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B. M. MALABARI

B. M. MALABARI
RAMBLES WITH THE PILGRIM
REFORMER

BY
SIRDAR JOGENDRA SINGH
AUTHOR OF " NURJAHAN AND NASRIN," ETC., ETC.

WITH A FOREWORD BY
SIR VALENTINE CHIROL

LONDON
G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
1914

CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.

RESPECTFULLY AND GRATEFULLY DEDICATED
TO THE MEMORY OF THE
LADY HARDINGE OF PENSHURST
A TRUE FRIEND OF
INDIA

FOREWORD
MY friend Sirdar Jogendra Singh asked
me to see his little book through the press,
and I am grateful to him for the opportunity he
has given me in these simple, unambitious pages
of becoming more intimately acquainted with one
of the most remarkable characters that modern
India has produced.
I met Malabari several times in Bombay and
Simla during the later years of his life. The fire
of an intensely vital soul seemed to be already
consuming the frail body, but to the end he never
saved himself. His life was a long struggle to
accomplish for himself, and to help his fellow-
countrymen to accomplish, the arduous task of
reconciling Eastern with Western conceptions
and Eastern with Western methods. As is apt to
happen in such cases, his. manifold activities
frequently challenged attacks from both flanks.
A far more fervent believer than most Indians in
the liberty of the individual — perhaps because he
vii

viii FOREWORD
was a Parsee and had, as such, a purer strain of
Aryan blood — he realized more easily and more
fully than other Indians, especially Hindus, are
able to do, that release from the bondage of
archaic social institutions was a far more pressing
need for India than emancipation from British
political tutelage. Probably the greatest disap
pointment of his life was that the Indian National
Congress gave precedence to political over social
reforms. But he pursued his way unmoved with a
serene confidence not in any personal triumph of
his own, but in the triumph of the cause he had
at heart. It is sad to think that he should have
passed away without having witnessed the great
uplifting which, in the hour of supreme trial, is
uniting as never before Europeans and Indians,
and all classes, creeds and races throughout India
for the fulfilment of their common destiny. To see
India welded together with Britain and Greater
Britain into an empire which should be the bulwark
of peace and freedom throughout the world was
the dream of Malabari's life. Valentine Chirol.

PREFACE
HEARTS are linked to hearts by God."
Invisible hands forge links which unite
men of diverse races and creeds into closest bonds
of friendship inevitably and for ever. I heard of
Malabari, for the first time, from my friend Sirdar
Umrao Singh. He described him as a man of
genius and a great social reformer.
Sirdar Umra Singh, too, had met him by chance.
He and Nawab Zulfiqar Ali Khan were going to
England by a steamer which carried Malabari and
his son Pheroze Malabari. They were introduced
to him on board. The acquaintance ripened into
close and life-long friendship, and I was eventually
drawn into the circle. It was to a newsagent that
I myself owed my first introduction to Malabari.
I was travelling in the South, and one evening
wandered into the Moore Market at Madras. A
newsagent brought me a copy of " East and
West," and asked me to subscribe. I agreed
gladly, and gave my address. The first number
of the magazine, however, travelled all over India
before it reached me.

x PREFACE
" East and West " was the first periodical of its
kind started in India. I liked everything about it,
and some of its articles inspired me with a desire
to write. I ventured to send an article on " The
Police," which was readily accepted, and I was
asked to write again and again, and in due course
became a regular contributor. I owe much of my
journalistic training to Malabari and to Mr. George
Chesney, of the " Pioneer." I sought Malabari's
advice on many things, and he wrote to me some
inspiring letters. We began to correspond regu
larly, though we did not meet for some time.
It was two or three years later that this oppor
tunity occurred. Malabari asked me to come and
stay with him at Bandora. Sirdar Umrao Singh
was also going to Bombay, and I accompanied
him. This was my first visit. We were met at the
railway station by Mr. Burjorji Byranjpe, who
carried us off to Malabari's delightful seaside
home. Such was the beginning of a friendship,
which I shall always value as one of the greatest
things in my 'life. The friendship of men like
Sirdar Umrao Singh, Malabari, and Nawab Zul
fiqar Ali Khan makes the world brighter, and
gives a quality of its own to life.
We found in the house at Bandora Mr. Bulchand
Dayaram of Haiderabad, a devoted public worker,
and Diwan Dayaram Giddumal, who all through
life has lived for God only. Diwan Dayaram and

PREFACE

XI

Sirdar Umrao Singh had long discussions; the
one believes in good works and active life, the
other, poet and artist by nature, had wandered
into the dry and dusty paths of philosophy, and
having become a follower of Tolstoi, would not
admit that any social organization could be for the
ultimate good of humanity. When sometimes the
discussion became very hot, Malabari would gently
put in a word which set the whole company laugh
ing. We all enjoyed his flashes of wit and humour,
and his large, generous ideas about men and
things. Since that memorable meeting we four,
Sirdar Umrao Singh, Nawab Zulfiqar Ali Khan,
Malabari, and myself, spent our annual holidays
together, whether at Bandora, Lahore, Simla, or
Calcutta. But alas! our rambles together came to
an untimely end. Just when we had all gathered
again at Simla in 191 2 Malabari was suddenly
called away from the world which he had done so
much to brighten for us.
I am now going to tell the story of these rambles.
I shall be with him again in spirit till my book
is finished. In the walks we had together he used
to discuss almost everything concerning India and
England. His powers of conversation were mar
vellous. I remember an English gentleman once
calling to see him at Calcutta and asking his views
on the political situation. Malabari began to speak
slowly, steadied himself more than once before

xii PREFACE
warming up, and unconsciously assumed his usual
meditative attitude, resting his chin on the palm of
his hand, and looking gently out of his dark grey
eyes. Then he unfolded the situation in calm dis
passionate words that carried conviction home.
I had never heard him talk like this before. At
the end of the talk he turned toward me and ad
dressing the visitor, said: " Now he will tell you
more about it." What could I add to his masterly
exposition of the situation? And yet he has left
no concrete and enduring monuments of his multi
farious labours, and of the unique influence he
exerted in so many directions. No great legislative
triumph is associated with his name, with the
exception of the Age of Consent Bill. There is
a risk, therefore, that a later generation may
realize his great work but imperfectly, unless it is
explained and recorded by those who came in
contact with his elevating and vivifying per
sonality. And now that he is gone, and our walks round
Jakko have come to an end, I am trying to give
to the world what he bestowed on me so lavishly ;
his thoughts on some of the most vital problems
of India; his aspirations, his hopes of the future.
I wish I had the power to reproduce his own
words and his own arguments, which will lose
much in my rendering. His mature opinions have
been translated here in disconnected thoughts,

PREFACE xiii
halting phrases, and broken sentences. How I
wish he himself or some one abler than I could
hold my pen. But alas, in the words of Hafiz:
"When even the high heavens could not carry
the burden of trust, they cast lots and it fell upon
such a poor fool as me." It has been my en
deavour to fulfil this trust, which the generous
co-operation of Sir Valentine Chirol has made so
much the easier. It must have taxed his patience
a good deal to wade through my disjointed story,
and give it the benefit of his wide and varied ex
perience. Here again Malabari has brought East
and West together for the service of this ancient
land, and it is in this union that lies the salvation
of India. Jogendra Singh.
Aire Estate,
United Provinces,
India.

CONTENTS

CHAP. page I

I. Childhood.
II. Education and Early Surround
ings .....
III. The Influence of Khialis and
Z oroastrianism
IV. Gujrati Poems .
V. Journalism ....
VI. " The Indian Spectator " .
VII. Marriage and Family Life
VIII. Travels ....
IX. Gujrat and Gujratis .
X. Social Reform
XI. Hindu Marriages
XII. Ideas on Education
XIII. Political Work .
XIV. Famine versus Land Tax .
XV. Native States
XVI. His Creed ....
XVII. The Taj Gardener
XVIII. The End ....

19
29
36
45 5574
8596
106 121130 141153
167 181 189196

B. M. MALABARI
CHAPTER I
childhood
BRITISH INDIA was still in the making,
when mutiny broke out, aiming at the over
throw of the Government of the "Company Ba
hadur." It was the last desperate effort of the fight
ing classes for supremacy. They found themselves
enmeshed in an invisible net which held them
under control and exacted obedience, removing all
opportunities of wild adventure. They could hardly
accept their fall as inevitable, and rebelled against
the change. The simmering discontent among the
higher classes slowly infected the Army. Hindus
and Muhammedans alike rejoiced at the prospect
of a return to power, and helped to raise the
tempest which they were entirely unfitted to
direct and control. The masses and the moneyed
classes devoutly prayed for the success of the
British arms. Many of the ruling princes and
Sikh soldiers, only recently subdued, rushed for
ward at the call of a foreign power, and fought

2 B. M. MALABARI
shoulder to shoulder under the British flag in the
cause of peace and good government. The rebel
dream of a general insurrection failed entirely.
It only served to establish more firmly the triumph
of order over the forces of anarchy. India passed
under the British Crown, unconsciously receiving
more than it ever hoped for — the rights and
privileges of British citizenship.
It was just a few years before the mutiny, prob
ably in 1853, that Malabari was born. A great
crisis in human affairs usually leaves its impress
on the plastic minds of those who are born under
its influence. Malabari passed from childhood to
youth in an atmosphere which was full of the
stories of the mutiny; the atrocities which the
mutineers committed, and the scarcely less cruel
reprisals on the part of the soldiers. People
also talked of the "Mulki Lat," the Viceroy and
Governor General, who, unmoved by the torrent
of grief and passion which raged around him, was
determined to act righteously.
Malabari was quite a young man when Queen
Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India, renew
ing her promise to her Indian subjects in the name
of the whole British people of the rights and
privileges of British citizenship. Her proclama
tion at the great Durbar at Delhi is now regarded
as the Magna Charta of India. It was these first
impressions which imperceptibly fostered in Mala-

CHILDHOOD 3
bari the growth of an unswerving confidence in
the good intentions of the British Government,
and the futility of unreasoning discontent. Early
in life he came to believe that the influences
brought into play by Western Education were
the only forces to be relied upon for the liberation
of human intelligence from the trammels of caste
and for the achievement of individual freedom.
Malabari saw the hand of God in the shaping of
events, which were bringing East and West to
gether for the fulfilment of a Divine purpose.
As a boy he came in touch with a warm-hearted
Irish missionary, and he found that colour was no
bar to mutual esteem when hearts were united in
noble aspiration. He often told me, that he felt
as if he belonged to both India and England; that
to the East he owed his birth and his traditions,
but that it was the West that helped the develop
ment of his mind, and claimed his love and allegi
ance equally with his motherland.
The self-made man is not peculiar to any epoch.
If he is more in evidence in recent times, it is
because the trend of modern civilization has helped
in the making of the individual. In all ages and
in all spheres of activity great men have fought
their way up from the lowest rung of the ladder to
the summit of power and influence. To the super
man difficulties are merely incentives to conquest,
they are stepping stones to the mount of glory.

4 B. M. MALABARI
There is, therefore, nothing surprising in the fact
that Malabari was born to a small clerk in the
service of the Gaekwar of Baroda. But he stands
pre-eminent in this, that sprung from humble
parentage, and knowing the disadvantages in
herent to a prolonged struggle with poverty, he re
mained all through undazzled by riches and rank,
and untempted by power. In the day of his great
est triumph he turned his back upon worldly suc
cess, and helped the more effectively all who
sought his assistance — from the poorest ryot to
the proudest Rajah.
Malabari's father, Dunji Baai Mehta was a
small clerk in the office of the Gaikwar. Malabari
could tell little about him, except what he heard
from his mother, and she only spoke of her
troubles. His father died when he was barely
five, and his mother, a helpless widow, was com
pelled to seek shelter with her parents at Surat.
The prospect must have been gloomy indeed, when
a helpless young woman, burdened with a child
of tender years, set out on a journey which was
at the time by no means free from danger. There
was no railway in those days, and the spirit of ad
venture, finding all avenues to honourable fighting
closed, had turned to freebooting and highway
robbery. People travelled in large parties for self-
protection, but poor Bhikhibai could not wait for
a caravan, and had to start on her journey alone.

CHILDHOOD 5
She put her trust in God, and with her little son
Behram left Baroda for Surat. Her faith met its
own reward; her very helplessness became her
protection. Who would trouble a poor girl mother,
trudging wearily along? She picked her way from
village to village, taking shelter for the night at
humble wayside rest-houses, and starting again on
her journey long before sunrise.
In pre-railway days there was usually nothing
of the present day rush and scramble ; travellers
formed large parties, and set out at dawn, when
the fresh perfume-laden breeze filled the earth
with a new life. They stopped under a clump of
trees when the sun became too hot ; starting again
late in the afternoon, walking or driving slowly
onward under starlit skies, passing the night
wherever they found a convenient halting place.
From Baroda to Surat is now a journey of a
few hours, but it was not till the evening of the
seventeenth day that Bhikibai reached her parental
home, and here a fresh misfortune awaited her.
She arrived only to find the whole quarter ablaze,
and the family roof was burnt down before her
very eyes. Her parents received her kindly, and
did all that they could to alleviate her sorrow.
Surat now became the home of Malabari. His
mother married again, and it was the name of his
stepfather that he was destined to bear. The love
of his mother brightened his little home, and he

6 B. M. MALABARI
found all doors open to him, Hindu, Muham-
medan, and Parsi. He was welcomed by all, and
all through life he remained a friend of all com
munities. The Parsi population at Surat was fairly large.
It was probably at Sanjan, between Surat and
Bombay, that the Parsi refugees, "the Pilgrim
Fathers," from Persia, first found shelter. They
came thousands of miles away from the land of
their forbears as homeless wanderers, in order to
preserve their faith and worship Ahurmazad in
their own way They were welcomed by the Raja
of Sanjan. They built Fire Temples and Towers of
Silence all over Gujerat, showing that they had
come to stay, and were determined to follow the
law of Zoroaster. And as they met with no oppo
sition they offered no active resistance to the in
fluences that surrounded them. The result was
that in the course of a few generations their social
life became very largely Hinduized. Finally the
disintegrating influence of Western thought ac
complished what great armies had failed to
achieve. Those whose forefathers had preferred
voluntary exile in order to preserve their ancient
faith, were themselves led to undermine its founda
tions. The Parsis still visit the Fire Temples and
expose their dead in the Tower of Silence, but
the faith that clothed antique custom with life and
gave primitive ceremonies a meaning, has in a great

CHILDHOOD 7
measure evaporated, leaving modern Parsis nearer
in thought and spirit to the European sceptic.
The Parsi community at Surat was beginning
to feel the effects of Western solvents when Mala
bari with his mother came to Surat; but it had
not as yet broken with the past. He was there
fore brought up in an atmosphere which reflected
the old brotherly life of the East; and all classes
and creeds lived as neighbours. Malabari was
welcomed in all houses; only his stepfather,
Mehrawanji Malabari, was not kind to the boy.
He was absorbed in business, and had little time,
and perhaps still less inclination for the gentler
aspects of life. His irritability was aggravated by
a loss at sea which swallowed up his small fortune,
and late in life he had to start as a herbalist. He
often employed young Malabari to pound drugs
for him.
It is strange how an unknown power places us
in special surroundings with parents, class affini
ties and national tendencies all fixed, without any
choice of our own. Long before we are able to
understand our environment, a thousand invisible
factors play upon the childish mind and mould
the character of the future man for all times. The
"Pilgrim Reformer" was given a home which
brought him in touch with real life. His mother
was one of those soulful women who live for
others only. Her unfailing sympathy and selfless

8 B. M. MALABARI
devotion awakened in the heart of the child that
instinct of compassion which guided him all
through life.
Malabari was in due course sent to a " Path-
Shala " for his education. I cannot do better than
give a pen portrait of his school by Malabari
himself: " My first school was just behind our house at
Nanpur. Narbhairam Mehtaji was my first teacher.
He was a Bhikshu Brahmin, tall, majestic, and
taciturn. The School was a commodious little
shop with an elevated square for the master. On
the square squatted the master and on the floor
squatted his flock, Hindu and Parsi. There was
no fee to be paid for the instruction — only a hand
ful of grain, a few flowers or some fruit now and
then. There were no tables nor benches, nor slates
nor pencils nor books nor maps; not one single
item of the literary paraphernalia of the modern
schoolroom. Each pupil had a wooden board
(' Patti ') which served him for a slate, and a pointed
stick (' Lekhna ') which he used as pencil. He also
carried with him a rag. With this piece of cloth
he shifted the dust over the board, and on that
board he traced the figures and numerals. The
task work was submitted every noon to the
Master, who held a rod in his hand with one end
pointed. Glancing over the dust work, he would
now give a grunt of satisfaction and strike the

CHILDHOOD 9
board with the pointed end of his stick. The
figures of dust would at once disappear, and so
would the lucky pupil for lunch. If unluckily the
task was badly done Narbhairam would apply the
butt end of the rod to the pupil, instead of to his
board. There were worse methods, of course, the
sharp and supple cane, the pebble under the knee,
the stone across the shoulders, the twisting of the
nose, and the shaking of the neck. Worse still,
sometimes the little urchin was swung across the
beam, and at times stripped of his scanty dress.
Oh the torture of the midday ordeal! How my
heart sank within me as I crawled up to the
Master's Gaddi. Life or death — which was it to
be? I died on an average two deaths a month.
That was because I was too small to deserve
attention, quite a beginner. But for all that when
ever Nirbhairam condescended to notice me, he
did it heartily.
" But to return to the schoolroom. The
written work was gone through in the forenoon.
The boy was expected to say by rote the ^th,
the ^th, the |th, i^, the i^ the 2\ and 3-^- of any
number up to 100. These were respectively called
Paya Ardhi, Pauna, Savaya Dodha, Adhua and
Otha. Like the fractions came the integers up to
100 x 100. Thus Pachi Pachisa Chhapachisa
(25 x 25 = 625) and so on from 1 x 1 up to 100 x
100= 10,000.

