Chapter 2-

FROM THE WORD TO THE EYE

WHEN I hear my foreign friends speak of 'an Indian' or 'Indians' I sometimes interrupt them breezily: 'Please, please do not use that word. Say "Hindu" if you have in mind a human type common to the whole continent; otherwise, according as you want to refer to this or that group, say "Bengali, Punjabi, Hindustani, Marathi, Tamil, Sikh, Muslim", and so on. As to the word "Indian", it is only a geographical definition, and a very loose one at that.' I know what would happen if I were to say anything like that to a person belonging to the present ruling class in India. Rubbish,' he would burst out, 'Hinduism is dying, if it is not already dead. Our industrial revolution will kill it, and that would be right. We have proclaim- ed a secular state, and to try to bring back into it an out- of-date religious notion is rank obscurantism. That might do for Pakistan, a backward, theocratic country, but India is progressive, and is admired by the whole world for her progressive outlook and activities.' Yet I also know that I can persuade the very same men to withdraw their loud objection very easily, even with- out starting a Socratic argument about the extinction or survival of Hinduism. They can be outflanked by a simple verbal march. There is no set of men more sen- sitive to definitions and even quibbles. It needs very little Greek to discover that the words 'Hindu' and 'Indian' are etymologically the same, being derivatives of the Per- sian and Greek forms of an identical definition. The Persian word was aspirated, whereas the Greek was soft- ly breathed, and that probably began the parting of ways. The definition originally meant 'an inhabitant of the re- gion of the river Indus' (in Sanskrit-Sindhu), but was extended to the people of the whole continent. Thus, in its primary meaning, the word 'Hindu' stands for the same thing as 'Indian', and until recently it was used only in this sense in the United States. With my countrymen, I have no need to carry the ar- gument further. But those Europeans who have read about us may remind me that it is not all so simple.

Perfectly true, for very early in its history the word came to embody much more than a mere geographical notion. The peoples of the Near and Middle East found out very soon that the dominant human group beyond the Indus belonged to a closed society which was not only highly organized in itself, but was also possessed of an intense and acute self-consciousness. The most import- ant ideas within this self-consciousness were the follow- ing: that the members of this vast society were bloodkins, and no one who was not born into it could be of it, at least without the legal fiction of birth and assimilation through the slow operation of the ever-elastic caste sys- tem; that they were not only a Chosen People, but The People; that their way of life was divinely ordained and eternal; that it was superior to all others; that there was an unbridgeable gulf between them and the older inhabi- tants of the country, as well as foreigners.

There was nothing strange or novel in such a convic- tion of the individuality and even superiority of a people: similar feelings have existed elsewhere. What distinguish- ed the Hindus from all others was, however, the fana- tical rigour with which they applied and worked out the genetic principle. The concept of such an exclusive so- ciety was naturally associated with the word 'Hindu', and therefore it did not long remain the simple geogra- phical definition which at first it was.

I am ready to modify so far my contention that the word 'Hindu' is primarily a geographical expression. In- deed, whenever I use it I feel its cultural connotation very strongly, and I wish to evoke a cultural type. But I am unable to admit any exclusively or even dominantly religious association into it. This was read into it quite recently. I am surprised to find how many people, even among those who are well educated, think that we are Hindus because we have a religion called Hinduism, and that the word is comparable to 'Christian' or 'Muslim'. It had no such association for the Hindus or for their neighbours in former times. This crept in when modern European Orientalists began to study the religions of India. They found that the Hindus had no other name for the whole complex of their religious beliefs and prac- tices except the phrase Sanatana Dharma or the Eternal Way; they did not even have a word of their own for religion in the European sense; and so the Orientalists coined the word 'Hinduism' to describe that complex of religion. Actually, we Hindus are not Hindus because we have a religion called or understood as Hinduism; our religion has been given the very imprecise label of 'Hin- duism' because it is the jumble of the creeds and rituals of a people known as Hindus after their country. On this analogy, the Greek religion might be called Hellenism, and even Graecism.

In precise use, the religious suggestion of the word 'Hindu' should be kept at its minimum, if not kept out altogether. All Hindus of today, if they have anything Hindu left in them, and have not, through an inefficient Westernization, acquired an unpleasantly shallow anti- religious bias like the anti-clericalism of the French politi- cian, think of themselves as a human community almost wholly in a cultural sense, and the religious association felt by the denatured Hindu is hardly present in their mind. Strictly speaking, the term Hindu is like 'American' or 'European', with only a far stronger genetic suggestion than is to be found in the two latter words.

