general conditions with European countries ?
Miss Katherine Mayo's Mother India is remarkable in more ways than one. It is remarkable for the attempt that has been made in it to depict the Indians in the darkest possible hue, and it is remarkable for the numerous misinterpretations of our old Sanskrit literature, it is remarkable for the various false charges it contains against the Hindu population of our country, it is remarkable for the determination the authoress has shown in every page of it to depict the Hindus as nothing more nor less than barbarians, and above all it is remarkable for the efforts that have been made in it to convince the British public that the Indians are not fit to enjoy the privilege of self-government.
But unfortunately the lie which has once got a start can beat the very devil in its elusiveness, and hardly comes home like the Prodigal Son. To those in England who are relishing Miss Mayo's spicy dish of Indian humiliation, any refutation, however cogent, would merely smack of sickly hypocrisy and snivelling apology. In such cases the verdict goes for the aggressor and not for the victim. Still the optimists who believed in the effectiveness of wooing public opinion had tried to present India's case as promptly as could be done.
From the way in which the wind is blowing, cannot Indians be right in thinking that a concerted anti-Indian campaign -is making head-way amongst the English people at home, and that the other side of the picture on which many expatiate has got a niggardly chance of securing sympathetic spectators I' —I am, Sir, &c.,
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