Chapter 14-

THE HALF-CASTE MINORITIES: GENETIC AND CULTURAL

IT is with the utmost reluctance that I write this chapter. The communities with which I am going to deal in it are the underdogs of Indian society, and no one would will- ingly give an impression of being harsh to them, far less do anything that would look like hitting a man who is down. As it is, they have enough to bear.

But I cannot leave them out, nor can I write about them with whole-hearted sympathy. It might be said that about the Hindus too I have not written with unreserved sym- pathy. True, but I have criticized them as a Hindu my- self, as a lone critic of the rest of the three hundred mil- lion, and the risks are all mine. In the case of those whom I am describing as half-castes, my criticism can seem to be prompted by the confidence given by the pre- sence of the same millions behind me. It is not my habit to bark with a master at my back.

But I am compelled to write about them because they are all communities in being in India, and because they are also elements in the country's population which are still reactive in the ethnic and social evolution, and have not become merely sedimentary. Their influence is out of proportion to their relatively small numbers on account of some special circumstances. Besides, they illustrate the great difference that can be seen in regard to ethnic re- sults between the Aryan and Muslim conquests on the one hand, and the European on the other. Both the for- mer conquests deposited massive human elements, large in numbers, solid in culture, and assertive in their ways, but the European conquest created nothing which stands comparison with the previous deposits. This curious in- effectiveness of the European expansion in the ethnic sphere calls for an explanation, all the more because in those of culture and economic life the Western impact has certainly made a difference, and will make more. Yet on the ethnic evolution the same impact has been negli- gible: of minor significance for the Hindus and Muslims, and unfortunate for the new communities themselves. Moreover, they, or at least some of them, are a bad in- fluence on the Hindus, both culturally and morally. Fur- thermore, their unfortunate plight illustrates an aspect of the winding up of European imperialism which those who are bragging about the end as an achievement are most anxious to conceal: that the products of the impe- rialism are being abandoned by those who produced them. Therefore what I am going to write will annoy the con- temporary British anti-imperialists.

On the other hand, my sympathy for these communities is inhibited by the poverty of life they exhibit. It is this. and not their insignificance in numbers, which prevents my writing about them with full sympathy. In this they present a striking contrast to the Parsi community, which is also small but has nevertheless maintained a high qua- lity of life as resident aliens. But there is something un- naturally shoddy and unhealthy about the half-caste com- munities, and no novelist even would like to deal with them unless he had a penchant for the decadent and the abnormal. But perhaps I should first enumerate the communities which I am labelling as half-caste. As the chapter head- ing indicates. I have divided the ethnic elements creat- ed by the European expansion in India into two broad classes the genetic half-castes and the cultural. The first group includes the communities in which there is an actual intermixture of European and pre-existing blood. mostly Hindu. The second is comprised of the converts to Christianity, in which the intermixture is not present. This at first sight would seem to be a wholly arbitrary classification, for no one can be called a half-caste who does not have two racial or genetic strains in his heredity. But that precisely is not my definition of a half-caste in India. According to me, a half-caste in India, as per- haps everywhere else, is a psychological and cultural type, and not merely a zoological hybrid, though the ge- netic admixture has certainly played a part in predeter- mining and preconditioning his mental and cultural char- acteristics. Furthermore, the half-castes of India (and, I would repeat, of other countries also) are not the pos- sessors of a composite culture, unless culture is defined in the very wide anthropological sense. They are not natural and healthy hybrids, racially or culturally, but, be they genetic hybrids or converts, are people who have given up their old culture without being able to adopt a new culture except in a weak and debased form. To put it even more plainly, the half-castes of India are, either through birth or conversion, only a depressed offshoot of the conquering European nations, and they remained protégés of the European nations so long as their rule lasted. In an India politically dominated by the Hindus, it is this social and cultural status which is making the position of the communities I am speaking about very anamolous, and even dubious.

Nevertheless, it would not be advisable to disregard the genetic factor, for as between the different half-caste com- munities, it has determined the degree of 'half-casteness', if I might coin the derivative. For instance, Indian Chris- tians do not exhibit the same degree of half-casteness as do the Eurasians. Again, the Indian Christians who be- longed to the higher Hindu castes before their conversion show even fewer of these attributes, compared with the converts from the depressed or untouchable Hindu castes. There is a whole gamut of tones in the half-caste scale. Furthermore, the position of those who are half-caste both genetically and culturally is infinitely more difficult than that of those who are so only culturally. The first of these have almost completely burnt their boats, and are now looking for fords or swimming desperately to get back to the Hindu bank, while the others, even if they did not keep the boat-bridge standing, at least kept the boats.

I can now proceed to list the communities which I call half-caste, and I shall begin with those among whom there is undoubted admixture of European blood. The first injection of modern European blood began in India with the Portuguese conquest, mostly on the western coast of India, but partly also in Bengal. In Bengal, however, the half-castes of Portuguese origin did not remain dis- tinct from the half-castes of British descent. They became one with the lower stratum of the Eurasian or Anglo-Indian society, a dark element distinguished from the dark Eur- asians of British descent only by their Portuguese names. But in Goa and Mangalore people with Portuguese names have remained generally speaking separate from the Eur- asians.

I should explain here that the terms 'Indian' and 'Anglo- Indian' were introduced as official nomenclature for the natives of India and the Eurasians respectively by Lord Hardinge towards the close of his term of office as Vice- roy. Before that the Hindus, and the Muslims as well, were called 'natives' by the British, and the mixed Indo- English breed 'Eurasians'. Both these terms had acquir- ed pejorative associations and were felt as insulting by the communities concerned. So the new names were in- troduced. I have, however, reverted to the word 'Eur- asian', because it avoids confusion with the older usage of the word 'Anglo-Indian', which meant an Englishman who was residing in India or had done so, and also be- cause 'Eurasian' is a more accurate descriptive label.

Now, there is no doubt about the mixed type which is Indo-British. But the genetic element in the Indo-Portu- guese breed is difficult to assess. It is always a queston how much European blood exists among the people of Goa and the Indian Christians of Mangalore, who bear Portuguese names. The name itself gives no clue, for it might have been taken by mere adoption as a client. It would seem, however, that intermixture of blood is virtually negligible among the Christians of the Mangalore region, whereas in Goa it certainly exists, though it is uncertain to what extent. But, irrespective of any actual intermixture of blood, the whole mental cast and cultural complexion of the Christians of Goa are those of a Mestizo population. In their social habits and institutions and way of living. the Goanese Christians became basically distinct from the Hindus, and it was not a question of the Christian religion alone. Therefore I am including the Christians of Goa among the genetic half-castes, keeping in mind the possi- bility that many of them might not have any Portuguese blood at all.

