Chapter Vi — The Great Hindrance
CHAPTER VI
THE GREAT HINDRANCE
To understand the attitude of India toward the West one has to keep in mind the existence in India of what Professor H. A. Miller calls “an oppression psychosis.” He defines “oppression” as “the domination of one group by another, politically, economically, or culturally—singly or in combination.” And by “psychosis” he means “those persistent and aggravated mental states which are characteristically produced under conditions where one group dominates another.” India feels that she is being dominated culturally, economically, and politically by the West. An “oppression psychosis” has resulted.
A good deal of the bitter criticism of the West on the part of India at the present time is undoubtedly the result of that psychosis. Under existing conditions it is almost psychologically impossible for India to find or appreciate any good in the West and openly acknowledge it. Indians may appropriate from the West, but as long as they are conscious that they are Indians they cannot acknowledge their debt. I have found many foreign students in America who were getting all their education and training here, but I have not seen a single one who while being self-conscious as an Indian, could find anything good in America or her civilization. Only at times when they, for the moment, forgot they were Indians could they acknowledge any good.
I do not think that India will ever openly and frankly appropriate from Western civilization or from the Western church until she is freed from this oppression psychosis, in other words, till she is politically self-governing.
Britain has on the whole given India good government, but until India feels she stands as a free people there can be no frank and balanced evaluation of what the West contains.
India can now take from Christ because she is able to disassociate him from the West, but she finds it difficult to take from the Christian Church or from missionaries, for in these cases the disassociation is not easy. But even here missionaries may lose their Western identity, so to speak, and may so merge their lives and endeavors with India that they are no longer a part of the dominating influences, but take their place as serving friends and brothers. As a social thinker, a Hindu, said to me, “Western civilization was never at such a low ebb in our estimate as now, but you missionaries never stood higher; you come not to exploit us but to serve us.” If we come as the servants of the situation, we step out of any dominating movement that may be the program of the West.
In dealing with the criticism of India toward the West we must keep in mind this psychosis, make allowances for it, and be patient.
But we fool ourselves if we dismiss it at that. For this oppression psychosis has very good basis for its existence—not so much from deliberate governmental policy as from the daily contacts of white men with brown; the snobbery, the taken-for-granted attitude that any white man is superior to any brown—these are the things that rub into soreness the soul of India and make it smart. If the Indian, smarting under these assumed attitudes, turns upon the West in invective and biting criticism, let us remember that his criticism is pointed with the knowledge the Indian now possesses that when we take these attitudes we are cutting absolutely across everything that our religion teaches. He knows that these things are not Christian.
If the centering of everything upon the person of Jesus clears the issue and has given us a new vitalizing of our work in India, nevertheless it has come back upon us in a terrific judgment. India is doing nothing less than judging us in the light—the white light of the Spirit of Jesus. They have caught the meaning of what it is to be a real Christian; in the light of that they are judging us. We could stand in the light of the civilization of other times and climes, and feel on the whole that we have come off pretty well, but it is another thing to be judged in the light of his spirit and demand.
In speaking to an audience in India I have often mentioned the incident of the church in South Africa with a sign on it, “Asiatics and Hottentots not allowed,” and how Mahatma Gandhi could not get into the church because he was an Asiatic, and have ended up by saying that my own Master could not get into the church because he too was an Asiatic. I have noted the pained scorn that would go across the faces of the audience. But the audience was not especially conscious or disturbed that the low-caste people were excluded from their own temples, not by signs, but by the decree of religion and custom. In the one case they were judging themselves in the light of their own religion, but they were judging us in the light of the Spirit of Jesus. It is no answer, then, to say that they do the same things toward their own people—they are judging us by the religion we avow and by the Christ whom we profess to follow, and they have a right to do so. I am personally glad that they are doing it—cut as it may—for our salvation as well as theirs depends upon our being brought back to his mind and purpose.
A thoughtful Hindu said to me one day, “If you call one of us a Christian man, he is complimented, but if you call him a Christian , he is insulted.” In that penetrating statement we get the epitome of the situation: the designation of Christian may mean that he is a member of the Christian community—Indian or European—it may not mean much; but to call him a Christian man is to pay the highest compliment that can be paid. They see that to be a Christian man is to catch the Spirit of Jesus.
A little Hindu girl caught the meaning of what a real Christian is when she gave this definition of a Christian: “One who is different from all others.”
But many of the Christians are not Christian. A Hindu in the great city of ——— said to me, “If you can show me one real Christian in this city, I’ll be a Christian.” Overstated? Yes, but it carries its meaning.