10 B. M. MALABARI
" The process was a powerful aid to memory.
I doubt if the ablest Professor of Mathematics or
even the readiest Finance Minister of the day
commands such an elastic and almost intuitive
power of manipulating figures.
" We learnt the alphabet also on the same plan.
Every letter had a nickname and a familiar versi
fied description. That is to say, the form of the
letter was likened to some object of common use,
and thus impressed upon the mental vision.
Europeans are coming to that system, judging
from recent publications of juvenile literature.
There was a fair amount of literary instruction,
too, imparted at Narbhairam's school. Some verses
from Ramayana and Mahabharata done into simple
Gujrati for the occasion, served as history as well
as poetry. I excelled in this as also in letter-
writing. What splendid letters I dictated to my
seniors, myself ignorant of the art of writing,
letters from wife at Surat to husband at Mumbai
Bandar, now gushing, now whining, now asking
for a remittance, now threatening to go to the
parents' house! Letters from the principal of a
firm at Cambay to his factory at Karachi advising
the departure of the good ship ' Ruparel,' laden
with pearls and precious stones! Letters from
father at Broach to his son at Delhi with the
love of the distracted mother and with a basket
ful of advice as to how to live in ' that remote

CHILDHOOD n
country.' I enjoyed these studies exceedingly
well, and was often presented with fruit or flower
and the cheering word ' J a Bacha aj tane chhutti
chhe ' (' Go, Boy, you are free to-day '). But when
it came to figures, I was usually an ' uncle of the
camel,' 'born of blind parents' and other things
indescribable. I was bad at receiving the rod, so
much so that the flogging of a neighbour would
send me directly into a fever. Narbhairam knew
this, and was kind enough to send me out of the
room when a culprit had to be hauled up.
" One day a refractory boy had to be brought to
his senses. Narbhairam had tried all his punitive
regulations on him. This time, therefore, he made
him kneel upon pebbles, and placed a heavy slab
on his back, and over the stone he himself pre
tended to sit. This was the last straw, and the
boy gave such a shriek of agony and fright that
his mother and grandmother came running to the
scene; they lived next door to the school. These
dames were well known for their muscular de
velopment. They went up to Nirbhairam, gave
him a good deal of Billingsgate, and released the
boy. He was withdrawn that day. I, too, went
home, never to return to the school again. At
night I was in high fever, and shortly after in the
clutches of Sitala Mata, the goddess of Small Pox.
I was not expected to outlive the shock, but was
somehow brought round, as my poor mother said,

12 B. M. MALABARI
by daily prayers and sacrifices on her part, and
by nightly vigils before a small silver figure
sprinkled with red ochre, the mata.
"For weeks together she had lived upon parched
rice and water once a day. And this was her re
ward, she explained to our friends in meek thank
fulness, when they met at our house to do justice
to the good things prepared in honour of my
second birth."
From this Swadeshi reservoir of national edu
cation, the sensitive boy was transferred to an
Anglo- Vernacular school, and now began his
literary education which was to open to him the
treasures of Western thought and enlist him for
the service of the country.
The school merely supplements the real educa
tion begun at home. The example that the parents
set; their self-control, charity, frugality, and other
domestic virtues, which go unnoticed, play upon
the infant mind and shape the character of the
future man. In the East more than in the West,
where natural reserve and a hurried existence
keep people apart, moral culture and the spirit of
the race are transmitted by the contact of children
with their parents and others who surround them
from infancy.
An Indian villager, who has never been to
school, and can hardly discriminate between a
letter and the scrawl made by his plough, is often

CHILDHOOD 13
a man of high aspirations and an unclouded
understanding. The village tree is a school, open
at all times and to every one. The ideas that are
exchanged under it pass from father to son in un
broken line, and have no small educative in
fluence. Learned Sanyasis and well educated
Brahmins often stop under the village tree, and
propound philosophical truths. The old men of
the village recount their experiences, and convey
to the younger generations the knowledge which
has been handed down from mouth to mouth for
generations. Thus continue unbroken the tradi
tions of the East and its ancient usages. The
villager cannot read and write, but none the less
his mind is well stocked with moral precepts, and
he has a clear understanding of social duties.
Young Behram went to school overflowing with
animal spirits, and a love of fun and frolic. He
was a healthy boy, and his little wants were easily
satisfied. Boyhood is the only period when fresh
ness of life is not deceived by desire. For a while
Malabari enjoyed life intensely. On off days he fol
lowed the " Khialis," the poor wandering minstrels
who sing away their lives. He had a capital voice,
and often joined the street singers from sheer
exuberance of youthful spirits. He would some
times go on repeating a single line of a popular
song till the words seemed to lose their conven
tional meaning, leaving a strange sensation of

14 B. M. MALABARI
vibrating harmony, a clear throbbing note of the
spirit. He would often wander with the singers
listening to stories of the heroic age. At such
moments he yearned for glory. The lives of great
men, sung with real feeling, evoked his unstinted
admiration, and kindled a glow of generous emo
tions. He listened to songs of passion and hero
ism; of selfless devotion and indomitable courage,
which carried him out of himself, transporting
him for the moment into the realms of glory, and
awakened in him that chivalrous sympathy and
deep understanding which was all his own.
Life for him in his early years was full of
romance. He would sometimes accompany a
party of young maidens, who, with their pitchers
daintily poised on their heads, went to draw water
from the common well. He would play upon his
bamboo flute whilst the girls filled their pitchers.
The music awakened strange longings in youthful
hearts, undefined and undefinable. They would
turn back and cast timid glances into space vaguely
searching for the unattainable. In the case of a
delicate girl, the boy would draw up her pitcher
for her as he whistled a favourite air. With him
romance and service went always together.
Boys will be boys, and they had more of the boy
ish spirit in those days than they have in these
days of high pressure education. Malabari and his
companions would of an evening go up to an old

CHILDHOOD 15
betel-seller who at fifty had married a girl of fifteen,
teasing him with the question, " Uncle, where is
your daughter?" "You fool, she is your mother,"
was the quick reply. " I will remind my forgetful
father," some one would retort, and they would
run away, roaring with laughter as the old man
sat grinding his teeth. The young wife often
entered into the spirit of the joke, and would peep
out from behind her door with an arch smile,
followed by a sigh. She seemed to wish she were
a boy, and could join in teasing her grandfatherly
husband. Sometimes these little jokes ended very seri
ously. One day the boys shut Malabari in and
challenged him to open the door. He pushed with
all his might; the door was rotten at the hinges
and gave way, falling on the boys on the other
side, with his own weight upon it. No one was
seriously hurt, but the headmaster was very
angry; and the boys were sentenced to receive a
dozen stripes each. The chief offender would not
submit till he was persuaded by his own teacher
to hold out his hand. The first stroke sent a
tremor through his body, and he almost fainted.
The headmaster stopped, but there was such a re
volution going on in the heart and brain of the boy
that he tbrew down his bundle of books and bolted
from school never to return to it again. He had
not then learnt to put himself in the place of those

16 B. M. MALABARI
in authority, or to consider the apparent strength
of the case against himself.
He ran down to his mother to complain, but
found her in the grip of cholera. In a moment he
forgot all his sufferings, and sat beside her bed,
ministering to her comfort, weeping in the anguish
of his heart, and praying earnestly that she might
be spared to him. He could not believe his be
loved mother was dying. He sat hopeful by her
side, rubbing her hands and feet, and watching
and praying ceaselessly. For two days the patient
hovered between life and death, but on the third
day she finally closed her eyes on this earth. The
boy could not realize that she was gone. He
hoped on even after the end had come, till friends
and neighbours came and removed the body,
and carried it to the Tower of Silence. The boy
followed the sad, silent procession, praying for a
miracle to restore his mother to life. None hap
pened. . . . The heart that had emptied its treasure
upon him had ceased to beat; the eyes that sparkled
with love for him were closed for ever. The white
robed wardens of the Chamber of Death came and
carried her body into the unknown gloom, and
left it there. The last shred of hope was gone. In
a single night he lived as if through a hundred
years. The spirit of youth was gone from him for
ever; the world seemed to him enveloped in a
shroud of darkness without hope and without

CHILDHOOD 17
joy, though in time he was yet again able to feel
that
Pleasure is spread through the earth
In stray gifts, to be claimed by whoever shall find.
At the moment he felt the hand of death on
everything ; even the warm sunshine that he
loved seemed to breathe a message of death in
the shadows that it created and destroyed. He no
more sang and played with the boys, or wandered
with his flute to amuse the girls drawing water
from the well. He became the silent self-com
muning figure that he was known to be ever after.
Not that the melancholy mood held sway over
him entirely. His poetic soul asserted itself, and
his sense of humour lifted the cloud from the
horizon, and then his eyes would sparkle with the
gleam of mirth, and he would enjoy a hearty
laugh. But usually when he was alone, sitting or
walking by himself, he looked like one for whom
the world had no illusions. He seemed to look
beyond into the vale of tears, hidden away, though
it is by sunshine and flowers.
Nature moulds human character in strange
ways. It endowed Malabari with a keen apprecia
tion of life, and yet dashed the cup out of his
hands before he had put his lips to it. The boy
poet was brought face to face with death, and was
never able to forget that which encompasses human
life. Such trials are the proof stones of life. They
c

18 B. M. MALABARI
test the influences of home and social surround
ings, and definitely determine the future. The
petals of character open in easy harmony, but the
frost and hot winds of misfortune break and tear
them, and many a delicate flower withers away,
carrying its perfume unshed.
The youthful mourner struggled through his
grief and despair. What was personal ambition,
love of power and greed of wealth when life de
pended on a breath? Then, over the gloom of
despair rose the dawn of hope. He felt the hand
of love that turns all our sorrows, all our suffer
ings and disappointments into a harvest of peace.
He bowed before the inevitable in humility and
resignation. He resolved to prepare himself for
service, so that he might one day become an in
strument of Divine Love. The poet of twelve
now turned to philosophy for solace; Brahmanic,
Buddhistic and Persian by turn, reverting after an
interval of many years to the robust optimism of
the Zoroastrian formula," good thought, good word,
good deed." He did not allow himself to be
cheated by vain desires, but lived on, ready to
suffer and to serve with a gleam of hope in his
eyes. His Gujrati verses woven at this early age,
amid a round of study and meditation, are thought-
pictures of his soul, revealing the beginnings of his
personal creed: There is no happiness for man
apart from usefulness.

CHAPTER II
education and early surroundings
TH E death of Malabari's mother brought him
face to face with some of the grim realities of
life. Hitherto the atmosphere of love, with which
she had surrounded him, threw a glamour over
his simple life; he was her darling and her prince.
Now the dream was broken; his step-father was
not disposed to trouble himself about the future of
his ward, and left him severely alone, and often
vented his ill-humour on the poor motherless
orphan. Another boy in his position might have given
way to despair or sulked, but he was determined
to work for a future. He managed to join an
English school maintained by the Irish Presby
terian Mission. The Rev. Mr. Dixon, who was
in charge of the school, was an Irishman, and took
to young Malabari with all the impulsive kindli
ness of his race. Malabari in his turn looked up
to him with great affection, and his studies became
a source of pleasure to him, for that was the only
way he could return his friend's kindness. In due
19

20 B. M. MALABARI
course Mr. Dixon introduced him to Shakespeare,
a study which absorbed him completely. One
morning he surprised his master by suggesting an
explanation of a passage in " Julius Caesar " which
had puzzled Mr. Dixon himself.
The Mission School, so far as general instruc
tion was concerned, was not different from the
Government Anglo- Vernacular School. It fol
lowed the same curricula, and the methods of
instruction were not very dissimilar. It was the
personality of the teachers that made a vast
difference. The spirit of religion infused into the
work by the missionary workers created a moral
atmosphere which helped the education of the
heart, and thereby the formation of character.
The Anglo- Vernacular School was purely a secular
institution, with a body of teachers who generally
felt no zeal for their high calling. They were like
prison warders, who saw that the boys loaded
their minds with the prescribed texts. It was im
material whether the pupils understood the mean
ing of what they learnt, or could apply their
knowledge to the furtherance of human happiness.
The system has not changed even now. It is
responsible for the ruined health and stunted
growth of the present generation. The Mission
School had to follow the Educational Code, but
it endeavoured to train the youthful mind to think
for itself, and the youthful heart to enter upon the

EDUCATION 21
path of faith and devotion. They could not give
full attention to all the boys who attended the
School, but picked out the more promising stud
ents, and helped them to form correct habits of
thought. Mr. Dixon took great pains with Malabari, and
often invited him to stay with him for a week end.
Mrs. Dixon was kindness itself. It was their
sympathy which won over Malabari for ever, and
made him a staunch supporter of the British
Government, and virtually a Christian in all the
important actions of his life. It also helped him
to acquire a command over the English language
which was the marvel of his school. His fellow
students envied the easy fluency with which he
could express himself.
In the early days of British rule English educa
tion seemed to be the " Open sesame " which
unlocked all doors to success, prosperity, and
wealth. The pen undoubtedly became the chief
means of advancement, and for a really able man
no career was too high.
Times change and men with them. In olden
days a Deputy Collector, a pleader, or a Sub-
Judge bulked larger in the minds of the people
than perhaps a High Court Judge or a Member
of the Viceroy's Council does to-day. A successful
Deputy Collector, who was also a poet, recorded
his satisfaction in Urdu verse. " People say that

22 B. M. MALABARI
a poet's profession is ill-omened," he wrote; "but
look at me, I began by writing verses, and now I
am a Deputy Collector." The ambition of our
talented men now soars higher. They naturally
aspire to a share in the administration of their
own country, and their claims are legitimate. The
question of self-government is a very different
thing. Western countries have secured it only
after centuries of self-denial and incessant striving.
We will have to earn it in the sweat of our brow,
labouring hard to prepare the ground, and waiting
in faith and hope for the day of harvest, which
comes in God's own time. For the present the
transition from the old into new modes of life is
responsible for a great deal of unsettlement of the
minds of the people and social and political unrest.
Those in authority find it difficult to harmonize
the aspirations of the educated classes for a broad
and free civic life with the apathy of the villagers,
who constitute the real India. They seldom share
the enthusiasm to help a fallen people to a new life
of social freedom which inspired some of the
builders of the British Empire in India.
In the early days of British rule people looked
up to Englishmen as givers of peace and justice.
The Englishmen, too, were eager to share with
their Indian fellow subjects the great gifts which
they enjoyed in their own country. There was a
pervading spirit of mutual esteem and good will.

EDUCATION 23
It was in such an atmosphere that the mind of
young Malabari was nurtured. He simply loved
his Irish Guru, and delighted to be with him.
Unfortunately he had very little time which he
could call his own. Like many a poor boy who
has to work his way in life, he had to coach
younger boys on his own account in order to earn
his living and buy himself clothes and books. In
one respect he was better off than many of his
fellow students. He was not married. There
were many in his class who had families at home.
Theirs was truly a struggle against terrible odds.
They had not only to provide for themselves, but
for their wives and children. The parents had
done their duty by getting them married and
giving them a bit of school education. If they
wanted to pursue their studies further, they must
shift for themselves.
Malabari in any case had to work for himself
only, and he duly qualified himself for Matricula
tion. At last the day came when he had to go to
Bombay and sit for the examination. He had no
money. Mr. Dixon spoke to him in general terms,
implying that he could draw on him for his
expenses, but the boy was too shy, perhaps too
proud to ask. He was the envy and admiration
of his class, and his circumstances were not un
known to his fellow students. One of his class
fellows spoke to his father, who had the reputa-

24 B. M. MALABARI
tion of being a miser. The old man's heart was
touched. He sent for the boy and gave him
twenty rupees. Was such a man really a miser?
How are we to judge? The springs of human
action lie beyond the range of human sight, and
where nothing is apparent but selfishness an
invisible chord may sometimes be touched, lead
ing to a noble action. Twenty rupees seem a
mere trifle, but to the orphan it meant a sum not
easily to be repaid. The neighbour was not only
generous, he was really affectionate. " Do not
fret," he said, " you can pay when you can, your
honest face is security enough for my money."
And he was not mistaken in his reading of the
boy's character. Malabari never forgot his kind
ness, but paid him back many times over, not
only in money, but in real gratitude.
Malabari paid ten rupees to the University as
the Examination fee, and with the balance in his
pocket he left for Bombay to make his way in the
world. His only anxiety now was about his step
father, whose house at Surat was about to be sold
by a creditor. He knew no one in Bombay. But
he had often heard of a rich Sowcar of whose
wealth people spoke with awe. In the simplicity
of his heart Malabari believed that such a man
would not refuse to help him to payoff his father's
debt. He repaired to the house of the rich man.
He was admitted into the room, allowed to state

EDUCATION 25
his case, and then laughed out of the presence as
a fool. The ingenuous boy turned away from the
millionaire disillusioned. He had regarded rich
men as the cream of human kindness, patrons of
art and learning, and centres of beneficence. He
now perceived that poor men often outshine the
rich in their love of humanity, and that charity
does not always lodge in the house of the wealthy.
It was a great disappointment, but he had no
time to brood over his failure. He had to devote
himself entirely to his studies, resisting even the
temptation to see the sights of the great city.
The day fixed for the examination soon came.
He was admitted to the Examination Hall along
with other boys to whom the question papers
were distributed, and the scribbling began. The
examination lasted four days, and the boys strained
their memories to the breaking point to secure
the requisite number of marks for a pass. It was
after a month that the result was announced in
the Gazette, in which Malabari's name did not
appear. He had failed in mathematics.
Bombay the Beautiful, with her splendid build
ings, crowded markets, and a cosmopolitan popula
tion, drawn together from all parts of the globe in
the pursuit of wealth or pleasure, frowned on
the poor student. He needed nothing but time
and guidance to fight his own battle of life, and
there was no one to befriend him. Bombay recog-

26 B. M. MALABARI
nized nothing but success, whether in examination
or business. Malabari could not afford to be idle.
He looked round for employment, and, after many
failures and much suffering, secured an appointment
at a school with a salary of twenty rupees a month.
He threw his heart into the work, and in leisure
hours he read for his matriculation. He was
determined to try his luck at the end of another
year. He worked at the school with such diligence
that after a time his pay was raised to forty rupees
a month, and then to sixty. He earned as much
by taking private pupils. For a boy who had
entered life with only ten rupees in his pocket
this income was more than ample. He rented a
room for himself, and settled down comfortably in
his own home. He would have been quite con
tent with his lot, but for the examination which
loomed large on the horizon. For four long years
he struggled for a pass. He failed in 1868, again
in 1869, and for the third time in 1 8 70, but at last,
in 1871, fortune smiled on him, and his name
appeared in the Gazette. But this did not bring
him the satisfaction which would have been his if
he had passed when he first came to Bombay full
of golden dreams. He was now settled in life
and had a fixed income, which was more than
enough for his wants.
It is well that Malabari did not covet a Univer-

EDUCATION 27
sity degree. Had he continued to pursue the
regulation course, a weary grind from examina
tion to examination, culminating in a B.A. or
M. A., he would perhaps never have been the man
he was, deep and broad in culture, responsive to
all that is noble and great in Eastern as in
Western thought. To readers unacquainted with
the Indian Educational system, this may seem
strange, but it was really a great thing that he was
saved from the relentless mill which might have
crushed and ground out his magnificent powers of
heart and mind. What would Malabari have been
without his originality ?
In Europe a University degree is the indication
of preparation for a future career. I n I ndia it is
conferred as the reward of an overloaded memory
at the expense of natural energy and aptitude.
The examination is not incidental, a means to an
end, but the end itself. The graduate of an Indian
University is usually a spent force. The pro
gramme of studies has been prepared without any
correct appraisement of his mental and physical
capacity. The educationalists stand aghast at the
idea of what they call " lowering the standard of
education." They are always crying out that the
standard should be raised, as if the Indian boy
could go on swallowing, more and more, the indi
gestible stuff, which he is constitutionally incapable
of assimilating, and which is always destructive of

28 B. M. MALABARI
brain and body for those who are not physically
and mentally fit to bear the strain.
In dealing with Malabari's early life, with his
prolonged struggles to obtain education, with his
repeated failures to pass the matriculation, one
cannot but speculate on " the might have been "
under more congenial surroundings. What could
he not have attained if a kindly fate had given
him a congenial home with an environment of
hope and freedom, of ease and culture — to him
who, in spite of everything, found his way to the
mount of vision, and saw through the gilded haze
which ensnares humanity.

