BEYOND PAIN

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 68, 17 September 1930, Page 4

BEYOND PAIN

MODERN HINDU MARTYRS

TERRIBLE TORTURES

(Copyright.)

I It would doubtless take a Jot of persuasion to convince the average person j that there is no such thing as pain, that J such is the ascendancy of the human will when properly exercised and controlled, that bodily suffering can bo entirely eliminated from the ills and' "thousand natural shocks which flesh is heir to." ■ . What'is this strange secret at Orient tal mysticism which enables so "many people of the East to inflict; tho most terrible tortures on themselves without experiencing any apparent sensation of pain or show any superficial evidence-of wounds or scars'? Some time ago two fakirs, one.an Indian and one an Egyptian, gave some extraordinary: demonstrations in London before a committee of eminent doctors and scientists. With the view to showing that the human will, wlien properly exercised and controlled, can. obtain almost unlimited ascendancy over the body, one of tho fakirs performed wonders of the kind that one reads about but, never expects to see, piercing his body with daggers, needles, iron nails, and enduring burns without any sensation of pain. He could make his blood flow or cease to flow at will, and his wounds healed very . rapidly without leaving any sore or sear. While in a state of catalepsy he laid on a bed of nails with a man standing on his" stomach, pressing the naked flesh hard on the- spikes. BURIED ALIVE. Such performances by Indains as dancing with- naked feet on a bed of glowing coals and picking up handfnls and filling their mouths with the flaming embers without any trace left upon their bodies of the ordeal, are fairly common, while many travellers have no doubt witnessed in certain parts of India, on the occasion of festivals, sadhns, or religious mountebanks, who lie prone on beds of sharp spikes, or stand motionless upon the head and elbows for hours together in the burning sun, while sometimes'the observer will see along the roadside rows of human arms protruding from the ground—the arms of men who had themselves • buried alive, proving the.efficiency of a system of breathing in which they train themselves. One such man, on a small coin being placed in his hand, emerged from a grave in which he had been buried for-half an hour. ....■■ This peculiar form of self-torturing asceticism is seen in. a more spectacular fashion during the Hindu religious processions on the occasion of the Hindu New Year, in- which ' the participants endure.torture, to. ensure happiness in the hereafter. Some turn themselves into human pincushions, one devotee haying 1500 needles inserted one by one into his body, while one has tramped three miles under a blazing gun on wooden shoes fitted with nails driven point upwards through the soles. Devotees with chests and • thighs riddled ■with needles and their tongues fastened to their cheeks with skewers are commonplace incidents in such processions, but one enthusiast added a little more zest to the penance by dragging a handoart by means of ropes attached to two hooks fastened in his back. APPEAR TO LIKE IT. ; It is inconceivable that all these torr tures can, be inflicted on the human body without' any sensation of pain, but .there is no ouihvaTd'or visible :ihdi-' cation thatit'eauses these fieypteeß any inconvenience jpn.Jhe contrary.they ,ap-^ pea»-ta-:iat&6¥~relisli-'ti'6'-ordesa.v'-So,'-U----seeing, is believing-, it is- not so difficult a matter to overcome physical pain. But if the Hindu faith teaches us how to combat it and how to obtain '.'unlimited , ascendancy over the body," there is much in the Hindu cult which would not commend itself to Western ideas of civilisation^ The Hindu re-: ligion, ,to put it bluntly, is thoroughly insanitary- and a constant menace to the rest of society, or such is the indictment made against it by an American'authoress. Prominence has some time ago been given to some of the more inscrutable tenots of the Hindu faith, its peculiar attitude to life most forcibly exemplified by its rigid principles of renunciation, self-mortification and self-tortur-ing aseetieism, which are reverenced above all virtues in a remarkable book by an American authoress, Miss Katherine Mayo, entitled "Mother India," which contains such a powerful indictment against tho Hindu religion as it affects both life and conduct, that efforts, principally by Hindus, have been made to have the book suppressed. - Miss Mayo indicts India from her public health point of view as "a world-menace," the originator of epidemics of cholera1 and plague which sweep from continent to continent. "Whenever India's real condition becomes known," says ait American Public Health expert, "all the civilised emotion of the world will turn to the League of Nations and demand protection against her."