Indian Unrest - Sir Valentine Chirol

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he returned to India accompanied by a chosen band of eager disciples from the West.

      There are, indeed, endless forms to this revival of Hinduism—as endless as to Hinduism itself—but what it is perhaps most important for us to note is that, wherever political agitation assumes the most virulent character, there the Hindu revival also assumes the most extravagant shapes. Secret societies place their murderous activities under the special patronage of one or other of the chief popular deities. Their vows are taken "on the sacred water of the Ganges," or "holding the sacred Tulsi plant," or "in the presence of Mahadevi"—the great goddess who delights in bloody sacrifices, Charms and amulets, incantations and imprecations, play an important part in the ceremonies of initiation. In some quarters there has been some recrudescence of the Shakti cultus, with its often obscene and horrible rites, and the unnatural depravity which was so marked a feature in the case of the band of young Brahmans who conspired to murder Mr. Jackson at Nasik represents a form of erotomania which is certainly much more common amongst Hindu political fanatics than amongst Hindus in general.

      By no means all, however, are of this degenerate type, and the Bhagvat Gita has been impressed into the service of sedition by men who would have been as incapable of dabbling in political as in any other form of crime, had they not been able to invest it with a religious sanction. There is no more beautiful book in the sacred literature of the Hindus; there is none in which the more enlightened find greater spiritual comfort; yet it is in the Bhagvat Gita that, by a strange perversion, the Hindu conspirator has sought and claims to have found texts that justify murder as a divinely inspired deed when it is committed in the sacred cause of Hinduism. Nor is it only the extremists who appeal in this fashion to Hindu religious emotionalism. It is often just as difficult to appraise the subtle differences which separate the "moderate" from the "advanced" politician and the "advanced" politician from the extremist as it is to distinguish between the various forms and gradations of the Hindu revival in its religious and social aspects. But it was in the courtyard of the great temple of Kali at Calcutta in the presence of "the terrible goddess" that the "leaders of the Bengali nation," men who, like Mr. Surendranath Banerjee, have always professed to be "moderates," held their chief demonstrations against "partition" and administered the Swadeshi oath to their followers. Equally noteworthy is the part played by the revival of Ganpati celebrations in honour of Ganesh, the elephant-headed god, perhaps the most popular of all Hindu deities, in stimulating political disaffection in the Deccan.

      Hand in hand with this campaign for the glorification of Hinduism at the expense of Western civilization there has been carried on another and far more invidious campaign for the vilification of everything British. The individual Englishman is denounced as a bloodsucker and a tyrant; his personal integrity is impugned and derided; his methods of administration are alleged to be wilfully directed to the impoverishment, and even to the depopulation, of India; his social customs are traduced as depraved and corrupt; even his women-folk are accused of common wantonness. This systematized form of personal calumny is a scarcely less significant feature of the literature of Indian unrest than its appeals to the Hindu scriptures and to the Hindu deities and its exploitation of the religious sentiment for the promotion of racial hatred. Swadeshi and Swaraj are the battle-cries of this new Hindu "nationalism," but they mean far more than a mere claim to fiscal or even political independence. They mean an organized uplifting of the old Hindu traditions, social and religious, intellectual and moral, against the imported ideals of an alien race and an alien civilization, and the sincerity of some, at least, of the apostles of this new creed cannot be questioned. With Mr. Arabindo Ghose, they firmly believe that "the whole moral strength of the country is with us, justice is with us, nature is with us, and the law of God, which is higher than any human law, justifies our action."

      This is a grave phenomenon not to be contemptuously dismissed as the folly of ill-digested knowledge or summarily judged and condemned, in a spirit of self-righteousness, as an additional proof of the innate depravity and ingratitude of the East. It undoubtedly represents a deep stirring of the waters amongst a people endowed with no mean gifts of head and heart, and if it has thrown up much scum, it affords glimpses of nobler elements which time may purify and bring to the surface. Nor if our rule and our civilization are to prevail must we be unmindful of our own responsibility or forget that our presence and the influences we brought with us first stirred the waters.

      The part played by Brahmanism in Indian unrest is far more conspicuous in some parts of India than in others, and for reasons which are generally not far to seek. Wherever it has been most active, it connotes perhaps more than anything else the reactionary side of that unrest. Though there have been and still are many enlightened Brahmans who have cordially responded to the best influences of Western education, and have worked with admirable zeal and courage to bridge the gulf between Indian and European civilization, Brahmanism as a system represents the antipodes of all that British rule must stand for in India, and Brahmanism has from times immemorial dominated Hindu society—dominated it, according to the Hindu Nationalists, for its salvation. "If," writes one of them, "Mother India, though reduced to a mere skeleton by the oppression of alien rulers during hundreds of years, still preserves her vitality, it is because the Brahmans have never relaxed in their devotion to her. She has witnessed political and social revolutions. Famines and pestilence have shorn her of her splendour. But the Brahmans have stood by her through all the vicissitudes of fortune. It is they who raised her to the highest pinnacle of glory, and it is they whose ministrations still keep up the drooping spirits of her children."

      The Brahmans are the sacerdotal caste of India. They are at the same time the proudest and the closest aristocracy that the world has ever seen, for they form not merely an aristocracy of birth in the strictest sense of the term, but one of divine origin. Of the Brahman it may be said as of no other privileged mortal except perhaps the Levite of the Old Testament: Nascitur non fit. No king, however powerful, can make or unmake a Brahman, no genius, however transcendent, no services, however conspicuous, no virtues, however pre-eminent, can avail to raise a Hindu from a lower caste to the Brahman's estate. In early times the caste laws must have been less rigid, for otherwise there would only be Aryan Brahmans, whereas in the South of India there are many Brahmans of obviously Dravidian stock. But to-day not even the Brahmans themselves can raise to their own equal one who is not born of their caste, though by the exercise of the castely authority they can in specific cases outcaste a fellow-Brahman who has offended against the immutable laws of caste, and, except for minor transgressions which allow of atonement and reinstatement, when once outcasted he and his descendants cease for ever to be Brahmans. The Brahmans might be at a loss to make good their claim that they date back to the remote ages of the Vedas. But a good deal more than two thousand years have passed since they constituted themselves the only authorized intermediaries between mankind and the gods. In them became vested the monopoly of the ancient language in which all religious rites are performed, and with a monopoly of the knowledge of Sanskrit they retained a monopoly of learning long after Sanskrit itself had become a dead language. Like the priests who wielded a Latin pen in the Middle Ages in Europe, they sat as advisers and conscience-keepers in the councils of every Hindu ruler. To the present day they alone can expound the Hindu scriptures, they alone can approach the gods in their temples, they alone can minister to the spiritual needs of such of the lower castes as are credited with sufficient human dignity to be in any way worthy of their ministrations.

      In the course of ages differences and distinctions have gradually grown up amongst them, and they have split up into innumerable septs and sub-castes. As they multiplied from generation to generation an increasing proportion were compelled to supplement the avocations originally sacred to their caste by other and lowlier means of livelihood. There are to-day over 14 million Brahmans in India, and a very large majority of them have been compelled to adopt agricultural, military, and mercantile pursuits which, as we know from the Code of Manu were already regarded as, in certain circumstances, legitimate or excusable for a Brahman even in the days of that ancient law-giver. In regard to all other castes, however, the Brahman, humble as his worldly status may be, retains an undisputed pre-eminence which he never forgets or allows to be forgotten, though it may only be a pale reflection of the prestige and authority of his more exalted caste-men—a prestige and authority, be it added, which have often been justified by individual achievements. How far the influence of Brahmanism as a system has been socially a

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