THE MENTAL SECLUSION OF INDIA.
THE Times of Wednesday, in a leader upon that wonderful record, the new " Census of India," the details of which have just come home, calls attention once more to one of the greatest puzzles presented to observers by this perplexing world. The English have held the first position in India for
We have no full answer to give, for the problem, after thirty years of thought about it, remains to us as impenetrable as ever ; but we can, we think, contribute some facts, or ideas
about facts, which may make its existence a little less wonder- ful and bewildering. In the first place, the suggestion that because the Anglo-Indian governs successfully, therefore he understands the people he governs, is, we believe, fundamen- tally erroneous. The British Empire in India is not a marvel- lous example of the possibility of one race fitting its ideas to those of another race, adapting means to ends, or making laws specially suited to those who obey them, at all, but something widely different. It is the most marvellous example the world has ever seen of the possibility of governing human beings through abstract principles, when those principles include im- partial justice, perfect tolerance, and the most absolute respect, not only for personal freedom, but for personal idiosyncrasy. The great Civilian who suddenly, and by a sort of magic, pacifies a newly-acquired province, till three millions of swordsmen not only obey him, but honour and in a way love him, very often does not understand the hearts of the men he governs in the least degree, and will admit to intimate friends that he does not un- derstand them. They will, he believes, do so and so ; but "there is an element of the unknown or the capricious, if you like, in all native minds, never to be quite left out of the account." What he does understand thoroughly are justice, tolerance, mercy, and the use of firmness ; and he applies those principles steadily, fearlessly, and with a certain respect for logic seldom displayed by his own caste in Europe. Every Indian is guaranteed his life, his liberty, his property, and his honour ; every man who breaks the law is hunted down, every man who observes the law is let alone, let him do, or say, or believe what- soever he may. As the native universally approves those principles when applied, he desists from dangerous opposition, and becomes, so rapidly that the change is almost scenic, a quiet citizen ; and the intellectual qualities of the Civilian who has tamed him are extolled to the skies. They have done very little for him, nevertheless. It is the moral qualities which have pre- vailed, and which gave as quick a result to Clive, who could speak no word of any native tongue, as to the last competition- wallah who boasts, perhaps with truth, that he could play at a native gaming-table and never be known for a white man. The problem is, therefore, reduced by this, that the Anglo-Indian ruler does not show at one and the same time knowledge and ignorance, that he rules successfully by knowing other things than the inner minds of the population, which he is confessedly so unable to interpret. He is simply ignorant, and not a thoroughly instructed man who is also an ignoramus.
This truth, however, though it renders the problem far less unique, and, as it were, mysterious, still does not reduce its size. The Anglo-Indian ruler lives among the people longer than Mr. Hamerton lived among Frenchmen, or Mr. Ford among Spaniards, or Mr. Finlay among Greeks, lives often thirty years, knows the language, passes six hours a day in conversation with natives, resides among them, in fact, and still does not understand them. How is that ? The true answer is that all this does not happen in the sense the words suggest, that the Civilian or adventurer does not reside among the Indian people at all, but only on the spot where the Indian people also abide,—a very differ- ent thing. There is he, and there are they, but they are fenced off from each other by an invisible, impalpable, but impassable wall, as rigid and as inexplicable as that which divides the master from his dog, the worshipping coach-dog from the worshipped horse, the friendly spaniel from the acquiescent cat. The wall is not, as we believe, difference of manners, or of habits, or of modes of association, for those difficulties have all been conquered by officials, travellers, missionaries, and others, in places like China, where the external difference is so much greater. They have, indeed, been conquered by individuals even in India itself, where many men—especially Missionaries, who are not feared—do live in as friendly and frequent inter- course with Indians, as they would with their own people at home. The wall is less material than that, and is raised mainly by the Indian himself, who, whatever his pro- fession, or grade, or occupation, deliberately secludes his mind from the European, with a jealous, minute, and persistent care, of which probably no man not gifted with an in- sight like that of Thackeray could succeed in