CHAPTER III
the influence of khialis and zoroastrianism
THE formative period of a poet's mind is
always a period of great interest. Early in
life the " Khialis " fired the imagination of young
Malabari, and he loved to feel the thrill of joy and
sorrow and infinite longings which their songs
awakened, carrying him far away to :
Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
It was with wandering minstrels he found his
way to the world of the muses. He had passed
his childhood amid suffering women, and from
their own lips heard the story of their woes. He
used to tell me that young wives married to men
fit to be their fathers, and girl widows came to
his mother and poured into her sympathetic ears
all their disappointment and despair. He would
often sit and listen and weep with them, as the
tragedy of their lives obsessed his heart and
brain. Besides these active influences there were the
traditions of his own race. " The main fact about
29

30 B. M. MALABARI
a man is his religion," says Carlyle, and the Parsis
had left their country for the sake of their re
ligion. Nations work out their destinies in strange
ways. Aryans that made India and Persia their
home had but a brief stay, their rise and their
decline were equally precipitous. When Europe
was fighting its way upwards, India and Persia
were suffering from senile decay.
The Persia familiar to us in the works of the
great historians, that Persia, which but for a chance
might have changed the history of Europe, had
fallen on evil days, and as in the case^of India,
there was no Persian nation to stay the foreign
invasion when the followers of the Prophet poured
into the country and converted almost the whole
population to Islam. Those who refused to change
their creed either left their country or resolved to
suffer patiently for the faith of their fathers. But
still Persia had its glory and its tradition, and
when Ferdausi, the great Persian poet, at the
request of Mahmud enriched the epic literature of
the world by writing his " Shahnameh," such was
the wealth of material available, that Mahmud,
apprehending ruin, refused to pay the gold mohur
for every verse, which he had promised before he
realized the potentialities of such a subject.
The Parsis in Persia who remained faithful to
the faith of their forefathers were subjected to
cruelty and wrong. "Up to 1895 no Parsi was

THE INFLUENCE OF KHIALIS 31
allowed to carry an umbrella," writes Napier
Malcolm, " they could not use eye-glasses, they
were prevented from wearing rings, their girdles
had to be made of white canvas, they must twist
their turban instead of folding it. Up to 1891 all
Zoroastrians had to go on foot in towns, and
even in the desert they had to dismount if they
met a Mussulman. Their houses had to be built
so low that the top could be reached by a Mussul
man with his hand. They could not trade in the open
market. They had to pay ajazia or a Poll Tax."
Such was the life of the Parsis in their own
country up till recent times. The Parsis who came
to India were welcomed long ago by the Raja of
Sanjan : " Welcome to those who walk faithfully
in the way of Aharmazad. May their race pros
per and increase. May their prayers obtain the
remission of their sins! May Lakshmi by her
liberality and gifts contribute to their wealth and
to the fulfilment of their desires, and ever may
their rare merits of race and intellect continue to
distinguish them in our midst."
Once settled down in India, the Parsis throve as
agriculturists, traders, and artisans, and slowly
adopted Hindu customs and dress, which they have
altered and improved upon with such taste that the
crowd that now promenades the Malabar Road in
the evening rivals any crowd in the world for
brightness of colour and grace of drapery.

32 B. M. MALABARI
The fundamental doctrine of the Zoroastrian
creed is that from the beginning of the things
there exist two spirits, Aharmazad and Aharman,
the principles of light and life, of darkness and
death. Zoroaster, the Parsi prophet, taught devo
tion to Aharmazad, the principle of goodness,
purity of body and soul, and an eternal war against
Aharman, the principle of evil. He spoke from a
heart full of love, and left a great following. In
the course of time a powerful priesthood fastened
upon this simple creed, and hedged it round with
an elaborate ritual. They subtly invested his words
with hidden meanings, and placed upon them
plausible interpretations to suit their own pur
poses. His abstract speculations were materialized
into concrete facts, and his allegorical forms of
speech personified to serve a new mythology.
In ancient Persia fire temples were raised on lofty
hill tops, soaring heavenward with their flaming
fire, while devout worshippers, weary and foot
sore, knelt before the altar, recited their prayers,
and went home heart healed. All this is gone
now; the great fire temples of Iran, which raised
the human soul to a sense of the divine, are in
ruins, with no fire burning and no worshipper
worshipping. The new fire temples in India built
in crowded streets and distinguished only by
groups of white-robed priests sitting at the door,
afford a painful contrast to those sacred fanes

THE INFLUENCE OF KHIALIS 33
towering above mountain tops ; repositories of the
divine fire rising heavenward in all its purity.
We ultimately become what we worship. May
it not be that the modern fire temple is responsible
for the growing spirit of indifference amongst the
Parsis ? No religion has ever retained for long the
high level which was reached by its founder. The
unregenerate crowd cannot rise to the altitudes of
spiritual belief in which the Master and his dis
ciples dwelt. They seek shelter in the familiar
valleys resting in the lap of sunlight and shadow,
and resume their old practices with just a little
difference which marks the step that has been
taken towards the ideal.
The prayer that goes forth from the lips of a
Parsi asks for everlasting light :
"Give us knowledge, sagacity, quickness of
tongue, holiness of soul, a good memory, and the
understanding that goeth on growing, the under
standing which cometh not through learning."
Perhaps Zoroaster, in modern language, would
have called this understanding faith, and defined
it as the inner knowledge of reality implanted in
the heart of man for his guidance. Religion is a
thing of the heart and not of the intellect. " The
boundless, endless infinite void in the heart of
man can be satisfied with nothing but God." In
tellectual religion is therefore no religion, and its
desert paths are frequented only by lovers of

34 B. M. MALABARI
empty words and subtle arguments. " Tangle on
tangle is the path of intellect," said Sadi; "for
those who believe there exists nothing but God."
Is it possible for the understanding to encompass
that which illumines the understanding ? The
carbon point might as well go searching for the
source of the electric fluid. Religion raises man
to its divine source, metaphysics hold him down
to the glittering foot-board. Well may the Parsis
pray for the " understanding which is not of the
earth." And it was this simple faith which Mala
bari's mother professed and implanted in the heart
of her son — a faith inspiring practical good work,
in however humble a way. She taught him how
to pray and to live by trust in God.
Such were the influences that moulded the
character of Malabari, and to him all through life
there remained the early recollection of a good
and loving mother. He remained true to the
ideals of his youth, endeavouring to work out in
life the plan which possessed his childish fancy.
He would have loved to pass his days in some
small village in a sphere of peace and simplicity,
amid fragrant fields and flowing streams, but the
cry of suffering men and women rang in his ears,
and he could not refuse their call for rescue. He
made his home in Bombay, with the dull gray of
the streets as his only landscape, and resolved to
elevate the position of women. He thought that

THE INFLUENCE OF KHIALIS 35
he had but to lift the curtain and to give his
countrymen a glimpse of the advantages which
social freedom would bring to both the sexes, and
they would hasten to the work of its attainment.
He was soon disillusioned. He learned what others
had discovered before him, that those who talk
most are not generally those who devote them
selves to enduring work, which demands immediate
sacrifice of what they love most — popularity. He
himself cared little for popular applause ; and was
willing to suffer even unpopularity as long as he
could help more effectively the cause he had at
heart. He continued his own work in the service
of women, and of the sick and the weary, unmoved
by the opposition that his work encountered.
When I met him he had passed through years of
stress and storm, and I can recall the first day, as
if it were yesterday — the serious smile of welcome,
the questioning look from his eyes, the frank and
hearty shake of the hand. We walked out in the
evening along the sea shore. His face lit up — he
drank in with a deep breath the wide landscape.
He was full of joy as he pointed to the delicately
tinted clouds floating in a golden sky. He seemed
immeasurably happy. I said to myself: Life has
never stained his youthful chastity of spirit.

CHAPTER IV
GUJRATI POEMS
GENIUS has been often defined as akin to
madness, and yet it is the man of genius
who invests all nature with a divine splendour.
He is as the great Hafiz has been called, " the
tongue of the invisible." He sees the vanishing
rainbow, the golden sunset, and describes them in
words of infinite glory. The world cannot under
stand him, and they call him mad because he does
not accept things at their conventional value. For
all that it is this unbalanced and over-developed
brain that brings down to earth glimpses of divine
truth to live in the hearts of men, and make them
all the brighter for their presence.
It is the man of genius who has the power to
flash deep down to the heart of things, and to ex
press what others feel but dimly, and realize still
less clearly — the infinite longings of the human
soul for a full and perfect life.
Nature endowed Malabari with the golden gift
of genius. He was a singer before he could read
and write. He was more of a poet in his early
36

GUJRATI POEMS 37
days, when the " darkening " veil of intellect lay,
like the golden haze of the dawn, waiting for sun
rise, than in his manhood when social work and
politics absorbed him completely.
He sang because the songs came to him, de
manded and founded expression. He sang of
flowers, and fragrance, and laughter, with an easy
grace and fluency which was the marvel of the
wandering minstrels. As he grew older, he be
came essentially spiritual in his aspirations; press
ing onward to life's joys and sorrows, and wander
ing even into the labyrinth of metaphysics. He
struck the deepest notes when singing of the woes
of Indian women; songs sad and despairing and
freighted with infinite pathos. He wrote for his
own pleasure. He had no idea of publishing his
verses till a friend persuaded him to take them to
the Rev. Mr. Taylor, who was known as a warm
admirer of Gujrati literature. It is especially the
missionaries who cultivate the vernaculars of India
successfully, and have done much to enrich them
with translations from good books.
Mr. Taylor read young Malabari's verses with
keen interest. He was charmed with the young
poet's delight in the common things of life, and
the sweet homeliness of his language. He could
appreciate the beauties of language and sentiment,
as he had himself written some verses, and was
the author of a Gujrati Grammar. He was all the

38 B. M. MALABARI
more pleased that the boy-poet had broken new
ground, and made his songs the vehicles of beauti
ful thoughts.
Mr. Taylor recognized in the earnestness of the
young poet, and the high tone which pervaded his
verse, a new champion of social reform and of
purer life generally. He insisted on the publica
tion of the poems and introduced Malabari to the
Rev. Dr. Wilson, who did so much to popularize
English education in Western India.
Dr. Wilson was a remarkable man. He came
full of zeal to confute and convert heathen India
to Christianity. He began his work by vehement
attacks on Indian religions, and instead of winning
adherents, he created powerful opponents, and
Hinduism eluded him at all points. Then Dr. Wil
son reconsidered his position, and decided to devote
himself mainly to the cause of education and
charity. He gave up polemics, and became a real
helper, ready to serve and suffer, and befriend
the friendless. The change from a self assertive
missionary to a gentle minister of Christ was rich
in fruit. His personal life helped to popularize
Christianity more than his polemics, which some
times carried him beyond the bounds of charity.
Argument can be met by argument, dialectics by
equally subtle dialectics, but nothing can resist the
limitless power of love, humility and grace.
In his early career, Dr. Wilson, with all his zeal,

GUJRATI POEMS 39
secured only a few converts, and embittered the
whole Indian community. He attacked the weak
points in their religion, and set them searching
for weak points in his own. Later on he became
known as the friend of all, devoting himself to the
service of all, and he was sought by Hindus,
Parsis and Muhammedans for comfort and con
solation. Just at the time of life when Malabari needed
contact with a strong and inspiring personality he
had the good fortune to meet Dr. Wilson. They
parted friends after their first meeting. They met
frequently, and Malabari stayed with Dr. Wilson
for days together. They became so intimately
associated that they might have belonged to one
family. In all that was good and useful, their
thoughts met in unchanging affinity, and their
hearts rejoiced and suffered equally with the joys
and sorrows of others. Dr. Wilson affirmed that
the salvation of India lies in Jesus Christ, while
Malabari held, that without the living personality
of a prophet the conversion of a whole population
was not possible, though he hoped that some day
all religions would find their inner unity. This
was their only point of difference, the one sought
to attain it for the people through Christ, the
other by educating the people in righteous living.
When it came to practical work, they both found
themselves working together, and realized that

40 B. M. MALABARI
caste and creed were of little account when hearts
were inspired by a common aim, and devoted to
the service of suffering men and women.
Friendships which are brought about by self
interest rest on shifting sands, and give way as
soon as the parties fail to afford each other
the requisite amount of profit or pleasure. But
when two hearts are drawn by mutual attraction
to each other, the foundations of friendship are
laid deeper, and become an unfailing source of
comfort and strength. Just when Malabari made
the acquaintance of Dr. Wilson, he formed the
friendship of Mr. Shahpoorjee Bhala, who after
wards embraced Christianity. Malabari many
years after wrote: "If anything could have con
verted me to Christianity it was Shahpoorjee's
example. His faithfulness to Christ, and his for
titude were most edifying. Dr. Wilson loved
Shahpoorjee as a son, and I myself owe much of
Dr. Wilson's kindly regard to Shahpoorjee. I
look upon Shahpoorjee's family as my own. His
father is one of the worthiest and yet one of the
most unlucky men I have known."
Malabari himself was very much attracted by
the noble doctrine of Christ, and the great work
which missionaries were doing in India. In a
letter to Principal Wordsworth, he wrote: "And
how much do we owe to Christian Missionaries?
We are indebted to them for the first start in the

GUJRATI POEMS 41
race of intellectual emancipation. It is to them
that we are beholden for some of our most
cherished political and social acquisitions. Our
very Brahmo Samaj, Arya Samaj and Prarthna
Samaj are the off-shoots in one sense of this bene
ficent agency. And apart from its active useful
ness, the Christian Mission serves as a buffer for
the tide of scepticism, usually inseparable from
intellectual emancipation. At a time when doubt
and distrust are taking the place of reasoned en
quiry among the younger generation of India, I
feel bound to acknowledge in my own person the
benefits I have derived from contact with the
spirit of Christianity. But for that holy contact, I
could scarcely have grown into the staunch and
sincere Zoroastrian that I am, with a keen appre
ciation of all that appeals readily to the intelli
gence, and a reverent curiosity for what appeals
to the heart, knowing full well that much of what
is mysterious to men is not beneath, but beyond
the comprehension of a finite being."
In early life Malabari found his best friends
amongst the missionaries, and he almost became
a Christian in spirit, though not in form. They
got nearer to each other than the nearest of kith
and kin, guided by some unknown power to
mutual love and esteem.
It was this early friendship with Europeans
which made the Parsi poet such a persuasive

42 B. M. MALABARI
apostle of a better understanding between the
two races, parted by as vital a difference as age
bears to youth. India, old and querulous, ex
hausted and sensitive, dwelling in the past, which
is dead and gone ; England, energetic and arro
gant with all the youth's contempt for old age.
Malabari with his faith in the ultimate good,
felt that God, who has brought the two people
together, must unite them in the end. " The veil
of the East is a shadow of mutual exclusiveness,"
he often said. " It is in our power to raise it by
right understanding and unfailing sympathy." He
expected more from the English than from his
own people. He said it is they who have it in
their power to shape the future of an ancient race
which has for centuries suffered from discord. He
held that once the English people set their hearts
to this noble work, all misunderstanding would
disappear. In the union of the East and the West
Malabari foreshadowed the promise of a new era
of universal peace. It was not an idle dream.
Many men of the two races who have met as
comrades and friends have found much to appre
ciate in each other.
Dr. Wilson introduced Malabari to some of the
leading citizens of Bombay, and arranged for the
publication of his poems. The verses came out
in a neat little volume under the title of " The Niti
Vinod : or The Pleasures of the Right Path." The

GUJRATI POEMS 43
booklet was a great success. Appreciative letters
and reviews poured in from all sides. The Indian
and the English press welcomed it as marking a
new departure in Gujrati poetry. " Malabari's
verses combined," they said, " the sweetness and
grace of Gujrati melody with the practical vigour
of Western thought." The publication of the
book led to many life-long friendships. The one
that Malabari prized highly was the friendship of
Mr. Mansukhram Tripathi. The strange thing
about it was, that this sympathy between the
intellectual Brahmin and the spiritual Parsi was
brought about by a Christian from Ireland!
It is difficult to render Gujrati verse into
English, but some pieces would bear translation.
In clear, sad melodies the poet sings of the wail-
ings of child-widows, and the despair of girl-wives
pining for life, which is never to be theirs. It
is when sung in the tender Indian refrains that
the verses touch the heart with the pathos of the
life of the East.
"Niti Vinod" brought its author fame and
friends, but no material gain. He still laboured
as a schoolmaster, giving of his best to the boys
entrusted to his care. By a mere coincidence Sir
Cowasji Jahangir introduced Malabari to Mr.
Martin Wood, the Editor of the " Times of India,"
and thus our poet found his true vocation. Mr.
Martin Wood asked him to write for his paper,

44 B. M. MALABARI
and trained him as a journalist. That was how
Malabari discovered the platform from which for
many years he was to address Rajahs and Maha-
rajahs, Government and people of India.

