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It is not justified by history, which teaches us that civilisation is the result of themutual action of Europe and Asia; and thatthe advanced races of India are our ownkinsfolk.. It comp

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Title: Tales of Bengal

Author: S B Banerjea

Posting Date: December 13, 2009 [EBook

produced from images generously made available by The

Internet Archive/Million Book Project)

Tales of

Tales of Bengal

by S B Banerjea

I The Pride of Kadampur

II The Rival Markets

III A Foul Conspiracy

IV The Biter Bitten

V All’s Well That Ends Well

VI An Outrageous Swindle

VII The Virtue of Economy

VIII A Peacemaker

IX A Brahman’s Curse

X A Roland for His Oliver

XI Rámdá

XII A Rift in the Lute

XIII Debenbra Babu in Trouble

XIV True to His Salt

XV A Tame Rabbit

XVI Gobardhan’s Triumph

XVII.Patience is a Virtue

That “east is east, and west is west, andnever the twain shall meet,” is an axiomwith most Englishmen to whom the

oriental character seems an insolubleenigma This form of agnosticism is

unworthy of a nation which is responsiblefor the happiness of 300,000,000 Asiatics

It is not justified by history, which teaches

us that civilisation is the result of themutual action of Europe and Asia; and thatthe advanced races of India are our ownkinsfolk

The scene of Mr Banerjea’s tales hasbeen won from the sea by alluvial action

Its soil, enriched by yearly deposits ofsilt, yields abundantly without the aid ofmanure A hothouse climate and regularrainfall made Bengal the predestinedbreeding-ground of mankind; the seat of anancient and complex civilisation Butsubsistence is too easily secured in thosefertile plains Malaria, due to the absence

of subsoil drainage, is ubiquitous, and thestandard of vitality extremely low Bengalhas always been at the mercy of invaders.The earliest inroad was prompted byeconomic necessity About 2000 B.C acongeries of races which are now styled

“Aryan” were driven by the shrinkage ofwater from their pasture-grounds in

Central Asia They penetrated Europe insuccessive hordes, who were ancestors of

our Celts, Hellenes, Slavs, Teutons andScandinavians Sanskrit was the Aryans’mother-tongue, and it forms the basis ofnearly every European language A laterswarm turned the western flank of theHimalayas, and descended on UpperIndia Their rigid discipline, resultingfrom vigorous group-selection, gave theinvaders an easy victory over the negroidhunters and fishermen who peopled India.All races of Aryan descent exhibit thesame characteristics They split into

endogamous castes, each of which pursuesits own interests at the expense of othercastes From the dawn of history we findkings, nobles and priests riding roughshodover a mass of herdsmen, cultivators andartisans These ruling castes are imbued

with pride of colour The Aryans’ faircomplexions differentiated them from the

coal-black aborigines; varna in Sanskrit

means “caste” and “colour” Their

aesthetic instinct finds expression in apassionate love of poetry, and a tangibleobject in the tribal chiefs Loyalty is areligion which is almost proof against itsidol’s selfishness and incompetence

Caste is a symptom of arrested socialdevelopment; and no community whichtolerates it is free from the scourge ofcivil strife Class war is the most salientfact in history Warriors, termed

Kshatriyas in Sanskrit, were the earliestcaste Under the law of specialisationdefence fell to the lot of adventurous

spirits, whose warlike prowess gave themunlimited prestige with the peaceful

masses They became the governing

element, and were able to transmit theirprivileges by male filiation But they had

to reckon with the priests, descended frombards who attached themselves to thecourt of a Kshatriya prince and laid himunder the spell of poetry Lust of dominion

is a manifestation of the Wish to Live; thepriests used their tremendous power forselfish ends They imitated the warriors informing a caste, which claimed descentfrom Brahma, the Creator’s head, whileKshatriyas represented his arms, and theproductive classes his less noble

members

In the eleventh century B.C the warriorclans rose in revolt against priestly

arrogance: and Hindustan witnessed aconflict between the religious and seculararms Brahminism had the terrors of hellfire on its side; feminine influence was itssecret ally; the world is governed bybrains, not muscles; and spiritual authoritycan defy the mailed fist After a prolongedstruggle the Kshatriyas were fain to

acknowledge their inferiority

When a hierocracy has been firmly

established its evolution always followssimilar lines Ritual becomes increasinglyelaborate: metaphysical dogma grows toosubtle for a layman’s comprehension.Commercialism spreads from the market

to the sanctuary, whose guardians exploitthe all-pervading fear of the unknown toserve their lust of luxury and rule.

