Advice to the Indian Aristocracy/Introduction
INTRODUCTION.
MY old and valued friend, the Maharaja of Bobbili, has paid me the compliment to ask me to write an introduction to those interesting lectures, in which the common-sense and independence of character, for which he is conspicuous, are amply illustrated. I do not know any Indian nobleman better fitted to advise the youth of his own class, and it is with this object that he has taken his pen in hand "to prepare papers on various subjects of great importance to the landed aristocracy of India." I do not think that I have anything to say worthy of record here. It has been my good fortune to be associated with most capable, public-spirited, and high-minded princes and noblemen such as their Highnesses the Maharaja of Travancore, and the Raja of Cochin, and the Maharaja of Bobbili, but I have numbered among my friends in India others born to high station, and possessed of very great merits, who have nevertheless had short or unsuccessful lives, owing to their neglect of some of the lessons the Maharaja essays to teach. It is very painful to such as love India, and her sons of every rank and station, to look back upon many careers of great promise, which have come to a sad and premature end, and though the like happens in other countries as well as in India, there are certain temptations to which the great in our Eastern Empire are especially subject, and it is with these for the most part that the Maharaja is concerned. As he truly says, a foreigner and a person of a different religion cannot advise with such good effect. Indeed, such an one would not venture to come before an Indian audience saying that the Puranas were intended for the uneducated and common classes of people, and are equal to the words of a woman. Nor indeed would every author have the courage to add, "If one entirely depends on what a woman says one knows the result well enough." Few Parliamentary candidates in these days dare say as much! The Maharaja deals with religious questions in a down-right practical manner, the applications of which throughout the world's history would have changed the history of the world. The poet in that case would never have written :
"Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum."
The Maharaja, as becomes one who knows Europe and England well, allows exceptions to his rules. For instance, wives should obey husbands, but as among Christians the husband is not always older than the wife, the principle is not in their case applicable. Not so strictly applicable, I apprehend, is meant. The lecture on Truth disposes of questions which have occupied casuists for ages. Before the Maharaja, Sheikh Sadi had written, what Englished, runs thus :
"Well meant falsehood is better than trouble-raising truth."
And before Sadi, Mahomet held an untruth to be commendable when it tended to reconcile foes, advantaged the faithful in war with the infidel, or pleased a wife. The Maharaja's treatment of the case must be perused to be appreciated, and like the poet and the prophet he finds untruth in words sometimes permissible. As he says, it is a most difficult question, and while no one is called upon to express concurrence with, or disapproval of, the views of individual authorities, cases in which untruth is held not only to be permissible, but obligatory, are not unknown in England, as the annals of certain of her Courts of Justice can testify. The Maharaja faces this like every other difficulty boldly, and expresses an unequivocal opinion, and the case of the pious hermit, who was doomed to everlasting punishment for carrying out his vow never to tell a lie, is at least as forcible as Sheik Sadi's illustration. It is far from the author's intention to palliate untruthfulness. Indeed his intention is altogether different, and his friends can testify to the fact that his life is a practical proof of his own love and practice of truth. Sri Krishna apparently allows greater laxity than Mahomet, but it seems very probable, as the Maharaja hints, that his indulgence has been enlarged by certain of his exponents and disciples. Our author points out, however, that untruths told between husband and wife in the furtherance of pleasant and charming conversation deceive no one, and says he is afraid that strict truth does not prevail in general mercantile business. Even a visit to England has not dispelled this fear. Then how wise are his observations upon the waste of time, and the vice of unpunctuality, which causes in the aggregate more unhappiness than crime, and upon the greater merit of monogamy, "in view of the demands modern civilization makes upon our energies and thoughts." Upon dress he leaves nothing more to be said, and has always had the good taste and good sense to rejoice in the far more beautiful Indian costumes he invariably wears even in Europe. He abstains, with more politeness than sincerity, I suspect upon this one occasion, from saying ours "is an ugly dress," and is content to observe that "it is purely European and so unfitted for Hindus." How justly does he urge his readers not to be too submissive to Europeans, but to be natural, and how shrewd is his remark that "except in business matters Europeans do not like to see persons of rank too submissive." The whole chapter is alike in matter and in manner admirable. As to sport, I would only put in a plea for that much maligned friend of the agriculturist the tiger, who keeps down the head of crop- destroying deer, antelope and pig, and takes a comparatively moderate toll of cattle. The man-eater is a disgrace to his class and of rare occurrence. For the destruction of such it is fair to offer rewards, but surely the slayer of 100 tigers is the ryot's foe. It is not a little extraordinary to me that the Indian Government should offer indiscriminate rewards for the extermination of one of the most beautiful, and not the least useful, of living creatures. Hardly however is the man taken seriously who deprecates the destruction of anything so distinctively Indian as the tiger, and I lifted up my voice in vain upon the great cat's behalf in the Viceroy's Legislative Council. For the present I will confine myself to expressing a hope that the Maharaja's brother will never reach the tale of a hundred tigers slain.
