దేశం మరియు ప్రజలు (కొనసాగింపు)

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11

THE COUNTRY AND PEOPLE

The domestic animals chief both of which are extensively used in agriculture. ploughing and the watering of animals, and all heavy carts are drawn by them. the cows and the buffaloes give milk, but in some parts for that purpose, and nearly cows are very little kept of mUk is obtained from the whole supply The milk of the latter is richer in cream than that of the The cattle on the whole cows. fodder is difficult to get, and the farmers have no idea Moreover, by successive famines, of scientific breeding. the cattle have been much reduced in numbers. estimated that in the famines of 1897 and 1900 fully cattle in the half the affected Kurnool the Government has done something to improve The wet districts, where cattle are at their the breed. worst, are favourable to buffaloes. except in towns, and there they are of small size the country-bred pony is hardy and has great powers of Goats are kept wherever there is pasturage endurance. is poor, and their milk so for them, but their quality 23

(continued) cattle and are buffaloes, Domestic ^.mmals. The fields are done by these Both buffaloes. of poor are quality, It is districts were In lost. Horses are quite rare still, ;

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24 in some parts they are not milked at scanty that They give the ordinary mutton of these parts. kept for food, not for their wool. are also as elsewhere in India, of the noble qualities of the dog kept in Europe, but are regarded chiefly as scavengers, and are, therefore, useful Shepherds, however, keep dogs, which to the villages. they value highly, to drive their sheep. found in the villages of a kind somewhat different from England. those of very short and fine hair, and are commonly of a greyish stripes above and having colour, are not looked upon as pets, but are tolerated in the villages on account they are taken young and brought up in the house they prove fully equal to those of their kind in Britain. A few words must be said about the climate. Climate. popular saying has been that enjoys two seasons in the year, the hot season and the Our mission hotter. of the Presidency. The range of the thermometer in the as distinctly hot. course of the year is not great. trict the mean temperature has been officially declared From November to be 85". paratively pleasant, though the sun is found, by anyone at midday, somewhat oppressive. out of doors March to May the heat markedly increases. of June the rains are due, and the temperature, from that time, through July, August and September, depends When clouds are abundant and rain on the rainfall.

all. Sheep The dogs, They have none are half wild. Cats are to be They with body, are slender in They below. spots however, usefulness. their of If, The the Madras Presidency districts belong to the dry region They must, therefore, be described Kurnool dis- For the is com- to February it From At the end

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Buffaloes in the river Handri, Kurnool; A stone-leader's bandy, Kurnool

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A Stone-leader's bandy, Kurnool

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falls at frequent intervals the temperature is pleasantly When lowered. rain ceases, But on the whole, the body adapts speedily follows. high annual temperature, to this itself people there will agree that when the mercury falls below 70° (which a occurrence) rare is unpleasantly cold. In spite of the great heat, this part of the country far more favourable to touring on the is missionaries than much of upper India. is the fact that travelling with tents is more extensively in many parts, In North practised. India, sidered impossible by European tents during six or seven months diflScult, though not impossible, to endure indeed, is it the heat of May and June under canvas, but in all the other months camping is commonly practised. be easily seen what an enormous difference travel makes to what of facility Another vUlage a mission. is that the more open-air consideration to lead here tends to keep the missionaries in possible better health. The climate, therefore, is, in itself, not unfavourable. Unfortunately the country is Under the hills there diseases. bad type. Cholera is a common, almost a yearly, visitor to the Small-pox villages. is ; nor is there any idea of isolating thought very httle of at any Dysentery the patient stage. and proves epidemic, fatal

25 temperature a of rise that most so begins to feel it

part of the

A proof of this is con- it officers to remain in Here, of the year. It may this greater almost entirely is unworthy not point of life that is it Diseases. supplied with plentifully a malarial fever of is but generally present, occasionally is Typhoid to children.