CHAPTER V
journalism
BOTH by education and temperament Mala
bari was fitted for the high calling of a
journalist, to be the guide and philosopher of
modern India. He had come in contact with real
life, and traced the disintegrating factors which
govern Indian society and remain unaltered and
almost unalterable. He was fully in touch with
the positive and powerful influences which have
been brought into play by the introduction of
Western education, and are silently shaping the
course of future events. He also saw what others
do not see, that the day of fruition was distant
and uncertain, and that impatient idealism was
fatal to the interests of the country. He was
convinced that the only hope of future progress
lies in the slow but sure assimilation of the new
ideas, requiring unbroken peace, and that the
foundations of national life must be laid in the
homes of the people. He was not deceived by
the first dawn of a renaissance which has dazzled
so many honest workers. He firmly believed
45

46 B. M. MALABARI
that freedom in the homes of people must precede
free institutions, and that amid the " unnumbered
representatives of obsolete systems " and dis
tractions of rival creeds, it was hopeless to think
of self-government on colonial lines, however
noble an ideal it may be to work for and to
prepare the people for its achievement.
It was social life, he asserted, that needed
liberation from the thousand complexities which
choke the springs of life, and it was the free play
of Western thought enduring for years which
could alone remove the rust of ages and strengthen
the elements of future improvement. It was
something of a faith with him that in the tone
and temper of the British Government, with all
its limitations, lies the only hope of national re
generation, and that to serve the British Govern
ment was therefore to serve the country. He was
convinced that the strings that make the loom,
the hands that keep it duly adjusted, exercising
an invisible and irresistible control, must remain
unchanged to keep together the heterogeneous
tissue of Indian society, whilst the gates of India
were unassailable in the hands of those only who
have raised impregnable fortifications all along
the frontier against the ancient danger of invasion
from without.
All through life, Malabari insisted that we
should escape from customs and usages which

JOURNALISM 47
made light of human life and were fatal to true
progress. " We must live for truth and righteous
ness," he said, " and sweeten the lives of men and
women condemned by custom to everlasting
slavery." On the other side he endeavoured to
convince the Government that its strength lies in
even-handed justice and in the love of the people.
Many a time his earnest pleadings modified official
opinion and strengthened the policy of sympathy.
Nature, in giving him the gift of a golden tongue,
ensured his success from the beginning. He was
the one man in India credited with the power of
unsettling settled facts, and of achieving the
impossible. There is a type of Anglo-Indian, who has a
scarcely veiled contempt for educated Indians,
and an even less veiled contempt for the time-
servers who seek his patronage. He generalizes
from the few individuals he knows. He thinks
that the policy followed by the supreme Govern
ment, in response to the demand made by the
educated classes, is not required by the circum
stances and the country. He talks of a " strong
Government," as if Government derived its
strength from the skies. He ought to know that
the attitude of the Home Government and opinion
in India is becoming every day clear and pro
nounced. The Government to be strong must
have either the support of the people of India or

48 B. M. MALABARI
that of the Home Government, and cannot do
without either. The theory of the strong Govern
ment is therefore not without difficulties.
The educated Indian, on the other hand, is
carried away by " Impatient Idealism," and can
not harmonize his aspirations for Constitutional
Government with an administration mainly based
on the traditions of Eastern Rule, slowly adapting
itself to new conditions. It was Malabari's am
bition to reconcile the two main currents of
opinion and secure permanent and enduring
results. The training he received under Mr. Martin
Wood helped him to conduct his " Indian Specta
tor" on sound lines. He was sometimes mis
understood by foes and friends alike, but he
refused to change its policy, which he thought
was the only policy of permanent usefulness. He
often wished to give up the struggle and betake
himself to the solitude of the jungles. This
eternal craving of the East for peace used to come
upon him very strongly, but it was met by the
Western ideal of unremitting effort, which pre
vailed and kept him at his post. He realized at
twenty-two that active contact with men in the
daily transactions of life was a better preparation
for salvation than the meditative seclusion to
which he was naturally drawn. At times, it is
true, he felt as if he could serve his motherland

JOURNALISM 49
better by his songs than by his newspaper articles.
He longed for the joy which comes to the poet
when he catches some beautiful idea from the
world of imagination, and pours it out again in
spontaneous verse. But he saw that it was his
duty to deny himself this satisfaction for the good
of the country. " The Indian Spectator" refused
to die, surviving storm after storm in its chequered
career. Journalism in India is an exotic. In the olden
times there used to be news-writers employed by
the Kings to keep them informed of what was
going on, but their activities partook somewhat
of the nature of a secret service. The first news
paper in India was started by English people,
and began by criticizing their own Government
and indulged in strong invectives. The Indian
newspapers which followed imitated, for the most
part, the worst of these English models, and from
the very beginning fell into grooves. They there
fore missed too often their real mission, which
should have been to guide public opinion in the
discovery of the causes which shaped the past, and
which are now silently governing the course of
future events. Malabari wished our Press to have
greater inwardness and to devote itself earnestly
to domestic problems. We must fight first of all, he
used to say, to free ourselves from the tentacles of a
priesthood which allows no freedom, if we wish
E

50 B. M. MALABARI
to raise India and help the onward movement on
the lines which have brought such glory to the
Western world.
He had great dreams about his own "Spec
tator." It was to be a poor man's paper; it was
to help the women of India; it was to elevate the
depressed classes. There were to be systematic
studies by experts of social and political problems.
Dreams, alas ! which were never realized, but he
remained on " the watch tower " to the end, the
advocate of all good causes, the champion of the
helpless and the forlorn.
Nothing succeeded in unsettling the balance of
his mind. The gift of complete understanding and
boundless sympathy, which was his heritage as a
poet, gave him an immense advantage. He could
flash deeply into the very core of things, and
speak with such gentleness that his opinions were
always respected. Malabari remained more a poet
than a publicist. He felt even with the man he
had to oppose. He always saw the possibility of
a standpoint differing from his own, and was
content to give his own reasoned opinion. He
was very sensitive to criticism himself, and de
liberately abstained from doing unto others what
he would not have them to do unto him. He
would sometimes get up at one o'clock at night to
correct a proof, and remove the word which he
thought was likely to wound. He offered his own

JOURNALISM 51
views without assuming an air of superior wisdom,
and even when sorely tempted to speak with
severity, he endeavoured to leave the harsh word
unspoken. He appealed to the highest in man,
knowing that the divine in him makes always for
righteousness. This was the secret of his success
as an advocate of forlorn causes.
The columns of "The Indian Spectator" testify
to the innate benevolence of the editor, no less
than to his unerring judgement. " The Indian
Spectator," under him, spoke consistently for the
people, yet represented no party. He often en
deavoured to pour oil on troubled waters, and
sometimes a note in "The Indian Spectator"
served as a balm to wounded pride, and won the
heart of an opponent.
He was sometimes misunderstood both by
officials and by his own people. The officials, con
vinced of their omniscience, laughed at his fears,
refused to take note of changing conditions, and
lightly dismissed his appeal for a definite policy.
His own contemporaries thought he was merely
temporizing by counselling them patience and
moderation, urging them to consider the ultimate
results of the unmeasured use of words which
were likely to alienate popular sympathy from the
Government. Malabari strongly urged on the Government
the need for reform — more so through private

52 B. M. MALABARI
correspondence than through the columns of his
paper — but he recognized that the salvation of
India rested mainly with the Indians themselves.
He gave his support to the Government, not be
cause it was perfect, but because he was sure it
was infinitely more human than any that had
gone before it. He often said that no one with
any vision of the future could afford to weaken
the Government.
If he wished he could have been the most
popular man of his time ; the hero and idol of his
generation. But he resisted the temptation, stand
ing . apart and in the background, and was only
to mould and guide opinion in silence without
reward or recognition; and striving in full faith to
secure the greatest good of the greatest number.
As an eminent English publicist put it, " Malabari
leads through the leaders." He should perhaps
have said " tries to lead," for often the leaders
would not be led by him.
It is a strange phenomenon of our politics that
while our people are eager to have self-Govern-
ment on colonial lines, which has been declared
to be the aim of both the Indian National Con
gress and the Muhammedan League, the Hindus
at least still cling to the old carcase of a system
which has failed irretrievably, and plead its petty
utilities, ignoring the lasting injury it has done to
the growth of national sentiment. What is more,

JOURNALISM 53
they look backward in trying to realize the future,
nursing a false pride in the past which has cradled
the inglorious present, and buried public life
under an accumulation of sectarian jealousies and
mutual distrust. The " Back to the Vedas " cry
still holds its ground. The Muhammedans, on the
other hand, press for preferential treatment, and
aspire to self-government in the same breath.
Malabari saw far into the future, and was not
deceived by fine phrases which have such a fatal
fascination for the majority of our countrymen. It
was not in politics, but in a reconstructed society,
on the basis of a free and equal life for all classes
and both sexes that he saw the hope of the future-
The argument that Indian Society has managed
to exist through all changes which have changed
other nations, and must, therefore, be on the right
lines, never appealed to him. He could not under
stand how educated men could uphold a system
of inequality between the sexes and the tyranny
of the higher over the lower castes, leading to
such a degeneration of the masses, that even a
hundred years of British Rule have failed to pro
duce any substantial improvement.
He held that if we are earnest about the future
of our country we must seek new ways of life,
which have led other nations to greatness and
glory. Malabari believed that it was faith that was

54 B. M. MALABARI
wanting to realize the potentialities of a national
life which the future offered. He would have us
recognize that life went out of the old organiza
tion centuries ago, leaving half truths and deaden
ing superstitions behind. He pleaded ceaselessly
that we should destroy false pride, and with it all
the pernicious forces which have their root in
ignorance, and that our men of light and leading,
who now neglect the vital interests of the country
for what passes for high politics should take up in
their hundreds the gospel of social freedom, broad
based on the co-operation of all right-minded men
and women.

CHAPTER VI
"THE INDIAN SPECTATOR"
AN Indian journalist is very often his own
manager, contributor, and proof reader.
Malabari went even further, and sometimes hired
a cab, and delivered his paper from door to door.
The Editorial chair demands rare qualities of
heart and brain, " a calm and clear judgement, a
wide range and a keen perception of human
motives in the handling of large questions."
Malabari was perhaps the only Indian journalist
who saw above and beyond the horizon, and re
fused to support conventional prejudice, or blow
attractive bubbles to please the popular fancy.
The career of " The Indian Spectator," therefore,
resulted rather in a succes d'esttme than in a record
of big circulation. It enjoyed, however, great
power and influence; its paragraphs were read
with great interest, both by Indians and Anglo-
Indians. " It is a paper like ' Tit Bits ' that gathers in the
shekels," remarked Sir George Newnes. "The
papers that make and unmake Cabinets, form
55

56 B. M. MALABARI
opinions, raise great questions, exercise great
power, are financial failures." And it is to the
latter class that the "Spectator" belonged. It
swallowed up a large share of what Malabari
earned by working for those who sought his assist
ance in other spheres.
We generally read a newspaper which flatters
our vanity, and reflects our own views with all
the dexterity of professional journalism. The
" Spectator" was honest above all things. It fear
lessly expressed its own opinions, and appealed
only to a select number of paying subscribers. It
was, however, widely read, a single copy passing
from hand to hand amongst hundreds of readers.
Many a time when other journals expressed
their strong support, or equally strong disappro
bation of a public measure, Malabari's weekly came
upon the scene, opening out new aspects of the
problem, and suggesting easier and more humane
methods of meeting the situation. And all this
with such sweet reasonableness and confidence in
the good intentions of the men in authority, that
it was found difficult to ignore his views. The
result was that the Government often consulted
the Editor beforehand on important questions of
administration or policy. He enjoyed the friend
ship of almost all Viceroys and Governors from
the days of Lord Northbrook.
He often said that it was impossible for any

"THE INDIAN SPECTATOR" 57
one to speak for the whole of India with pre
cision, except on the few large questions which
affected all the provinces in an equal manner and
to an equal degree. He was, therefore, never
dogmatic, but when once he was convinced of the
justice of his cause, he put his case in such a
manner that it was impossible to resist his views.
He always appealed to high principles, to the love
of truth, humanity and fair play. Who could be
such a churl as wantonly to disregard what Mala
bari clearly showed was the only right and just
way of dealing with a question ?
Malabari had great dreams about the Indian
Press. It has, he said, a wide scope both for good
and evil, and grave responsibilities. It was only
a pure administration, free from corruption, and
determined to do justice all round that could afford
to welcome the co-operation of a vigilant Press in
the cause of good administration. He deeply de
plored the low level to which the Press in all
countries was sinking, courting moral bankruptcy
in its thirst for gold and popularity. He was
particularly anxious that the Indian Press should
take a broader view of men and measures.
The Government of India, in Malabari's opinion,
was overshadowed by the traditions of the personal
rule it had supplanted. It was not constitutional
like that of England and other European countries.
The public, therefore, needed calm and clear guid-

58 B. M. MALABARI
ance, and was unfortunately acquiring a taste for
strong and pungent writing. The Anglo-Indian
papers, with a single exception, often committed
themselves to party views, and fired their missiles
impartially at the " educated native," and the " se
ditious Babu." They had no imperial policy, and
did not try to lead their youthful contemporaries
into more fruitful channels. They missed the
great opportunities of initiating a real and fruitful
imperial policy.
He used to tell me that it was his ambition to
have a good " daily," and conduct it on sound
lines, with a constructive policy of permanent
value. It was not a Press Act, he used to argue,
but a good Press with an Imperial Policy, which
could influence opinion in such a way as to put a
stop to the continuous flow of misrepresentations
and bitterness.
The British administration cannot help being
British in its character, he often said. It was not
possible for it to follow traditions which were not
its own. It was the importing of the British ideals
into the Indian administration which had made it
such a glorious success, and he certainly expected
Englishmen to follow their own traditions, and
be independent, and straightforward, disdaining
temporary expedients which are the refuge of the
destitute. He believed that the more English the
administration becomes in its character the more

"THE INDIAN SPECTATOR" 59
British will India grow, and by a happy blending of
the two, the union will become almost indissoluble.
He was anxious to provide a medium for
friendly interchange of opinions between Indians
and Anglo-Indians, and though he could not man
age to carry out his idea of having a "daily,"
he started "East and West" in 1902, with the
avowed object of bringing the East and the West
together. The Magazine began its career with the
approbation and active co-operation of some of the
most distinguished men of the two countries. The
Duke of Argyll and Sir Charles Dilke on one
side, and the Gaekwar of Baroda and the Ma-
harajahs of Gwalior and of Bikanir on the other,
contributed to its pages.
The magazine has served a useful purpose, but
it has hardly attained the object of its founder.
Recent discussions have been largely on philo
sophical subjects, which are, by their very nature,
above party politics, and are well calculated to
show unity of thought in East and West. The
time has, however, arrived, when a friendly dis
cussion of current questions in a spirit of amity,
both by officials and non-officials, is desirable, and
it is to be hoped that the Magazine will be used
more and more, both by officials and non-officials
for fostering a healthy public opinion for the
Empire. " East and West " has even now great
possibilities of useful work.

60 B. M. MALABARI
It will perhaps surprise my readers, that Mala
bari, in spite of his general support of the prin
ciples and policy of the Government, did not escape
suspicion. In 1898 he published a series of Guj
rati poems under the title of " Sansarika." The
book was pronounced by the Director of Public
Instruction as seditious, and his printing office was
visited by the police. The matter was hotly dis
cussed for months, the Government of Bombay
exonerated the poet from all ill-will towards itself,
Lords Northbrook, Ripon, and Reayin the House
of Lords, testified to Mr. Malabari's steadfast loy
alty. He himself did not care to make much of
this unpleasant incident, and wrote to a powerful
friend: "Now since the local authorities do not
like to refer the matter to unbiassed non-official
scrutiny, I am myself in no hurry to trouble the
Government of India or the Secretary of State.
As it is, I almost feel too much has been made of
what looks like a personal matter. And after all,
what is likely to humiliate my Government must
necessarily humiliate me." The matter was finally
allowed to drop, but when such a friend of Eng
land could not escape suspicion, what of ordinary
men whose actions and utterances are often liable
to systematic misrepresentation ? Our police have
not yet understood their functions, or realized their
responsibilities. In " Samsarika " Malabari had
merely preached his gospel of social reform. He

"THE INDIAN SPECTATOR" 61
exhorted his people to be up and doing, and his
words were misinterpreted to mean what he never
meant them to convey. He, however, continued
his labours in the cause of suffering women with a
loyalty, energy, and sagacity, that extorted the ad
miration of his opponents. He was often accused
by Hindu critics of aiming at upsetting the entire
fabric of society. " Reformers are always open to
the taunt," Lord Morley observes, " that they find
nothing in the world good enough for them."
" You write," said a popular novelist to one of this
unthanked tribe, "as if you believed everything is
bad." " But I do believe that everything might be
better," said the other. The reply was convincing,
but it has taken many years even for the Euro
peans to accept change as a necessity of progress.
In India the spirit of reform is regarded with
great distrust. Hindus, Parsis, and Muhammedans
alike are apprehensive of the mischievous effects
of reform, and ready to pronounce all reformers
heretics. It was the triumph of his personal char
acter that in spite of much misrepresentation and
calumny, Malabari retained the esteem of his po
litical and social adversaries, who often sought his
advice and assistance.
In referring to the files for details of the battles
which the " Spectator " has fought against ignor
ance, prejudice, or high-handedness, we are con
fronted with yet another misfortune that dogs the

62 B. M. MALABARI
steps of Indian journalism — the depredations of
the white ant and, hardly less disastrous, the flat
tering attentions of the reader who borrows but
never returns. In any case it is beyond the scope
of my wandering sketch to draw largely upon such
material as may still be available.
The "Spectator" fought its way up to power
and influence under Malabari, who continued the
good fight right to the end against all that shuts
out sweetness and light from life. He sympath
ized with the aspirations of the younger generation,
who take lightly the labours of their seniors as
their rightful inheritance, and, in turn, demand a
great deal more than the former asked for. It has
been truly said that when " one spring of dis
content mounts to a head and overflows every
other source becomes a tributary." The last few
years have witnessed great changes in the tone
and temper of young India. It was Malabari's en
deavour now to explain the position of the Gov
ernment to his countrymen and show that there
were many sides of the question which escaped
them. There was, however, no shrinking from the
criticism of official mistakes or from remonstrance
with panic or high-handedness. He frankly con
fessed he did not expect a new India to rise out
of nothing, merely owing to the importation of
Western institutions. " If it were merely a matter
of appointing Committees or passing resolutions

"THE INDIAN SPECTATOR" 63
or debating in the newspapers we should no doubt
succeed grandly," he said, " in making India one
of the foremost countries of the world. But the
future has to be worked out day and night, amid
solitary villages and among ignorant men and
women, at home and in silence, and for this simple
task we are, alas, unspeakably poor." He spoke out
his mind freely and frankly, and it cost him ease,
many sacrifices, and finally his health and life. But
he would not be silent; and though the misunder
standing and odium he incurred stung him acutely,
nothing could rob him of his sweetness of spirit.
It was impossible for him, however, to run the
paper single-handed. In recent years he had to
surrender the helm to other capable hands. But
wherever he happened to be, and even when en
grossed with other things, he continued to con
tribute short paragraphs as a religious duty, and
occasionally he would snatch time to write at some
length when he thought the occasion demanded
his reasoned opinion. The great vogue which
theosophy and occultism obtained in India a few
years ago, prompted him to write his own remin
iscence of Madame Blavatsky, which I transcribe
in full, as it shows how Malabari touched the sore
point without causing pain, and also his tolerance,
charity, and good humour.
" The first time I heard this mellifluous and
classical expression ' Fatuous Flap-Doodle,' was

64 B. M. MALABARI
from Madame Blavatsky's lips. ' H.P.B.,' high
priestess of Occultism, author of ' Isis Unveiled,'
and custodian of the combined wisdom of East and
West, had recently installed herself in a by-lane of
Girgaum Back Road, and had drawn to her many
Hindu and a few Parsi Chelas. Among these
were personal friends, who pressed me to join,
opening out vistas of vast usefulness and a high
status in society. But I pleaded inability to follow
the drift of transcendentalism, though generally
sympathizing with theosophy as a scheme of
eclecticism. When Blavatsky and Olcott were at
tacked by some of our Orthodox Parsi Papers, I
asked for tolerant and patient hearing. This made
the founders of the Theosophic cult seek me, and
thus we came to be friends. I read the literature
they gave me, and enjoyed Olcott's droll Yankee
humour, no less than ' H.P.B.'s' immense learn
ing. They favoured me with quiet talks in the
evening, and tried to capture me as a regular
Chela. Failing therein, they attacked me in the
only vulnerable point in my armour, my love of
the little 'Spectator.' Madame especially lauded
its paragraphs to the skies, and offered to con
tribute. I accepted the offer gratefully, but on
condition that I was free to use her writings or
not to use them. We thus became very chummy,
though I never attended the seances nor shared
the privileges of the elect.