The Maharaja is well qualified to write on Health, and many folks in England are now saying, what he says, about the abuse of smoking. Nor, when he comes back to us, will his dictum "that it is a very objectionable thing for females to smoke" be without interest and point. Writing upon moral courage the Maharaja lays it down that "politicians are considered to have the greatest courage of mind." It is not clear whether this comforting conclusion is formed upon Indian or British premisses, but as regards pundits, they are roundly described as "weak-minded, to whatever religion they belong." Nothing can exceed the wisdom and moderation of the lecture upon money, or the charitable and responsible spirit in which it is written. He greatly praises recent legislation in Madras and indeed all who know the Presidency must rejoice that the ancient Zamindaries have received a measure of protection, such as Lord Ampthill's Government has granted. It is not clear, however, how or why a money-lender should be bound to prove that the purpose for which money was borrowed is lawful. Concerning Estate management the Maharaja writes with the authority of an expert, but in this country one may be allowed to doubt if "Western people reap more enjoyment from their wealth than Hindus." The latter appear to me at any rate to be at least as happy as the English, the general expression of whose countenances can hardly be said to connote content and enjoyment to any exceptional extent. They might be reminded with advantage, as the Maharaja takes occasion to remind the Hindus, that according to the sacred writings enjoyment of life also is a duty. Who will dare to improve upon what a Hindu Maharaja of high character and standing has to say upon the sacred theme of charity? Not I, but in passing it is difficult not to underline, what he says of the not unheard-of case of the proprietor, who embarrasses his estate in order to give large subscriptions to objects of which Government approves, in the hope of thus deserving some honorary title or distinction.
The Maharaja having devoted a chapter to courage now shows his own, by entering the nursery, wherein he wisely deprecates intellectual forcing, urges that Hindu teachers are best for Hindu girls, and that European tutors for boys, themselves need supervision. The Maharaja is a Hindu of the Hindus, and is no believer in the advantage of educating youths to doubt and despise the system under which they have to live their own Jives, and in which all those around them live and move and have their being. Upon the marriage question he is content with what Nature prescribes for India, and does not yearn to substitute for it systems Providence provided for wholly different circumstances. He warns young land-owners against litigation, lawyers, and false friends, and against borrowing and lending, and writing of friendship very aptly illustrates his case by introducing the late Maharaja of Vizianagaram, one of the most charming and attractive personalities I ever met, who was friend indeed to every living soul except in some respects to himself. It was natural that with him should end a hereditary feud, which for long divided the Northern Circars into two camps, those of Bobbili and Vizianagaram. Would the Maharaja of the latter had survived to read the appreciation of the leader of the former clan! Towards the end of his book, the Maharaja, as men in their later lives, gets back to religion, and with robust common-sense untainted with theology he beats the whole Hindu system into shape, wipes off excrescences, and shows up the underlying truths in strong relief. He makes short work of the monkey folk, and the magnanimous apes, of whose proceedings I have read with wrapt attention in the Ramayana, whose route march I have followed in the field. "It is necessary that not only Hindus, but also men of other creeds should impartially throw aside any statements, or accounts made in their religious books that do not stand to reason." Here is a religious reformer indeed and at once away go the Lilavati, "the light loves carved in the temple stones." He says "I should like to deal with the Ramayana, and reserve it for another occasion." To this we may look forward with pleasure and as the romantic charm of the poem will no doubt survive, it will perhaps not be necessary to beseech the Maharaja not to give to the word "deal" that "slaughterous intention" attributed to it by the late Lord Salisbury. Indeed what is truly Hindu is safe enough in the author's hands, and almost his last words are those of warning to his hearers not to boast themselves far better than their sires.
It will be a pleasure to such as love India and her peoples to read the work of a highly educated, intelligent and travelled author, in which the destruction of all Hindu individuality is not considered per se as a merit, but in which on the contrary it is regarded as wrong in fact, in art, and in imagination to impair the ancient self- sufficient and highly complex civilization, to the task of providing a substitute for which Europeans and new Hindus are alike wholly unequal.
London, 'Xmas, 1904.