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26 the threatens especially arrives in the country accustomed to drink only pure At one season of the year ophthalmia, locally water. ' sore eyes,' a disease both painful and disgusting, called

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minute abounds. certain seeks the human eye, seems to be designed to be the carrier of this disease, and to be a continual annoyance to and by by referred the habit Relief can be obtained only by One fatal disease has been markedly under a punkah. absent from this part of the country—that is the plague. The reason of its absence is as yet unexplained. can be no doubt the habits of the people are largely for the abundance responsible villages are kept in a much dirtier condition than those Though the houses inside may be clean, in North India. the approaches to the village, as every traveller knows, are indescribably dirty. down become streams, washed, which finally reaches understand why to therefore, village after another down the valley. like those as a are not, rule, shafts, but are generally large excavations, with steps leading down to the water. greater chance contamination, or even of rains, washing completely in the available for drinking, as the missionary soon finds out, is often a Hquid deeply coloured by animal and vegetable from this account matter. If the people have much to contend with, it should

who European missionary, which persistently fly, buzz. incessant its in a wind or sitting There The of their diseases. In the rainy season these roads which indiscriminate filth is the easy, It river. is one attacks cholera Again, the wells of North India, narrow a much This form gives a of flood, The only water in. would appear that it also

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appear that by a general effort they could make a vast improvement in their conditions. The rainfall in India is governed ahnost entirely by The south-west monsoon, the monsoon winds. blows ning until June, in monsoon begins north-east the continues until December or January, though the time prevails over any part of India either monsoon when The with the varies locality. monsoon winds the the of of origin weather At the hot the of close heated by the rays of the sun, attracts mass of India, the south-east trade wind in a northerly direction. configuration of the land causes the wind that passes over it to take in general an easterly direction—whence it becomes the south-west monsoon. India it blows from the south, or the south-east, or even weather In the cold the east. High pressure then exists over Central Asia, prevail. which gives rise to the current known as the north-east monsoon. The amount that rain of varies mainly according to their relations to the The hills divert the winds which bring up the rain-laden The monsoon currents show a predilection for clouds. moving along certain valleys as compared with others. Thus, one vaUey may year after year go abundant neighbour its next enjoys streams of air exhibit a special partiality for travelling Our mission districts are fairly up the beds of rivers. The rainfall of one of them. rich in both hills and rivers.

; 27 Rainfall, begin- September August or October and about account given general as follows is enormous land the The But in parts of conditions different places in different falls hills. short, while The cool rain.

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28 Kurnool, the of district thirty-five inches per annum. get much than less credited instance, is Places with so small a rainfall naturally become known as centres of recurring scarcity. No account these of Famines. without some reference to the periodical famines. mere enumeration of the famine years of the nineteenth century teUs its pitiful 1866, 1891, 1876, 1854, supposed that the famine problem has yet been solved. There is an idea abroad that the British Government is able to cope with famine, so far, at least, as the saving of life is concerned. gathered from the fact that, in the famine of 1900, in the Bombay Presidency the deaths leaped up from a normal half a mUlion of something over million and a quarter. the rate twenty years previously in one of our mission of Kurnool—when, districts—that deaths the famine, previous year) from under 20,000 to 48,000. famine even now be on a wide enough limitations of human power to contend with the adverse forces of nature wlU be seen in the ghastly death-roll. Some of the conditions that make for famine must be Famine is not necessarily due to a shortage mentioned. of food in the country as a whole. country. food-producing During a famine India wiU probably and imports little.

is put down as a whole, at Parts of the Presidency The town BeUary, of for this. twenty with than inches. less districts would be complete The 1810, 1824, 1804, tale 1833, : Nor must it be 1900. 1897, How erroneous is this idea may be to one in the year This is not so very different from nine months in of (as compared with the increased Let the scale, and the is a great India exports large It quantities

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still contain more than enough food for the whole popula- What technically tion. is confined to a certain area and is the result of the failure India suffers through its excessive of rain in that area. dependence on a single two-thirds at least of its whole population being occupied Everywhere on the land. depend for their livelihood on cultivation. fails to rain therefore, fall, their means unmediately lose the drought they have no work to If their wages are generally paid can earn no wages. in grain, their food supply is directly cut off then they have no money with which to buy food. market may be fuU of grain, but that is of small avail to the poor labourer who famine, therefore, is a famine of wages or money, rather in many respects, than of food. It is, unemployment problem no sooner is it certain that the crops are aggravation : going to be a failure over any considerable district than food-stuffs in the market the price of They may become double or treble the normal raised. best way for Perhaps the price. understand what famine means in India that half the people, say, poor with insignificant exceptions, were thrown simul- taneously out of work, while at the same time the price of food was enormously enhanced. India, depending wholly as it does on the monsoons is more for liable rain, its

