The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1876-01-01 00:00:00

`! BARBARIANS."

The Times of Monday published the following letter :
Sir,—As an educated Hindoo I regret to notice in
one of. the leading articles of The Times of Tuesday the
expression "barbaric pomp," as applied to the enter-
tainment which is being given by the loyal subjects of
Her Majesty to the Prince of Wales in India. A
similar expression was used by the Dean of Westminster
when, in his sermon on his Royal Highness's departure
from England, he said that the Prince was going to
visit "those barbarous lands," meaning, I presume,
"India and its dependencies." I feel sure that you
would not wittingly give unnecessary pain to any one,
yet the above remark is calculated to annoy very many
of Her Majesty's loyal subjacte in India, especially as
it comes from one who occupies such an exalted position
as your honour.
Certainly India, in the estimation of its many mil-
lions of 'inhabitants, is not a barbarous country, but it
is well to know what others think of us. One of your
popular poets has somewhere said—
"Oh! wad some row'r the Otte gie us
To see ourseles as others see us "
Well, many English gentlemen who have never been
in India may look upon us as barbarians, but per-
mit me to remind you that the civilization of India is

of infinitely more distant date than England's is,
and thongh it has a kind of stationary aspect, it is
more far-reaching with the bulk of the population
than English civilization is. I have been travelling in.
England for a few months and have had many oppor-
tunities of observing the condition of ybur poor
people; I have also had the honour of conversing with
several retired Indian civilians upon the subject, and,
both from what I have seen and heard, lam convinced
that many of the poor in England are mush more
barbarous than the poor of my own country. lam
further convinced that the state of the poor in the
Christian countries of Italy, France, and England (all
of which countries I have visited), especially in the
large towns, is infinitely more wretched, godless, de-
grading, and barbarous than it is in heathen India.
It is often said that India has everything to learn
from England, and England has nothing to learn from
India. I aurquite certain that the pauper question
has been solved in India, with her teeming millions,
more satisfactorily on the family principle than it has
been in England on the State prinoiple. I have
recently seen one of your magnificent workhouses in
Brighton. I ask my very kind friend and patron with
whom lam staying what is the result? He tells me,
"The system is abominable; we are loosing family
ties, we are inducing hardness of heart on the part of
fathers towards their children, and of children
towards their parents." If this is true we have no
wish to change our "barbarism" for the much vaunted
Western "
You wish to make us Christians. You English
gentlemen and ladies subscribe very largely towards
Missions. What is the result? In Northern India
you have scarcely any converts, except among the
dregs of the people, the pariahs of society. These
allow themselves to be called "Christians " because it
Is profitable to get money and employment from the
various Missionary Societies, who vie with each other
In gaining converts. Why do you not make more
Christians among the respectable classes of society?
Because there is little to recommend itself in your
Christianity. Does it make your merchants, who send
their cotton wares to Bombay, honest men? Are
their goods pure and unadulterated? Does it make
your soldiers polite and moral men? If it does not, we
prefer our ancient Heathenism to your Christianity.
You, Sir, call us barbarous because of our pomp and
finery. Well, Sir' I have heard a good English pro-
verb about living in glass houses. We think it mar-
vellous that your ladies should have the innocent birds
killed that they may ornament their bonnets. I know
one European who cleared 4,000 rupees in one year by
sending home birds from India for that purpose. We
think it marvellous that your ladies should imitate our
superstitious jogees in wearing false hair and many
other strange things I might mention, which seem
very barbarous to us.
You, Sir, in England think we worship stocks of
wood and stone, and are, therefore, unlearned and
barbarous. We do no such thing; no more than
• Catholics worship images.
We have our ignorant, superstitious people, of
course, and I believe you also have a few in England.
We, many of us, worship in our temples, though we
no longer believe in our gods • but we are no more
idolaters on that account than many Englishmen are
Christians because they go to church.
Excuse, Sir, the length of this letter, but these
hard epithets vex loyzalsubjects.—l have the honour to
remain, A Mm BZR or THE BRAHMO SOMAJ.
Brighton.

In connection with the above, The Times of Tues-
day said—ln a letter published in The Times of yester-
day under the head of "Barbarians" "An Educated
Hindoo " complained that Dean Stanley, in his sermon
on England and India, delivered on the occasion of
the departure of the Prince of Wales, referred to the
"barbarous lands" he was about to visit. It is ad-
mitted that such an expression would justly give
offence to natives of India. It does not, however, occur
in the report of the sermon we published, and it ap-
pears that our Ifindoo Correspondent must have met
with it in some inaccurate report, in which the word
" barbarous " was substituted for the "marvellous."
The following is the passage of the sermon to which be
refers :—" We pray that this visit, long desired and at
last undertaken, to those marvellous lands, may, by
God's mercy, leave behind, on the one side (if so be)
the rememberance of graceful ads, kind words, Eng-
lish nobleness, Christian principle; on the other side,
awaken or renew in all concerned the sense of graver
duties, wider sympathies, loftier purposes,"