"THE INDIAN SPECTATOR" 65
" Madame Blavatsky was a mighty personality,
large of limb, loud of voice, reckless in manner,
with profound, if somewhat ill-digested knowledge,
and with a pair of eyes blazing like electric bat
teries. She was short-tempered, but I learnt to
manage her like a child as we sat in her sanctum,
she smoking and talking and scolding and swear
ing, and I listening and usually laughing. One
afternoon she wanted to take me by storm and
came out with a particularly learned yarn about
the ancient cult of the Magi, the fire burning
eternally at Baku, her personal first-hand experi
ence of the great ones in those regions and else
where. In her enthusiasm Madame talked and
talked till I felt sore under the astral rides she gave
me, scouring the heaven above and earth below
for the nuggets of the Zoroastrian wisdom, and
promising me wondrous powers of illumination, if
I could only accept divine guidance unquestion-
ingly. She took me by turn at my weakest and
my strongest, and lay back in her chair apparently
exhausted by the strain of her own emotions. Was
I captured? Alas, no. On the contrary, taking a
malicious pleasure in mimicking her, I gave
Madame a yarn about my own spiritualistic ex
periences, winding up with the exploits of a cock
that had belonged to my great-grandfather. ' That
cock,' I concluded in an awed whisper, ' used to
pray in the Bactrian dialect, and it is believed that
F

66 B. M. MALABARI
its feathery frame was inhabited by the soul of a
Magian.' As I doled out the linguistic and magic
virtues of that wonderful chanticleer, I thought I
had made an impression on Madame. But she
was contemplating murder all the while. Before I
could realize her intention, she jumped out of her
chair, and with the words ' Take this, you wretch,'
she delivered a ringing box on my ear. Rubbing
the injured orifice with one hand, I saluted the
tigress with the other. ' Let me kiss the hand that
had smitten the sceptic, now is Isis truly unveiled.'
We both laughed at that — the situation was ludi
crous in the extreme. Had I not luckily laughed,
Madame would have cried tears of shame, she was
so sensitive in spite of her strength. As it was she
never again talked to me of the occult and the in
visible. Never more for me the wisdom of the
East imparted in weird jaw-breaking words, the
extolling of our ancestral virtues, the calling back
to the glorious days when man communed visibly
and tangibly with his Maker, through agencies
which the vulgar West could hardly ever con
ceive. But the loss was nominal whilst the gain
was real. In a moment of expansion, inevitable
under the action, she was thrown off her guard
for the moment, and confessed to her contempt of
the ' Fatuous Flap-doodle ' which Indians, as a
rule, love to take in from foreigners. After this
we understood each other thoroughly, and we did

"THE INDIAN SPECTATOR" 67
not meet often. I stood by 'H.P.B.' to the last.
Even when the cup and saucer crash came at
Simla, shattering the faith of ever loyal Mr. Allen
Hume, I tried to belittle the consequences. Mad
ame should not be judged by the ordinary stand
ards. A giant in intellect, she could be at times
even worse than a child, presuming to treat man
kind as a collection of imbeciles and babes. She
was a creature of strange impulses, and her love
of sensation drove her to the performance of a
" miracle " which the catch-penny street juggler
would be ashamed to practise. But all the same
Madame Blavatsky was one of the most remarkable
women of her age. It irks a generous mind to
see the eagle hooted by an owlet. But that is
the way of the world. With Olcott I was in
greater sympathy; he knew how to efface him
self, how to laugh at himself. He felt intensely
for the poor and the despised, and did his best
to uplift them. And he never thrust his spiritual
istic attentions on me, having seen that I was a
bad subject.
" But whether it comes from a Blavatsky or an
Olcott, or anybody else, one must be careful not
to succumb to ' Fatuous Flap-doodle.' When a
foreigner tells an Indian that he loves India more
than the Indian loves her, or that he loves India
more than he loves his own country, it is ten to
one a case of softening of the brain, or worse still

68 B. M. MALABARI
some moral obliquity. Our Indian ancestors were
decent enough persons in their way, and acted
decently enough according to their own dim light.
But it sickens one to hear perpetually of their
glorious deeds, the more so when the foreign
mentor talks in the same breath of his own fore
bears as naked savages destitute of all merit.
That is ' Fatuous Flap-doodle,' and one must
always be on guard against it. Personally I had
rather my European friend slapped me in the face
for my faults, which are many and serious, than
that he should feed me on this cheap pabulum, con
juring up pictures of national greatness that offend
violently my common sense. He may be sincere,
but he does me great harm nevertheless. Patriot
ism, like other virtues, should be healthy, not
morbid. As the Persian saying goes, a wise foe-
man is more serviceable to one than a foolish
friend. And no foolish friend does more harm
than he who treats us habitually to ' Fatuous Flap
doodle ' coddling our ' beautiful ' social customs
and our ' noble ' moral deeds, discerning wisdom
in rank and patent folly, beauty in loathsome ugli
ness. It is not friendship, but fatuity that usually
dictates this line of conduct towards one's fellow-
beings. No race can claim a monopoly of wisdom
and virtue, least of all a race that lives in the
past, trifles with the present, and throws away the
future."

"THE INDIAN SPECTATOR" 69
How differently did he write of those who loved
India and her people without flattery and trickery.
I was with Malabari when the news arrived of
Lord Ripon's death. For a long time he remained
in silent prayer, and then with tears in his eyes he
wrote the obituary notice for his paper, which I
was privileged to read in manuscript.
" Ripon the righteous!" he wrote. " This was
the title which the people of India gave the de
ceased Viceroy as they said good-bye to him
nearly twenty-five years ago, after a series of more
than royal ovations. What was the secret of Lord
Ripon's popularity? He certainly lacked Lord
Dufferin's grit as he lacked the brilliancy and
vigour of Lord Curzon. Nor did he do anything
so very extraordinary as to merit the overflowing
affection and undying devotion of a traditionally
sluggish populace. His work in connection with
local self-government and education, though me
morable in its results, was, after all, an expansion
of the policy inaugurated by Lord Mayo. Whence
then Lord Ripon's phenomenal popularity? It
arose, I believe, in response to his own unfeigned
love of the people, his desire to broaden the basis
of their civic liberty, and above all, his treatment
of them as brothers and fellow-citizens. In this
respect he stands above, and apart from almost all
his predecessors as well as successors. This, to
my mind, is the secret of his popularity, joined to

70 B. M. MALABARI
his transparent honesty of character and purpose,
his straightforwardness of speech and his down
right English methods of work.
" A hundred interesting reminiscences of our
personal relations spring up as I sit down to this
hurried scribble at a distance. But there is time
only for one ; the memory of our last interview at
Bombay clings to me still as a sacred vesture of
the soul. He had missed me at every public en
tertainment in his honour, and at last asked Sir
Jamsetjee, Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji and Mr. Bad-
ruddin Tyabji severally to tell me, that if I did
not go up to him quietly some morning, he would
have to come over to me — he could not leave
India without saying good-bye in person, and he
had offered Mr. Dadabhai (Naoroji) a special in
ducement if he succeeded in abducting me to
Government House. So I had to go, and very
grateful I was to have done so. After more than
one hour's talk I commended Mr. Dadabhai to
his care as a prospective candidate for parlia
mentary honours, and Lord Ripon promised
heartily to do all he could to forward our enter
prise — a notable proof of his brotherly interest in
Indians. Then, as we stood up for the last hand
shake, and as he kept my hand a prisoner in both
of his, trying perhaps to read my thoughts, I could
only jerk out, ' Don't forget India.' To this he
replied with a heaving breast and eyes glistening

"THE INDIAN SPECTATOR" 71
with moisture, ' How can I forget India? It has
become part of my existence.' No wonder the so-
called stolid East loved and trusted this true lover
of her children.
"In my last visit to London we had a long
talk and his advice was to give Mr. Morley
the full credit of his intentions. ' If he cannot
help India, no other can in the circumstances.'
We were considering the South African difficulty
and the new situation in Bengal. And here we
parted for the last time (he punctuated every
parting with a ' God bless you '), he to hobble
down to the House of Lords as Leader and Privy
Seal, I to look up Lord Courtney a few doors
away. " Lord Ripon wrote to me more than once, but
evidently it cost him an effort to write. His last
two letters were dictated. In the first of these he
asked me pathetically to explain to the Indian
public why he could not attend the debates on the
Reform Bill, and his signature was ominously un
like the bold clear-cut expression of his own char
acter. Next week came a countermand saying he
had managed to attend the debate and advising
my countrymen to make the best of what Lord
Morley could secure. Almost with his last breath
did he serve the country which he loved next only
to his own. A stout heart and a noble one — a
heart of oak which no opposition could break. Of

72 B. M. MALABARI
him history with truth can record, ' Well done,
servant of God.'
" Lord Ripon was scarcely a great statesman,
and he would have shuddered at the bare sugges
tion of genius as prompting any of the most im
portant measures of his Viceroyalty. But on more
occasions than one did he approve himself a good
man and a true seeker after righteousness. An
attempt is being made in some quarters to stir up
the dying embers of the Ilbert Bill controversy.
Anglo-Indians have nothing to be proud of in
that connection, except in so far as they unwit
tingly taught their fellow-subjects the art of poli
tical agitation and organization, Surely it does not
lie in their mouths to protest against Indian me
thods of agitation which are more or less echoes
of their own methods. Political agitation in India
has come to stay, call it sedition, Swadeshi or
what you will. And so far as this agitation stops
short of actual crime, it will claim the sympathy of
every freeborn Englishman. Is not the Indian
justified in claiming equal opportunities with other
British citizens over the Empire, of which India
is an integral portion? To use her as maid-of-all-
work for the Empire, and then to deny her the
elementary right of citizenship, is a proposition as
infamous on its moral side as it is inapplicable in
practice. For practical purposes India is more im
portant to Great Britain than any other of her

"THE INDIAN SPECTATOR" 73
possessions across the sea. This was Lord Ripon's
view of the matter (the words are my own) al
though whilst in office he could not enforce them
openly."

CHAPTER VII
MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE
MARRIAGE," says Auguste Comte, "joins
two beings to the mutual perfecting and
service of each other by a bond which no shadow
of rivalry can darken ; its essential purpose is to
bring to completeness the education of the heart.
Attachment in which it begins leads on to a spirit
of reverence, and that to the practice of goodness,
each spouse is in turn protector and protected —
the one being richer in affection, the other in force.
When two beings, so complex and yet so different
as man and woman, are united together, the whole
life is barely long enough to know each other
fully, and to love each other perfectly." The ideal
of marriage set forth by the Positivist philosopher,
is clothed in more than the sacredness of an awful
mystery by Eastern religion.
It is regarded as an eternal tie, which goes to
wards the perfecting of man and woman. Among
the Parsis marriage is a religious duty. The posi
tion of woman in ancient Persia, at one time,
seems to have been as good as that accorded to
74

FAMILY LIFE 75
her in our day in civilized countries. Woman, as
a mother, was always held in respect. She was
the mistress of the house, and aspired to moral
and spiritual perfection by lifelong devotion to
her husband and her children. Each time the
Avesta speaks of pious men, it does not omit to
speak of pious women. It promises paradise to
both. According to Zoroaster human beings are
created to keep up the incessant struggle against
evil. Therefore, to ensure the triumph of good
over evil, it is necessary that Zoroastrians should
increase and multiply. The mother of many
children was honoured amongst the Parsis. The
birth of a girl was as welcome as that of a boy.
" Kanya," the name by which modern Parsis, like
Hindus, call a young girl, is full of very tender
associations. A Persian girl was brought up in an atmosphere
well calculated to awaken the spirit of self-sacri
fice, purity, and ungrudging service. She was
educated, as a rule, by her own mother, in the
paths of devotion and benevolence. Up to the
seventh year she received no literary education,
but later she was taught to read religious and de
votional books. She was brought up to be chaste
in thought, gentle in manners, devoted to her
parents, faithful, tender, and obedient to her hus
band.

76 B. M. MALABARI
Religious and moral education was considered
to be of more importance than lessons in grammar
and geography, which now absorb so much atten
tion. When she attained the age of puberty, her
parents arranged her marriage with a young man
of about the same age and of good antecedents.
The parents examined carefully the genealogy of
the boy's house. It was essential that he should
be of pure blood on both sides, and belong to a
family of good repute.
Modern Parsis, living amid a Hindu population,
slowly adopted the Hindu customs, such as child
marriage, which is mainly responsible for the de
generation of a virile race. The field of selection,
too, was limited in India and the marriage cere
mony likewise came to be essentially Hindu.
Marriage alliances began to depend more and
more on the opinion of the astrologer, generally
an ignorant Brahmin, who compared the horo
scopes and could be bought over for a few rupees.
Boys and girls were sometimes united in marriage
long before they were out of their teens, with a
complete disregard of their own future and of the
effect on the coming generations.
Happily all this has changed now. The cere
mony is more or less the same, but it is shorn of
all extravagance, and marriages have become a
matter of choice and convenience. Bride and
bridegroom, with their friends, meet in the house

FAMILY LIFE 7j
reserved for the wedding, the men dressed in the
pure white Jama of ancient Iran and the ladies in
beautiful clinging Saris, draped with all the ro
mantic art of the East, and displaying all the
colours of the rainbow. Flowers and betel are
given to guests, and rose-water from gold and silver
Gulab-pashis is sprinkled on their dresses. The
priest, too, has often to cut short his benedictions
to suit the anglicized notions of his clients. The
mixture of the East and the West, almost in
everything, gives the ceremony quite a new char
acter, a dim foreshadowing of what the West may
yet do to alter the changeless East.
In the early eighties Parsi Society was still in
a state of transition. The education of girls had
just begun. The wishes of the parties were some
times consulted, but generally the marriages were
arranged by parents, accompanied by all the old
world pomp and circumstance.
Malabari met his fate in the house of his own
landlady. He was twenty-one at the time, ab
sorbed in study, and a dweller in dreamland. The
future Mrs. Malabari was just nineteen. She had
received little of Western education, but had im
bibed those noble qualities which are the heritage
of her race — to be a good wife, a loving mother,
and a devoted friend. What mattered it to the
husband if she could not speak English ? She could
appreciate his Gujrati verses all the better. He

78 B. M. MALABARI
did not mind her ignorance of all that we asso
ciate with Western culture as long as her presence
meant some subtle magnetism, gentle and serene,
which attracted him in spite of himself. She loved
him with all the devotion of her soul, and it was
this love that conquered him once and for ever.
He felt that in a simple home, which was all
that he desired for himself, a community of interest
in the thousand and one small things which make
up the dual existence of the day, was more im
portant than intellectual equality.
What one seeks in marriage is a nature which
supplements his own, a twin spirit throbbing with
the same aspirations and prepared to share the
same trials in life. A marriage inspired by an
inner motive of selfishness, seeking nothing but
pleasure and self-gratification in conventional
union, is at the most a commercial compact lead
ing often to inevitable ruin of body and soul.
Marriage becomes divine when each party re
solves to live from that day not for self, but for
the other who becomes the very heart and soul of
life. Such heart unions are rare both in India and
England. They are only possible in a community
of God-fearing men and women, who have free
dom of choice, and equal opportunities of knowing
each other. In some cases chance, and what we
in India call the law of Karma, bring two persons
together for their mutual happiness, and there is

FAMILY LIFE 79
some truth in what Zulaikha said, " Love does
not spring only from the sight of the beloved, but
sometimes whispered words give rise to the wealth
of love " ; and then again there is happiness.
What love is possible between couples who have
nothing in common and suddenly find themselves
united in wedlock? The parents of the intended
couple cripple themselves financially for life in
marrying their offspring, and yet the married
couple may find that all the expenditure has
brought them sorrow, and sealed the fate of the
woman for life. It is true that marriages of choice
are not always happy, but is it right to conclude
that because people are often misguided in their
choice and barter their souls for pleasure or posi
tion, we should not have the option of choosing?
In olden days, when people knew no better, and
men and women were on the same level, perhaps
things worked out decently. Now that the out
look of the educated classes has changed, is it
right to unite in marriage at random two awakened
minds thirsting for happiness? It may be possible
for two sleeping souls to jog along silently through
their earthly pilgrimage, but when the minds are
awakened, when the hearts thirst for self-realiza
tion, it is a sin to tie down for life two thinking,
thirsting human beings who know next to nothing
of each other. What sin, what sorrow, what utter
ruin of life have been the result of these ill-

80 B. M. MALABARI
assorted unions? It is such marriages that have
led in India to the degeneration of the whole race.
The man can marry again and please himself in
other ways, but not the woman. She must for
ever endure a loveless existence. How can she
be the mother of good and brave men, or inspire
her children with ideals that make men gods when
the heart within has been frozen to ice ? The suf
fering of the Indian woman is so patient, her
future happiness so uncertain, that the parents do
not even hide their grief at the misfortune of her
being born. They would rather their infant
daughter died than that she should live a life in
which all the chances for her are of sorrow rather
than of happiness.
She may have conquered the indifference of her
parents by her sweet ways, she may have been
tenderly brought up, but it is all in vain. Her
future happiness is always staked on a mere
chance. If the husband turns out good and con
siderate, she has a home; if he becomes indif
ferent, she must endure, to the end, the solitude
of the soul, which is worse than death.
Malabari was more fortunate than many of his
contemporaries; he could make his own choice,
and he married at years of discretion. He had an
utter disregard of outward veneer and little regard
for mere social position. In his wife he wanted a
companion to share with him the burdens of his life;

FAMILY LIFE 81
and he thought that his bride elect was prepared to
share them. He, therefore, arranged the marriage,
and the wedding ceremony was quiet and simple ;
thepriest asked the usual question, "PasandKardi,"
and gave his " Ashirbad " (benediction) and the
couple drove straight to their little home. The
husband resumed his literary work, as if no change
had taken place in his life, while the wife ministered
to his comfort, inspired by increasing respect for
his genius. Otherwise, she led her own simple
life in her own simple manner, and he proved
himself an ideal husband and a loving father.
It seems that the gift of genius brings with it a
keen sense of joy and sorrow and an eternal long
ing for the unattainable. No reality can approxi
mate to the poet's ideal of perfection, and there is
really no satisfaction for him on this earth. A
sudden eye-flash, a soft gesture, may touch his
heart, and he may feel for a moment as if he
were nearer to the heart's desire, to find it after
all only a partial realization of his dream ; and
then again the same craving, the same heartache,
the same longing, which he pours out in passionate
verse or prose. The poet has to pay the penalty
of his high gifts in that nothing can come up to
his dreams; and Malabari was a poet even when
he could not read and write.
The veil of the East is the shadow cast by the
Eastern married life, the smoke rising from
G

82 B. M. MALABARI
smouldering hearts condemned to disillusionment
and despair. The Indian mind foiled by circum
stances from the realization of its desires, turns
inwards and finds its most joyous mood in a life
beyond the everyday reality. The world of imagi
nation thus becomes the more real, and offers the
only possible retreat from the hopelessness of
actual life. It is difficult for those who have not
come in direct touch with the pathetic domestic
life of the country to understand its meaning and
realize the strength of its unfulfilled desire.
Malabari's philosophic temperament, a rare gift
for a poet, helped him to look hopefully forward
and beyond his own self. Wife and husband both
bore the burden of life silently with mutual trust
and esteem. They were blessed with three
daughters and two sons, and as he proudly used
to say, " no other parents could have had such
children." The family led a simple life at Bandora, caring
little for the outer iworld and its frivolities, stand
ing almost apart from the new life which has
taken hold of the younger generation. Parsi
Society is rapidly moving towards the modern
life of unbelief and excitement and the mad pur
suit of wealth and pleasure. Few care for such
time-worn virtues as brotherly love and com
munal sympathy, which were characteristics of
the generation that is now disappearing.