A Hindu teacher said to me one day, “I want to become a Christian, but I do so in spite of the lives of the Europeans I have seen here. They seem to have two loathings—one is religion and the other is water.” And he did not mean it for bathing, but for drinking purposes! This was said in a section of the East—the Straits Settlements—where nearly every European planter had his native concubine. His race prejudices do not extend as far as his lusts.
I was in a certain city where two Europeans had fought a duel and both had been killed. The Hindus, out of the kindness of their hearts, buried them, and wishing to make an offering to the spirits of the dead, after thinking the matter over, thought they would love in death what they had loved in life, so came and offered as an offering on the tomb a cigar box and a whisky bottle.
But it is not merely the lives of some local Europeans that are the great hindrance, but the whole wide world has now become a whispering gallery, and India is listening in. I have broadcast a number of times since I came home, and it was uncanny to feel that my conversational tones spoken into a tiny disk in an obscure corner were being listened to hundreds and thousands of miles away. That thing is happening in a broader sense. What we are doing in legislative halls and in the seemingly obscure incidents of racial attitudes is being broadcast to the rest of the world—and there is a loud speaker at the other end.
Listen to the loud speaker in this story giving its message: I sat in the midst of a group of earnest Nationalists in a Round Table Conference. I said: “My brothers, I have been talking to you these nights about Christ. I want you to tell me frankly and openly why you do not accept him. Do not spare me, for I am not the issue—tell me frankly.” A Hindu arose and said, “You ask us to be Christians; may we ask you how Christian is your own civilization? Don’t you have corruption at your central government at Washington?” ( It was just after the revelations at Washington when oil began to flow!)
Another asked, “Don’t you lynch Negroes in America?”
A third: “You have had Christianity in the West all these centuries, and though Jesus is the Prince of Peace you have not yet learned the way out of war. Don’t you know any more about Christianity than that?”
These things were not said in spleen and hatred, but in anxiety and thoughtfulness. The loud speaker was speaking on the other side of the world.
Here is another scene that has its meaning. I was in a section of India where, just before our coming, there had been near-riots over the question of the baptism of a Hindu girl. Indignation meetings had been held and the city was in turmoil. We held our meetings with this background of unrest and resentment. We wondered if we would get any hearing at all. To our surprise there were great crowds and a most respectful and interested hearing. The last night a room at the rear was filled with earnest seekers after new life through Christ. But on the threshold of that invitation to give themselves to Christ was this incident: At question time a voice came out of the back of the crowd, “What do you think of the K. K. K.?” This was about four years ago, when I had scarcely heard of the Klan myself. But here in a backwater of India, a place where I thought the least from the outside would penetrate, the loud speaker was speaking and was embarrassing our witness and message. I have many fine friends in the Klan, and they are sincere and earnest, but since they are a religious organization and have the cross at the center of their gatherings, their racial attitudes are a decided embarrassment to us.
The local whisper intended to deal with a local American problem was resounding around the world and cutting across the message we were giving to India.
Nothing spoke louder to that whole Eastern world than the recent action of Congress in passing the ill-advised and un-Christian Immigration Law. I wish America could see what she did in that bit of hasty legislation. Up to that time America held the moral leadership of the East. It was a moral asset to be an American. Japan was grateful for what we had done by our wonderful generosity after the earthquake; China was more than friendly because of the indemnity incident and our traditional attitude of friendliness, and India was moved by the idealism of Wilson and the realism of what we had actually done in bringing the Philippine Islands so quickly to practical self-government. In Persia we were loved and respected because of the help that disinterested Americans had given to assist Persia to her feet financially, as this incident shows: I was among the Syrian refugees in Bagdad. They had fled before the Kurds from Urumiyah, Persia. The watch that I wear was given to me by the Syrians for what I was able to do for them in their time of trouble. But this was nothing compared to the gratitude another section of them felt when they fled for protection to the compound of the American Mission in Persia. As the Kurds came on, bent on blood, the missionary put out the American flag in front of the compound. The Kurdish leader did not know what flag it was. When told it was an American flag he advanced and was met by the missionary, who said, “This is an American flag and in its name I ask for protection for the refugees here.” The leader thought a moment, turned to his men and ordered them to retire. They were spared, protected by the flag. The refugees, overjoyed, kissed the flag that had delivered them. That is what the American flag stood for in the East at the close of the Great War and after. In one moment by this Immigration Law we renounced the leadership that was in our hands.