The products of the intermingling of British and Hindu or Muslim blood are the Eurasians properly so-called.

They are found all over India, but are mainly concen- trated in the three big cities of Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras, with secondary concentrations in important rail- way centres and some of the hill-stations. By the crite- rion of colour the Eurasians or half-castes of British des- cent range from the pure European blond to dark brown, but the community as a whole is fair. The dark Eurasians are not looked upon as equals by the fair ones, and as a rule the fair marry among the fair, and the dark among the dark. Whenever an over-ambitious dark Eurasian marries a fair girl of the community, there is trouble, and there is unhappiness. Thus, within the Eurasian commu- nity, there is a contrasted selective breeding which is mak- ing the fair side fairer, and the dark side darker. The difference in complexion is a source of internal stress in the community.

Coming now to the cultural half-castes, that is to say. to the converts into Christianity and their descendants, they are far more heterogeneous than the Eurasians. The community of Indian Christians is divided up into subcommunities, between which there is neither intermarriage, nor even social intercourse. These sub-groups owe their existence to the differences among the churches and denominations which have converted them, and also to the previous status of the converted families in Hindu society.

Since I am concerned in this chapter only with those Indian Christians who can be described as half-caste according to my definition, I am not including in my account the oldest Christian community in India. It is formed of the Syriac Christians of Kerala or the former Princely State of Travancore. They came over from Syria when the Arabs conquered their country, and since their arrival in India they have been living here as colonists.

Thus the first group of Indians converted to Christianity that I have to mention here are the Roman Catholic Chris- tians who live at and around Mangalore, all of whom have Portuguese names. They are, of course, a product of the Portuguese conquest of Western India, and as such they should go with the Christians of Goa. In fact, these two groups of Roman Catholics have the same his- tory and are very close to each other in ever way. Never- theless, the Mangalore Christians do not look upon them- selves as being the same kind of Christians as those from Goa. They even dislike the Goanese. A D'Souza, Mas- carenhas, Pinto, or Lobo from Mangalore will not will- ingly marry among the De Souzas, Mascarenhases, Pintos, and Lobos from Goa. On the other hand, they do not like to be confused with the other Christians of India. They look upon themselves as a Catholic aristocracy even among other Catholics, not to speak of the other denomi- nations. When one day talking to a lady from Manga- lore, I described her as an Indian Christian, she indig- nantly protested: 'I am not an Indian Christian, I am a Catholic. Indian Christians are low-caste converts to Protestantism."

All the Christian groups of India retain the mark of the caste system. This is exhibited as strongly by the Christians whom the lady looked upon as mere 'Indian Christians', as by her fellow-Catholics. They continue their caste status and pride of caste even in the genera- tions born to Christianity and not merely converted to the new religion. For instance, a Bengali Christian who bears such surnames as Banerji, Chatterji, Mukherji, Bose, or Dutt will be very wary about a Bengali Christian who is a Biswas. Now, the son of an eminent Bengali Chris- tian of Calcutta wanted to marry a girl with one of the lowly surnames which are those of the low or depressed castes from which the converts came and the father at first strongly objected, and his sister told us: 'After all, we are Brahmin.'

Let me begin with the Eurasians. In assessing their position, and indeed of both the groups of genetic half- castes, one must keep in mind not only the immediate background of British rule, but also the ancient Hindu background. The Aryan Hindus had a horror of mis- cegenation, especially that kind of miscegenation in which a woman of the superior and dominant race married a native. They treated the offspring of such intermarri- ages with such contempt that even the products of these were left with a permanent sense of inferiority. It was as if an indelible bar sinister was not only painted on their escutcheon but branded on their forehead. Of course, this was natural in a community of Whites who were colonists among a dark and uncivilized native population.

The ancient Hindus showed another characteristic pre- judice. They had even greater suspicion of the half-caste who pretended to be Arya and tried to behave like one. In the Mahabharata Yudisthira asks Bhishma, 'Grand- father! How can we recognize a half-caste who is born of the seed of a man of inferior caste in the womb of a woman of superior caste, but who looks or dresses like an Arya?' Bhishma replies, "The baseness of a man born of miscegenation is easily detected from his un-Aryan con- duct: indiscriminate habits, cruelty, non-observance of rituals proclaim the low origin of these men; ... they can never hide their baseness; just as tigers and other animals cannot give up their nature, these men too cannot . . . mere knowledge of the sacred books cannot remove the baseness of a base man.' So it goes on.

Contemporary Hindus have certainly not outgrown this ancient prejudice, and no Hindu can, for he remains basic- ally genetic in all his social outlook: a believer in blood and birth. Moreover, he was not taught to think differ- ently by his British rulers. They displayed, and even paraded, a good deal of the Hindu contempt for the half- castes they themselves had created. They had the same horror of miscegenation. Thus it happened that in Cal- cutta no woman of pure English birth who had married a Bengali in England and come over to her husband's country, could ever have any social life among the Bri- tish of the city. As for a man of Eurasian origin, it was virtually impossible for him to marry among the pure British. He could not even mix with them in society on an equal footing. The British in India showed yet an- other similarity with the Hindus in thinking that the Eur- asian who knew his place and kept to it was a better man than the Eurasian who wanted to pass off as an English- man.

Even Kipling could not write about the Eurasians with complete sympathy, though they were the genetic product of British imperialism. Not that he did not see good qualities in them-read his description of the Eurasian boys at St Xavier's school at Lucknow; but he also knew that there was another side to the matter. So, while giving them their due, he also made Kim cut in with a snort when Mahbub Ali spoke of the young sahibs of St Xavier's:

'Not all! Their eyes are blued and their nails are black- ened with low-caste blood, many of them. Sons of mehte- ranees-brothers-in-law to the bhungi (sweeper).'