29 famine usually called is that agriculture, of industry, people majority the of Wherever, of the labourers the bulk During subsistence. of they do, therefore if in cash, ; The The destitute cash. of is similar to the one with but England, in is immediately English readers to is to suppose of London, including all the to famine than any other

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30 During the country in the world. famine average frequency of more than once every ten years. of famine, however, so far as human life has been immensely reduced. the Bengal famine of 1770, for instance, when one-third of the whole population is said to have perished, practically inconceivable. It was during in 1869, that the British Government first undertook the responsi- bility of saving human life. only by degrees. In 1874, during the famine in Behar, relief was given in excess of the needs of the case, and the result was a marked degree of pauperisation. In the appalling famine of 1876-8, led to a reaction. which raged in the Madras and Bombay Presidencies, the Famine Commissioner appointed by the Government of India, who by a strange irony was the very man who had advised the excessive relief which to many scheme of The exacting. pitilessly that the rate of pay was insufficient to support life. was the opinion of medical The Madras generally. had, in the Ceded Districts, a million persons on relief works, gave a trial for a short time to the scheme, and then increased slightly When, lamentable indeed. were opened for those too weak to work, large numbers had to be admitted to them who had been on the relief The Government works.

the British period, been has considerably The destructiveness is concerned, A mortality like that of is now in Rajputana, the famine The policy was worked out This relief in Behar, produced a time seemed the at criticism was point of chief This officers and of the public which Government, already The the were rate. results later, relief camps a little Sanitary Commissioner in

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one of his reports asserted that of those whom he had so far seen in the relief camps one-half at least must die. mortality famine the Altogether Bombay reached Presidencies The districts in which our mission work five miiiions. is carried on were among the worst sufferers. The Famine Commissions gathered up the of fruits The main principles now adopted are two in number. The every that is first The success of famine measures is to be reckoned saved. not by financial considerations at aU, but by the num- The second principle is that relief ber of deaths. be given in return for work from all who can work. is to be neither too low to preserve standard of relief life, nor so high as to destroy people's independence of The simple rule governing the rate of wages character. is that the lowest wage will be given which wiU maintain a healthy person in health. undertake to keep any persons in ordinary comfort, nor to prevent suffering, all is evident that the point of greatest these principles it is not the amount consideration but the quantity of food that can be bought with is made The wage, therefore, with the market price of the necessaries of life. Government the Since 1877 opportunities of putting these principles into practice. The famine of 1897 was spread over a very wide area. the Government claimed that its aim of saving life But met with complete success.

31 the Madras and in dreadful total of the 1898 and 1901 1880, of this and experiences. later be to possible, is if life, is to The The Government does not On but save to solely life. of the wage in itself, it. vary automatically to had two has great The famine of 1899-1901

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32 not only came before the country had recovered, but was on an even larger scale. no less than 4,500,000 persons on the relief works. loss of life from famine in British districts was estimated Among the somewhat smaller population at one million. under estimated native rule is it perished. The liability to famine being so great, the attitude of the Government has become one of unceasing prepared- The various provinces have their Famine Codes. ness. The Madras Famine Code, to select the one that applies if examined, will be found to be to our mission districts, an extraordinarily elaborate set of rules, prescribing in fullest detaU what to be done is during, and after famine. ment aims at being fully informed, whole agricultural situation. Province, from the in officer highest, has to conti^ibute his quota of information, by sending, monthly or weekly throughout the year, reports on the state cultivation, of mortality amongst men and cattle, and market The huge mass information thus of densed and published monthly by the Government Then, in addition to this, complete programmes India. relief works, capable of absorbing the labour of one- of of the whole population, fifth with the Government and kept up to date. programmes of the large extra staff required immediately on the outbreak of famine. necessary for the immense relief works are always ready.

