IMPRESSIONS OF INDIA

Stratford Evening Post, Volume II, Issue 371, 30 September 1933, Page 6

IMPRESSIONS OF INDIA

Personal impressions of India were related by Mr. R. A. Laidlaw in an address delivered at the weekly luncheon of the Auckland Rotary Club. A traveller, he said, was both fascinated and depressed by India, with its teeming millions, dire poverty, immorality and terrible idolatry. The country contained 353,000,000 people, equivalent to 1,-sth of the world's population, or three-quar-ters of the population of the British Empire. Fifty different languages were spoken. Mr. Laidlaw said Indians appeared to be very degenerate physically. This was due to child marriage,, the usual age for girls to marry being from nine to 12 years, and also to poor"" food. It was a tragedy to see the ignorant, illiterate and undernourished child-mothers. The average weight of Indian babies at birth was 4lb, and 280 of every 1000 died in the first year. Gandhi, who married when ohly 12 years of age, wrote as follows:. "Child marriage is sapping the vitality of thousands of . our promising boys and girls, on whom the future of our, cpuntry entirely depends. It .is bringing into the world thousands of weaklings, who are born of immatur parents." The caste system, on which Indian society was built, was just about as repellent as the marriage and moral standards. It was not snobbery, but a deepseated religious belief in the transmigration of the soul. The caste into which a man was born was regarded as the outward sign of the history of his soul. A man was reincarnated in his caste because he deserved it, and therefore it was aiding the gods to heap any indignity on the castes below and it would be defying the gods to try and lift a man from the caste in which he was born.

The system was like a pyramid with the Brahmans on top. There were 2300 gradations of class and under all were the 60,000,000 "untouchables." The 8.000,000 Brahmans, being on top, lived on all the rest and they had no scruples about taking anything they cquld get even from "untouchables," because washing would "purify" anything taken. When the Prince of Wales visited Delhi in 1921 a total of 25.000 "untouchables" gathered to greet him. To the horror of high caste spectators the Prince ordered his, motor-car to stop and he received from the spokesman of the "untouchables" expressions of loyalty from the 60,000,000 "unclean" of India. Although many indignities were suffered by the lower classes much had been done under British rule to improve their lot and it was no wonder the "untouchables" lifted their voice as one man in their appeal to Britain not to withdraw her authority and hand them over to the "tender mercies" of the Brahmans.

Coming from New Zealand, a dairying country, Mr. Laidlaw said he was very impressed with the immense number of cows in India. The explanation was simple. The cow was regarded by Hindus as a- holy and sacred animal and must not be killed, although many of the animals were allowed to starve to death. It was pitiable to see halfstarved cows wandering about. The average yield for a cow in India was less than one pint at a milking. In concluding his address. M i -. Laidlaw paid a tribute to the wonderful work of Christian missions. '