All that the British in India admitted was that, having brought this class into existence in the country, they had a duty to it and were under an obligation to provide suit- able livelihood for its members, which was, of course, like the behaviour and conduct of all honourable men to- wards their natural sons. Although it cannot be said that in this matter the British authorities in India quite took their cue from Louis XIV, Charles II, or even Lord Ches- terfield, they did give the Eurasians every help they could in obtaining employment matched to their outlook and aptitudes. The community as a whole did not possess much ambition, nor did it show any high degree of abi- lity or intelligence. Generally speaking, the Eurasians were like feeble replicas of the British lower middle-class white-collar workers. But they had stronger outdoor in- terests than the Hindus. So they were given employ- ment in the Post and Telegraph Department, in the rail- ways, in the Survey Department, and partly also in the engineering and medical services in the lower grades, be- sides being appointed to minor administrative posts in the secretariats. Outside government service they were ap- pointed in mercantile houses and British shops, and their women, when they worked, had almost a monopoly of the posts of stenotypists and saleswomen in the British offices and shops.

This framework of their economic life naturally deter- mined their outlook and also the quality of their personal life. It was very dull, commonplace, and even vulgar. Even when they rose to higher levels mentally, they never achieved distinction, depth, or originality. At best they showed a conventional and well-intentioned goodness.

But the curious thing is that despite this ordinariness their life was not free from its pain. In India even the most unexciting life has its bitterness, and in their way the Euarsians were eaten into by spleen. While British rule lasted they had no means of knowing what the Hindus felt towards them, and they did not suffer from Hindu contempt. But they felt all the insult of the British atti- tude, and nursed a standing grievance. There hung over their consciousness the shadow of a disinherited life, cast by the knowledge that all their potentialities were limited by something over which they had no control, namely, their birth. This fostered in all Eurasians a resentment against the British, which often became strong enough to be sullenness, affecting the mood and temper of the whole community.

Yet they could not allow themselves to be driven by this sentiment into anti-British behaviour. They knew equal- ly well that their position in India was dependent on the British. So they developed a psychological dichotomy. in which their resentment against the local British came to be mixed with the impulse, which became a habit, to look up to the British in India as protectors and to re- main abjectly dependent on them. To this was added another psychological maladjustment. Towards the peo- ple of the country, especially to the Hindus, they behaved with an arrogance which was very stupid. But, of course, it was intelligible: it was derived half from the assurance of British protection, and half from the consciousness that they were partly of the ruling race, or in any case nearer to the ruling race than to the Hindus. So they also addressed Bengali gentlemen in Calcutta as 'Babu'. The English have now given up this form of address, but the half-castes still call us 'Babu'.

All these strands of feelings and ideas, in their com- bination of a crushing awareness of inferiority, rancour, and the egregious race pride which they displayed to- wards the natives of the country made for an unbalanced collective personality. This personality often found ex- pression in behaviour, which was not wholly normal even in British days when the Eurasians had a sense of special protection. Although the community as a whole was most effectually defended by its mediocrity, which engendered sluggishness and prevented clashes, its basic instability also spilled out.

Young Eurasians, both boys and girls, showed a weak. and degenerate form of the exuberant animal spirits of the English schoolboy and girl. The lack of balance lasted until the young people were overtaken in due time by the general insipidity of the class. To young Eurasian girls. more especially, the instability gave a deceptive beauty, like that of a rime-covered, but canker-eaten, moss rose. This type of beauty with its appearance of fragility and evanescence attracted some true Europeans with a rom- antic temper, because what they took it for was Euro- pean feminine charm polarized by an exotic light, but in a direction which was opposite to that of Creoles. But if any of them was drawn by it into a permanent man- woman relationship, he very soon found reason to regret it. Even before age and married life had congealed the Eurasian wives into their natural commonplaceness, they showed themselves as women with whom it was impos- sible to live. They were either lifeless wax dolls without a mind but capable, nevertheless, of looking frighteningly unhappy, or demons driven by a heady, but very volatile, essence of sensuality with no body. Every moment the unfortunate man would feel like strangling the creature out of exasperation, yet every moment he would also realize the utter impossibility of hurting anything so flimsy, so much like an ethereal embodiment of all that was frail and feather-brained in womankind.

These are the antecedents which have to be kept in mind in trying to assess the life of the Eurasians in present-day India. Unfortunately for them, another and a very pain- ful antecedent has also to be recalled. In the British days it was the women of this class who mostly supplied prostitutes for the White Man in India, and they were concentrated in the big cities. In Calcutta the quarter in which these women lived was known as Kareya. It had rows of maisons de tolérance. These bawdy-houses with their bead, lace, or net curtains and glimpses of tawdry bric-a-brac, suggested a sad meretricity such as is conveyed in phrases like filles de joie et de tristesse, and the impression was heightened by the sudden appearance at a door, or a window from which a canary cage was hanging, of a young woman with a thin but hectic face and sunken eyes. More unfortunately still, there was a large number of amateur practitioners in the community, how many it was difficult to say, but certainly not too few.

Even down to the twenties of this century the Hindus hardly cultivated Eurasian prostitutes, professional or ama- teur. These were considered above them, and, besides, the Hindus had not as yet learnt to enjoy Eurasian putinrie. There is a style and genius in prostitution as there is in all other human activities. But with the growth of external Westernization among the Hindus, which has been increasing in the last forty years or so, the fashion of going to Eurasian prostitutes has also developed sub- stantially, and it has to be admitted that there is an in- nate appropriateness in this. A Bengali in trousers was likely to look very incongruous in the arms of a tradi- tional Bengali prostitute, who had the Bengali woman stamped all over herself; moreover, the man was also bound to feel uncomfortable. And to indulge the new yearning for drinking strong spirits was even more diffi- cult with them, for in the company of a Bengali prostitute, who had no nerves to speak of, it had to be joint drink- ing and vomiting, and vomiting and drinking, all the time until the power to do either was lost in stupor. Drinking with Eurasian girls, on the other hand, was likely to be more in the cocktail party style.

In addition, there was a whole complex of hard-set predispositions and sensibilities which came into play in making Eurasian prostitutes fashionable among the Hin- dus. For one thing, the Hindu debauchees, especially the hard-boiled ones, had a feeling that the Hindu prosti- tutes were not piquant enough. This was quite an old idea, and before it worked in favour of the Eurasian prostitute it had been helping the Muslim. In an old Bengali book the major domo of a rich man says to him, 'Babu, do not go to a Hindu whore, but only to Mussul- man wenches, because you will get more fun out of women who eat garlic and onions than from those who do not.' Not even the most fanatical Hindu vegetarian thought that this type of food improved prostitutes, whom they want- ed to be game.