At one time there were The that three millions preparation in for, In the first place, the Govern- of the all tunes, at Nearly every executive lowest rank the the to water supplies, rainfall, prices. obtained con- is of are permanently lodged These include Even the tools and plant

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The famine course of : Where indications point to famine described as follows test works are opened. being imminent, somewhat standard severe the average in private employment. proves persons the bodied relief works distress, then the famine These are necessarily such as can employ a large pro- unskilled labour. portion of is generally excluded. therefore, as tanks and wells. irrigation works, such the programme. in often men, women, and children—are divided into classes and The wages are carefully regulated assigned proper tasks. for each class of work, to secure the worker a sufficiency To persons unable to work, such as aged and food. of sick persons and children, Such persons, if not belonging to others already on relief separate camps. works, treated in are artisans, of skilled classes work at their own trade and paid relief wages for it. These are the main principles of famine measures. But the utmost human ingenuity has been exercised to leave no contingency unprovided is suddenly called upon to superintend very probably operations involving the saving of life on an enormous scale, is no longer left to buy his experience as he goes on. This Famine Code not only gives him the main lines of fills in the details in such a multiplicity of action, but ways as to be a veritable manual of famine relief. would seem be impossible to

33 operations may be briefly Famine relief, On a these, of work exacted, above is If the influx of able- wide-spread existence of are commenced. Railway construction, Preference is given to Roads are persons able to work All is given gratuitously. relief Certain large are given such as weavers, officer who The for. It find any event that to

D

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34 has not been anticipated inspect Idtchens and food, to wish to know how to make up gangs of labourers, and what quantities of work they can be expected to per- Does he need to build huts, or to erect booths form ? drinking water ? for supplying an epidemic cholera ? of thing to do in every one contingencies exactly described in the Famine Code. Thus the Government stands confronting the greatest of its present problems. How to prevent famine is a far greater ning of its task. problem than how to cope with famine. succeed in making India say, any advanced Western state is now, few things that have been done in the world, and nothing that has yet been achieved in India, would be comparable with that. Among the things that must be touched on, to give a Land of the people amongst whom our Mission tenure. proper idea is working, are their relations the Government. with, are those that concern the land. people from whom our Christians are drawn are engaged on the land as labourers, a certain number are them- selves peasant proprietors. for the prosperity or otherwise of those who draw their living directly from the land, intimately concerns our people. all that part of India which includes our Telugu In the people Mission, ' ryotwari ' system.

Does he have him. to for Does he disinfect wells ? Has he to cope with He proper the find will of these and numberless other As yet is only at the begin- it it can If ever as unmune from famine as, or points of contact to, Of these the most important While almost all the Whatever, therefore, makes hold under lands their the

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' ryot ' is a farmer or cultivator ;

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and the essence of this system deals directly with the individual cultivator. parts of India the whole village for paying a fixed land revenue, and some person has to be entrusted with the power proprietor his share according to his holding. The name of every proprietor not so here. in the Government books, and he alone for the Government demands. The foundation of the assessment At all times, in some part or other of the Settlement. a Province, the special staff engaged in surveying and in estimating the value of all and kinds of land, in fixing Government. fairly yield to the once made, force in for is Once in every year each cultivator But this is not all. has his name registered, with during he cultivating that is If he is taking up more land, the tax revenue account. to which it is liable is recorded. he is giving up some land previously cultivated, he ceases thenceforth to be liable to the tax. is registered, and occupancy according automatically assessed, Settlement. The old theory was that the State was the sole land- owner, and the cultivator only an in the Madras Presidency, his occupancy and hereditary, and can be freely sold or mortgaged, does not practically differ from proprietorship.

35 is that the Government In some jointly responsible is collect from every to That is is written is answerable is what is called Settlement of officers is they may revenue the

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settlement, when thirty years. tjie exact extent of land that a year, in special If, on the other hand, But m any case his lor the year his liability the the to of scale But occupier. as, is permanent it

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36 Much the greatest part of the land in our districts is Some held by Sudras. But portions of land, generally of poor or to Brahmans. from time quality, to the two out-caste classes, the Malas and the Madigas, from whom most of our Christians spring. way that a certain number of our Christians have come to be not merely labourers but landowners. The burdensomeness of the land tax has long been of controversy between the a subject India and the defenders of the Government. the tax principal is and question the is Whatever experience with the contact in show tax the that same At the them. Indebted- ness of and indebtedness, their Indicin doubtful whether even the smallest portion is peasants. relief that might be given would, under present circum- stances, reach the cultivator, and not rather swell the profits of the mercantile class in whose hands the class of cultivators really lies bound. This indebtedness general problems in the raising of the masses. first likely to puzzle and shock the English is at of it But it really arises out of the circumstances observer. which the country, of Ready money at is, He has periodically to pay a Indian peasant. biiy an ox, to marry a son or daughter, or to conduct a

temples belong parts to rich immemorial have been assigned It is in this Nationalists in The land revenue source India, of in for the Government. vital one a writer has gathered present the goes small to proprietors, on very indeed hardly presses owing excessive their time, to habits peculiar of thrift, it of any one the greatest of is The universality make easily explainable. it a need times, pressing the of tax, to

