Good-bye to Western Culture -- Norman Douglas (1930) gives a rejoinder to the lies of Katherine Mayo's Mother India (which MK Gandhi called a 'Drain Inspector's Report').
Thanks to Balayogi Venkataraman for the link and observations made in the context of Wendy Doniger's warped view of Hindu culture which has been aptly described as Hinduphobia of western academe.
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Good-bye to Western Culture (1930) - Norman Douglas
Thanks to Balayogi Venkataraman for the link and observations made in the context of Wendy Doniger's warped view of Hindu culture which has been aptly described as Hinduphobia of western academe.
.
Good-bye to Western Culture (1930) - Norman Douglas
Title: Good-bye to Western Culture (1930) Author: Norman Douglas * A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
The best retort to Mother India was given by a British author, who wrote his book of some 500 pages, while travelling from Delhi to Kerala. In those days (1920's) it took more than 7 days. In beautiful prose he asks and answers the question: 'How about Europe' by Norman Douglas. He gives a befitting reply to twisted misinterpretations by westerners about Hindu scriptures.
Embedded is an abbreviated version (in 74 pages) of Norman Douglas' book, highlighting some points vividly made by Douglas about the beauty of India and the nobility of her people.
Appended are some excerpts from the book.
Balayogi Venkataraman
CRITICS of Hindu illiteracy should not forget that British rule is
largely responsible for it. By the Institutes of Manu, the parent was
obliged to place his child at school in his fourth year. At the
beginning of last century there were schools in every Indian village;
in sweeping away the village system we have simultaneously swept away
the schools. John Bright complained in 1853 that while our Government
had almost wholly overthrown the universally existing native
education, it had done nothing to supply the deficiency (E. Wood: _An
Englishman defends Mother India_, p. 229). Ten years ago only one
penny per head was spent on education in British-ruled India, whereas
Russia was spending between sevenpence and eightpence (H. M. Hynd-man:
_The Awakening of Asia_, p. 218). "One cannot fail to deplore the
rapid decadence, probably more rapid than the official figures show,
of independent educational institutions" (G. T. Garratt: _An Indian
Commentary_, p. 78).
Christian poets, mediaeval and modern, have hymned the charms of
womanhood in moving verse; what the old law-book of Manu says, or
rather sings, about women and maidens has a refinement of beauty which
is not surpassed in any European tongue. And Manu alone, of all
ancient lawgivers, allows for the passionate nature of women and will
not have them treated as frigid creatures: he knew the world! Of the
mother he says that she "exceedeth a thousand fathers in the right to
reverence, and in the function of educator." The scripturally
prescribed course of an Indian woman's life is not more humiliating
than that laid down in our own texts, and its practical working,
despite such horrors as Sati--the authority for which is based on an
altered text--has proved less calamitous. It is well to remember that
Christ Himself was not overpolite to His Mother on a certain occasion,
while Saint Peter and Saint Paul said things about women that were
both unkind and unreasonable.
ACCORDING to the privilege of disinterested and strenuous thinkers,
Nietzsche changed his mind now and then. He changed it in regard to
the Code of Manu. In an earlier work he said it was "founded on a holy
lie... everywhere the lie was copied, and thus Arian influence
corrupted the world." In this _Antichrist_ he finds that it is
"replete with noble values" and has "come into being like a good
law-book."
Manu's Tables have been spoken of as an invention of the priests. You
might as well call Aristotle's _Poetics_ an invention. These things
are not inventions; they are deductions. The principle of caste is
founded on the fact that men are not equal. One may suspect that Manu
was further aware of the biological truth that particular talents are
prone to run in families, and that he therefore elaborated his system
inductively: if in families, why not in allied family-groups forming
themselves by persistive selection and intermarriage into corporations
or guilds of musicians, doctors, servants and so forth? In pursuit of
this ideal he grew a little pig-headed; such is the way of all
law-givers, not excluding Moses and Jesus Christ.
Though there is no hint in the Veda of the caste-system, which would
seem to be rooted in differences of racial colour, it is a matter of
experience that men fall naturally into castes. Even in England, where
our very faces betray the impurity of our breeding, we can dispense
with neither the word nor the thing. Caste-feeling underlies every
form of refinement; it is a man's best prophylactic against that
mass-feeling which would make a cypher of him. Manu's deduction is
both logical and practical. No doubt such things are sometimes
threatened with what looks like arterio-sclerosis, as was the case
with the caste-system on the advent of Buddhism; or even with sudden
death: is there anything more logical and practical than Free Trade?
Parliamentary government sounds logical and practical, yet ours is
menaced with senile decay if not downright liquefaction, the Party
System having been brought to such a pitch that no Member can call his
soul his own. It has become a farce.
Caste is no farce. It rests on firmer foundations than anything which
the Western world has hitherto devised.
OUR own ancients give us glimpses into the beneficent operation of
Manu's laws. On three occasions does Megasthenes note the
inviolability of the Indian cultivator caste; he tells us that men of
this class, being regarded as public benefactors, are protected from
all injury, and that even when war is raging around them, those
engaged in agriculture remain unmolested at their tasks.
In war, moreover, "they never ravage an enemy's land with fire, nor
cut down its trees [compare this with what happened during the last
European war]... theft is almost unheard ofj they neither put out
money at usury nor know how to borrow; truth and virtue they hold
alike in esteem. Hence they accord no special privileges to the old
unless they possess superior wisdom [compare this with our
superannuated dodderers in authority]... These things indicate that
they possess sound, sober sense." Marco Polo tells us that the
Brahmins are "the best and most honourable merchants that can be
found. No consideration whatever can induce them to speak an untruth,
even though their lives should depend upon it."