Brahminism has never sought to win

proselytes; the annals of ancient Indiarecord none of those atrocious

persecutions which stained mediaevalChristianity It competed with rival creeds

by offering superior advantages: and thebarbarous princes of India were keptunder the priestly heel by an appeal totheir animal instincts A fungoid literature

of abominations grew up in the Tantras,which are filthy dialogues between Siva,the destroying influence in nature, and hisconsorts One of these, Káli by name, isthe impersonation of slaughter Her shrine,

near Calcutta, is knee-deep in blood, and

the Dhyán or formula for contemplating

her glories, is a tissue of unspeakableobscenity Most Hindus are Saktas, orworshippers of the female generativeprinciple: happily for civilisation they aremorally in advance of their creed But it is

a significant fact that Káli is the tutelarygoddess of extremist politicians, whoseminds are prepared for the acceptance ofanarchism by the ever-present ideal ofdestruction

It was Bengal’s misfortune that its peoplereceived Brahminism in a corrupt anddegenerate form According to legend,King Adisur, who reigned there in theninth century of our era, imported five

priests from Kanauj to perform

indispensable sacrifices From this stockthe majority of Bengali Brahmins claimdescent The immigrants were attended byfive servants, who are the reputed

ancestors of the Kayasth caste In Sanskritthis word means “Standing on the Body,”whence Kayasths claim to be Kshatriyas.But the tradition of a servile origin

persisted, and they were forbidden tostudy the sacred writings An inheritedbent for literature has stood them in goodstead: they became adepts in Persian, andEnglish is almost their second mother-tongue to-day Kayasths figure largely in

Mr Banerjea’s tales: their history provesthat the pen is mightier than the sword

Economic necessity was the cause of thefirst invasion of India: the second wasinspired by religion The evolution oforganised creeds is not from simple to

complex, but vice versa From the

bed-rock of magic they rise through worship and man-worship to monotheism.The god of a conquering tribe is imposed

nature-on subdued enemies, and becomes Lord ofHeaven and Earth Monotheism of thistype took root among the Hebrews, fromwhom Mohammed borrowed the

conception His gospel was essentiallymilitant and proselytising Nothing canresist a blend of the aesthetic and

combative instincts; within a century ofthe founder’s death his successors hadconquered Central Asia, and gained a

permanent footing in Europe In the tenthcentury a horde of Afghan Moslems

penetrated Upper India

The Kshatriya princes fought with

dauntless courage, but unity of action wasimpossible; for the Brahmins fomentedmutual jealousies and checked the growth

of national spirit They were subduedpiecemeal; and in 1176 A.D an AfghanEmperor governed Upper India fromDelhi The Aryan element in Bengal hadlost its martial qualities; and offered noresistance to Afghan conquest, which wasconsummated in 1203 The invadersimposed their religion by fire and sword.The Mohammadans of Eastern Bengal,numbering 58 per cent., of the population,

represent compulsory conversions

effected between the thirteenth and

seventeenth centuries Eight hundred years

of close contact have abated religioushatred; and occasional outbursts are due topriestly instigation Hindus borrowed theZenana system from their conquerors, whoimitated them in discouraging widow-remarriages Caste digs a gulf betweenfollowers of the rival creeds, but Mr.Banerjea’s tales prove that a good

understanding is possible It is now

imperilled by the curse of political

agitation

In 1526 the Afghan dynasty was subverted

by a Mongol chieftain lineally descendedfrom Tamerlane His grandson Akbar’s

reign (1560–1605) was India’s goldenage Akbar the Great was a ruler of thebest modern type, who gave his subjectsall the essentials of civilisation But heknew that material prosperity is only themeans to an end Man, said Ruskin, is anengine whose motive power is the soul;and its fuel is love Akbar called all thebest elements in society to his side andlinked them in the bonds of sympathy.

Religion in its highest phase is coloured

by mysticism which seeks emblems of thehidden source of harmony in every form oflife Anthropomorphic conceptions arelaid aside; ritual is abandoned as

savouring of magic; hierocracy as part of

an obsolete caste system; metaphysical

dogma because the Infinite cannot beweighed in the balances of human reason.The truce to fanaticism called by Akbarthe Great encouraged a poet and reformernamed Tulsi Dása (1532–1623) to point asurer way to salvation He adored

Krishna, the preserving influence

incarnate as Ráma, and rehandled

Valmiki’s great epic, the Rámáyana, in thefaint rays of Christian light which

penetrated India during that age of

transition Buddha had proclaimed thebrotherhood of man; Tulsi Dása deduced

it from the fatherhood of God The

Preserver, having sojourned among men,can understand their infirmities, and isever ready to save his sinful creatureswho 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 inBihar and the United Provinces than is theBible in rural England The people ofHindustan are not swayed by relentlessfate, nor by the goddess of destruction.Their prayers are addressed to a God wholoves his meanest adorer; they accept thisworld’s buffetings with resignation: whileRáma reigns all is well.