We talk as if this were a Japanese problem, but India and China are put in the same position as Japan.
Do not misunderstand me. I am not advocating the flooding of America by immigrants. My own views are embodied in the resolution passed by the Federal Council of Churches of America and the last General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church:
“We urge a federal law raising the standards for admission into the United States, applying them to all nations alike, and granting the privilege of citizenship to all those thus admitted who duly qualify regardless of their race, color, or nationality.”
This would mean that we could put the bars as high as we like, provided there is no racial discrimination and consequent insult.
If the present law were extended to apply to all nations alike, it would mean, according to the first provision of the law, namely, that two per cent of the nationals of the 1890 census can be admitted, that 40 Japanese, 2,140 Chinese, and 42 East Indians would be admitted each year. But the second section of the law provides that “the annual quota of any nationality beginning July 1, 1927, shall be a number which bears the same ratio to 150,000 as the number of inhabitants in continental United States in 1920 having that national origin bears to the number of inhabitants in continental United States in 1920.” This would mean that after July 1, 1927, the number of Japanese admitted would be 159, Chinese 87, and East Indians 4, making a total of 250 people from Asia. This is nothing among a population of 114,000,000 and would never mean an economic or social problem. The fact is that the East is not keen to flood America. I was talking to an Indian official, the vice-president of the Legislative Assembly, and I said, “Suppose we should be able to get India put on a quota basis, it would mean that there would be actually less Indians admitted into America than before, for now about eight hundred or nine hundred are being admitted each year, largely according to the will of the American Consul in Calcutta; this would cut the number down to about four in all; would you not therefore feel that we had done India an injustice by having India put on a quota basis?” He replied: “We do not care how many of our people go to America. We do not want them to go, but we do not want them nationally insulted if they do go.”
The fact of the matter is that many more than two hundred and fifty are now being smuggled into America across the Mexican and Canadian borders and we have no redress. We can bring no pressure to bear upon the governments of these countries to stop this illicit smuggling, for the whole thing is too sore a point to raise with them, and they are in no mood to assist us in stopping it. The shortsightedness of Congress overreached itself and has left us in a worse condition regarding flooding than before. But I do not advocate the modification of the law because of the self-interest involved, nor because of its effects upon Christian missions, but because it is Christian to treat other nations as we ourselves would like to be treated.
It has been said that to repeal this law would be worth more than sending one hundred missionaries to the East. I should be inclined to doubt that estimate and to go further, and say, that in certain circles those missionaries who are there now will either mark time until it is repealed or win the people in spite of being Americans. I go back to the East with a heavy heart, knowing that I shall have to apologize for the attitude of the land of my birth to the land of my adoption. I shall meet it in every public meeting at question time, in nearly every personal conversation and in the changed attitude of sullen indifference. This legislation has broken our arms as we stretch them out in friendliness and good will toward the nations of the East, and yet it was from Asia that we got the one thing that is truly worth while in our civilization and the one thing that we look to to save us—Christ.
The Hindus have discovered that Jesus looked on man apart from race and birth and color; that he looked on man as man and believed in the sacredness of personality as such. They know that he was color blind and that the vision that he saw and that he aimed to transmit to others was that there is “one race, one color and one soul in humanity.” In the white light of that conception they are judging us. I have had this story concerning the origin of the white man quoted to me by an Indian: “God asked the man who is now white what he had done with his brother, and he turned white with fear.” Read the book entitled The Black Man’s Burden and you will come to the conclusion that there is enough truth in the above story to make it sting.
Mr. C. F. Andrews writes: “A Hindu gentleman of my acquaintance said to me, ‘Do you not see what is happening? Mr. S——— is tearing down your work faster than you can build it up. Every time he calls us niggers it is a blow dealt to your religion, for you teach us that caste is sinful, while you Christians are building up a white caste of your own.’ ”
For the life of me I cannot see any essential difference between this white caste which we are building up and the Brahman caste of India, except that the former is based upon the color of the pigment of the skin with which one happens to be born, and the other is based upon the family into which birth brings one. They are both based upon the accidents of birth. If there is any real difference, it is in this, that the Brahman caste idea is according to his religion and has its sanction, and our white-caste idea is directly opposed to our faith and has its condemnation, and therefore of the two ours is the more hideous and reprehensible. Both should go.
A penetrating, but kindly old philosopher of India, Bara Dada, the brother of Dr. Rabindranath Tagore, pronounced this judgment: as we sat in the evening talking for long hours about these things he thoughtfully said, “Jesus is ideal and wonderful, but you Christians—you are not like him.”
