Tales of Bengal | Page 3

to salvation. He adored Krishna, the preserving
influence incarnate as Ráma, and rehandled Valmiki's great epic, the
Rámáyana, in the faint rays of Christian light which penetrated India
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