Secondly, the Hindu women in this profession tended to be homely. They would not go beyond certain limits. If, in addition, any of them came to develop some sort of affection for a regular customer or took what Bengali gay dogs and the more refined police officers of Calcutta euphemistically abbreviated in the Roman alphabet as P.N.-which is quite correctly translated as 'lover for love' -she showed a dangerous tendency to behave like a wife, and became capable of thinking that the most impassion- ed declaration of love was to say, 'Have a handful of rice before you go, for my sake!' In a certain District town in West Bengal the houses of ill-fame bore signboards: 'Din- ner and bed for gentlemen who have to be in town over- night.'

Thirdly, by going to prostitutes of European descent, the Hindus also got satisfaction in the patriotic and nationalistic way. It could be felt as a form of revenge for political subjection if they could pay back the humilia- tion to the women of the ruling stock. This inclination had also grown in the Muslim period and was easily transferred to the Eurasians who were of the ruling race, at least on the father's side of the family. The Hindus like to satisfy their sensuality and their nationalism at the same time, and some of them even read the 'sexy' novels now coming from the West in paper-backs for the double pleasure of being titillated and coming on fresh proofs of the depravity of the White races. Before con- siderate European and American novelists began to meet the demand with specially written material, even Anna Karenina was read by some Hindus in this spirit. A very recent practical development along these lines has also to be noted. Most Indians have already acquired an un- easy feeling that the Americans are going to be their future political masters. This is necessarily having its reaction on their sensual appetite. The Hindu sensual avanguardisti have already begun to boast about their delectable experiences with American women, with what truth I am unable to say.

Fourthly, just as there was on the one side a moral satisfaction to be had from going to prostitutes of Euro- pean stock, there was, on the other, escape from a cer- tain kind of moral qualm. Muslim and European wo- men did not confront the Hindu sensualist with the un- pleasant prospect of having a sudden pain shooting through his pleasure by being given glimpses of the degradation and suffering inflicted by Mrs Warren's profession, which the Hindu prostitutes at times could give. I shall tell an anecdote about this.

One evening a friend of mine was going along a street in north Calcutta, notorious as a disreputable quarter. He saw the usual groups of bold and tittering persons at the doors. But at one in a rather quiet stretch, he saw only one very young girl standing timidly. Something in her air made my friend look back after he had gone a few steps. He saw her lips parting, and as he expected the simpering solicitation, an infinitely more dangerous whisper floated across the still atmosphere: 'Dada Babu," give me something. I have not eaten the whole day, and my landlady will not give me food until I have handed her my earnings. He walked back, put what he had with him in her hand, and walked away again with an exercise of the will. Though there are people who would, even in such a situation, insist on value for money or even a little more, there are also men who can think that one opportunity for sexual satisfaction is well lost for an act of compassion. But it is unreasonable to expect such sacrifices to be made continually or by everybody. So it was wiser in every way to avoid such risks by going to women who could not put lust and compassion at war. Lastly, the cultivation of Eurasian prostitutes had a snob value, and to be able to command only Hindu wo- men was looked upon as the sign of a third-rate rake's progress.

All these factors taken together began to turn the at- tentions of the Hindus to Eurasian girls. Another friend of mine satirized the emerging fashion in alliterative Ben- gali verse, 'Kareya bareya bara,' which meant: 'Kareyas [that is, the Eurasian prostitutes of the quarter of that name in Calcutta] were very fine. But even more than the professional it was the amateur Eurasian girls who exercised the stronger lure on the Hindus.

The new fashion made its appearance in the twenties. and by the thirties was well established. Pioneers in this exploration were some very rich Muslims and Hindus, especially young men of the wealthy Marwari community, the longest range of whose Westernization at that epoch was the Eurasian girl. Regular touts wandered about in Chowringhee and nearby streets, especially at Whiteaways Corner, and offered to take well-dressed and prosperous- looking Hindu youths to 'Anglo-Indians' in well-known Eurasian streets. With independence the Hindus have. of course, attained the status of White clients, without superseding them.

It is this Hindu eyeing of the girls of the Eurasian com- munity which constitutes the greatest future danger to it, socially and morally. In India every ruling power has in the past showed its particular taste in women. The Moguls, for instance, preferred Kashmiri beauties, the British Muslim and Aboriginal girls, and the Hindus would rather have women of European descent, after they had outgrown their earlier taste for Muslim mistresses. The more risky part of such attentions to a politically and socially depressed community is that they seem to evoke a readiness to be obliging, and by and by it becomes un- able to resist the money and power of the rulers. Its members become all the more responsive because they think that they can thus exert a backstair influence in the interest of their community. The laxness already shown by the community of Eurasians in meeting the sensual demands of the Hindus has risked the position even of its honest women. There is a general tendency among the Hindus who are on the sensual quest to look upon all Eurasian girls, irrespective of their conduct, as fair prey.

As it happens, the very figure of these girls has become a sort of emblem of their destiny. They have a character- istic physical appearance, which is top heavy. While, even when not plump, they have full upper limbs and equally full nether limbs down to the calves, they exhibit a thinness from the calves to the ankle which is wholly unexpected. This part of their shins is extraordinarily slender, and since they heighten the gazelle-like effect by wearing high-heeled shoes they seem to be always on the point of toppling over. To the onlooker they give a curi- ous sensation suggestive of their luscious appeal to the Hindus and precarious foothold in the Hindu order.

In other respects the Eurasians have neither much to fear nor much to expect from the Hindus, who are quite willing to leave them alone in their own half-caste world. The community is definitely not under suspicion like the Muslims, even though in the past it formed part of the British ruling order and treated Hindus badly. Their former arrogance seems to have been forgotten and for- given, which, given the cast of the Hindu mind, is to be expected. What a Hindu mostly wants to inflict on an enemy, national or personal, is moral humiliation. Once defeat is accepted on that plane, a Hindu will neither kill, nor persecute, nor even harm the one-time enemy's in- terests, and the Eurasians have accepted defeat.

But the main obstacle in the way of a stable and psycho- logically adjusted relationship between the Hindus and the Eurasians is not the attitude of the new rulers, but of them- selves. The British affiliation has not been blotted out of the memory and mind of the Eurasians by the disappear- ance of British political power. When the British with- drew in 1947 many of the Eurasians felt strongly that they could not break the tie and that, for better for worse, their lot was cast finally with the British, and so they chose to emigrate to Great Britain. I have conflicting reports of their experience there.