FAMILY LIFE 83
The one great loss that darkened Malabari's
home was the death of his eldest daughter. She
was the virtual head of the family; its guardian
angel. They called her " our little mother." She
was married after a prolonged engagement, and
passed away after only twelve months of wedded
life, leaving her little baby of three weeks as the
pledge of her love. She had a singularly affec
tionate nature, and made the pain of others her
own. She seemed always to have lived nearer
heaven than earth.
She was mourned deeply and widely, but to all
messages of sympathy that poured in, the father
had only one answer to make: "He who gave
has the right to take away." The Governor of
the Presidency, who had attended the wedding,
could not help exclaiming in the course of a long
letter, " How I admire your wonderful fortitude."
Malabari left two sons and two daughters.
Phiroze Malabari, the elder, is a barrister. He
has travelled through Europe, parts of China and
Japan, and has inherited his father's love of
literary work. His book, " Bombay in the Mak
ing," which was recently published with an intro
duction by H. E. Sir George Clarke (now Lord
Sydenham) has won a place for itself. Like a
devoted son, he shared with his father the burden
of his evergrowing occupations, and now he has
to bear them alone. Jahangir, the younger son,

84 B. M. MALABARI
has gone into business. He is quiet and un
assuming, and is in sole charge of the finances of
the family. Miss Phiroza Malabari has qualified
in England as a doctor and specialized in eye
diseases. The eyes of our Parsi sisters seem in
deed to be growing preternaturally weak. Little
Daulat, the third daughter, is still at school, but
already wears glasses which her sister has pre
scribed. Their home is on the brow of Bandora
Hill, with the sea moaning below. It is a simple,
two-storied house, which many a pilgrim has
visited to meet the sage of Bandora and enjoy his
generous hospitality.

CHAPTER VIII
TRAVELS
THOSE who met Malabari in his home at
Bandora and saw him going to his office in
Bombay every afternoon, like a soldier going on to
the field, walking or driving straight to his room,
as if seeking shelter from the life that ebbed and
flowed around him, could hardly realize that he
had spent many years in Bombay, and that his
four-storied house in Hornby Row had already
become almost historic. He never condemned city
life in itself, but saw the hand of the Maker in
allowing great cities to grow up for some pur
pose hidden from human eye. He often said that
cities were, like manured fields, fostering to full
growth the tares as well as the wheat of human
nature. He was not prepared to accept the doc
trine of Tolstoi that city life in itself is wrong.
He admitted that it was usually a life of greed
and ambition, but he held that not only the wealth
of the nations increases as man draws more and
more on the forces of nature and makes them
subservient to his needs, but that the quickened
85

86 B. M. MALABARI
life of modern times has accelerated immeasurably
the evolution of the human race.
Malabari had a horror of crowds, but he saw
that things were working towards a better social
understanding through the fire and impulse of
invisible and potent forces. He had resolved to
consecrate all his energies to the service of his
country, and was determined to remain at his post.
He and his friend Diwan Dayaram Giddumal en
deavoured to follow the teachings of the Gita, and
lived to serve only.
It is men who make nations, and alas, in olden
times, the wisest and the best of Indians sought
refuge in inaction. They thought they were offer
ing themselves in sacrifice, whilst they were in
reality obeying the impulse of an insidious form
of selfishness. They wasted their lives in vain
pursuits, and allowed their country to be ruined
by lesser men, depriving it of the wise guidance
and control that it needed. The rakes and gam
blers became the rulers, and sealed the degrada
tion and death of India. If our great men had
followed their Dharma as defined in the Gita,
India to-day would have been in full realization
of her dreams and mistress of her own destiny.
On these grounds Malabari always urged that
we must all do our share of work in this work-a-
day world, and make civic life really fruitful. He
himself gave up his favourite pursuits, literature,

TRAVELS 87
art and poetry, to take up his full share of the
country's burden. It is doubtful, however, whether
the temporary relief, the evanescent influence on
everyday problems of life, can be as enduring as
the soul-consuming labour of a mind bent on
eternal verities. Who can venture to appraise the
thought-imprisoned power of a written page? It
was a great renunciation, but Malabari was always
ready to put his own shoulder to the wheel. He
did not believe in neglecting little things in the
hope of doing great things. He believed in doing
his share of work, and leaving the rest to God.
India, he thought, needs all the patience and skill
which the country can command to rehabilitate
national life, and to lay out a course set straight
to the appointed goal. How could he leave the
helm at the mercy of dazed mariners in order to
follow for his own pleasure the remote course of
the stars?
Malabari was, therefore, always doing some
thing, always travelling, and when he was not on
his travels, he used to walk incessantly. It seemed
as if his body must be in motion to keep pace
with the activity of his mind.
It was in the course of his earlier wanderings
that Malabari came in touch with the slow beat
ing heart of the country, condemned for ages to a
life of stagnation. He has given some charming de
scriptions of his travels in the " Indian Spectator."

88 B. M. MALABARI
In one place he writes : " Musafirkhana was a few
yards from the Dharmshala, and the Khansama
an old man. I have never known a young Khan
sama in these parts. The explanation is that when
a Sahib cannot afford to pension off his old butler
he provides a place for him in this manner. The
Khansama had a large family of children and
grandchildren, all ready to serve, but he kept a
very spare table, only curry and rice for breakfast
— the town being so far away. Had to make shift
on milk. About 2 p.m., came in the Khansama's
little granddaughter, with broom and duster. She
moved sofas and lifted chairs with an agility that
would horrify Bombay girls twice her age. ' What
is your name, child? ' ' Pyari ' (Darling). ' What a
name! Whose darling are you?' ' Aji Sahib, I
am God's darling, my mother's darling, my
father's darling. Whose else could I be?' Not
bad for a girl who has never attended the Alex
andra School."
"I am now and then asked," he writes, "by
European friends, how often I have been to
England, and how long I have stayed there alto
gether, and when I protest that I have never
been out of India my friends look at me with
blank astonishment. The fact is, I have my own
ideas of travel, as more or less of everything else.
The first tour I remember having made, was
round grandmother's kitchen. Thence I trans-

TRAVELS 89
ferred my attention to the front yard of the house,
thence to the street, the neighbouring streets, the
whole suburb of Nanpura, and the surrounding
suburbs of Rustompura, Salabatpura, Gopalpura
and many others ; next, the camp and villages be
yond Umra and Dumaz, and so on. The climbing
of trees and roofs in search of paper-kites was
another round of useful tours. My last long tour
from Surat was a walking match to Novsari,
where poor Mr. Rustomjee gave his savoury and
succulent Malida feasts. From Surat and its dis
tricts I have passed on to Gujrat generally, and
from Gujrat, of course, to Khathiawar and Cutch.
I have seen much of India during the last seven
years, but Gujrat and Khathiawar I know best.
Most of these two provinces I have done on foot,
and with my eyes open. I know so much about
them that if I were to sell my knowledge at retail
prices, so much a page, I think I could make an
honest penny out of it, and I tell you again, my
dear respectable Bombay reader, that much of my
experience is the result of good hard tramping.
" But whether I go to Europe or not I will
never give up my habit. Your globe trotter would
laugh at my antiquated method, but he cannot
deny its advantages. When you travel or study
by slow and deliberate stages, every fresh step or
item of knowledge is a keen enjoyment. What is
the use of visiting foreign countries when you

90 B. M. MALABARI
know nothing of your own? When you go to
Europe, ignorant of your own national life, you
will miss the thousand points of comparison and
contrast, the thousand shades of difference, the
thousand beauties and blemishes which European
civilization presents. At the best you look at
things, not see or see through them. Knowledge is
best acquired, take my word for it, by the com
parative method. You go to see Windsor Castle,
and are lost in admiration at the sight. Have you
seen Agra? It makes me sick to hear a man rave
about this thing or that ten thousand miles away,
when a much better, perhaps the original thing, is
lying unnoticed in his own land."
No other Indian journalist travelled so much,
lived with the people so much as Malabari. This
gave him his strength and his insight. He did not
construct an imaginary India, like some of his dis
tinguished contemporaries. He knew his country
too well. What did the toiling millions know or
care for constitutional reforms? Is it possible to
rehabilitate national existence without their will
ing support? These are the questions which de
mand an answer, and he was prepared to wait
and work. He did not believe in sowing the wind
and reaping the whirlwind. Consequently he was
often regarded by his contemporaries as a rene
gade. They forgot that he was labouring for last
ing results.

TRAVELS 91
He had finished his Indian travels by 1890, and
seen almost all that there was to see in India of
city, town, and village life. He was as much at
home in the Punjab as in Bengal or Bombay. The
Indian eye was being gradually and thoroughly
trained to observe and catch the bright as well as
the dark side of English life, and the heart large
and tender enough to appreciate all. He was now
prepared to extend his rambles farther afield, and
sailed for England in 1 890, primarily to work in
the cause of Indian Social Reform. He had dis
covered that the Provincial Governments as well
as the Government of India were much too slow
in taking up new ideas. By the time an officer
reached the top and became a " Government " he
was either too old to carry out his ideas, or so
steeped in traditions that he could rarely take a
broad view of men, measures and times. It is in
rare cases only that the generosity of youth sur
vives beyond a certain age. There comes a time
when the most fertile mind ceases to grow. The
gap between a people awakening from long sleep
and trying to bridge the gulf with one desperate
leap, and a bureaucracy with traditions of personal
rule is naturally deep and wide. The Viceroy who
can take a detached view of things often finds
himself in a minority in his own Council. What
is he, an outsider, to say to a body of experts,
speaking with the assurance of long experience ?

92 B. M. MALABARI
The change every five years makes for no con
tinuity of policy, and no Viceroy, however able
and strong he may be, has the opportunity of
initiating a policy and developing it himself. He
has to leave it to his successor, who may be en
tirely out of sympathy with the ideas of his pre
decessor. And the result is that the Government
of India has no policy, and people in India cannot
understand its aims.
Malabari found that to move the Government
of India in the cause of social reform was like
trying to move the Himalayas. He therefore de
cided to go to England and take the case of the
child widows to the doors of the Parliament. He
writes: "A trip to London has been my dream
for years, a hope long deferred." "What could be
more natural for a student of humanity, a pilgrim
in search of the truths of life, than that he should
now wish for a look at the other world beyond
the seas, whose fortunes are so closely knit with
those of his own ? "
As a result of his travels he published " Indian
Eye on English Life," a book both enjoyable and
instructive. He writes:
" With London for its vantage ground, let the
pilgrim look at the world's fair around! If he has
eyes he can see a panorama of happiness and of
misery spread out in wild profusion before him.
If he has ears he may hear the throb of this great

TRAVELS 93
big heart of the universe pulsating with the highest
aspirations and with the lowest passions of human
ity." He noticed, in common with Emerson, the
great organizing powers of Englishmen. " A race
that could conquer such a climate," remarked
Malabari, " and carve out the utmost comforts of
life out of it, deserves domination over all the
elements of nature and freaks of fortune." Well
might Pope sing :
Let India boast her palms, nor envy we
The weeping amber, nor the spicy tree,
While by our oaks those precious loads are borne,
And realms command which those great trees adorn.
Another thing that struck Malabari was the
freedom of women and the power they exercised
in matters of the highest importance. In English
women he found his strongest and best supporters.
They welcomed and honoured him everywhere,
and their lionizing would have turned the head of
a lesser man. It was a new experience even for
our knight-errant devoted to the cause of women
and accustomed to the veiled life of the East. He
writes in a half bantering and a half pathetic tone :
" Often have I scattered the ladies in a friend's
drawing-room, like chaff before the wind, dropping
the book or the work as they fly, sometimes leav
ing a pair of tiny slippers behind as if to reproach
the intruder for walking in unannounced. Ah me,
when shall we have a real home in India? The

94 B. M. MALABARI
life in a decent English home is a life of equality
among all the members."
Our pilgrim reformer had a strange way of feel
ing at home wherever he went, and in England
no less than in India. He admired all that was
good and noble in the life of the people, but he
looked far into the future as to what would be the
result of the " Golden " civilization which made
life in the West a scene of such violent contrasts :
vaulting luxury on one side and abject penury on
the other, high culture and unredeemed brutish-
ness. The thirst for gold which seemed to domi
nate all classes, from the millionaire to the shoe
black, gave him food for reflection and even made
him exclaim, " If this be your English culture of
the nineteenth century, let us remain ignorant in
India. I had much rather that India remained
superstitious enough to worship her stone gods.
That means something of self-sacrifice; it lifts the
worshipper out of himself. The worship of self is
the worst form of idolatry."
Malabari found the greatness of the English
nation in its freedom at home and its noble insti
tutions which made it a nation of princes. He
studied everything in relation to India, and realized
that we have lived for ages on our spiritual capital
and on traditions which are no more than a myth
and an utterly useless myth, unless they serve
as incentives for higher achievement in the future.

TRAVELS 95
The British Parliament had loomed large be
fore his mind, so he repaired to the Strangers'
Gallery on the day when the Indian Budget was
being discussed. It was a great disappointment.
Mr. (afterwards Sir Henry) Fowler, the Secretary
of State, was speaking on India. " What a rattling
pace he goes on at," writes the visitor, " brushing
aside objection after objection in that light-hearted
fashion dear to the heart of the official expert !
Away he runs with his optimistic oration till flesh
and blood can bear it no longer. Here Sir W-
Wedderburn puts in a humble caveat, whereupon
the Maharajah of Westminster turns upon him
fiercely. There Mr. Samuel Smith ventures in
the mildest of his mild manner to correct a mis
take. He is rewarded with a shrug of the minis
terial shoulder, amid cheers from the opposition.
Never in my life have I realized India in this
position of utter helplessness. My poor country,
such is thy fate, and such it will remain till thou
knowest how to help thyself. God help India!
Conservatives and Liberals, nor Radicals, will
help her, seeing how much they have to help
themselves every day of the year."

CHAPTER IX
GUJRAT AND GUJRATIS
BESIDES "Indian Eye on English Life"
Malabari published a volume of short
sketches under the title "Gujrat and the Gujratis."
The book is a veritable picture gallery of Indian
life, so varied by reason of its varying environment.
Hindu, Muhammedan, Anglo- Indian, and Parsi
types are all sketched with the touch of a true artist,
showing at one and the same time the foibles and
the redeeming traits of human character. The
Marwari, the Vakil, the Hajjam, the Johukm
magistrate, the Vaid, the Orthodox Hindu, and
the Parsi shouting "Defeat, defeat to Shaitan,"and
having an eye on business even while at prayer,
are all drawn with photographic fidelity.
Here is a little sketch of Meer Bakhtawar. It
is the old story, representing a race of nobles,
living in an age of peace, and cherishing the
memory of their faded greatness, waiting for the
day when they will again play a part worthy of
their ancestry. " Mir Bakhtawar was a rich man;
his father left him houses, valuable jewellery, and
96

GUJRAT AND GUJRATIS 97
cash. At eighteen he married a beautiful wife,
and then he came out of the zenana only to ask
for some money from Nihal Chand, whom he
employed as a steward. He himself had no turn
for business, and he could not bring himself so
low as to be his own accountant. A son and heir
was born to him and there was a great deal of
merry-making and more money was needed.
Nihal Chand was always there with his little
wooden box and a smile. ' Not a rupee passed
through my hands but some fraction of it found
its way to my pocket. For a poor man must live,
and it was clear that my master was rushing on to
his ruin,' confessed Nihal Chand. They could not
live on in a great style and on nothing; jewels
were sold, houses were mortgaged, and yet they
took great delight in the marriage of Nihal Chand,
and sold their jewels to see it properly celebrated
— a matter of three thousand rupees. The jewels,
the jewel-hilted swords, the illuminated Persian
manuscripts — in short, all the treasure of the noble
house went for a mere song to Nihil Chand, who
cared little for them.
" One day the child fell ill. Night and day the
Hakim attended and wrote his elaborate prescrip
tions and the priest prayed his prayers. It was all
useless, and the child died. For the first time the
wife of the Mir appeared in person before the
steward. She stood there in her dressing-gown,
H

98 B. M. MALABAR!
divine in her loveliness, and all the lovelier be
cause she was signed and sealed with the sacred
trace of suffering which compels respect. 'You
see, Nihal Chand,' she said, 'we must save our
master's honour, we must give a fitting funeral to
my child ; is there nothing left- — nothing that we
could sell ? ' and the mother slipped her betrothal
ring from her finger and gave it to Nihal Chand
to sell, and the funeral took place with the usual
formalities. The said Mir still lived in his grand
house, a poor, weak, dazzled, incapable creature,
ruined and helpless, on a pension which the
Government gave him.
"It is the story of many an ancient family,
some of them of royal blood, without profession,
without education, subsisting on a bare pittance
which the Government allows them, pledging it
six months before it becomes due, and then spend-
it in a day. One day of real royal life, and then
weary waiting for its return through another
period of six months ! "
Here is a picture of a Hajjam (barber) who
plays a great part in the social life of India: "The
operation generally takes place in the forenoon —
immediately before the morning meal, patient and
operator squat opposite to each other chewing Pan
Supari, a process which the ignorant might mis
take from a distance for making faces at each
other. After discussion of the latest news, the

GUJRAT AND GUJRATIS 99
Hajjam takes out his tweezers and falls to picking
the hair off his patient's forehead. There is torture
unutterable . . . the more vigorously plies the hand
of the Hajjam, the more gratefully grunts the
Aryan brother. Then the Hajjam presses the
patient's head downward. . . . The water is now
applied for a few seconds, and then is applied the
trusty razor, and it moves backwards and forwards.
It makes a distinct noise, perhaps a wail, com
plaining of the rough surface. The razor has to
glance north to south, east to west, to see all
smooth as an ivory ball." The Hindus have always
enjoyed a clean shave.
Our little picture gallery will be incomplete
without the match-making and expectant mothers,
a speciality of Gujrat.
"'Sister,' said Deva Kaur, 'thy heart is not
clear like mine. Did I not tell thee without ask
ing that I was six months gone ? . . . How far
art thou ? '
" ' I was so ashamed,' said modest Sham Kaur.
' You have done it so often, you might be joking
and teasing. I am five months gone. ... It will
be a boy, I know.'
"T will have a girl,' replied the impetuous
Devakaur. ' What say you to a match, sister
mine ? '
" 'It will be an honour to my family, I will ask
my "this"' (husband).

ioo B. M. MALABARI
" That night Shamkaur's ' this,' and Deakaur's
' this ' were consulted, and in less than a week
the mothers expectant were married in the right
Shrawak fashion, so that on the birth of their
babies, if of different sex, they must be considered
as married."
"Gujrat and the Gujratis" was much appre
ciated, and ran into many editions.
Nature rarely unites in spirit those whom it
unites in the ties of blood, but a divine dispensa
tion permits union of souls in the choice of friends.
Malabari found real friends outside his own com
munity drawn to him under an impulse of irresist
ible affinity, who became one in heart and soul
with him, in spite of the barriers of caste and
creed. The friendship of Diwan Dayaram Gidumal
placed him in touch with the spirit of Hinduism,
and they both worked together for the good of
the people. Diwan Dayaram is one of those great
souls who come to make the world brighter and
sweeter by their presence. He has devoted all
his remarkable powers to serve the poor and the
afflicted; living for others only. It was he who
conceived the idea of a Seva Sadan or Home of
Service. Both in their early life studied together the
problems of Hindu life and Hindu religion, and
Malabari often wished to have the teachings of
Hinduism compressed into a single book, freed.