Nevertheless, I neither expect nor desire to be taken too literally or seriously in my objection to the word "Indian". I myself employ it quite frequently, and I cannot claim that I always do so with discrimination. I am sure even in this book, which begins with a purist's plea, there will be found many instances of improper use of the word. But at least I can say that I am fully aware of the mot injuste, and I know what I mean when I use it with any degree of care. For me then, the word 'Indian' bears only one or other of the two following senses:

1. An inhabitant of the geographical continent of India, which for practical purposes is India as it was constituted politically in the last decade of British rule.

2. A legally recognized citizen of the new sovereign State called the Republic and Union of India, it being clearly understood that I do not consider that all the citizens of this State belong to one nation. In their case, de jure nationality is not the same as de facto nationality. Over and above, so far as I can, I try to exclude all cultural suggestion from my employment of the word 'Indian', which is always implied in my use of the word 'Hindu'. But if in spite of this, in some contexts, such a suggestion seems to creep in, it will be seen that I am then using the word as a loose equivalent of 'Hindu'.

My real object in interrupting my friends is to make a gesture of protest against the addiction to words of the educated modern Hindu. I must warn all foreigners in- terested in India against the enlightenment they get at the hands of our politicians, officials, and professors. With these men, they have necessarily to maintain close con- tacts, but that, unless the disciples are put on guard against it, may become dangerously infective.

Hindu Gurus, that is, spiritual guides, always initiate their chelas or disciples into the use of drugs, especially ganja or bhang (Canabis indica), which are supposed to give beatific visions. The secular Hindu Gurus have not given up the tradition, but the drug they offer is different. It is the most harmful drug made in India today, which if taken in large quantities-and the quantities administered are large completely destroys the faculties of thinking and observing. I shall call it Logosane, a meaningless, taste- less, colourless, but intellectually asphyxiating substance, turned out from the only really efficient mass-production factory established in India since independence, namely, the Nationalized Factory of Words.

What should we do then?-the foreign student of con- temporary India will surely ask me. Certainly, I do not expect or want him to be so incivil as to plug his ears with cotton-wool when he is listening to the torrent of words. If he likes he can even say: "The sounding cataract haunts me like a passion.' I only caution him against the anexetastos logos, the unexamined word. He can listen to everything so long as he is exercising criticism. By doing so he will discover that most often the English words used by our political and intellectual leaders stand for very little else than the letters they are written with. Even this will be a gain, though a negative one.

By way of positive advice I would request them to use their eyes. I shall try to illustrate what can be done by using them even superficially in connexion with the subject of this book-the peoples of India. Indian ethnography is burdened with a formidable load of words derived from the successive stages of its study, and in general conversa- tion the obsolete terms are just as much current coin as the newest and the most fashionable ones. This indiscri- minate vocabulary gives the earnest beginner a sense of being totally out of his depth. But his eyes can drastically simplify the picture for him.

They will show that there really are only three physical types in India, and not even a fourth worth speaking about. Classified by the popular and easily applied criterion of distinguishing human beings-complexion, these are the Blacks, the Browns, and the Yellows. The Darks (I shall call the Blacks so) are fairly uniform, being of a very deep shade of brown; the Yellows have two shades, the coppery (light or dark) and the true pale Mongoloid; the Browns on the other hand are very varied, ranging from the European blond to a dark, almost walnut, brown. An- other point which has to be noted is that the Darks and the Yellows are more or less stable genetically, whereas the Browns are not at all so. In India proper the offspring of very dark parents may be quite fair. There are, of course, intermediates, but on the whole the three com- plexions stand out in large and clearly distinguishable masses.

Now for the features. Three types are clearly marked in these too. The Darks are not Negroid, but have as a rule sharp and modelled faces, with a high though at times a rather broad nose, and large, black, and liquid eyes. They all have good figures, the men being muscular and often wiry, the women full but not fat. Anthropologists call this type Australoid, illogically as it seems to me. Of course, the reason they give is that these people resemble the Australian aborigines in their appearance, but they seem to forget that, if anything, it is the Australian primi- tives who should be called Indoid, because in some distant time man must have gone to Australia from South Asia.

The Yellows, copper or pale, have the familiar Mongo- lian features, the high cheek bone, flat nose, and eyes with the characteristic slant due to the epicanthic fold.