In India, on the other hand, there is undoubted mal- adjustment at all levels and in all circles, and the presence of a strong but suppressed resentment can be felt. Their leaders, like those of the Muslims, feel compelled to say that they are as good Indians as any Hindu could be. But in the public utterances of the same leaders there is an undertone of continual grievance. In political life they are as a rule in the opposition, constituting a feeble element in it, and voicing the small grievances of a small and weak community.

Besides, there is a strange unreality in their claim to be Indian, which is revealed very significantly by their as- sertion that English is one of the languages of India and the mother tongue of true Indians. That alone is enough to show what their title to be Indian is worth. I am sure that if they wanted to be regarded as Indians in the sense 

English is an Indian language the Hindus would concede that at once.

Observing them even from a distance one can see that there is in their behaviour a latent anti-Hindu bias, and at times something more a disposition to find pleasure in the failures of the Hindus in politics or in economic acti- vity. They seem to watch these failures with a leer. With that goes a listless resignation to their own lot in the Hindu order. They know, even when they do not proclaim it, that no high sphere of action is open to them in their country, and they know also that even in the worldly way they must rest satisfied with very ordinary opportunities and vocations. There is on their faces an unnatural gravity, sometimes breaking out in irritability and peevishness. But the general and dominant expres- sion is one of infinite dejection at suffering which is not fully understood by them. This is very painful to an out- side observer.

I have now to consider the half-castes of Goa, who were taken over by India at the end of 1961. So long as Portuguese rule lasted, their lot was infinitely happier than that of the Eurasians. The first reason for this was that they had a homeland of their own, in which they were concentrated and dominant, and in which there were no social and cultural clashes. Between them and the Hindus of Goa there did not exist that antithesis and anti- pathy which was present in the Eurasian-Hindu relation- ship in India. Even those Goanese who had to live in India and felt the unsettling contagion of the communal hatreds could and did go to Goa for rest cure and found it.

Secondly, they owed their peace to a sort of pax Romana, to Latin imperialism which was radically differ- ent from the Anglo-Saxon. It had no guilty conscience, no contempt for subject peoples, no repugnance to cul- tural proselytization. Whatever might have been the ini- tial ruthlessness of the converting process, once the 'auto- da-fé' was gone through, the result was happy. I do not think that any other group of Asiatics converted to Christianity succeeded so thoroughly in naturalizing them- selves within a Christian church which was not of their own creation as did the Christians of Goa in the Roman Catholic church. Even now it is in their church-going that the Goanese are seen at their best and most respect- able. They were no doubt priest-ridden, but hidebound as the clericalism was, it was none the less a stabilizing, tranquillizing, and dignifying influence on their otherwise trivial life.

The upshot was that through the operation of a colo- nialism of the Roman type in the medium of Portuguese rule, the Christians of Goa, irrespective of any intermix- ture of blood, came to be constituted into a homogene- ous society which might be called a tropical and Mestizo extension of the Christian order of the Mediterranean. Naturally, in monsoon-swept Konkan, it became different in a number of outward aspects, but at the same time it became even more different from Hindu life across the Ghats; as dissimilar indeed as was the alluvium of the coastal strip from the timeless rocks of the Deccan. No where else in India did any group of Indians converted to Christianity become so alienated from the original so- ciety and culture.

Were it possible to hope for a miniature continental drift in our times, it would have been best for everybody concerned if in 1947 Goa had cut itself from India and floated away towards the sugar islands of the south, to become a Madeira or Azores of the Indian Ocean. There the Goanese would have lived their out-of-date life, but still their own life, irredeemably trivial, yet kept together by the steel-frame of Jesuitical Romanism. They would have lived, combining courtship with marriage de conve- nance; attendance of the mass with the drinking of vino di pasto and even stronger spirits-all duty-free; Grego- rian chants with Konkani folk-melodies, in a litanie de la Sainte Vièrge of their own. They would have been devôts and heart-free, light or even light-headed, but they would have been themselves, neither vicious, nor vulgar. In going to their island it would have been possible for a man to think that he was setting out on a voyage pour Cythère:

To happy Converts, bosom'd deep in vines Where slumber Abbots, purple as their wines: To Isles of fragrance, lilly-silver'd vales, Diffusing languor in the panting gales: To lands of singing, or of dancing slaves, Love-whisp'ring woods, and lute-resounding waves.

But this little colony of tropical Mediterraneanity was wrecked on the granite mass of India, which acted on it like the black magnetic rock of Sinbad. Even under British rule, India was a country of temptation and fall for the Goanese, more especially the evil city of Bombay, which in recent years has become the main source of the low and degraded Westernization which is flooding India: the Indian film being its typical pro- duct. Though Bombay still has a ballast of hard-headed and business-like Gujaratis and also of very conservative Maharashtrians in its hold, its saloons and upper decks are crowded with an Anglicized set which is counterfeit at most levels and debased at the lowest. The part of Bom- bay which is active socially and culturally is this pseudo- cosmopolitan one.

It was in this city that the Goanese developed the pat- tern of their existence in India. What took them there was, of course, search for more money and better openings than were available in the small colony. They found both there, but not in walks where they could become better and stronger socially or personally. With few ex- ceptions honest employment was lowly or dull. Very large numbers, both men and women, worked as domes- tic servants. The men were much sought after as cooks, owing to a gastronomical reputation built on highly sea- soned dishes which Indians regarded as English and Euro- peans as Eastern. The women in these situations sometimes made extra money by ministering to other needs of their well-to-do masters than mere nursing of the children or scrubbing of the utensils. Women from Goa were much more numerous among the prostitutes of Bombay, and their importance in this profession gave to the word 'Goa- nese' an association which Indians found alluring and the people from Goa insulting. Their attractions were felt even in distant Delhi, where pimps tempted fastidious northern Hindus by holding out the promise of Bombay- ki chhukri, a wench from Bombay.

Those Goanese who did not sink into menial or dis- reputable life obtained the kind of employment open to the Eurasians, and became in fact a sort of inferior Eur- asians adopting their dress and manner of life. The special lines of these Eurasianized Goanese were catering and playing music in the restaurants and hotels. Generally speaking, they remained satisfied with these modest op- portunities, and spent their spare time playing cards and drinking. But drunkenness was not a vice with their menfolk as it was among the Eurasians. With all their fondness for strong spirits they never succumbed to these, and despite their softness in other matters they had a hard resistant core in regard to alcohol.*

But some Goanese, especially those domiciled in India. also went in for higher education and secured well-paid employment either in government service or mercantile houses. When they held such positions they usually es- tablished relations with the Anglicized circles of Bombay, Parsi or Hindu, and in the olden days also with the local British civil servants and business men. But even when well-placed they were distinguishable from the Parsis and Hindus in the same social stratum by a certain diffidence, as if their employment and position were too fine for them. They lost their naturalness and equilibrium, and became somewhat like a dependent social element, while the more ambitious and able developed an inclination to become adventurers. At best the Goanese in India be- came epiphytes, and at worst parasites.