GUJRAT AND GUJRATIS 101
from the accretions of ages. He awoke one morn
ing to find an answer to his silent appeal in the
Hibbert lectures, which Professor Max Miiller
delivered, tracing the growth of Hinduism from
simple nature worship to high flights of meta
physics. It was an attempt to reach the truth,
without any bias or prejudice.
Professor Max Miiller himself was a man, with
deep religious feelings, as revealedinhis "Thoughts
on Life and Religion," but it was an age when
everything that the intellect failed to account for
was ridiculed. It was the beginning of scientific in
quiry and the limitations of human intellect were
ignored by men of science. They did not realize
that men like Goethe's grasshopper, " that ever
flits and flitting leaps, and still sings in the grass
its old song," cannot transcend the limits of time,
space, and causation.
Science has made great strides since Max Miiller
delivered his Hibbert lectures, and things have
changed so much that Myers was in a position to
say, " Night and storm, cloud and eclipse men
have known from the earliest times, but now they
know that even at noon-day the sunbeam which
reaches them, when fanned into a spectrum is
barred with belts and lines of varying darkness."
They have learned also that where at either end
the spectrum fades out into what for us is Black
ness, there stretches onward in reality an undis-

102 B. M. MALABARI
covered illimitable rav, " and that the limits of
the spectrum do not inhere in the sun that shines,
but in the eve that makes the shining."
Max Miiller studied Hindu books and gave
things their true value in the light of higher
criticism. The Vedas, he said, were the first grop
ing of the Indian mind after ligdit and truth, thev
contained passages which were transcendental, and
which may, according to Carlyle, be called Shrutis
or revelations, but it was in the sun and the moon,
the fire and the storm cloud that the ancients
sought for the unseen deity that ruled the uni
verse. They sought Him, the All Father, bright
and pure, and boundless like the heavens, and like
the heavens, too, silent and far off in the mighty
forces of Nature, and eventually they called him
Daya Patar, Heaven-Father. This was the
highest altitude they reached in the realization of
God. Max Miiller placed the teachings of the Vedas
within the reach of anyone who could read
English, and Malabari rejoiced to find the truth
released from the labyrinth of commentaries, and
clearly re-stated by a scholar who was free from
all prejudice or bias. The Vedas taught the unity
of God, and the philosophical doctrine of the
" Absolute " has seldom found more decisive and
striking expression than in the doctrine of the
emancipating knowledge of the Atma.

GUJRAT AND GUJRATIS 103
In spite of the injunctions, "because as you
have told me, O, Gautama, this doctrine has never
up to the present time been in circulation among
Brahmins, therefore, in all the worlds the Govern
ment has remained in the hands of the Warrior
caste," it was appropriated by the Brahmins.
They dealt with the Upanishads in their own
subtle manner. They accepted the teachings
outwardly, but buried the philosophic aphorism
under a dead weight of commentaries. At best the
Vedanta can only appeal to a select few, and its
abstract concepts can never satisfy the hunger of
the soul. They called it " secret doctrine," and
forbade its study, except for the elect few.
Popular Hinduism is a strange mixture. As a
religion its real teachings are not known to one in
ten thousand. It withholds the love of God from
the weak and the poor, enslaving half the popula
tion for the advantage of the elect, who are called
" twice born." It is so comprehensive that it eludes
attack, and holds in its meshes the entire popula
tion of India, excluding Mohammedans and Chris
tians. It is either much too broad or much too
narrow to inspire the simple village folk and the
woman of India with firmness of faith and divine
hope which leads to glory. The Hibbert lectures
traced the origin and growth of the Hindu re
ligion, and revealed its strong as well as its weak
points. Malabari, therefore, resolved to translate

104 B. M. MALABARI
these lectures into all the spoken languages of
India, so that the common people might know
something of their ancient faith, and in the light
of truth discard all that was useless and harmful.
He was eager to lead his people to a life of truth.
He was not afraid, like others, that the spirit of
inquiry, if encouraged, might undermine the
foundations of faith ; on the contrary, he thought,
with Morley, that earnest inquiry was the life of
all true faith. " It is the power of giving up that
which we in our best and most honest moments
know to be no longer true. It is the readiness to
replace the less perfect, however dear, however
sacred it may have been to us, by the more per
fect, however much it may be detested as yet by
the world. Without this atheism, religion would,
long ago, have become a petrified hypocrisy."
It is this spirit of honest inquiry which Mala
bari wished to promote. He wanted his people to
find out for themselves what they accepted as
" Sanatan Dharma." The " ancient Faith " ? What
is it? Where is it to be found? If, it eludes the
grasp of the educated mind, what about the un
educated masses? Is there nothing in the system
to discard or to modify? The Hibbert lectures at
tempted to meet these questions.
Malabari expected great things from the trans
lation of the Hibbert lectures into the vernaculars.
He took up this task as " Samarpana," the con-

GUJRAT AND GUJRATIS 105
secration of all his energies. Listen in what pro
foundly earnest tone he announced his intention.
" Every man has his ambition. This is the aim of
one part of my life. If this series of translations
brings peace to a few of my Aryan brothers in the
midst of this troublous world, if it recalls to their
memory the exploits of their illustrious ancestors,
if, in my humble effort, they find an aid to the
understanding of Parmanand, the Supreme Fe
licity, and Parmatma, the Supreme Being, the
Uncreated, the Infinite, the Immortal, of whom
one glance reflects the extent of the universe ; if
this attempt succeeds in opening to my com
patriots the mind of the incomparable Aro-
German, the Muni Max Miiller, who has conse
crated his whole life to the interpretation of the
grandest phenomena of human history — the Aryan
faith and the Aryan tongue — then I may truly
feel the satisfaction of having attained my sacred
aim. Malabari travelled all over India to bring his
idea to fruition, but his efforts attained only a par
tial measure of success. Subscriptions were pro
mised for the publication and never paid. The
funds collected were too small to carry out the
whole project and it was with great difficulty that
he managed to publish a few translations.

CHAPTER X
SOCIAL REFORM
THE publication of the Hibbert lectures was
only the means to an end. Malabari wanted
to show to the people, that many of their most
cherished customs were not mentioned in the
sacred books, and that society must be freed from
the tyranny of caste and priests, if India was
again to rise to a position worthy of her hoary
past. The froth and foam of city life, he said, does
not affect the deep under-currents which have
flowed unchanged for centuries and govern the
tendencies of the Indian mind even now. It is the
villager multiplied into millions who makes the
Indian people, and with whom the social reformer
has ultimately to count. What does the villager
know or care for the new ideas ? He has learnt
through generations of mental slavery to follow
the ways of his forefathers, the only way for the
poor and the weak. He worships the stone god
near his well as his fathers did before him. He
fasts regularly, visits holy shrines, and without
1 06

SOCIAL REFORM 107
understanding listens to recitals from the Brah
min's book. He prostrates himself before the
Brahmin, kisses his feet, and believes in him
blindly. He cannot sow or harvest his crop and
eat the new grain without consulting the Brahmin
and securing his blessings. He lives on in faith
working for his living in this life, and for some
dim form of salvation hereafter. He often starves
himself to put together a few rupees in order to
go to Jaggannath, Pragraj, or Benares. He leaps
into the Ganges with full faith in the power of the
holy water to wash away his sins. Nor is he for
getful of his ancestors; he feeds the Brahmin once
a year on their behalf, so that in the far-off heaven
they too may share the fruit of his unquestioning
devotion. His Dharma, like the Dharma of his
woman-kind, is to obey the Brahmin, to perform
the usual ceremonies and to visit the sacred
shrines. What good is it to tell him that his Vedas
and Upanishads teach differently? He knows no
thing about these, nor is likely to. The scriptures
which are the pride and glory of India are closed
to him. Their teachings are meant only for dis
cussion by the elect. The Hindu villager may
sometimes smile and quote the old proverb that
" only the cowards and the weak follow the beaten
track ; the lion, the good son and the brave make
a track of their own." But he does not feel equal
to the effort. He lives as his forefathers lived

108 B. M. MALABARI
before him. He fully believes that the concatena
tion of causes and effects which is his Karma is
responsible for his joys and sorrows, that good
actions bear good fruit, and evil actions evil fruit,
and that the only way to soften the rigour of
Karma is through the Brahmin. You cannot argue
with him. He will naively reply that he is not
wiser than his forefathers, and there will close all
discussion. The educated men are little better than the vil
lagers. They look upon the whole creation as an
illusion and claim oneness with God, and yet
worship stone gods and practise unrelieved ex-
clusiveness in their own homes.
Religion without a personal God is a chimera.
Metaphysical abstractions can never sweeten the
lives of the suffering millions or save them from
the piteous subjection to cruelty and wrong. The
learned Brahmins themselves, who preach the
unity of God and man, worship countless gods and
goddesses and are the slaves of an elaborate ritual.
If the gods have a shadow of human weakness
they must be weary indeed of the fickleness of
their devotees, turning from one object of worship
to another, and believing with fullness of heart in
none. To worship too many gods is worse than
marrying too many wives and trying to love them
equally. It is said, that when all the fair maidens
of Gokul, drawn irresistibly by the magic of

SOCIAL REFORM 109
Krishna's flute, left their homes and surrounded
the Madan Murti (Image of Love), Indra, the god
of thunder clouds, came down in great wrath, and
threatened to wash away the whole earth. Krishna
had to lift a great mountain on the tip of his finger
to serve as an umbrella to protect the fair Gopees.
The jealousy between the gods acting and react
ing against one another has turned India into a
land of slaves. The vaunted superiority of Hindu
ism is an exploded myth, condemned by the ver
dict of time and experience. It is no use propping
up what no props can sustain. We must frankly
admit that there is something wrong in our reli
gion and social system, and search for new prin
ciples of intelligence and growth. It cannot be in
the scheme of things that the Indian people, with
all their simplicity, devotion, and purity of heart,
shall for ever seek refuge from the new light in
the old familiar caves darkened by ignorance and
superstition. The spirit of self-sacrifice is there,
the poorest peasant has it in plenty. All that he
needs is a living faith and a simple code of ethics.
Is he never to have his heart linked to a living
and loving God? What good is it to talk of the
pristine glory of Hinduism? Does it help the
thirsty traveller to sit by the banks of a river that
has run dry, and think of the time when a pure
and ample stream flowed there, or to be content
with a stagnant pool when a fresh stream is

no B. M. MALABARI
flowing at his feet straight from the snow-topped
Himalayas? It was not out of pedantic vanity than men like
Ram Mohan Roy, Keshab Chander Sen, Madhav
Ranade, and Malabari insisted on the prime ne
cessity of a change in our social environment. It
is not against the Brahmins or any other class in
particular that they have spoken and written, but
against the system which goes under their name
and sanction. Madhav Govind Ranade in our
generation was himself a Brahmin, but he held
that any powerful hierarchy which becomes the
sole interpreter of truth and enslaves " sovereign
reason as the serving drudge of superstition " is
fatal to progress.
The Brahminical system must be judged by its
results. It has existed for long centuries, and it
has made us what we are, reducing a virile race to
utter impotence. The system itself has lost little
of its strength. It has found new methods of re
cuperation. It needs but a little detachment, but
a little perspective, to follow its insidious activities.
The noblest spirits of the country wander in the
regions of doubt and disbelief, sometimes doubting
their own existence, sometimes claiming not only
kinship, but real unity with God. Life is not long
enough to penetrate the veil of Maya and reach
the "Absolute" which, as William James says,
" is neither intelligence nor will, neither a self nor

SOCIAL REFORM in
a collection of selves . . . but, in fact, a meta
physical monster."
Common folk, however devout, are never to
read the scriptures. They must follow the Brahmin.
They try to lead pure, simple lives, believing in
nothing or in everything, worshipping trees and
stones, and innumerable shrines. The " All
Father," who could draw out their hearts to their
fullest capacity, and raise their devotion to the
highest pitch, is eclipsed by lesser gods and god
desses. They are told that they cannot understand
. . . and they seem to think that "the ancient
tradition of knowledge actually contains that ap
proved truth which has just been pronounced un
attainable." Only a limited number, the intelligent
minority, belong to these; behind them stand the
whole population, men and women with hearts
ready to believe and hands ready to act, dominated
by a priestly class trading upon their traditional
ignorance. It has become the fashion to admire the selfless
ness of the Indian woman, her devotion and self-
denial. But what about man, who can accept their
sacrifice so lightly ? What about his callousness to
the claims of girl-wives condemned to premature
motherhood; trying to be devoted and true in the
only possible way they know of? " The web of
Indian life," is a web indeed. Once in its meshes
there is no possibility of freedom or escape. The

112 B. M. MALABARI
interests of a whole race are sacrificed to gratify
an idle sentiment.
The task of Social Reform in India is like
summoning new ideals of life from the cremation
ground of the old. Buddha, Srikrishna, Ramchan-
dra, Chaitnya and Guru Nanak have all endea
voured to give a pure religion to India, but with
little success. Such is the power of esotericism,
when it has usurped the place of reason, that it
absorbs new ideas into its own cavernous depths
just as the dark blue waters of the Indian Ocean
absorb the sunshine which glitters for a moment
on its rippling surface.
Social Reform in India implies an entire change
in the outlook of the people in their relation to all
that they believe in for the salvation of their souls.
It must aim at the dethronement of a whole system
of doctrine that has held sway over millions for
generations. It is not merely a question of ex
ternal readjustment; it means little less than a re
ligious revolution, and requires the conscious self-
sacrifice of hundreds in the making of a new road
for the silent millions to follow.
Malabari resolved to devote his last breath to
one side of the question only — to the emancipation
of Indian women. He embarked on his mission
with all the earnestness of an apostle. He went
from place to place, making speeches, arguing
with people who would accept no argument, writ-

SOCIAL REFORM 113
ing in papers, and doing all he could to place the
question of infant marriages and child widows in
the forefront of all the problems of India.
"The British Government," he wrote, "put
down Infanticide by Law. That was a great gain
to society. But we find infant marriage in practice
a more serious evil than infanticide. For whereas
the latter was one short struggle, an ill-assorted
infant marriage entails lifelong misery on either
or both parties. Infant marriage is the cause of
many of our social grievances, including enforced
widowhood. The area of selection is so narrow,
when society is split up into numerous castes and
sub-castes, that practically Hindu parents have
little scope for selection; they must accept the
first boy or girl available, or buy the one who
comes cheapest, all things considered. There may
be physical defect or moral taint on one side or
the other. But so long as this and no other match
is to be secured, why, it must be secured at all
risks. What wonder, then, if many of these forced
unions turn out unhappy ? The physical defect
may increase with age, the moral taint may grow
into a malady. The wife may outgrow the hus
band, or the husband may become fit for the grave
when the wife becomes fit for his home. There
may be total or partial absence of physical adapt
ability, or hopeless disparity of temperament. In
any of these events the 'married martyrs,' as
1

114 B. M. MALABARI
they have been aptly described, are socially alien
ated from each other, though perhaps living under
the same roof. These are some of the many dread
contingencies." "But let us take the union to turn out happy,
as it no doubt turns out in a large number of
cases. What follows? A too early consummation
of the nuptial troth, the breaking down of con
stitution, and the ushering in of disease; the giving
up of studies on the part of the boy husband, the
birth of sickly children, the necessity of feeding
too many mouths, poverty and dependence, a dis
organized household — leading perhaps to sin. In
short, it comes to a wreck of two lives grown old
almost in youth, which might in favourable circum
stances have attained to happy and respectable
age." That this is not an overdrawn picture will be
admitted by those who have even a superficial ac
quaintance with the domestic affairs of our people.
"We are often told by benevolent Let- Aloneists,"
he writes again, " that the only remedy possible is
to educate public opinion on the subject, and
then to set this educated public opinion to cope
with the evil. This is no doubt a sound doctrine.
But where such a very small portion of the popu
lation of India have received elementary educa
tion after so many years, the chances of bringing
educated public opinion as a force to bear upon
the question are extremely slender."

