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

OUR BULB IN INDIA.

The' following letter is from an intelligent Hi:
doo addressed to a gentleman in Scotland :
" Sir—Your letter of Jan. 25th last reached Ca-
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 convertinz them to Christianity. The
Malionunedali 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 llindooism 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-
nounctd 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 ear-
taiii 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 ia 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 orthoz-es
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 Hindoo,
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 Ben ;al in
the North-West 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. Personally, 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.' .1 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 arid 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 yeiniacular
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 Hindo-
sten is a country not inhabited by irrational
savages, but by tile Hindoos, who, in all ages, have
enjoyed the credit of being a comparatively