When India became independent a client order like the Goanese could hardly be expected to act otherwise but to transfer their vassalage to the new Hindu ruling class, and they did this with greater success than the Eurasians, for, previously, they had showed no contempt for the Hindus, and when in good positions they had even estab- lished personal contacts with Anglicized Indians. With that they also developed a violent anti-Portuguese feel- ing. Until Goa was annexed the Hindu ruling order had its motive in encouraging and even spoiling these 'anti- imperialists' with Portuguese names. But now they seem to have sunk into the obscurity from which they emerged so far as public life is concerned.

But if India has been a degrading influence on the two half-caste communities of Eurasians and Goanese, they have been no less regrettable an influence on the Hindus, and continue to be that. In saying this I do not have in mind at this point of the argument the sad fact about their womenfolk: that they are Liliths to the Hindus, though that too debases sensuality in two ways, by making it a cowardly assault on the reputation and morals of weak communities which cannot resist the money, power, and lust of the dominant order; and by removing the inhi- bitions which, among the Hindus themselves, safeguard a sort of honour among lechers. By making sensuality easier to satisfy and more piquant in the satisfaction, the two communities show themselves as the seducers of the Hindus.

However, regrettable as this is, not very much less re- grettable is the temptation that the Eurasians and the Goanese hold out to the Hindus in the public sphere, when they are in high and respectable positions. As instruments of the Hindu Government, they are always ready to go the extra mile in obliging their employers, and thus help the natural Hindu inclination to abuse power. When holding positions in the administration with executive juris- diction, the half-castes will accommodate their Hindu chiefs in a manner which the Hindus, even with their general servility to authority, will not adopt. This is natural because the Eurasians and the Goanese have their past to live down.

More especially, the Goanese, and the Eurasians up to a point, show a tendency to fall in with the most fanatical outbursts of Hindu nationalism, and overdo the chauvin- ism. To illustrate this I shall give the example of a Goanese or at least a man of partial Goanese descent who holds the exalted position of a Cardinal of the Ro- man Catholic Church. At the time of the border fighting with China he was attending an Oecumenical Council in Rome, and from there he issued a statement asking Indians to support their Government in the war against the Chinese. A little later he addressed the Pope on this subject and declared that God had 'drawn good' from the crisis in India. I wonder who in India expected him to intervene in a purely political quarrel, and I should think that the God of the Christians does not find much to choose between two nations of mere heathens. In any case, the Curia might have told him that the days of the bishops with maces were gone, and in our time a Christian priest, even though a Prince of the Church, was expected not to leave it solely to Mahatma Gandhi the Hindu to preach the message of Jesus.

These men bring no accession of strength to any Hindu cause, and I dare say they think fit to intervene more in the interest of their community than of the Hindus. But they do fortify the Hindu tendency to be self-righteous and bellicose, and to employ a dependent community to serve their special interests. I do not think that the choice of a Goanese for commanding the air operations against Goa was a mere coincidence. In the more exalted circles of Indian political life these men of half-caste origins in executive positions reinforce, to put it in the words of de Tocqueville, 'ce goût natural que les princes médiocres ont toujours pour la valetaille'. It is distress- ing to have to contemplate a whole community in the position of a Tabaqui to the Hindu Shere Khan.

They are almost as undesirable in the educational sy- stem, in which they are fairly numerous. Their facility in a particular kind of English has given them this posi- tion. They are found more especially in the schools for the Indian Christians and Eurasians, to which it has be- come a fashion to send Hindu children whom their parents hope to see in good position in the administration or the armed forces. Perhaps the Goanese and Eurasian teachers are more efficient than the general run of Hindu teachers in a narrowly technical way, but they cannot exercise any moral leadership over their pupils nor strengthen the Hindu character, owing to the fact that the communities themselves have no very great moral stature. They might well be compared to the Greek slaves who taught young Romans, but the Greeks at least knew the Greek langu- age, the half-castes do not know the language I call Eng- lish. It can even be said that by looking upon these men and women as the guardians of the language in India the Anglicized Hindus expose the weakness of their own Angli- cism. Certain teachers even get into the habit of spoiling the children of high officials and other influential persons, flattering them and their parents.

The members of the half-caste communities are also a bad influence on cultural activities when they are al- lowed to play a part or have a hand in them, and some of them are in this field for what qualification it is diffi- cult to say. The ruling class in India should have real- ized that persons of half-caste origin were likely to be far weaker as cultural instructors than as educators. But many Anglicized Hindus do regard them as exponents of European culture, especially European music. This is also a proof of the superficiality of their Westernization. 

Those of us who date from an older generation would rather have nothing to do with European culture than go to these men and women for initiation into it. It has to be remembered that these communities, in spite of their genetic association with Europeans, never played any role in the Westernization of the Hindus or in the creation of modern Indian culture, which was an attempt to fuse the best in India with the best from the West. The only Eurasian who can in any sense be regarded as an influence on this culture, and that too at second hand, was Derozio, a teacher of English literature in Calcutta in the early part of the nineteenth century. The new culture which was created in India under the impact of the West was the work of the Hindus, and mostly Bengali Hindus. The half-caste communities knew nothing about Hindu cul- ture, perhaps not much more about Western culture, and they took no interest whatever in the new culture after it had been created. They remained wholly outside the pale of all cultural activities, and they still remain there.

It was only when they came in contact with Anglicized Hindus and had to maintain a position of equality with them that the members of these communities acquired cultural interests. This would not have done much harm unless some half-caste persons had developed intellectual, artistic, and literary pretensions, which made them dan- gerous to those Hindus who associated with them, and a cultural association seems to be growing between them and the Anglicized ruling class. This is unhealthy, and if it develops further is bound to be injurious, because it is just in the cultural sphere that these men are most shoddy and counterfeit.