If the hereditary principle were sound, theEmpire cemented together by Akbar’sstatecraft 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 like horde of followers; Hindus werepersecuted, and their temples were

locust-destroyed So the military castes whosereligion was threatened, rose in revolt;Viceroys threw off allegiance, and carvedout kingdoms for themselves Within acentury of Akbar’s death his Empire was aprey to anarchy

India had hitherto enjoyed long spells ofimmunity from foreign interference Herpeople, defended by the Himalayan walland the ocean, were free to develop theirown scheme of national life; and world-forces which pierce the thickest crust ofcustom, 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 oftheir territory A third invasion began inthe sixteenth century, and has continuedtill our own day The underlying motivewas not economic necessity, nor religiousenthusiasm, but sheer lust of gain

In 1498 Vasco da Gama discovered anall-sea route to India, thus opening thefabulous riches of Asia to hungry Europe.Portuguese, Dutch, French and Englishadventurers embarked in a struggle forIndian commerce, in which our ancestorswere victorious because they obtained thecommand of the sea, and had the wholeresources of the mother-country at theirback

Westerners are so imbued with the making instinct that they mentally open, aledger account in order to prove that Indiagains more than she loses by dependence

profit-on the people of these islands It cannot bedenied that the fabric of English

administration is a noble monument of thecivil skill and military prowess

developed by our race We have given thepeninsula railways and canals, postal andtelegraph systems, a code of laws which

is far in advance of our own Profoundpeace broods over the empire, famine andpestilence are fought with the weapons ofscience It would be easy to pile up items

on the debit side of our imaginary book Free trade has destroyed indigenouscrafts wholesale, and quartered the castes

cash-who pursued them on an over-taxed soil.Incalculable is the waste of human life andinherited skill caused by the shifting ofproductive energy from India to GreatBritain, Germany and America It cannot

be said that the oversea commerce, whichamounted in 1907–8 to £241,000,000, is

an unmixed benefit The empire exportsfood and raw materials, robbing the soil

of priceless constituents, and buys

manufactured goods which ought to beproduced at home Foreign commerce isstimulated by the home charges, whichaverage £18,000,000, and it received anindirect bounty by the closure of the mints

in 1893 The textile industry of Lancashirewas built upon a prohibition of Indianmuslins: it now exports yarn and piece

goods to the tune of £32,000,000, and thistrade 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 inmoney From a material point of view ourGovernment is the best and most honest inexistence If it fails to satisfy the psychicalcravings 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 magnifythe prestige of his order It has been

sapped by incidents of foreign rule and thespread of mysticism Pandits find theirstupendous lore of less account than the

literary baggage of a university graduate.Brahmin pride is outraged by the

advancement of men belonging to inferiorcastes 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 suppressedrevolt One centre of the insidious

agitation is the fell goddess Káli’s shrinenear Calcutta; another is Puna, which hasfor centuries been a stronghold of theclannish Máráthá Brahmans Railwayshave given a mighty impetus to religion byfacilitating access to places of pilgrimage;the post office keeps disaffected elements

in touch; and English has become a lingua

franca.

While Brahminism, if it dared, couldproclaim a religious war, it has powerfulenemies within the hierarchy A desire forsocial recognition is universal It was thePatricians’ refusal to intermarry withPlebeians that caused the great

constitutional struggles of Ancient Rome.Many of the lowest castes are rebellingagainst Brahmin arrogance They havewaxed rich by growing lucrative staples,and a strong minority are highly educated.Mystical sects have already thrown off thepriestly yoke But caste is by no meansconfined to races of Indian blood What isthe snobbery which degrades our Englishcharacter but the Indo-German Sudra’sreverence for his Brahmin? The

Europeans constitute a caste which

possesses some solidarity against

“natives,” and they have spontaneouslyadopted these anti-social distinctions Atthe apex stand covenanted civilians;

whose service is now practically a closepreserve for white men It is split into theSecretariat, who enjoy a superb climate

plus Indian pay and furlough, and the

“rank and file” doomed to swelter in the

plains Esprit de corps, which is the

life-blood of caste, has vanished Officers ofthe Educational Service, recruited fromthe same social strata, rank as

