2. INDUSTRY, SCIENCE, ECONOMICS

The Swadeshi Movement (svadesi = belonging to one's own country), an agitation for the strengthening of Indian industries, arose in Bengal in Lord Curzon's viceroyalty under the stimulus of national excitement. Indians were urged to buy goods of Indian design and manufacture; articles and books were published, exhibiting the vast natural resources of India, the abundance of cheap labour available, and shewing how much India loses through importing what might quite well be made in the country. The movement was later contaminated by an organized Boycott of British goods, which was accompanied by much violence and social tyranny, disturbed business for a while, and embittered relations between the races, but entirely failed to divert the natural course of trade. The legitimate movement, however, has been distinctly useful. The educated classes began to think of economic questions, and every Indian industry was encouraged and quickened. Under the same impulse a society was formed in Calcutta for the purpose of sending young men to Europe, America or Japan to receive industrial or scientific education. When these students began to return from study, a supply of trained workers became available for the furthering of native industries. Between 1905 and 1907 a considerable number of new manufacturing and trading companies were formed in various parts of India, but above all in Bengal. Cotton, jute, leather, soap, glass and other manufactures were attempted. There was at least one steam navigation company. Several Banks and Insurance Companies arose. All have not proved successful by any means from the business point of view; indeed, in the end of 1913, a number of Indian banks collapsed; but experience has been gained; and in a number of cases considerable progress has been achieved.

There has also been an increase in the number of students reading science, agriculture and economics at the Universities; and several Indians have written wisely and well on economic questions.

3. SOCIAL AND POLITICAL SERVICE

a. Help for the Depressed Classes

One sixth of the whole population of India, a vast mass of humanity outnumbering all the people of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, have for some two thousand years been held down by Hindus at the bottom of society, in indescribable ignorance, dirt and degradation, on the ground that they are so foul as to be unfit for ordinary human intercourse. According to the orthodox theory, every man born among these people is a soul which in former lives lived so viciously that his present degradation is the just punishment for his former sin. They are called Outcastes, Untouchables, Pañchamas, or the Depressed Classes. What sort of a national danger this mass of crushed humanity is to India, every student of sociology and politics will readily realize. These people belong to many different races, and are found in every part of India, sometimes in small, sometimes in large groups. Their poverty is in most cases pitiable. Their religion consists in pacifying diabolic powers by means of animal sacrifice and various forms of barbaric ritual.

More than a century ago Christian missionaries attempted to win some of these groups for Christ; and at quite an early date they met with some success; but it was not until the year 1880 that anything startling occurred. The years from 1876 to 1879 were marked by a frightful famine, which brought indescribable suffering and lamentable loss of life in many parts of the South of India. Christians could not stand idly by in these circumstances:

Hundreds of thousands of people were dying in the Tamil and Telugu countries. Government was doing what it could in face of the hopeless mass of misery. There were few railroads, and grain brought from other countries by sea rotted on the beach at Madras while people two hundred miles away starved for lack of it. At this crisis missionaries everywhere co-operated with Government in the work of relief, raising funds among their own supporters at home, carrying out earthworks, and so finding employment for many poor people, and doing all that pity and their close contact with the people enabled them to do to help the sufferers.1

The result was that to these poor down-trodden people the contrast between Hinduism which held them down, and Christianity which did all that it possibly could to save them, began to be dimly visible; and, after the famine was over, they came to the missionaries in thousands for baptism. Such movements have occurred in several distinct parts of India. When such a movement begins, it usually lasts for a number of years, and then dies down. Or, it may slacken and then increase again.

Wherever it has been possible to give sufficient attention to this work, very remarkable results have been secured. When missionaries began to appeal to these people, Hindus jeered at them, saying they might as well attempt to uplift the monkeys of the forest. Certainly, at first sight, they are most unpromising material, physically, socially, mentally, morally. Yet the truth of Christ and loving Christian service have worked miracles. They have responded nobly, and great advances in physical well-being, in education, in society and the family, and also in religion, have been

won.

One of the most remarkable features of the work is this, that Hindus and Muhammadans all over India at once give the baptized Outcaste a new standing. He is no longer

1 The Outcastes' Hope, 32-3.

untouchable and beyond the pale, but is received as other Christians are.

For many years the work went on without causing much comment from the Hindu side; though, now and then, some educated man would refer to Christian success among these people either in scorn or in bitter anger. But, just about the time when the new nationalist spirit was spreading far and wide, fresh currents of thought began to shew themselves both among the Outcastes themselves and among educated men.

Groups of these Outcastes who had not become Christians had begun to realize that the doctrine which for so long had justified their miserable condition was false, and that it was not held by missionaries or the British Government. The hope that they might be able to throw off their chains began to rise in their hearts. These new stirrings appeared in different parts of India. First of all, came the Tiyas of Malabar, and, later, the Vokkaligas of Mysore. In the case of both these peoples the rising is so remarkable that we have dealt with them alongside of Caste movements.1 Another noticeable case is the rising of the Mahars of the Maratha country. They met in Conference at Poona in November, 1910, and drew up a Memorial to the Earl of Crewe, Secretary of State for India, begging that certain privileges which their fathers enjoyed in the Indian army should be restored to them. In this connection they speak of the many Mahars who fell wounded or died fighting bravely side by side with Europeans, and with Indians who were not Outcastes. But much more important than this claim of theirs is the spirit shown in the Memorial, and the statements they make to the Secretary for India. The following are a few sentences taken from it:

1 Above, pp. 311 and 314.

As British subjects we cannot, we should not submit to ordinances which are entirely foreign to British ideas of public justice and public honour. We are sick of the bondage which the barbarism of Hindu customs imposes upon us; we long to enjoy the perfect freedom which the British nation and the British Government desire to offer impartially to all those who are connected with them as British subjects.

We would, therefore, earnestly appeal to the Imperial Government to move on our behalf. We have long submitted to the Jagannath of caste; we have for ages been crushed under its ponderous wheels. But we can now no longer submit to the tyranny.

Our Hindu rulers did not recognize our manhood, and treated us worse than their cattle; and shall not that nation which emancipated the Negro at infinite self-sacrifice, and enlightened and elevated the poorer people of its own commonwealth, condescend to give us a helping hand?

The kindly touch of the Christian religion elevates the Mahar at once and for ever, socially as well as politically, and shall not the magic power of British Law and British Justice produce the same effect upon us even as followers of our own ancestral faith?

A similar story may be told of the Namaśūdras of Bengal. They are amongst the very lowest classes of the country; yet we find them in Conference in April, 1910, seeking to plan for their own advancement, and stirring each other up to various items of social reform.1 A few months later a still more interesting event took place in the Panjab:

An incident which would appear to be queer, under existing conditions, is reported to the Hindustan from Jullundur. To the reflecting mind it appears to be but the beginning, feeble though it be, of a spirit of retaliation against the most inhuman and degrading treatment meted out by Hindus and Mussalmans alike to the depressed classes for centuries past. The sweepers of Jullundur have started a society called the Valmika Samāj to defend their interests. They do not think themselves to be in any way inferior to their Hindu or Mussalman compatriots. 1 ISR., XX, 397