The basic reality which the Hindu patrons of these half-caste intellectual adventurers forget is that no authen- tic cultural effort can come from those who have no solid culture themselves, and to this poverty the half-caste in- tellectuals and writers are condemned by the very fact of their origin. Thus, if these men are freaks or sports, their works are tours de force, and both are often mediocre. The elementary truth that no fruit can be better than the tree has come to be forgotten in their case. If the participation of these intellectuals has not done much perceptible injury as yet it is only because India today is some sort of a cultural vacuum. Our contemporary cul- ture is protected against half-caste adulteration by its own bankruptcy. Insolvents can afford to be careless about money.

I shall now pass on to consider the Indian Christians, whom I have described as cultural half-castes. In regard to them, too, one has to keep in mind the original Hindu attitude towards those who gave up one religion to em- brace another, and in addition the attitude of the British rulers towards conversion to Christianity. Both were in their way hostile or at least unsympathetic. The Hindus as believers in the genetic principle for all human acti- vities, including the religious, never had any respect for conversion or converts. They would not convert others themselves, nor would they approve of conversion by others.

Naturally, they would also look upon those who went over from their religion and society to another as rene- gades, prompted either by fear or greed. The adoption of a religion to which a man was not born but which he preferred from conviction, was something a Hindu would never admit as sincere or honourable. It would always be set down to some worldly motive.

After independence there was a great clamour in India against the missionaries, who were accused of political mischief. There was a strong demand for putting an end to missionary activities, which could always be represented as political on account of the Hindu's habit of looking on religion as a form of social organization. The present government of India could not, of course, stultify itself by denying religious freedom, which is guaranteed by the constitution. But in certain parts of India partial res- trictions have been imposed on new missionary activities and on conversion unless the candidates are above a cer- tain age.

On the other hand, the British Government in India in the early days was against missionary activities, because it thought that foreign rule could be maintained here only by respecting the beliefs, traditions, and institutions of the native inhabitants. This opposition to the missionaries did not, of course, continue, but the authorities were never very sympathetic to them, and were never enthusiastic about conversion. There was not even equality between the official clergy in India, the members of the Ecclesiasti- cal Establishment, and the missionaries, who were regarded as an inferior order. The Church of England, except in its missionary extension, never concerned itself with na- tive souls. As Kipling said of the regimental chaplains: 'Whenever the Church of England dealt with a human problem she was very likely to call in the Church of Rome. The rivalry in the pastorship of heathenish flocks did not go very far. That, too, was indicated by Kipling. Here is an example in the dialogue between Father Victor and Colonel Creighton over the education of Kim:

Father Victor: Bad luck to Bennett [the Anglican chap- lain]! He was sent to the front instead o' me. Doughty certified me medically unfit. I'll excommunicate Doughty if he comes back alive! Surely Bennett ought to be content with Col. Creighton: Glory, leaving you the religion. Quite so! As a matter of fact I don't think Bennett will mind.

So between them the clergy of the Establishment and the missionaries worked out a nice division of labour, and after that they saw as little of each other as possible. One day, when I was young, I saw a gaitered canon with a missionary Father of the High Church; judging by the expressions on their faces as they talked, I could have taken them for Lucifer and Jesus on the high mountain.

So both conversion and the converts were left in the keeping of the missionaries, and the Anglican Church remained free to look upon itself as an instrument of the imperium, and to wield the civil sword to restrain the stubborn and evildoers. But even in the hands of the missionaries conversion did not long remain a simple religious activity. Soon a social motivation came to re- inforce the earlier religious motive. Quite early in its history there was a social shift in the history of mission- ary enterprise. At first those who came forward to seek conversion were the more earnest among high-caste Hin- dus, who had received a good education and were repell- ed by the gross idolatry and superstition of their own religion. But this came to an end with the appearance of a new form of Hindu monotheism, and, as education spread, the readiness to adopt Christianity, instead of in- creasing, decreased. Sir John Strachey, in his book on Indian administration-which is a classic on the subject- noted this. There has been no apparent connexion', he wrote, 'between the increase in the number of Christians and the progress of education. The effect of high Eng- lish education on the religious beliefs of educated Hindus has doubtless been great, but it has had little tendency to make them Christian. This was natural, though: the same education gave to the Hindus the notion of patriot- ism and also historical consciousness, which drew on the works of the European Orientalists to strengthen the loyalty to Hinduism.

The work of conversion was therefore transferred to different fields, where it became as much a movement of social reclamation as one of religious reform. I have al- ready referred to the conversion of the aboriginals. Within the limits of Hindu society the missionary activity con- cerned itself more and more with the low castes, the de- pressed classes, who resented their condition or were taught to do so. Those of them who wanted a rise in the social scale and better opportunities in life adopted Christianity, so that they might get not only equal treatment but also the protection of the ruling race through the missionaries of the same race.

But the power of the caste system is such that the Hindus from the low castes who embraced Christianity did not raise themselves to a higher level, but on the contrary brought down the religion to their level. This also was noted by Strachey. As he put it: 'Judged by even a low standard, the religion of the great majority of the native Christians, especially those of southern India, is Christian- ity little more than name. There are many noble excep- tions, but it cannot be professed that Indian Christians have gained for themselves, as a rule, an exceptional measure of respect either among their own countrymen or among Europeans.'

In this, the conversion to Christianity offered a radical contrast to that to Islam. Islam, too, spread largely among the lower classes of Hindu society, but these classes never showed the weakness and dependence which was characteristic of the Indian Christians. I have lived among the Muslim peasants of East Bengal, whom one would hardly call civilized in any high sense, but at their most primitive they showed a dignity in which even the Muslim aristocracy did not surpass them. I suppose this is to be attributed to the fact that Islam, a political reli- gion, not only brought a new faith, but also a new poli- tical status. Under British rule in India, on the other hand, the Christians remained as much a subject popula- tion as the Hindus. I have heard that even in the chur- ches in the old days the Indian Christian congregation could not sit with the European congregation. The con- sciousness of racial superiority on which British rule in India rested was not cancelled by Christianity. On the contrary, the British rulers felt happy if Christianity did not infuse arrogance into the converts from Hinduism, and they attached the greatest possible importance to the saying that blessed are the poor in spirit.