If we should be like him, if we should catch his spirit and outlook, what would happen? A Hindu lecturer on educational subjects was addressing an audience of educationalists in South India when he paused and said: “I see that a good many of you here are Christians. Now, this is not a religious lecture, but I would like to pause long enough to say that, if you Christians would live like Jesus Christ, India would be at your feet to-morrow.” He said nothing less than the very truth.
Another Hindu put the matter just as strongly but in different words. He was a Hindu head judge of a native state and was the chairman of my meeting. At the close of the address he spoke to the audience in these words: “You have heard to-night what it means to be a Christian. If to be like Christ is what it means, I hope you will all be Christians in your lives.” Then turning to us who were Christians he said: “I have one word to speak to you: If you Christians had lived more like Jesus Christ, this process of conversion would have gone on much more rapidly.” It was sincerely and truly said.
This judgment of the West by the East in the light of the person of Jesus is powerfully expressed in the lines which a Bengali poet wrote on Christmas Day and sent to my friend, Mr. C. F. Andrews:
“Great-souled Christ, on this the blessed day of your birth, we who are not Christians bow before you. We love and worship you, we non-Christians, for with Asia you are bound with the ties of blood.
“We, the puny people of a great country, are nailed to the cross of servitude. We look mutely up to you, hurt and wounded at every turn of our torture—the foreign ruler over us the crown of thorns; our own social caste system the bed of spikes on which we lie.
“The world stands aghast at the earth hunger of Europe. Imperialism in the arms of Mammon dances with unholy glee. The three witches—War Lust, Power Lust, Profit Lust—revel on the barren hearths of Europe holding their orgies.
“There is no room for thee there in Europe. Come, Lord Christ, come away! Take your stand in Asia—the land of Buddha, Kabir and Nanak. At the sight of you our sorrow-laden hearts will be lightened. O Teacher of love, come down into our hearts and teach us to feel the sufferings of others, to serve the leper and the pariah with an all-embracing love.”
This poetic appeal loses none of its power of judgment and appeal even if we could have wished that he had said that instead of Christ coming away he had asked that he would enter more deeply into the life of the West. Come, Lord Christ, come away? Nay, Lord Christ, do not go away! For we too have sorrow-laden hearts; and if the East is crucified on a cross of servitude, we are being crucified on a cross of materialism. We both need thee—desperately.
This judgment of the East is a call calling us back to our own Master and Lord. As such we welcome it. It shocks us from our smug complacency. It is the earthquake that does not destroy us, but looses our chains. It is the angel that smites us and says, “Arise.” This searching criticism of the East is a Godsend to keep us from falling asleep after taking an overdose of the opiate of material prosperity. It is God’s own voice to us. It is stabbing us awake.
This story tells what I mean. An Indian Christian doctor came to see me one morning in a far-off hill station. He said he was deeply troubled in mind. He unfolded this story: “I was a ship’s doctor. In Hongkong I met a Parsee with whom I became friendly. One day he turned to me and said, ‘Are you living the Christian life?’ ‘It is impossible,’ I answered. ‘Difficult but not impossible,’ he replied, ‘for His living Presence gives you power.’ I found that though he was a Parsee he was more of a Christian than I was. When my boat sailed back to India my Parsee friend was on the dock to see me off. As the ship pulled off from the dock he put his hands to his mouth and shouted to me across the widening gulf, ‘Remember, Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.’ The sight of that Parsee and the sound of his voice calling to me that phrase ‘Seek first the Kingdom’ have haunted me. I haven’t been seeking the Kingdom first. I have come to you to pray with me.” There we knelt, and that fine doctor made the surrender and arose, adjusted to the will of Christ—and happy. The Kingdom was to be first! But the anomaly: a Parsee had led him to it!
Across the widening gulf between East and West I see the awakened East, realizing how deeply endangered we are by materialism and racialism, and knowing that only as we are saved can we save them, putting its hands to its lips and calling to us of the West, “Seek first the kingdom of God.” May it haunt and woo us to repentance and to Christ as it did my Indian brother! Only thus can we turn back and share and save.
The situation is summed up in the words of a far-seeing Christian thinker and statesman: “We recognize that conditions in the West demand an indubitable and pervasive humility on the part of Christians, and that a deep sense of national and racial repentance should accompany any further missionary work that we may do.”