The Browns have what are usually described as Cauca- soid features, and to all appearance they constitute the Indian variety of the human type which is found all over Europe and western Asia. Though in India the type is often dark, for which I have called it Brown instead of White, it can be easily distinguished from the true Darks of India, and should be.

The last point that has to be made about these types is a very important one. It is that they are clearly separated from one another by their geographical distribution. Though faces which seem to be a blend of the Browns and the Darks occur in large numbers almost everywhere, and a blend of the Browns and the Yellows is also met with here and there, the three major types are concentrat- ed in their distribution. Each is found in regions which seem to have been made into its fixed and normal habitat. One might even say that each type has as stable an ecology as plants. 

The Mongoloids are confined to the Himalayan regions and the hills of Assam, though they have also spilled out in small numbers on the edges of the adjacent plains. The Darks in their free state are massed in the hilly and wooded areas of Central India and the Deccan. In a servile state they are found in small or large numbers in all parts of India, but are most numerous in the South. The Browns, on their part, live in the plains, large or small, and if they are also found in certain hilly regions it will be seen that these are river valleys, along which they have penetrated into the territory of the Darks or Yellows, and created trouble for everybody concerned. Overwhelmingly, how- ever, they are plainsmen and at home only on the plains of India.

These simple facts, which any man could discover by only using his eyes, at once sweeps away the mass of cob- webs which covers up Indian ethnology and ethnic history. But the gain need not be confined to the field of intellec- tual investigation alone. The same set of visual facts are a practical help, for they contribute to an understanding and even solution of one of the most acute and baffling problems of Indian politics, namely, the unending human conflicts which raged in the country in the past and are continuing today. If the familar words about the tolerance and capacity for synthesis of the Hindus were true, one would be hard put to it to explain why there are such deep suspicions and enmities among the human groups of India, why there are endemic outbursts of murderous ferocity, two of the worst of which swept two large provinces of the country recently.

To take the worst conflict, all my life I have been scand- alized by the discrepancy between the actual state of Hindu-Muslim relations, and their presentation in words. I have seen and read about murder, arson, loot, and rape on a colossal scale arising out of Hindu-Muslim clashes, and I have read simultaneously that there was no reason whatever for these because the Hindus and the Muslims were ethnically and culturally one. 

After independence the words have even improved their performance. In announcing these conflicts the author- ities do not refer to Hindus or Muslims, they speak of attacks by one community on another. At their frankest they go only so far as to use the phrases 'Majority com- munity' and 'Minority community'. Mankind has indeed sought mental protection against unpleasant realities by denying them or employing euphemisms. But the Hindus have carried this device to its absurdest extreme, and there- by created an unseemly opposition between what exists and what is spoken about. Therefore I say, 'Beware of words in India; above all, beware of verba magistri.'

Now let us see what can be done by using the eyes. This at once shows that the conflicts can be related to visual facts. For instance, the three ethnic groups which I have described and the classification of which is based wholly on the observation of external differences, furnish the key to one of the oldest human conflicts in India, that which has existed between the civilized Browns on the one side, and the Yellow and Dark primitives on the other.

There is fear and hatred of their Hindu rulers among all the Dark aboriginals. They feel that the Hindus are going to make, and indeed have already made, deeper inroads into their territories, economy, and life than was even thought of by any set of former rulers, including the British, under whom the country was most united politi- cally. So, after independence, many of them are claiming autonomy, or at least separate provinces for themselves.

Outside the tribal areas the conflict between the Darks and the Browns has taken the form of a revolt of the lower, and especially the untouchable castes against the higher. In some areas it is responsible for a repudiation in principle of the authority of the central government. This inter-caste conflict is, of course, most virulent in the South, where the servile Darks are most numerous.

The Mongoloids on their part are not less alarmed and resentful. Actually, they are more actively so. They were left alone even by the British, who for reasons of imperial strategy felt compelled to bring within their juridi- cal border territories which neither the Hindus nor the Muslims ever ruled. One small and very primitive Mon- goloid tribe, among whom British administrators went only under Gurkha escort, has even risen in revolt and defied the armed might of India. After many years of military operations the area remains a festering political sore, and if the tribe has not been able to withstand the Indian army, it has not been intimidated either. On the contrary, its resistance has impressed the Hindu rulers so much that they have given it a certain amount of autonomy. But the tribe has not been appeased.