The attitude of the rulers, coming in the wake of the force of the caste system, made Indian Christians humble and diffident as a class. But among the Indian Chris- tians themselves there was, as I have also pointed out, a good deal of difference in outlook and status due to their former position in Hindu society. This can be said to be particularly true of the best Christian families of Cal- cutta. They were and remain indistinguishable from other Bengalis of the same education and position. They never were very enthusiastic about going over to a foreign style of living, and preferred to live like Bengali gentlemen, which they were. I shall give an amusing example of this from my knowledge. A Bengali Christian from one of these Calcutta families was working in Delhi some years ago, and he lived with his wife in the house of an Indian Christian priest in one of the churches of New Delhi. This Bengali gentleman did not want to forget that he was one, and after dinner every evening he smoked his long-piped hookah on the lawn. It was, of course, much more expensive and elegant than any contraption in the way of smoking used by the padre, who was a more typical InIdian Christian, but the sound of the hubble-bubble (the word is onomatopoeic) got on his nerves. So one evening he shouted to my friend to stop, refusing to turn the other ear to the noise. No attention was, of course, paid to this. So, in revenge, he kept the alarm clock on from midnight to about three in the morning, even taking the trouble to sit up to wind the timepiece when it ran down. In a sense this padre was right, and his fanaticism was in the right place, for among the Hindus-whether he knew it or not-behaviour is the more important part of religion, and unless one resisted Hindu behaviour at the outset the Hindu camel was likely to usurp the whole Chris- tian tent before anybody could do anything about it. I shall presently speak about this danger, which seems to be growing in the epoch of independence.

This loyalty to the ways of the country was not confined to the upper-class Indian Christians only. It was shown to a greater or lesser degree by all classes of converts to Christianity in British India. This made it easier for the Christians to live with the Hindus without creating serious maladjustments, and for the same reason they never be- came as alienated from the country's culture as were the Goanese. On the other hand, it also exposed them to the social discriminations operative in Indian society, and also to the contempt of the Hindus so far as the converts from the lower castes were concerned. This contempt was even accentuated by the conversion, which for the Hindus was combined religious, social, cultural, and poli- tical apostasy. The result was that for protection against the Hindu attitudes the Indian Christians remained ab- jectly dependent on the missionaries, and developed all the traits of a client class, except in a few families of high standing.

This is as apparent today as it was in the past. In one sense, the feeling of helplessness and inferiority has increased, owing to the fact that the rulers of the country are now Hindus. In an India which is independent, the Christians have become even more dependent on their churches, in which there is a stiffening of the White mis- sionaries and clergy, and without these White men the Indian Christians would feel completely abandoned even in their own country. The great majority of them lead their etiolated life in the shade, and no sun invigorates them. There is something diffident and even pitiably de- pendent about them. I notice this in any large gather- ing of Indian Christians. They do not seem to be at ease. One might say that all of them are sitting timidly on the edge of the chair in the Hindu living-room.

In spite of this there are fewer adventurers among the Indian Christians than among the Goanese settled in India. But they are also unadventurous in their ways. They have their own type of goodness, which inclines towards the wishy-washy. Therefore when holding executive ap- pointments they show an over-attentiveness to their Hindu superiors, and when higher in the bureaucratic hierarchy they are more convinced of the Hindu leaders' infallibility than even the most complaisant Hindu official in the same position. One evening, shortly after the military occupa- tion of Goa, a high Hindu official who disapproved of it and was not afraid to say so even in a gathering of other officials, dragged me into a discussion with a high Indian Christian official. I said that the act was like Hitler's occupation of Austria. 'My God!' exclaimed the Chris- tian, 'do you compare it to that?' I rather thought that the God whom he was invoking was more on the side of the two dissentient Hindus than on that of the assenting Christian. The Indian Christians differ from the Hindus in this that though the latter admit the power of their fellow-Hindu rulers and would do nothing to incur their displeasure, privately, they do not see much virtue in the leaders. The Christians, on the other hand, give the im- pression of believing sincerely that the Hindu ministers cannot be very different from the archangels, standing by the side of God.

In the light of their present attitudes and behaviour it is not at all difficult to forecast the future of the Indian Christians. The wealthy and well-placed among them will become merged in the Anglicized Hindu upper middleclass, with only a difference of faith, which nobody, including themselves, will take very seriously. On the other hand the majority of Indian Christians, that is, those who are poor and already depressed socially, will become something like inferior castes in Hindu society.

It is not even improbable that they will perform Hindu and Christian rites impartially. Already, there is among all classes of Indian Christians, especially those of good position, a greater readiness to take part in Hindu festivals like the Holi and the Diwali than is safe for them. The Christians sprinkle colour, smear red powder, and explode fireworks like the Hin- dus. This they justify on the plea that these are nothing but social customs. They do not know the fact to which I have just referred that the most insidious side of Hin- duism is the social. A Hindu sets greater store by Hindu social behaviour than by any Hindu belief or dogma, which, in any case, it would be very hard to define. Bishop Heber had seen this even in the early days of missionary activity in India. He found that many Hindu boys of a missionary school in Benares had begun to say the Lord's Prayer, and he observed: 'Their parents seem extremely indifferent to their conduct in this respect. Prayer, or outward adoration, is not essential to caste. A man may believe what he pleases, nay, I understand, he may almost say what he pleases, without danger of losing it, and so long as they are not baptized, neither eat nor drink in company with Christians or Pariahs, all is well in the opinion of the great majority, even in Bena- res. So most Hindus are ready to compound the credo for the Holi and the Diwali.

Even in the worst days of Roman persecutions Chris- tianity was not faced with such a prospect as that which faces it today in India. Hindu tolerance is not a thing which lends dignity to what it tolerates. Therefore, thinking of the past of that religion I wish for a perse- cuting Caesar in India, so that its followers might be challenged to save themselves. If there was in the Hindu political order today a modern Nero, instead of a modern Augustus crying, 'Varus, Varus, give me back my legions', it would have been possible for me to see a great vision.

The Christians would be hated for His name's sake. I should see the abomination of desolation standing where it ought not, children rising against parents, brother be- traying brother, and even father the son, and the last of the faithful wearily taking the road out of Delhi, towards the south-west. As darkness falls and he is near the Idgah, prayer-ground, in which Tamerlain camped after sacking Delhi, he sees a figure coming up the road. When it comes nearer he recognizes it for what it is, and falling down on his knees, cries: 'Quo vadis, Domine!"

The figure replies: 'Ad Novam Delhiam, redimere apos- tatas et traditores.'

But no one will redeem the Christians of India, for there will be no traitors among them, and if there will be apostates they will all remain unconscious of the apostasy.*