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Now, to provide for these necessities before- lawsuit. hand is one of the hardest possible things is true that there have been in the country, learn. It from ancient times, certain ways of making provision for the future need of ready cash. Another was to buy jewellery for in a hole in the earth. the womenkind to wear. Until lately silver ornaments might at any moment be sold for their weight in rupees. But for some years past the heavy silver, combined with the has made the loss on the sale of silver ornaments con- This form of siderable. not commend itself so much as formerly. most popular course is to put oneself in the hands of a In times of necessity the latter advances moneylender. the ready money, while the other party to the transac- tion, for aU the rest of his life, continues to pay interest at a high rate. Neither party in the business intends, when he enters upon that the indebtedness should it, ever come to an end. It is of the essence of the relation between the moneylender and the peasant that the latter should always be a source of income to the former for ever continue to pay interest, therefore, he should but, at the same time, should always have at least a bare subsistence—as mean a one as will justify the moneylender in reducing him to, but still a subsistence. If, therefore, figures helplessness of the borrower in the clutches of the lender, stands between latter sometimes the starvation or other fate nearly as bad. bad, or when the applicant is out of work, if he occupies

37 for him to One was to bury coins fall in the price of artificial value of the rupee, investment, does therefore, By far the that, : society position in his fail to describe the former and the When times are

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38 a position in life which gives promise of a future return, it is the moneylender's advance which saves him for the Thus the mass of the peasantry hold the same time. position with regard to the moneylender, portion of our English population do to the pawnbroker. The system is extensive and thoroughly bad. life-blood of a large class is being slowly soaked out of it by a much less worthy class. rule is believed to have tended to fasten the system on by making the country, available for the recovery of moving social checks on the abuse of power. rate, farmers have been known to complain with some bitterness that in the old days, when the demands the moneylenders became too exorbitant, they could go and burn their houses and books, while now there is the police behind them. of the force irresistible gentler methods that we must look for the removal of and the to chiefly evil, borrower is often absolutely ignorant of his position. he does not know what is written cannot read or write ; in the merchant's books ; is often the case, he brings the interest in kind, he cannot be sure that it is entered correctly, not to speak of the fact is made by the moneylender. that the valuation the greatest hindrance to reform To the vast bulk of the population, desire for change. to be in debt and to be eternally paying in interest the money which should go for the support and the increased of themselves and prosperity much the normal and right state of things that no other

as a limited The The stability of British courts coercion the the of by these debts, and re- At any of to It is At education. the present He he holds no If, as receipts. But is the lack of a real seems their families, so

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Amusing examples of misplaced is really conceivable. benevolence, on the part of Englishmen who thought the one thing necessary was to get a man out give him a fresh start, are on record. chiefly the extreme alacrity of these people to get into Then it must not be forgotten how young debt again. the people are caught in the meshes. happens that money is borrowed for a boy's wedding, the boy himself, as and soon as is persuaded to take over the A great deal of coercion might be applied if Thus the young man starts life with a load of debt which he will never shake off to his djdng day. all these considerations stands the prime some moneylender of sort without which people could not, as society is constituted, The hope for the future lies in the go on living at aU. The more educated do not keep advance of education. free from debt, but they know their liabilities, and are in the way of learning more provident methods of laying A people cannot be incapable of true out their earnings. thrift who are content to live so frugally and to pay regularly all the spare portion of their income to a class But with alien interests. this in what difficulties the economical betterment people is involved. It remains briefly to touch on the relations of the villages to the Government in ways hitherto undescribed. The in contact with them officials officials and the officers of the Government the vUlage The proper. village officers,

3^ of debt and They illustrate It not uncommonly becomes of he age, for the debt. liability he refused. Over and above fact that a an absolute necessity, is so is enough to illustrate our of Local f^o^^'"- of two classes. are Officials, so much being nearer,

