The Sun.
London, England, 1858-09-30 00:00:00

civilised people, and who, though their ener-
gies have been prostrated by centuries of Mahome-
dan misrule, yet, are quite able, for the most part,

OUR

'DIA

The following letter is from an intelligent Hin-
doo addressed to a gentleman in Scotland :
" Sir—Your letter of Jan. 25th last reached Cal-
cutta while I was at Moorshedabad, and since my
return I have been so busy with other urgent matters
that I had no time to answer it, for which delay I
beg you will excuse me.
" I am beholden to you for the compliment you
have been pleased to pay me by asking my opinion
respecting the two letters you addressed the Stir-
ling Observer, touching the important question of
the religious policy of Government in India, and I
shall not fail to communicate to you my sentiments
thereupon.
"In the letter headed Mahommedans and Hin-
doos versus Christians' you state that, these Mahom-
medans and Hindoos having kept to their religion
for the long period of 1,400 years, there is little
chance of converting them to Christianity. The
Mahommedan religion is only 1,261 years old, for
Mahommed first preached his doctrines at Mecca
in the year of Christ 597. Three hundred and
twenty-seven years before Christ Alexander in-
vaded India, where he found Hindooism the esta-
blished religion of the country, and it existed here
for many centuries before.
" Though ' we the Hindooo community differ with
the Christian missionaries in opinion that Hin-
dostan will one day be included in Christendom,'
yet it is impossible to say what change it may
please God to effect in the religious faith of this
land some hundred years hence. When Jesus of
Nazareth first taught his tenets to the obscure
fishermen of Galilee the man would have been pro-
nounced as bereft of his wits who would have pre-
dicted that the many nations of the earth who now
profess Christianity would 1,800 years thence fol-
low that religion. The Christians believe in eel.;
tarn prophecies, many of which they observe have
been verified by subsequent events, and who can
calculate, say they, what result the efforts of the
missionaries may produce upon the Hindoo nation
centuries hence ?
"To allow every man to practise the rites and
ceremonies of his religion and to act up to the prin-
cipl es laid down therein for his guidance, so long as
he does not inflict any injury to the life, person, and
property of his neighbours, is the rule which has
invariably been followed by the local Government,
ever since the establishment of British supremacy
in India. And as the missionary conscientiously
believes that it is his duty to benefit the Hindoos
by preaching to them what he devoutly thinks to
be the Word of God, it would be offering violence
to his religion were the Government to prevent his
doing so.
" Moreover, the dis interested wish of the mis-
sionaries to promote the weal of my countrymen, as
indicated by the numerous charity schools and col-
leges they have established, and keep up from funds
raised among the members of their communion in
Europe and America, the purity of the lives they
lead operating as living examples of morality upon
all who come in contact with them (and their inter-
course with the native population is more frequent
and familiar than that of other foreigners), the
smile of genuine affection with which the mission-
ary invariably meets the Hindoo when they meet
one another, the unalloyed sympathy he evinces
towards them, the consolation he offers in his hour
of anxiety and distress when applied to, the aid
and advice he is sure to afford him in all cases,
whether the ailment be of the body or mind, have
conduced to make the missionaries the most liked and
trusted of all foreigners in our native community ;
you are, therefore, mistaken in thinking that
Brahmins have, in conjunction with the fanatic
Mahommedans, vowed death to every one who dares
to become a Christian.' When a person among us
abjures the Hindoo faith and embraces Christianity,
he stands in the position of a man in your country
who, born a Protestant, becomes a proselyte to the
Roman Catholic faith; but no one dreams, either
here or in Scotland, of murdering him. The Ma-
hommedan and the Brahmin can never properly or
cordially agree as long as the Mahommedan is a
Mahommedan ; for the latter (Brahmin) can never
forget, though he can forgive, the wholesale mas-
sacres, the desecration of temples, the violation of
women, and the grinding tyranny of 900 years.
" The Hindoo and the Mahommedan, it is true,
have leagued in the mutinous districts and with the
rebellious army against the British Government,
not because the Government is composed of Chris-
tians, but because as native subjects of a foreign
Government they believe they have common griev-
ances to complain of, for which the misguided
wretches foolishly despaired of obtaining redress.
There is a Hindoo proverb which runs to the effect
that neither the bald-headed man is good, nor is
the tamarind sweet.' By the bald-headed man is
implied the Mahommedan, for all the orthodaw
men of that persuasion shave their heads, and tama-
rind, you know, is very acid I can cite to you hun-