I hope I have been able to make out a case that there does exist a connexion between the physical traits that the eye can see and some political conflicts in India today. The method can be extended by observing the differences of appearance which are made by cultures (including reli- gion) and trying to find out if they too can be related to certain other conflicts. Of course, they can be. The Muslims of India, in spite of all that is said loosely about their being the same people as the Hindus, can be distin- guished from the latter not only by their dress, speech, and manners, but even by their features and expression. In the same way, a Sikh will never be mistaken anywhere in the world for anybody else. And it is a commonplace that these two groupings, in which two cultures have character- istic external expressions, are behind two other political tensions in contemporary India.

Once you have declared your independence against the reign of words, you will recognize the truth (which every- body should see, but in actual fact does not) that the ethnic conflicts of India, both past and present, have arisen basi- cally from the course of the history of India. Indeed, they are a part of the historical process, accompanying it as heat does chemical processes. There is, however, an important difference between the two. The ethnic process has not, except for a single exceptional phase, turned out an amalgam; what it has precipitated has always been a physical mixture, which has remained more or less inflammable.

Thus one is led on to the most outstanding feature of the ethnic history of India-that whenever there has been an active stage in the formation of the population of India there have also been conflicts. It is not necessary to go back to past times to illustrate this. Everybody knows that India did not become independent in 1947 without an ethnic regrouping, which in two provinces, the Punjab and Bengal, brought about large-scale displacements amounting virtually to an exchange of populations. But this was not accomplished peacefully or in an orderly way, nor were the attendant disturbances foreseen, though they could and should have been. There were violent upheavals as if the country had exploded; in addition, there were massacres and plunder on a scale hardly seen before even in this land of recurrent anarchy. In Delhi we saw killings compared with which even those by Nadir Shah were minor horrors. In Calcutta the slaughter was worse.

I can give a more recent example of a human conflict brought about by economic and cultural rivalry. In India movements of population from province to province create problems akin to those brought into existence by immigra- tion in other countries. Terrible ill-feelings are generated by the competition that follows. One interprovincial (real- ly international) clash of this sort was seen in eastern India as recently as 1960. In Assam there existed and still exists a good deal of enmity between the Bengalis settled there and the descendants of the Mongoloid Ahom conquerors, kindred of the Shans of Burma, who invaded the country in the thirteenth century. In 1960 it burst out in open rioting in the Brahmaputra valley. The behaviour of the contemporary Ahoms was in striking contrast with that of the older Mongoloids in the hills, who wanted only to live and let live. They never attacked the settled popula- tion of the adjacent plains unless attacked in their own territory, and at the worst they launched a razzia once in a while. 

But the Mongoloid Ahoms, though Hinduized, rampaged on the war path. To the cry of 'Bangal kheda' ('Drive out the Bengalis') they murdered the Bengali settlers, violated their women, burnt their houses. To all appearance, feeling safe that the provincial government which was predominantly Ahom would connive or at least turn the blind eye to their doings, they ran amuck. For the first few days nobody suppressed the outbreak, and when at last the army was called out, the fire had almost burnt itself out.

The episode left both the sides more embittered and alienated than before.

These two examples, fresh as they are, typically illustrate the special nature of the human conflicts in India. The antagonisms increase in direct proportion to the intensity of the cultural consciousness. The Hindus and the Mus- lims of India were and are acutely self-conscious in this way, and the enmity between the two has also been the greatest. The Mongoloid Ahoms only demonstrated the general law afresh. They had accepted Hindu culture from Bengal, and none but a madman will say that their langu- age is not a dialectal offshoot of Bengali. Even their war cry is corrupt Bengali. But in recent years they have developed a very strong sense of an Assamese collective personality. With that they have also acquired a violent hatred for the Bengalis, who brought them into the fold of Hindu civilization, if not civilization itself. Had they re- mained the primitives that they were when they came, like the Garos, Nagas, Khasis, or Kukis, there certainly would not have been massacres. Among us Indians, cannibalism, in a manner of speaking, is the product, not of the savage state, but of the civilized. The Muslims used to divide the world into two contrasted halves of a Dar-al-Islam, a land of peace, and a Dar-al-Harb, a land of strife, and if they included India in the land of strife for their own reason, India has provided her seasons to be regarded as such.

No one dealing with the peoples of India historically or descriptively can avoid a discussion of these conflicts. I too cannot do so. But what I have to say about them will be said and suggested incidentally. The main purpose of this book is to describe the peoples of India in their natural groupings, both ethnic and cultural, and analyse their collective personality in the light of the historical evolution which has formed it. Therefore it will be only when I have to discuss the inter-relations of the groups that I shall try to explain the nature of each conflict.