giving even a remote idea. He will talk easily, familiarly, and if he likes his interlocutor, most pleasantly, showing constantly a disposition towards humour, playfulness, and even rough jocularity, which, somehow, travellers never suspect, and, as far as we know, have never described in natives of India. A woman now and then has perceivedit among women, and has mentioned it; but, so far as we know, no man has recorded this, the plea- santest of all the many specialities in the native mind,—an inexhaustible amount of grave, sweet, easily-moved humorous- ness. But in his most facile moments the Indian never unlocks his mind, never puts it to yours, never reveals his real thought, never stands with his real and whole -character confessed, like the Western European. You may 'know a bit of it, the dominant passion, the ruling temper, even the reigning prejudice, but never the whole of it. After the intercourse of years, your Indian friend knows you better, perhaps, than you know yourself, especially on your weaker side ; but you only know him as you know a character in a second-rate novel, that is, know as much as the author has been able to reveal, but never quite the whole. In exceptional eases, quite exceptional, you may know as much as you know of Hamlet, know so much, that is, that you could write a book of reflections upon the character ; but you will still be aware of the supreme puzzle, that you know all of Hamlet but Hamlet. This seclusion of the mind is universal, runs through every grade, exists under any intimacy, and is acknowledged by every thoughtful European in India about those natives upon whom he relies, often justifiably, with a confidence as profound as his reliance upon the most trustworthy of his English friends ; and we believe, on the testi- mony of one of the few cultivated Europeans who ever lived happily with a native wife, that it extends to both sexes. The why of this mental seclusion, the cause which induces a native -of India, intelligent, inquisitive, and hungry for knowledge, not only able to converse, but eager to converse, to keep his mind in a casket, is the single puzzle of the situation which so per- plexes the Times, and every one of the very few Europeans who has so far overcome the sense of despair and bewilderment always -excited by the immensity of the native problem, as to look the • perplexity fairly in the face.
We certainly cannot solve it, though we are going to state in all humility a theory in which we believe, which, if correct, partly explains it, and which will, at least, interest the dreamier minds among our readers. We doubt if any European ever fully realises how great the mental effect of the segregativeness, the separation into atoms, of Indian society, 'continued, as it has been, for three thousand unbroken years, has actually been. We speak of that society as " divided into castes," but it is, and has always been, divided into far more minute divisions or crystals, each in a way complete, but each absolutely separated from its neighbour by rules, laws, prejudices, traditions, and principles of ceremonial purity, which, in the aggregate, form impassable lines of demarca- tion. It is not the European to whom the Indian will not reveal himself, but mankind, outside a circle usually wonderfully small, and often a single family, from whom he mentally retreats. His first preoccupation in life is to keep his "caste," his separateness, his ceremonial purity, from any contact with any other equally separate crystal ; and in that preoccupation, permanent and all-absorbing for thou- sands of years, he has learnt to shroud his inner mind, till in revealing it he feels as if he were revealing some shrine which it is blasphemy to open, as if he had earned from Heaven the misfortune he thinks sure to follow. It is not " timidity," as the Times suggests, which impels him, but an instinct of segregation, created partly by timidity, partly by supersti- tion, and partly by a kind of mental shrinking, the result of ages, during which he has been taught, and has fully believed, that only in segregation can ceremonial purity, and, therefore, the favour of the Superior Powers, and, therefore, Heaven, be secured. The words involve a contradiction in terms, but if we -could imagine a Catholic priesthood hereditary for two thousand years, yet always trained as priests are in a good seminary, we should, we fancy, find men with instinctive mental reserves, reticences, concealments, silences, such as Europeans note in natives of India, and such as so often render even a native opinion on a native character or career quite nugatory. The 'crystal can touch the crystal, but neither can get rid of the facets which so absolutely prohibit junction. That is true, no doubt, of all minds. The loneliness of each mind is one of the burdens humanity must bear with resignation ; but that loneliness has been increased in the Indian by the discipline of ages, until it is not an incident, but the first essential of his character.
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