dreds of such adages.
" The fact should not be lost sight of that all ser-
vants of Government, whether Christian or Hindoos
if believed to be faithful to the interests of Govern-
ment, have been alike ill-treated by the rebels, and
it has been ascertained that the natives of Bengal in
tho North-Woct provinces, because of their observed
leaning towards the British Government, have
fared the worst during these turmoils wherever
they fell into the hands of those miscreants.
" You mention Lord Shaftesbury and others of
London as busying themselves to get up a Chris-
tianising crusade to India. So far as I have read of
the proceedings of the societies with which that
nobleman is connected, or his public speeches, there
has been nothing to warrant this idea in any bad or
objectionable sense. His lordship and friends never
advocated the compulsory conversion of my coun-
trymen to Christianity, but have always been the
foremost among the nobility and gentry of Britain
to promote the cause of morality, sound education,
and as those generous men conscientiously believe,
of true religion in Hindostan. Pprsonally, of course,
I know nothing of Lord Shaftesbury, but I cannot
allow the opportunity to escape without recording
my grateful sense, as well as that of all those of my
compatriots who had the means of knowing them,
of his invaluable services to Hindostan.
" Allow me to repeat, you err in thinking that
religion has been at the bottom of all these atroci-
ties.' I assure you, sir, that religion in the way in
which you seem to imagine has had nothing to do
with this rebellion whatever. You seem to be under
the impression that the former policy of the India,
Company not to admit missionaries into their pos-
sessions was a wise one, and to those changes in
their policy which have subsequently been made
may be ascribed the sole cause of these disasters.'
The former policy you advert to was, in my decided
opinion, unjust alike to the missionaries and to my
countrymen, inasmuch as it deprived the former of
all means of exercising here the duties enjoined on
them by their religion, which in plain English was
an infringement of one of their essential rights as
subjects—a right the possession and free use of
which has never been known within the last 80
years to have done here an iota of harm to any
living
being whatsoever, but, on the contrary, has
tended materially to raise the British character in
the estimation of our community by presenting to
view the only foreigners who tread the soil of Hind
on the noble errand of disinterestedly doing good
to her children ; its injustice to our people could
only be calculated by holding before the mind's eye
the benign and salutary influence which the inter-
course of the missionaries with our people has exer-
cised upon their manners, the vast benefits they
have conferred upon the populace by gratuitously
imparting to thousands the blessings of improved
education, who, but for their labour of love, would
have grovelled in darkness and starvation, and the
impetus their righteous examples have given to the
cause of moral and social progress wherever they
have made their sojourn. Let us, also, bear in
mind the circumstance that, in a country like this,
where the Government is despotic, the people are
denied all voice in the administration, the press
exists only in a few cities, principally in a foreign
language, and, with two or three exceptions, pro-
fessedly as the organ of foreigners, and its use and
advantages are totally unknown to the bulk of the
people, the existence of so independent a body as
the missionaries, the sacred nature of whose calling
entitles them unreservedly to point out their
faults and merits to all men, whether in high
places or low, operates as a check against the abuse
of power. The ancient Hindoo aristocracy, who
felt both pride and pleasure in promoting native
arts and encouraging native learning, having nearly
dwindled and vanished wherever the British have
planted their rule in Hindostan, as the inevitable
result of a system which excludes the children of
the soil from all high offices of trust and emolument
in the State which formerly belonged to them, the
Brahmins have lost the patrons who enabled them
to maintain the many thousands of tols and pat-
sholus (i. -e., Sanscrit colleges and vernacular
schools) which provided gratuitous education, with
board, to the poor throughout the whole length and
breadth of the land ; and to prohibit the mission-
aries, who in a great measure fill the places of the
learned Brahmins as regards the charitable distri-
bution of knowledge to our indigent population,
would be to deprive them of advantages, for the
loss of which, under the present state of things, no-
thing could compensate.
" From what you have said in a letter, headed
How India is to be governed,' it is evident that
you suppose the people of this country to be under
the impression that Government or others intend
in some improper way to Christianise them. Per-
mit me to observe that this is a mistake ; for Hindu-
stan is a country not inhabited by irrational
savages, but by the Hindoos, who, in all ages, have
enjoyed the credit of being V cemp4r4trfely