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40 make much more for good or evil to the peasants. of them head is the village magistrate. hereditary, and he is almost invariably a Sudra of the He Reddi tribe. is probably the representative of the chief who originally—perhaps many centuries ago—led his people colonise to this spot. of the village magistrate's function was to protect village from oppression. such an office as it is now, seems strange that attempts to start settlements without the recognised hereditary element are always failures. limited, but he responsible for order is and villagers are certain orders as watchmen or messengers. reports to the Government, and civU, and is in constant relation with the He receives a very small If misconduct virtue of the office. may removed he be him, in which case another member Though appointed. his can prove exceedingly reports and getting persons into the toUs of the police. His attitude towards our simple Christians is, therefore, he may important, for If, however, his outrages extend to the upper classes in the village, he incurs the risk of removal at the hands of hired assassins. The other important village official is the His duty is to keep the registers of the or accountant. land and its owners, and the records of the cultivation of

The His office is Indeed, the old idea his The hereditary in principle, but it is said ; His powers are in the village, under appointed to act his He sends periodical tries minor cases, criminal police. salary and lands in holds proved against is by Government^ the will be the family of powers he thus are limited, by making oppressive, false them give endless trouble. ' karnam '

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the village lands and of the taxes due to Government. His office also is hereditary. These officials are entirely local. a series of officers who stand directly for British govern- The one with whom our people will have most to ment. ' tahsildar,' the magistrate of one of the areas do is the into which the whole country is divided for administra- tive purposes and which are the smallest administrative He responsible units. for is perhaps twenty or thirty miles across. our people are involved commonly go to him The tahsUdar is always an Indian. trial. a member the Deputy Collector, Service, who may be either authority extends over a much larger Collector, who is above him, is the fountain of authority of what for the whole is technically which a portion includes large Cuddapah for example, District, Wales, and in 1901 contained nearly 1,300,000 people. The Collector controls the whole of the administration, and also the collection of revenue, within this huge area. Naturally, therefore, our vUlages see very little of him. Of the other departments, the one which affects our xhe people most intimately is that a altogether British institution, we must look with mingled is more feared and hated by the mass of the country One important function people. admirably—that of keeping the peace. tion of crime they not only do not succeed, but have no

41 But above them is an area within order Cases in which for first Above him is Indian the of Civil His Indian English. or But the area. called a District, The country. of is about as as large Pol'=e, This of the police. is which and on one Nothing in the feelings. perform the police But in the detec-

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42 The people chance of success. of the annoyance because any way concerned in a police case, withhold what evidence they could or robbed often has no greater anxiety than to keep the of the hands of the affair out found those whom and men, individually of that there belief is tyranny of which, collectively, they are not capable in order to serve their own ends. With the courts of justice our people have not a great

V^^

deal to do, and when they have with the minor courts. own will found in them at aU. is brought into court, on both sides of a evidence that suit, makes the dispensing of justice a matter of extreme A man's standard of truthfulness commonly difficulty. depends on his environment for the time being. is a sphere within which be binding upon him, whilst weakened force is England all education tends to make that sphere a large The effect is felt in the administration one. The average witness in court recognises an obligation to the community at large sufficiently to make him on the whole speak the truth. a man within which extremely often small. larger than his own neai-est group of hills is often, indeed, a foreign country

against them and, are inflicted on aU who are in help Even the man who give. is The writer has police. has met a well-disciplined he set But popular the kind. and no no crime species of is it is almost invariably They are not generally by their The low standard of the There moral laws the are to felt outside that sphere their or may be In altogether. lost of justice. But in India the community moral recognises obligations is It may very much be not The country beyond the village.

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So the same man who in his own village and to him. his own panchayat might before truth, when removed to a distance and before a court which always preserves feels no such obligation. A witness may feel that his obligations the difficulty. towards a plaintiff or defendant of his own caste wholly those towards the community override towards truth in the abstract. of the ordinary party to a suit, moreover, is not without The belief of the vast ideas of policy. is that no case is good enough to go into court without A typical example of the many trivial embellishment. just because they seem to have stories which amuse, is that of the plaintiff who produces a a lifelike touch, forged bond with false witnesses to prove a loan which had never really been made far from denying the loan, produces a forged with more false witnesses to prove that the loan had is not to be wondered at if the courts, been repaid. It with the best intentions, often fail to do justice. is, too, a partial explanation of that litigiousness which is often charged upon the a multitude of cases brought into court plaintiff would never have come forward any the naked expectation that from the proceedings. gamble in the courts exactly as a similar class in England enjoy a little gamble on the Stock Exchange. The people from whom our Christians are drawn are too poor to rush into lawsuits.