With these brave words of the Christian thinker agree the penetrating but kindly counsel of India’s great soul, Mahatma Gandhi. In conversation with him one day I said, “Mahatma Gandhi, I am very anxious to see Christianity naturalized in India, so that it shall be no longer a foreign thing identified with a foreign people and a foreign government, but a part of the national life of India and contributing its power to India’s uplift and redemption. What would you suggest that we do to make that possible?” He very gravely and thoughtfully replied: “I would suggest, first, that all of you Christians, missionaries and all, must begin to live more like Jesus Christ.” He needn’t have said anything more—that was quite enough. I knew that looking through his eyes were the three hundred millions of India, and speaking through his voice were the dumb millions of the East saying to me, a representative of the West, and through me to that very West itself, “If you will come to us in the spirit of your Master, we cannot resist you.” Never was there a greater challenge to the West than that, and never was it more sincerely given. “Second,” he said, “I would suggest that you must practice your religion without adulterating or toning it down.” This is just as remarkable as the first. The greatest living non-Christian asks us not to adulterate it or tone it down, not to meet them with an emasculated gospel, but to take it in its rugged simplicity and high demand. But what are we doing? As someone has suggested, we are inoculating the world with a mild form of Christianity, so that it is now practically immune against the real thing. Vast areas of the Christian world are inoculated with a mild form of Christianity, and the real thing seems strange and impossible. As one puts it, “Our churches are made up of people who would be equally shocked to see Christianity doubted or put into practice.” I am not anxious to see India take a mild form—I want her to take the real thing. “Third, I would suggest that you must put your emphasis upon love, for love is the center and soul of Christianity.” He did not mean love as a sentiment, but love as a working force, the one real power in a moral universe, and he wanted it applied between individuals and groups and races and nations, the one cement and salvation of the world. With a soul so sensitive to the meaning of love no wonder there were tears in his eyes when I read him at that point the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians. “Fourth, I would suggest that you study the non-Christian religions and culture more sympathetically in order to find the good that is in them, so that you might have a more sympathetic approach to the people.” Quite right. We should be grateful for any truth found anywhere, knowing that it is a finger post that points to Jesus, who is the Truth.
When I mentioned these four things to the Chief Justice of the High Court in North India, the noble, sympathetic, Christian Britisher exclaimed: “He could not have put his finger on four more important things. It took spiritual genius and insight to do that.”
When I asked another nationalist leader the same question as to what we must do to naturalize Christianity, he replied, “You must have more men like ——— and ———,” naming two men among the missionaries who were devoted lovers of Christ and of India.
Here, then, is the epitome of the whole thing: From every side they say we must be Christian, but Christian in a bigger, broader way than we have hitherto been.
One word of caution: Some who have little love for endeavors of uplift for those outside their own racial group may seize on the above chapter as a justification for withdrawing everything from others and concentrating it upon themselves, forgetting that this is a disastrous fallacy, for the moment we cease to share with others where there is seemingly no return and recompense to ourselves, that moment we cease to be Christian. We cannot be Christian and concentrate ourselves on ourselves. America can never be Christian apart from its world task.
“Oh, East is East and West is West,
And never the twain shall meet.”
So spake a son of man—and erred!
Oh, man is man and man with man shall meet,
So taught the Son of man, and at his feet,
Bade us there learn the worth of human worth;
To see the man apart from race and birth.
To find in Aryan pale and Aryan brown,
In Mongol and in sun-blacked African;
The oneness of humanity—the same
God-touched, aspiring, worthful soul of man.
Boast not, Oh Aryan pale, o’er Aryan brown,
Of greatness not in thee—’tis in the gift!
For, once, a nail-pierced Hand of Asia touched
Thy life and grants thee now his gracious lift.
Beware, lest in the roll of judging years,
That Hand, withdrawn from thee through pride of race,
May touch to power those races now despised,
And grant to them thy forfeit—power and place.
The Master bids thee lose thy petty self
In service, and thy help to brothers give;
And thou shalt truly find thyself again,
’Twill be thy gain, and others too shall live.
Thus freed from tribal mind and attitude,
Thy Christianed soul, with self renounced, shall find
A larger, richer self of brotherhood;
Since, with the Christ, it has the Kingdom mind.
A Kingdom where there is no East nor West;
There are no walls dividing clan from clan;
But brotherhood as wide as humankind,
And with a King who is the “Son of man.”
Oh, man is man, and man with man shall meet,
So speaks the Son of man. O Master! shamed,
But learning, sit we here—here at thy feet.