“uncovenanted”; and a sense of

humiliation reacts on their teaching

The Land.—In 1765 Clive secured for the

East India Company the right of levying

land-tax in Bengal It was then collected

by zemindars, a few of whom were independent nobles, and the rest merefarmers of revenue, who bid against oneanother at the periodical settlements

semi-Tenant right apart, the conception of

private property in the soil was

inconceivable to the Indian mind Everyone knows that it was borrowed by

English lawyers from the Roman codes,when commercialism destroyed the oldfeudal nexus Lord Cornwallis’s

permanent Settlement of 1793 was a

revolution as drastic in its degree as thatwhich Prance was undergoing Zemindarswere presented with the land for whichthey had been mere rakers-in of revenue Itwas parcelled out into “estates,” which

might be bought and sold like moveableproperty A tax levied at customary ratesbecame “rent” arrived at by a process ofbargaining between the landlord and

ignorant rustics The Government demandwas fixed for ever, but no attempt wasmade to safeguard the ryot’s interests.Cornwallis and his henchmen fondly

supposed that they were manufacturingmagnates of the English type, who hadmade our agriculture a model for the

world They were grievously mistaken.Under the cast-iron law of sale most of theoriginal zemindars lost their estates,

which passed into the hands of parvenussaturated with commercialism Bengal isnot indebted to its zemindars for any of thenew staples which have created so vast a

volume of wealth They are content to beannuitants on the land, and sub-infeudationhas gone to incredible lengths Most ofthem are absentees whose one thought is

to secure a maximum of unearned

increment from tillers of the soil In 1765the land revenue amounted to £3,400,000,

of which £258,000 was allotted to

zemindars A century afterwards their netprofits were estimated at £12,000,000,and they are now probably half as muchagain The horrible oppression described

by Mr Banerjea is impossible in our era

of law-courts, railways and newspapers.But it is always dangerous to bring thesense of brotherhood, on which

civilisation depends, into conflict withcrude animal instincts In days of

American slavery the planter’s interestprompted him to treat his human cattlewith consideration, yet Simon Legreeswere not unknown It is a fact that certainzemindars are in the habit of remeasuringtheir ryots’ holdings periodically, andalways finding more land than was setforth in the lease.

The Police.—A pale copy of Sir Robert

Peel’s famous system was introduced in

1861, when hosts of inspectors, inspectors and head constables were letloose on Bengal The new force washighly unpopular, and failed to attract theeducated classes Subaltern officers,therefore, used power for private ends,while the masses were so inured to

sub-oppression that they offered no resistance.There has been a marked improvement in

the personnel of late years; and Mr.

Banerjea’s lurid pictures of corruptionand petty tyranny apply to a past

generation of policemen The Governor of Eastern Bengal does justice

Lieutenant-to a much-abused service in his

Administrative Report for 1907–8 HisHonour “believes the force to be a hard-working body of Government servants, thedifficulties, trials, and even dangers ofwhose duties it is impossible for the

public at large really to appreciate” Heacknowledges that “India is passing

through a period of transition Old possessions and unscientific methods must

pre-be cast aside, and the value of the

confession must be held at a discount.”Bengal policemen fail as egregiously astheir British colleagues in coping withprofessional crime Burglary is a positivescourge, and the habit of organising gang-robberies has spread to youths of themiddle class.

Education.—Though Mr Banerjea has no

experience of the inner working of ourGovernment offices, he speaks on

education with an expert’s authority LordMacaulay, who went to India in 1834 aslegal member of Council, was responsiblefor the introduction of English as the

vehicle of instruction He had gainedadmission to the caste of Whigs, whosebattle-cry was “Knowledge for the

People,” and his brilliant rhetoric

overpowered the arguments of champions

of oriental learning Every one with asmattering of Sanskrit, Arabic or Persian,regrets the fact that those glorious

languages have not been adequately

cultivated in modern India Bengali is atrue daughter of the Sanskrit; it has Italiansweetness and German capacity for

expressing abstract ideas No degree ofproficiency in an alien tongue can

compensate for the neglect of the

vernacular Moreover, the curriculumintroduced in the “thirties” was purelyacademic It came to India directly fromEnglish universities, which had stuck fast

in the ruts of the Renaissance Undueweight was given to literary training,

while science and technical skill weredespised Our colleges and schools do notattempt to build character on a foundation

of useful habits and tastes that sweetenlife; to ennoble ideals, or inspire self-knowledge, self-reliance, and self-control.Technical education is still in its infancy;and the aesthetic instinct which lies

dormant in every Aryan’s brain is

unawakened A race which invented theloom now invents nothing but grievances

In 1901 Bengal possessed 69,000 schoolsand colleges, attended by 1,700,000

pupils, yet only one adult male in 10 andone female in 144 can read and write! TheCalcutta University is an examining body

on the London model It does not attempt

to enforce discipline in a city which

flaunts every vice known to great seaportsand commercial centres, unmitigated bythe social instinct Nor is the training ofcovenanted civilians more satisfactory In

1909 only 1 out of 50 selected candidatespresented himself for examination inSanskrit or Arabic! Men go out to India attwenty-four, knowing little of the

ethnology, languages or history, of theraces they are about to govern

Agriculture.—Seventy-two per cent of

the Bengalis live by cultivating the soil.The vast majority are in the clutches ofsome local Shylock, who sweeps theirproduce into his garners, doling out

inadequate supplies of food and seedgrain Our courts of law are used by these