43 tell the bare literal a somewhat aspect, foreign The caste system magnifies or in general The common procedure illiterate mass ; upon which the defendant, receipt This There Indian people. are in which the if he had had truth would emerge Many enjoy a people little Moreover, is a there

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44 check, additional slight inasmuch a Christian who, without the permission as Church the of authorities, fellow Christian, would be liable to punishment by the panchayat. Christian liable to be brought into court as defendants. The Post Office is the one department in which the The Post Office. Government appears to the people in a whoUy benevolent is indeed an admirable aspect. It the whole vast country that of Post Office in England will for one halfpenny, and transport by rail is rather the exception than the rule. In many parts there are not even roads for fast-wheeled traffic, and an immense number carried by runners. a short spear and a circlet of jingHng beUs, traverse daily many a road amidst palpable dangers and robbers, and bring the mail bag through many In the remoter districts, such as our part of the flood. Telugu country, we cannot expect a service in most of But post the villages. about ten miles apart, along the main routes. Kalasapad is an example of a very remote mission-station. every evening the mail reaches Kalasapad, having been carried by runners the whole sixty miles from Cuddapah early morning since the mail from Kalasapad reaches Cuddapah every day. is safe to say that the Post Office is one of the great forces are changing the that before we have done with

on Utigation, their in case, a a brought against suit Our course, Christians of are, Over institution. it wiU do what the carry a not, that letter is, that spite of the this in fact of mails have to be These men, armed commonly with of wild beasts a offices wiU generally be found, Yet and similarly the outgoing ; It And into the new. India old it, we owe it the duty of

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।, TIVAANVN ONINMON dOOD b 3 i.

AVA AYS

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A typical school and schoolhouse in the Telugu Country

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THE COUNTRY AND PEOPLE

mentioning that in some of the provinces, and in ours helping particular, in it is malaria, by scourge India, of farthing doses of quinine. The last subject that need detain us village itself, its constitution and its inhabitants. EngUsh readers need to make an effort to understand the import- ance of the village in any study of India are so different from those prevaihng at home. in England and Wales the urban population is between three and four times as great as the rural, in India the rural outnumbers the urban by eight to one. importance is not the of village The fact is that the village system has these numbers. characters the modified of difficult for persons living in entirely different circum- In India, when the British came to stances to grasp. it, the village was virtually a state in miniature. it a more definite entity and one which villager saw in more had powerful hold a organisation outside poUtical vUlage lands were a perfectly defined piece of territory, in the integrity of which he had a real interest. the village was if not nearly, mere haphazard was no population custom prescribed that persons ; the classes of workers necessary for aU functions of life, in due proportion. and those outlook tended to be limited to his smsdl village from it was economically independent fact that the Lastly, the village world. outer

45 combat that to gigantic at every selling, office, is that of the The ''"ages, the conditions ; Whereas But the expressed by be to an the people extent to The upon any than himself To begin the with, it. Then quite, Its self-sufficing. aggregation of it should contain all The ordinary villager's of the was almost in all

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MISSIONS IN THE TELUGU COUNTRY

46 a self-governing respects own course with the least is obvious how different the It have been from anything that we now understand by that term in the West. some changes occupation, impossible to understand the Indian character without forming a mental picture of his village environment. Let us look now at the different classes we are likely to find in any one of the villages in our mission districts. is the landowning First of all there portant of all and the backbone of the community. come Brahmans or priests, traders, artisans and independ- Lastly come the out-castes, who occupy ent workmen. the position of menial servants of the village or of the landowners, and who work as labourers on the land. villages the landowners are mainly Sudras. In our of more be spoken These wLU The most important

chapter.

merchants, who combine with their trade the business The principal workmen are the black- of moneylending. smiths, the carpenters, the washermen, the barbers, the potters, the weavers and the jewellers. to be found, in many villages, shepherds, basket-makers, The village musicians, and others. The mentioned above. out-castes are which have been already named, Malas and Madigas. Both of these, besides working on the land, have special handicrafts, the former being weavers, the latter cobblers. The main village of divisions Thus we shall find the Sudras, the of houses. blocks

pursuing organisation, its possible help from outside. in India must village And though, since the British have come, almost is it class, the most im- Next a subsequent in fully of the traders are corn There are also officials have been of two classes, society in separate live

