PERILS OF MIXED MARRIAGES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19529, 11 July 1925, Page 17

PERILS OF MIXED MARRIAGES.

The telegram from the Capetown correspondent of The Daily Mail-citing the facts of a recent case of an Indian doctor inducing an Edinburgh girl to entertain marriage, and another report stating that friends in the ship on her way out persuaded the girl to reconsider her decision, is a timely reminder for others, says that paper’s Nairobi correspondent. Some cases of these fatal inter marriages have occurred in Kenya Colony. It is time that British girls were made to understand that the Asiatic mode of thought and temperament are utterly opposed to the European outlook on life and social instincts. It is not a question of grade but of fundamental racial diversity. With extremely few exceptions—if any—such marriages are .utterly unhappy on the European side. Apart from the lack of racial consanguinity, the European wife of an Indian —even a doctor or lawyer—is cut off by the mere fact of her condition from all social contact with her European sisters, in Kenya Colony and South Africa, and to a large extent in India. She is regarded as deciassee and as a species of freak or monster by her European neighbours. But as a rule she has no neighbours, for the Indian—gentleman or otherwise—rarely lives in a European quarter. At public places, such as theatres, if she is seen with an Indian, however well dressed the Indian may be, she is regarded v/ith open-eyed curiosity not unmixed with pity.’ • * • » This is not stated with any desire to depreciate the Indian. Many are most excellent men of their kind nd live decent lives of their own sort; but out of Great Britain and outside offices and commerce, the Indian leads his own life apart from the European. : A decent girl who marries an Asiatic and goes abroad must be prepared to be “cut" by all Europeans and to follow her husband in mostly sordid surroundings, llarely indeed does a high-caste Indian marry outside his own class and kind. The Indian who seeks a white girl for a wife is generally a man who dreams of gaining social prestige by means of marrying a white wife, and he fails in his object. The views of many people in England, unfortunately, on those matters are loose' and false. Black men come to England with the assurance and knowledge that that which is forbidden them over-sea is granted them in London or elsewhere. Girls consort with them, frequently with the* consent of their parents. All raws and till nations may dwell under the flag, but a British Indian or Chinese or African is no more a mate for mi English girl than a terrier Is a mate for a mastiff.