India, Old and New | Page 5

our London parks, the green playfield and
the vital lung of the whole city. Along and behind Chowringhee there
are still a few of the old-time mansions of Thackeray's "nabobs," with
their deep, pillared verandahs standing well off from the road, each
within its discreet "compound," but they are all rapidly making room
for "eligible residences," more opulent perhaps but more closely
packed, or for huge blocks of residential flats, even less adapted to the
climate. The great business quarter round Dalhousie Square has been
steadily rebuilt on a scale of massive magnificence scarcely surpassed
in the city of London, and many of the shops compare with those of our
West End. The river, too, all along the Garden Reach and far below is
often almost as crowded as the Pool of London, with ocean-going
steamers waiting to load or unload their cargoes as well as with
lumbering native sailing ships and the ferries that ply ceaselessly
between the different quarters of the city on both banks of the Hugli.
The continuous roar of traffic in the busy streets, the crowded tram-cars,
the motors and taxis jostling the ancient bullock-carts, the surging
crowds in the semi-Europeanised native quarters, even the pall of
smoke that tells of many modern industrial activities are not quite so
characteristic of new India as, when I was last there, the sandwich-men
with boards inviting a vote for this or that candidate in the elections to
the new Indian Councils.
In all the strenuous life and immense wealth of this great city, to which
European enterprise first gave and still gives the chief impulse, Indians
are taking an increasing share. The Bengalees themselves still hold very
much aloof from modern developments of trade and industry, but they
were the first to appreciate the value of Western education, and the
Calcutta University with all its shortcomings has maintained the high
position which Lord Dalhousie foreshadowed for it nearly seventy
years ago. In art and literature the modern Bengalee has often known
how to borrow from the West without sacrificing either his own
originality or the traditions of his race or the spirit of his creed. Some
of the finest Bengalee brains have taken for choice to the legal
profession and have abundantly justified themselves both as judges in
the highest court of the province and as barristers and pleaders. In every

branch of the public services open to Indians and in all the liberal
professions, as well as in the civic and political life of their country, the
Bengalees have played a leading part, not restricted even to their own
province, and in the very distinguished person of Lord Sinha, Bengal
has just provided for the first time an Indian to represent the
King-Emperor as governor of a province--the neighbouring province of
Behar and Orissa. Nor have the women of Bengal been left behind as in
so many other parts of India. In Calcutta many highly educated ladies
have won such complete release from the ancient restraints imposed
upon their sex that they preside to-day over refined and cultured homes
from which the subtle atmosphere of the East does not exclude the ease
and freedom of Western habits of mind and body.
Yet these are still exceptions, and even in such a progressive city as
Calcutta and even amongst the highest classes the social and domestic
life of the majority of Hindus is still largely governed by the laws of
Hinduism, and not least with regard to marriage and the seclusion of
women. I was once allowed to attend a sort of "scripture lesson" for
little high-caste Hindu girls, organised by a benevolent old Brahman
lady, who has devoted herself to the cause of infant education on
orthodox lines. None of these 40 or 50 little girls had of course reached
the age, usually ten, at which they would be cut off from all contact
with the other sex except in marriage. They had bright and happy faces,
and as it was a Hindu festival most of them were decked out in all their
finery with gold and silver bangles on their dainty arms and ankles,
sometimes with jewelled nose-rings as well as ear-rings. They went
through an elaborate and picturesque ritual with great earnestness and
reverence and carefully followed the injunctions of the Brahman, a
cultured and Western-educated gentleman who presided over the
ceremony. It was an attractive scene, and would have been entirely
pleasant but for the painful contrast afforded by some eight or ten poor
little mites with shaven heads and drab-coloured dresses, almost ragged
and quite unadorned. They were infant widows, condemned according
to the laws of Hinduism by the premature death of their husbands to
whom they had been wedded, but whom they had never known, to
lifelong widowhood, and therefore in most