Gujarát and the Gujarátis/Preface
PREFACE.
The page of the social and domestic life of the people of India is almost unread by Europeans. There are many reasons for this. First, there is the difference of language. Very few Englishmen have sufficient knowledge of any Indian language to converse with Indians with ease and fluency. Then, there is the deficient education and seclusion of Indian women, which cuts them off from social intercourse with English men, and renders their meeting with English women productive of very meagre results. Gravest of all, as a bar to free intercourse, is religious prejudice. This operates even where friendship exists between Englishmen and Indians. Over every avenue to real cordiality, the Hindu and Muhammadan have written up: "Yes. To smell pork! To eat of the habitation which your prophet, the Nazarite, conjured the devil into. I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, and so following; but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you." It has been said that the way to an Englishman's heart is through his stomach: well, the people of India cannot penetrate to English hearts that way. Caste sits before every Indian door and forbids the European to enter. The very shadow of a European pollutes the food of a Bráhman; and though an Indian may enter a European's house of prayer, the sacred places of the Hindu may not be profaned by the European footstep.
The story of Indian domestic and social life can be set forth only by the pens of Indians themselves, and these pens have many restraints upon them. Pages, therefore, such as these which are here presented to the English public, deserve to be welcomed. The author possesses a remarkable knowledge of the English language, and combines with it an amount of candour and freedom from bigotry which is rarely to be met with anywhere. In these sketches of Indian life will be seen the struggles which clever and ambitious Indians, who have but a meagre patrimony, must undergo, first to educate, and then to support themselves. Here, too, will be seen evidences of the friction which exists between the governing and the governed race. It is to be hoped that the hauteur of the one and the irritation of the other are decreasing; but the European who goes to sleep with his boots in an Indian gentleman's lap while travelling in the same compartment of a carriage on an Indian railway, is, it is to be feared, not wholly extinct; and wherever he exists he spreads around him an atmosphere of discontent in which good feeling finds it impossible to breathe.
Among the more general and lighter descriptions there are many sketches that will be new to English readers, as, for instance, the manner in which the people of India enjoy their holidays, the elephant-fights in the arena at Baroda. Many of these more interesting passages have drifted into the later chapters, and might be overlooked unless pointed out by reviewers. Of pure literary interest is the chapter on the Hindú epic, the Rámayana, which the author, struggling, perhaps, a little beyond his depth, compares with the Sháhnámah, and even with the Iliad.
What is said about English law may not, perhaps, be acceptable to English readers, and its soundness may be contested, but amongst Indians there would be a universal consensus as to its truth. The law's delay is in India an intolerable grievance; and it is certainly the fact that in the first mutiny the English judges were the most frequent victims.
The portraits of Indian notabilities seem to be drawn from the life, and will, no doubt, be thought by some to be recognisable; and it may be learnt from them that it is not always those Indians who are most countenanced and raised to the highest posts by the English authorities, who are most acceptable to their countrymen.
It will be seen that the author, although a very much younger man, is a friend of Lutfullah and his fellow-townsman, and these sketches have something in common with the autobiography of the older writer. May the débutant be equally fortunate with the English public!