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THE COUNTRY AND PEOPLE

Brahmans, the merchants, the Malas, and the Madigas, all living separately from one another. It has been the immemorial custom to regard the above-mentioned artisans their work by the person who They are not paid for services, though he has to supply them requires their But they get a regular allowance with materials. grain out of the harvest, and, possibly, other perquisites. They also hold pieces of land in virtue of their services. are hereditary. these posts All connected perquisites are sacrifices, and in the case who perform important functions in the great gives to difficulties rise Christians. For disputes, settling land or to caste rules, there The word mittee of elders. is by no means restricted to the committee but number. The most important understanding of the old village life of India, is that the village was, in a vast number of cases, almost completely The major part of the land was given up self-sufficing. to the cultivation of the staple foods. the cotton, which was a crop grown within the village boundaries, was spun and woven into cloth in the village. The jungle furnished materials for houses and for fuel. Salt might have to come in from outside. we may say that all the necessaries of life were procurable We have already seen that all the elements on the spot.

47 the servants vUlage. as of of some In the cases with annual the vUlage of the Malas and Madigas, this sacrifices, when become they those especially relating to is the panchayat, or com- signifies a body of five, that remember to fact the for In many cases But practically

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MISSIONS IN THE TELUGU COUNTRY

48 society which were required were to be found of The result was that the Indian village, which village. its dependence on the outer world, became never felt self-centred to an extraordinary degree. caste, and the the bonds of between connexions to led sectional, and they were not even these ties were between whole vOlages. preferred to live in its isolation. fact meets us everywhere in the absence of roads between country, was not the custom for a village to make roads between itself and its neighbours. been worn by the wheels though these tracks are so permanent that the writer, using a map, thirty years old, of his district, which gave never once these tracks, to be marked, yet it is probably the literal fact that not once in a hundred years has a village sent out a gang of men to clear away the smooth round stones that give the springless carts such a terrible jolting. knows one village, on the tracks leading to which the stones are bigger than usual, and which, on that account, no heavily-laden cart can approach. It was this hugging of their isolation on the part of gave that the villages While village life was intense, national cohesion to India. feeling was almost non-existent. desired nothing so much as to be narrow outlook, They were willing to pay tribute to the para- alone. mount power as the price of security, and to pay even

in the It is true that resulting intermarriages, But groups of villages. ties For the most part the village A curious proof of this in our part Telugu the of villages. It Such tracks as there are have And of the country carts. found a deviation sufficient The writer such a remarkable want of The villagers, in their let

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of leaving to themselves no more than to the extent enough to live on. If security were granted, the nature of the paramount power became a matter of absolute This greatly facilitated the British absorp- indifference. The tion people of India. engendered by insecurity The British appeared to be the strongest the country. of the contending powers and, therefore, promised more security than any other. people all politics were comprised in the question would make it easier for them to plough, to sow, and to reap ? But explains this if conquest of India, it also explains, in part, the present What the villager supremely ferment in India. was to be let alone to pursue the small round of village is just what has not been done. That life. little dreamed of when first the British power assumed the responsibility of keeping the peace of the country, life has been profoundly disturbed. that Our but be of ideal so. different order to the Indian tration does interfere with the village commonwealth in The ways. vital effective village, but in the longer from The police bring the it. the distant Government into contact with the meanest all, a new commercial system has Worst of villager. let loose forces which undermine the whole economical stability of the vUlage. should have been divided among of old days,

49 by were the distracted sections within the warring To the vast masses of the : What the the easiness of British desired In ways It could not of a national totally life is Our adminis- villager's. is no government of seat far removed it and outside irresistible strength of The corn which, by the custom all the

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50 village, now, by the operation Goods from abroad, by the same laws, other countries. in and make the labour come The village, which wanted to be outside unnecessary. the world forces, has found it more than ever impossible But the Government is, of course, as much the to be so. its circumstances as anyone. passive tool of could put back the march of events. pointing out that this was not what the people expected. The British rule, which, by its promise of peace, backed by resistless force, seemed to be going to establish the village commonwealth for powerful dissolvent of it ever known in Indian history. Surely these people in their perturbation, who see the old order changing with accelerated speed and conceive but a dim idea of that new order to which it is destined to give place, have a claim upon our sympathy.

of new to laws, drifts of the artisans village No one Here we are only has proved the most ever,