Tales of Bengal | Page 6

He shows that Bengalis are
men of like passions with us. The picture is perhaps overcharged with
shade. Sycophants, hustlers and cheats abound in every community;
happily for the future of civilisation there is also a leaven of true
nobility: "The flesh striveth against the spirit," nor does it always gain
mastery. Having mixed with all classes for twenty eventful years, and
speaking the vernacular fluently, I am perhaps entitled to hold an
opinion on this much-vexed question. The most salient feature in the
Indian nature is its boundless charity. There are no poor laws, and the
struggle for life is very severe; yet the aged and infirm, the widow and
the orphan have their allotted share in the earnings of every household.
It is a symptom of approaching famine that beggars are perforce
refused their daily dole. Cruelty to children is quite unknown. Parents
will deny themselves food in order to defray a son's schooling-fees or

marry a daughter with suitable provision. Bengalis are remarkably
clannish: they will toil and plot to advance the interests of anyone
remotely connected with them by ties of blood.
Their faults are the outcome of superstition, slavery to custom, and an
unhealthy climate. Among them is a lack of moral courage, a tendency
to lean on stronger natures, and to flatter a superior by feigning to agree
with him. The standard of truth and honesty is that of all races which
have been ground under heel for ages: deceit is the weapon of
weaklings and slaves. Perjury has become a fine art, because our legal
system fosters the chicane which is innate in quick-witted peoples. The
same man who lies unblushingly in an English court, will tell the truth
to an assembly of caste-fellows, or to the Panohayat (a committee of
five which arbitrates in private disputes). Let British Pharisees study
the working of their own Divorce and County Courts: they will not find
much evidence of superior virtue! As for honesty, the essence of
commercialism is "taking advantage of other people's needs," and no
legal code has yet succeeded in drawing a line between fair and unfair
trade. In India and Japan merchants are an inferior class; and loss of
self-respect reacts unfavourably on the moral sense. Ingratitude is a
vice attributed to Bengalis by people who have done little or nothing to
elicit the corresponding virtue. As a matter of fact their memory is
extremely retentive of favours. They will overlook any shortcomings in
a ruler who has the divine gift of sympathy, and serve him with
devotion. Macaulay has branded them with cowardice. If the charge
were true, it was surely illogical and unmanly to reproach a community
numbering 50,000,000 for inherited defects. Difference of environment
and social customs will account for the superior virility of Europeans as
compared with their distant kinsmen whose lot is cast in the sweltering
tropics. But no one who has observed Bengali schoolboys standing up
bare-legged to fast bowling will question their bravery. In fact, the
instinct of combativeness is universal, and among protected
communities it finds vent in litigation.
Englishmen who seek to do their duty by India have potential allies in
the educated classes, who have grafted Western learning on a
civilisation much more ancient than their own. Bengal has given many
illustrious sons to the empire. Among the dead I may mention Pandits
Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar and Kissari Mohan Ganguli, whose vast

learning was eclipsed by their zeal for social service; Dr. Sambhu
Chandra Mukharji, whose biography I wrote in 1895; and Mr. Umesh
Chandra Banarji, a lawyer who held his own with the flower of our
English bar. A Bengali Brahmin is still with us who directs one of the
greatest contracting firms in the empire. How much brighter would
India's outlook be if this highly-gifted race were linked in bonds of
sympathy with our own!
The women of the Gangetic delta deserve a better fate than is assigned
to them by Hindu and Mohammadan custom. They are kept in
leading-strings from the cradle to the grave; their intellect is rarely
cultivated, their affections suffer atrophy from constant repression. Yet
Mr. Banerjea draws more than one picture of wifely devotion, and the
instinctive good sense which is one of the secrets of feminine influence.
Women seldom fail to rise to the occasion when opportunity is
vouchsafed them. The late Maharani Surnomoyi of Cossimbazar
managed her enormous estates with acumen; and her charities were as
lavish as Lady Burdett-Coutts's. Toru Dutt, who died in girlhood, wrote
French and English verses full of haunting sweetness. It is a little
premature for extremists to prate of autonomy while their women are
prisoners or drudges.
Superstition.--Modes of thought surviving from past ages of intellectual
growth are the chief obstacles in the path of progress. Mr. Banerjea's