to make a distinction between coercive interference
with religion and appeal to reason. The mission-
aries have never authoritatively or coercively inter-
fered with our religion ; all that they do is to
address our understanding and conscience, and
where is the harm, therefore, of our hearing them?
If any of our countrymen feel convinced that his
adoption of the Christian faith is the best mode of
attaining beatitude, there is no physical or legal
hindrance to his doing so—it is a question between
him, his conscience, and his Maker. Why should
the Hindoo nation work up into a frenzy, originate
a rebellion, and endanger the public safety, because
one, or some of its members, has or have of his or
their free will and accord forsaken the national
creed and embraced that of Jesus ? The cry that
has been raised by the rebels against the Govern-
ment or any others, alleging that religion has been
forcibly or fraudulently interfered with, is utterly
hollow and unfounded, and I beg you will give no
credence to it and point out to your friend its fallacy.
" From the tenor and purport of both your
letters published in the Stirling Observer, it appears
that you take the Brahmins to be a class of cruel
intolerant, and unprincipled men. This wholesale
denunciation against the reverend Hindoo clergy is
erroneous and undeserved, you must be judging of
the whole race from some of the sad occurrences
connected with the recent mutinies. Of course
among millions there must be thousands less reput-
able than others ; and amid the horrors of mutiny-
and rebellion the worst passions are sure to be
stirred up ; it was so even in France, said to be the
politest country in the world. Past and present
history do not afford any data to support this accu-
sation of the Brahmins as a race. The Brahmins,
and more especially that large and more influen-
tial section of them that has been hereditarily de-
voted to literary and philosophical pursuits, far
from being cruel, are proverbially distinguished
for their gentleness and humanity. Some of them
carry their doctrine of kindliness so far that they
reckon it an inexpiable sin to hurt any sentient
being whatever, for they believe that to love God
and his creatures is the chiefest of virtues. As
to toleration, they are ever ready to listen to what
any one has to say who proposes to communicate
any knowledge, whether sacred or profane, and to
hate any person for entertaining sentiments con-
trary to their own is altogether foreign to their na-
ture. There have existed in Hindostan from time
immemorial various sects of dissenters from the
established religion, and some of them went to the
length of denying even the existence of the Supreme
Being without experiencing any hindrance or mo-
lestation from their countrymen. Among us it is
considered the height of folly to persecute a man
for his opinion. Fraud, oppression, and cruelty are
means unsuited to produce conviction, or to help
the propagation of theories. They are instruments
the holy Brahmin would never stoop to think of
much less to touch ; they were chosen, used, and
recommended by the Mahommedans, but found a
the least favour in the eye of the Ilindoos.
" The worship of Almighty God in his unity is the
fundamental principle of the ancient Hindoo reli-
gion, and the errors and misconception of ages have
encrusted thereon pantheism and polytheism,
idolatry and superstition, which I grieve to say are
now received and believed by the mass of the peo-
ple as the tenets of their creed. There are very few
even among the Brahmins, who comprehend their
ancient faith, and such as do, abstain from the afore-
said abominations, but as to those who do not (and
they form the majority), their bitterest enemies
can never with justice lay the charge of hypocrisy
or insincerity at their door. As regards their cha-
racter, it is such as to command the love and adora-
tion of the Hindoo community, and would be held
in like estimation by our brethren in Europe had
they equal opportunities of knowing its excellen-
cies

...laving to the best of my humble power an-
swered your letter, I conclude with the prayer that
may God, in His infinite mercy, forgive us all our
sins—may He so enlighten the understanding of
His children all over the earth as to enable us to
see the errors of our ways, to comprehend the
heinousness of the crime of fratricide, i.e., of waging
war against one another. May the Universal Father
so purify our hearts as that we, living with each
other in brotherly affection, may mutually help in
teaching, learning, and practising the dictates of
true religion, and thereby glorify Him who exalted
us above all living beings by endowing us with a
mind to reason and a heart to love.
" I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
" DUKHENA. RUNJUN MOOKERM.

" Calcutta, June 30.
" P.S.—As your two letters appeared in a public
ioural, I hope that, as a matter of justice to me and
to the cause of truth in India, you will give inser-
tion to my reply in the same channel, and oblige
D. M."