Not fear of the law, but the fear of losing caste, was responsible for
this state of affairs. The toughest opponents of Alexander the Great
were the Indians under Poros, and the Greeks were loud in their
praises of these people; never in their eight years of constant
warfare had they met with such skilled and gallant soldiers, who,
moreover, surpassed in stature and bearing all the other races of
Asia. These were Hindus; Mohammedanism had not yet been invented. It
was Hindus again--Mahrattas, Sikhs, and our own Sepoys--who gave most
trouble to the British. The author of _Mother India_ has a marked
belief in the warlike qualities of Mohammedans.
Diodorus Siculus gives us a hint how this selection of the fittest
came about. "Hence Alexander led his army to the cities belonging to
So-phites, which were governed by most excellent laws; among the rest
they strictly observe this--To value their beauty and comely
proportion above all other things; and therefore they carefully
examine every part of the child when it is in the cradle, and such as
are sound and perfect in every limb and member, and likely to be
strong and comely, they nurse and bring up; but such as are lame and
deficient, and of a weak habit of body, they kill, as not worth the
rearing. They have the same regard to their marriages; for without
any regard to portion, or any other advantages, they only mind the
beauty of the person and the health and strength of their bodies."
How convenient we should have found it lately to possess a warrior
caste! Instead of that, we sent into the trenches thousands who were
unsuited for this profession by temperament, antecedents and physique;
thousands who had counterbalancing aptitudes of the highest utility.
What we have lost by the sacrifice of valuable persons unfitted for
war--artists, teachers, thinkers, bankers, scholars, officials,
inventors--cannot be repaired in a short generation.
A Warrior Caste would have avoided the wastage.
* *
AS TO the millions of Untouchables (some of them are very
touchable)--we have them in Europe also, and I wish they were
differentiated from others, and officially ear-marked, as they are in
India. Of the two varieties I prefer the Indian one.
Haeckel, that dry professor who writes as if he had discovered
Veligama in Ceylon, thus describes one of its inhabitants:
"It really seemed as though I should be pursued by the familiar
aspects of classical antiquity from the first moment of my arrival at
my idyllic home. For, as Socrates [the rest-house keeper] led me up
the steps into the open central hall of the rest-house, I saw before
me, with uplifted arms in an attitude of prayer, a beautiful naked,
brown figure, which could be nothing else than the famous statue of
the 'Youth Adoring.' How surprised I was when the graceful bronze
statue suddenly came to life, and dropping his arms fell on his knees,
and after raising his black eyes imploringly to my face bowed his
handsome face so low that his long black hair fell on the floor!
Socrates informed me that this boy was a Pariah, a member of the
lowest caste, the Rodiyas, who had lost his parents at an early age,
so he had taken pity on him. He was told off to my exclusive service,
had nothing to do the livelong day but to obey my wishes, and was a
good boy, sure to do his duty punctually. In answer to the question
what I was to call my new body-servant, the old man informed me that
his name was Gamameda (from Gama, a village, and Meda--middle). Of
course, I immediately thought of Ganymede, for the favourite of Jove
MANU lived ages ago, and the ground-plan of his statutes remains
unchanged save in those parts where the native has been driven into
contact with Occidental institutions. The result: the average Hindu is
happier than the average European. His birth-rate--he is supposed to
grow impotent between twenty-five and thirty--is higher than ours; he
has individuality, he has repose. "The Indians," says Tavernier, "do
everything with great circumspection and patience, and when they see
any one who acts with precipitation, or becomes angry, they gaze at
him without saying anything, and smile as at a madman." All Asiatics,
according to another writer, "attribute to almost all Englishmen
atrocious manners, chiefly because Englishmen are so impatient of loss
of time."
How about Europe? Europe may be heading for Colney Hatch. This
impatience or strenu-ousness is the White Man's characteristic, and
his curse. It is converting him into a harassed automaton, the slave
of machines and unhealthy legislation.
I see no urgent cause for alarm in the fact that sanatoria spring up
like mushrooms over-night; that suicides due to nerve-strain are
increasingly frequent where they should not be increasingly frequent,
namely, among the well-to-do classes--that Manchester, for example,
spends 160,000 pouns a year on lunacy, and that out of 607 patients in one
local asylum 335 were there as a result of mental anxiety, worry, and
overwork (they ought to be ashamed of themselves); that the number of
our known mental deficients shows a steady augmentation of 2,000 a
year. This last is a contemptible little figure, not worth talking
about. At this rate we can go on for ever, and Colney Hatch remains a
dream.
The dream might be realized if we had another three or four wars on
the scale of the last (a not unthinkable eventuality), particularly if
we allowed ourselves no centuries in which to recuperate between two
of them. This, likely enough, is how we should act, since each
succeeding cataclysm will leave us more empty-headed than the last;
more ready, therefore, to begin again without weighing the
consequences. Such a course could not but end in bringing us to the
incandescent, moonstruck stage; and thereafter we may anticipate a
great calm--no more hysteria, no more nervous wrecks, no more
sanatoria. By the time we reach, if we ever do, the age of Mother
India, some pious Hindu, travelling westwards to observe the condition
of our crazy Kindergarten, will discover the last European among the
ruins of strange machinery, hugging his passport-talisman and
dribbling at the mouth, in a state of mellow dementia.