Tales of Bengal | Page 3

during that age of transition. Buddha had proclaimed the brotherhood of man; Tulsi Dása deduced it from the fatherhood of God. The Preserver, having sojourned among men, can understand their infirmities, and is ever ready to save his sinful creatures who call upon him. The duty of leading others to the fold is imposed on believers, for we are all children of the same Father. Tulsi Dása's Rámáyana is better known in Bihar and the United Provinces than is the Bible in rural England. The people of Hindustan are not swayed by relentless fate, nor by the goddess of destruction. Their prayers are addressed to a God who loves his meanest adorer; they accept this world's buffetings with resignation: while Ráma reigns all is well.
If the hereditary principle were sound, the Empire cemented together by Akbar's statecraft might have defied aggression. His successors were debauchees or fanatics. They neglected the army; a recrudescence of the nomad instinct sent them wandering over India with a locust-like horde of followers; Hindus were persecuted, and their temples were destroyed. So the military castes whose religion was threatened, rose in revolt; Viceroys threw off allegiance, and carved out kingdoms for themselves. Within a century of Akbar's death his Empire was a prey to anarchy.
India had hitherto enjoyed long spells of immunity from foreign interference. Her people, defended by the Himalayan wall and the ocean, were free to develop their own scheme of national life; and world-forces which pierce the thickest crust of custom, reached them in attenuated volume. Their isolation ended when the sea was no longer a barrier; and for maritime nations it is but an extension of their territory. A third invasion began in the sixteenth century, and has continued till our own day. The underlying motive was not economic necessity, nor religious enthusiasm, but sheer lust of gain.
In 1498 Vasco da Gama discovered an all-sea route to India, thus opening the fabulous riches of Asia to hungry Europe. Portuguese, Dutch, French and English adventurers embarked in a struggle for Indian commerce, in which our ancestors were victorious because they obtained the command of the sea, and had the whole resources of the mother-country at their back.
Westerners are so imbued with the profit-making instinct that they mentally open, a ledger account in order to prove that India gains more than she loses by dependence on the people of these islands. It cannot be denied that the fabric of English administration is a noble monument of the civil skill and military prowess developed by our race. We have given the peninsula railways and canals, postal and telegraph systems, a code of laws which is far in advance of our own. Profound peace broods over the empire, famine and pestilence are fought with the weapons of science. It would be easy to pile up items on the debit side of our imaginary cash-book. Free trade has destroyed indigenous crafts wholesale, and quartered the castes who pursued them on an over-taxed soil. Incalculable is the waste of human life and inherited skill caused by the shifting of productive energy from India to Great Britain, Germany and America. It cannot be said that the oversea commerce, which amounted in 1907-8 to ￡241,000,000, is an unmixed benefit. The empire exports food and raw materials, robbing the soil of priceless constituents, and buys manufactured goods which ought to be produced at home. Foreign commerce is stimulated by the home charges, which average ￡18,000,000, and it received an indirect bounty by the closure of the mints in 1893. The textile industry of Lancashire was built upon a prohibition of Indian muslins: it now exports yarn and piece goods to the tune of ￡32,000,000, and this trade was unjustly favoured at the expense of local mills under the Customs Tariff of 1895. But there are forces in play for good or evil which cannot be appraised in money. From a material point of view our Government is the best and most honest in existence. If it fails to satisfy the psychical cravings of India there are shortcomings on both sides; and some of them are revealed by Mr. Banerjea's tales.
Caste.--As a Kulin, or pedigreed Brahmin, he is naturally prone to magnify the prestige of his order. It has been sapped by incidents of foreign rule and the spread of mysticism. Pandits find their stupendous lore of less account than the literary baggage of a university graduate. Brahmin pride is outraged by the advancement of men belonging to inferior castes. The priesthood's dream is to regain the ascendancy usurped by a race of Mlecchas (barbarians); and it keeps orthodox Hindus in a state of suppressed revolt. One centre of the insidious agitation is the fell goddess Káli's shrine near Calcutta; another is Puna, which has for centuries been a stronghold of