SOCIAL REFORM 115
" I have never heard an argument in favour of
infant marriage as a national institution, except
that it is enjoined by the Shastras. But so far as
I have been able to see, no Shrastra enforces
marriage proper on a girl under twelve years of
age, when presumably the boy must be between
15 and 20."
" It appears to me that the State has a right to
insist upon having the best available servant, if
not the best available citizen. If so, the head of a
department may prefer the unmarried candidate
to the married, all other qualifications being equal.
I am not blind to the risk to which this proposal
is open, but the advantages far outweigh every
possible inconvenience. The Education Depart
ment may give a few chapters in its School Books,
describing the evil in its various forms. I suspect
that something very like gentle moral pressure
had to be exercised by friendly officials, when
schools for girls were first opened in the Mofussil.
Parents would not allow their daughters to be out
of sight for a few hours every day. But the thing
had to be done. Shut up these schools to-day,
and I dare say the people will make a grievance
of it."
Speaking of Hindu widows: "As a matter of
fact the Hinduani is, by blood and tradition, an
excellent type of womanhood in all the relations
of life. But, in modern India, woman seems to

116 B. M. MALABARI
have become, as if by common consent, the in
ferior of man as a social unit. She is married in
infancy. In case of the early death of the husband
she has perpetual widowhood before her. Even
though still an infant, her life is a social failure.
In most things she is at the mercy of others, be
cause the average Hindu widow is not able to
appreciate and protect her rights as a member of
society. To many it is a wonder that the world
hears so little of the results of such social in
equality. I believe that is so because woman is
the sufferer. It is not in her nature to publish her
wrongs, however great. The widows of Gujrat and
of Maharashtra, of Bengal, of the North- West, of
the Punjab, of Madras, have often set forth their
grievances, in prose and verse, in odes and ele
gies. We hear of a case now and again, in which
the widow is the guardian angel of the house and
of the street, who, having lost the sharer of her
joys and her sorrows while yet a girl, consecrates
her womanhood exclusively to works of charity,
cherishing the hope of union in a better world.
But if there are thousands of such saintly beings
in Hindustan, there must be millions of simple
misguided creatures, exposed to all sorts of trials
and temptations whose lives are a curse to them
selves, and in some instances a standing menace to
society." "It is sometimes urged that enforced widow-

SOCIAL REFORM 117
hood must be accepted as a necessary evil. If so,
the question arises : Is the Hindu woman reconciled
to the evil? No. She is and has long been in re
volt against this inhuman custom. Educated young
women and many of the orthodox school are
anxious to be saved. Why then do they not shake
off the evil? Because the Hindu is hard to move.
Caste exercises overpowering influence. Caste is
more potent in its secret persecution than was the
inquisition of Spain. Not only are the offending
couple excommunicated, but their relations and
friends, too, may become outcasts henceforth and
for ever. Suttee was one single act of martyrdom,
of heroism as the victim conceived it, and an act
of religious merit according to popular belief; the
life which caste imposes on an unwilling widow, is
a perpetual agony, a burning to death by slow
fire, without any chastening or elevating effect on
the sufferer, or any moral advantage to the com
munity at large by way of compensation."
" Caste has no objection to the widower marry
ing again as often as he likes, and more women
than one at a time, if he so wishes. Its cold
blooded philosophy is reserved only for the woman
who has lost her husband, that is, her all in life.
Here, then, there is a conflict between State and
caste: Who is stronger? "
" Now I am not one of those who are for vio
lent interference by the State or for abrupt re-

n8 B. M. MALABARI
forms. We must move with the times, carrying
the people with us. All that now seems to be
needed, is the interposition of authority to a small
extent. Let the Government rule :
"(i) That no Hindu girl who has lost her
husband or her betrothed, if she is a minor,
shall be condemned to lifelong widowhood
against her will.
" Here I need not be reminded of Act XV of
1856. It is a fairly adequate provision in itself.
But what has it done for the remarried widow and
her friends in the course of the last twenty-eight
years ? Practically it has remained a dead letter.
I ask for a little more than this. The existing pro
vision must be made known to the victims and
enforced in their favour by all possible means.
The secret opposition of caste must be met by
some indirect encouragement to them from the
Government. " (2) Arrangements must be made in sus
pected cases to ascertain whether a widow
has adopted perpetual seclusion voluntarily or
whether it has been forced upon her.
" (3) That every widow, of whatever age,
shall have the right to complain to the authorities
of social ill-usage (over and above excommunica
tion) and that proper facilities shall be afforded

SOCIAL REFORM 119
her for the purpose, such as the gratuitous serv
ice of counsel, exemption from stamp-duty, at
tendance at Court, and so on.
" (4) That the priest has no right to excom
municate the relations and connections of the
parties contracting second marriage, besides
excommunicating the principals."
" Emancipate the women of India, ye English
rulers: restore to the widow her birthright, of
which she is robbed by usurpers who owe no al
legiance to God or to man. Give her back the
exercise of freewill. Is it meet that in the reign
of the most womanly Queen, the women of India
should remain at the mercy of a foul superstition?
Raise the status of our women, and in time Eng
land shall be furnished with a Volunteer Corps, a
million strong, win the blessings of India's women,
the most grateful amongst a grateful nation.
Education by itself has failed to secure influence
in the country. Our educated young men want
position. They are no match for the priestly class
who are, in a sense, better educated. The priest is
an institution which the poor men worship, and
the rich men think it a privilege to bow to. Be
sides, as long as this priestly class has been on the
defensive against the attacks from within and
without, the organization — that is, the power to
work together — has become the law of their very

120 B. M. MALABARI
existence. Has the educated man, the young re
former, any of these advantages? Modern educa
tion has made him both impatient and offensive.
He has no hold on the popular mind. Not only
have his orthodox neighbours no confidence in the
educated young reformer, but they look upon his
doctrines with positive distress. Then again, in
many cases, his acts fall short of his words. Let
the people be addressed directly in their own ver
naculars. Let the Poet and the Pundit go hand in
hand, scattering the seed of true knowledge broad
cast among the masses, to bear fruit in time. Let
Government move to some extent under a sense
of humiliation that a hundred years of British rule
could do but so little towards the amelioration of
the social condition of its subjects. And let the
people, too, now move for very shame, remember
ing that there is no hope of political elevation for
so long as we live, and apparently love to live, in
such social degradations."
Even this lucid and touching appeal failed to
make any impression on the minds of the people,
who, like birds that are obedient to the mes-
merizer, move only along appointed lines, having
lost all power to order their lives on rational lines,
or to act in consonance with their own aspirations
for a larger and broader political life.

CHAPTER XI
HINDU MARRIAGES
MALABARI had not the leaping, light
ning enthusiasm of Keshab Chander Sen,
which for a time carried everything before it, and
created a new centre of thought, aiming at the
establishment of a simple and theistic creed, open
to men of all castes and denominations.
Keshab Chander realized the spiritual enslave
ment of his people, and kindled a blaze of intellec
tual zeal for social improvement. It seemed as if
the awakening had really come, but it was not so.
Men of light and leading came forward to champion
the old system, and created a spark-gap which
short-circuited the new current. Keshab's church
is still on its trial and has made little progress
since his death.
Malabari, however, believed in small begin
nings, though he had the courage to take up the
most vital questions. The solution of Indian prob
lems, he said, was in the lap of the women of
India. He used to laugh at the idea of imprison
ing eternal fires, and he traced the downfall of
India from the day when people sought to protect
121

122 B. M. MALABARI
feminine virtue within the four walls of the zenana.
The future of India, he argued, is bound up with
the problems of women, and it is because they are
ignorant and shut off from life that we have no
real home life, and consequently we are deprived
of those silent, but all-powerful influences, which
mould the child's character, and fit men to be
heroes. It is in the development of woman's true
nature, that we must seek the future greatness of
our people. In the moral and spiritual education
of men, in the refinement of life, and improvement
of home, in the bringing-up of children, and in the
implanting of a true faith in the hearts of men,
the sphere of women is absolutely boundless. Who
but women can inspire men with a high-minded
resolve for noble deeds ? Who but women can help
the organization of charity, and provide comfort
for the desolate, the ignorant, and the friendless,
and bring to the sick and the weary the love of a
mother ?
Our wiseacres, he said, are afraid that accept
ance of new ideas may disturb the faith of the
common people in things that they now hold
sacred, and thus lead to the disruption of society.
They forget that the truth has a power for good
which is greater by far than that of all the clever
palliatives devised to enslave human intellect. If
we honestly believe that infant marriages are bad,
we must put a stop to them without troubling

HINDU MARRIAGES 123
about side issues. If we believe enforced widow
hood is a menace to society, we must allow nothing
to stand in the way of reform. If we think educa
tion and freedom is good for women, we must not
think of personal inconvenience. Have we be
come such imbeciles, he asked, as to need special
protection from ourselves?
It has been sometimes urged by European up
holders of Indian customs that marriage is a
spiritual union, and a widow must remain a widow
all her life. But is it true? Marriage may be
spiritual in cases where the parties marry of their
own choice. But when persons are united in wed
lock who have never seen each other? Unless, of
course, it be argued that all marriages are pre
ordained, and a divine power guides the parents
in bringing about such unions, how can such
unions be eternal ? If they are eternal, what of the
millions of child-widows, doomed from the cradle
to the grave to an unnatural life? Christians may
perhaps be justified in objecting to a second mar
riage, as Christianity enjoins monogamy, and pro
mises a reunion in another world, but how can
Hindus justify it with their sanctioned polygamy?
Is it not too much to expect a woman to sacrifice
her life for a husband whom she has never seen,
and when, even beyond the grave, she may be
confronted with rivals, claiming their share of her
husband's love?

124 B. M. MALABARI
Malabari did not advocate that every widow
should marry. He honoured those who con
secrated themselves to the memory of those they
loved, but he held that it was a sin to ignore the
expressed desire of a widow for remairiage. He
pleaded for thousands who were not born saints,
who become widows in their childhood, and are
made of common clay. Is it reasonable to expect
a young woman to be happy without a home of her
own, without any serious occupation, with hardly
any glimpse of joy and sunshine, and doomed to
remain all her life a dark shadow in the house of
her parents? No one objects to a widower re
marrying as many times as he likes. He is at
liberty to form as many spiritual unions as he
likes. It is only the widow who does not count,
and must sacrifice her life because it has been or
dained by man and the custom of the country.
Malabari found his own people immovable and
appealed to the Government for help. " How can
a Christian Government hold aloof and allow the
women of India to suffer from social wrong"?
The Hindus are a most law-abiding people, but
their clinging to corrupt and corrupting social
customs," he pleaded, " is proof positive of their
inability to help themselves even when afflicted by
cruel evils." " The people cannot give up ancient
customs till there is some power behind their
back." "Who is to do this?" asked Malabari.

HINDU MARRIAGES 125
"The Government are wringing their hands in
despair, the people cannot do it for themselves,
and the old law prevails."
If Government does not like to interfere with
the social life of the people, he said, why should
it not enact a Civil Marriage Law, free from the
evils that are embodied in the old system and
offering an opportunity, to those who wish, of
marrying under a just and equal law for both
parties? It will interfere with no religion and
custom, and affect only those who wish to avail
themselves of its advantages. Indians who have
discarded old customs, ways, and habits, have a
right to claim an equitable marriage law. And
the State has the highest interest in enacting a
Civil Marriage Act for the ever-growing body of
men and women, who find the existing law in
adequate and unjust. Such an Act, when passed,
may, by its simplicity, lead ultimately to the mod
ification of the present marriage code, so obviously
unjust to the weaker sex. No one can object to a
Civil Marriage Act which is merely of a permissive
nature. Malabari's appeal met with all kinds of criticism.
" We cannot afford to have love letters, flirtations,
and amorous fancies in our households," wrote
one. " Our widows are happy enough, and never
think of marrying again," pleaded another. " The
sanctity of the ancient laws must be preserved,"

126 B. M. MALABARI
quoth a third. " There are many failures in mar
riages by choice," triumphantly exclaimed a fourth.
" Ours is the best system," said a fifth, who wrote
with the finality of the laissez faire school. Even
such a kindly scholar as Principal Wordsworth
argued " that the bad customs should be left to
the influence of time, that infant brides and virgin
widows cannot really be so very miserable since
human nature is wonderfully elastic and adapts
itself to any circumstances."
"It does indeed. But at what fearful cost?"
exclaimed Malabari. "Is it right to endure pre-
ventible misery? If men and women are to meet
freely, as they did in Vedic times, why should
there be no courtships, no expression of mutual
esteem? Is not love the purest and the holiest
thing on earth, and the hope of obtaining it
one day, of winning and wearing it next one's
heart, the greatest thing in the life of men and
women ? "
" Flirtation is a naughty little amusement,"
wrote Malabari, " but it is often a healthy exercise
for the heart and nerves, and steadies that uncon
trollable little rebel. Are all widows happy? If so,
what of the skeletons in the cupboards?"
As for the failures of marriage in the West,
that does not prove that because some people
make a mistake, others should not be allowed to
have any choice. The Western system, however,

HINDU MARRIAGES 127
affords proof positive of what freedom of choice
can do to ensure freedom of life to a nation,
endowing individuals with some of the noblest
qualities of human nature. It is freedom at home,
which has ensured for European countries their
free institutions, and made the English people a
nation that dominates the world. What has our
system done? Has it not destroyed trust between
man and woman, and man and man? Where is
the sanctity of a system which has broken up a
valiant people and placed social gyves on all free
movement? "If the Hindus are happy at home,
and brave and patriotic and enterprising abroad,"
wrote Malabari, " in spite of the custom of baby
marriages, how much happier, braver, more
patriotic, more enterprising they would be if they
eschewed the unnatural custom ? A good deal, no
doubt, depends on how we define happiness. If
it means a state of brute contentment at home, we
are doubtless a happy race. But in that case the
happiest of mortals are our cousins the Red
Indians. Are we prepared to go by this standard
in determining happiness ? "
" No, but things must take their course, they
say, till education makes indubitable angels of
what are doubtful men, a matter of a few cen
turies at the earliest. So our educated reformers
sleep on, until the time may come when we may
possibly consider if the marriageable age of girls

128 B. M. MALABARI
is to be 7 or 9." What rapid progress, what a
hopeful future!
We lay great store by the wonderful progress of
the Japanese, but it was not thus that the Japanese
acted. They did not leave it to time to introduce
such changes as it might. They took up the
question of national reform in full earnest, and in
thirty years accomplished what it may take
centuries for India to postulate.
It is often argued that Japan had its own
Government. But so had India before the advent
of the Muhammedans. What did Hindus do?
Even now, though India has not a Government of
its own, it is fortunate in having a Government
which, after centuries of strife, unites the country
into one geographical whole and guarantees per
sonal freedom. It is not the fault of the Govern
ment that we cling to a carcase with one hand
and grasp at life with the other. It is for the
people, and especially for the English- educated
classes, to act. It is on them that the future of
the country mainly depends. Malabari raised the
alarm. Is his cry to be a cry in the wilderness?
Let us hope it will be taken up and find an
answering echo in the hearts of the community,
and finally lead to the solution of the all important
social problem.
Malabari, after years of incessant labour, ob
tained " The Age of Consent Bill," which marks

HINDU MARRIAGES 129
a step forward. It was not this measure that he
had worked for. He thought it would be less
effective and much more troublesome in operation,
than the simple permissive or enabling act he
had applied for. This he would assuredly have
secured, but for the artificial agitation in some
parts of the country which prevented the Govern
ment from doing what they wished, and he was
deprived of the fruits of his efforts by the opposi
tion of his own countrymen, who were carried
away by the glamour of flowery words, and failed
to work for a cause on which rests the future of
India. The Age of Consent Bill met with great
opposition from Bengal. The main points were
obscured by side issues which puzzled the Govern
ment. The result was that a measure which would
have helped social reform generally, was merely
confined to raising the Age of Consent for the
consummation of marriage to twelve years.
Many years have since passed, and the question
.-of child marriages still remains where it was.
Our politicians are too busy to take up domestic
questions, which make no appeal from the public
platform. They are out for national independence,
or for self-good. These are braver words than
social emancipation, though without it no free
institutions are possible.

K

CHAPTER XII
IDEAS ON EDUCATION
MALABARI counted on the support of the
educated classes when he started on his
social reform campaign. He was deeply disap
pointed to find a large majority of the " men of
light and leading " amongst his countrymen ranged
against him. He made allowances, with his usual
generosity, for the conservatism of the common
people, but he could not understand the blind
adherence of men, who professed progressive
views, and were eager to win new ways of life for
their country, to customs and social usages which
were in no way compatible with their professed
aspirations. National revival begins at the top, and spreads
down to the common people, till the entire popu
lation feels the zest and the tingle of a new life.
What hope was there for India when they who
ought to be in the van had not the courage to face
the situation, and selfishly or timidly clung to
fossilized systems.
Malabari was in the habit of tracing all effects to
130

IDEAS ON EDUCATION 131
their causes, and he set himself to inquire into the
educational system which produced men who had
no faith in the opinions they professed. He was
anxious to find out if there was any indigenous
system of education which could be revived and
improved to suit modern conditions. His inquiries
showed him that there was no system of educa
tion which could be called national. Here and
there men like Vigana Bikhshu kept a school of
philosophy and attracted pupils, who gathered
round their teacher, drawn to him by his fame
and their own love of learning, devoted them
selves whole-heartedly to their Guru, and tried to
come in close touch with his informing mind, so
as to receive the full inspiration of his ideas.
They were given instruction in the art of reading
and writing, but were never encouraged to follow
an independent line of inquiry. They had to
accept in an unquestioning spirit the teachings of
their Guru, and to subject their own judgment to
the ancient word, consequently there never was
any liberal education in India. All intellectual
efforts was confined more or less to expounding
old theories and writing new commentaries.
A school of Sanskrit flourished up till recent
times at Benares. It was the only institution of
its kind in India, and gave instruction to a small
number of Brahmin boys who, after years of hard
work, learned to read and write Sanskrit. The

132 B. M. MALABARI
people as a whole received no education. The
only book which came within the reach of the
masses was the " Ramayana," which we owe to
the unrivalled genius of Tulsi Das.
During the Muhammedan period the profes
sional classes learned Urdu and Persian, as they
now learn English. Rajah Ram Mahan Rai could
write and speak Persian with the same facility as
Babu Surendra Nath Bannerji can write and speak
English. It may, therefore, be admitted that the
idea of popular education in the true sense of the
word is wholly modern. But India has again its
usual bad luck. It is a great pity that the belief is
growing in Anglo-Indian circles that higher
education is responsible for much of the troubles
which India has been recently passing through.
Some have even gone so far as to suggest that
higher education should be placed beyond the
means and capacity of the average student. It is
forgotten that " A wise enemy is better than a
foolish friend," and modern education has banished
the chronic anarchy which prevailed in India.
Even the most impatient of our " impatient
idealists'' cannot fail to realize that in the strength
and statesmanship of the British Government
rests the salvation of the Indian people. It is not
the fault of education, but of the educational sys
tem, which is responsible for choking the brains of
our young men with ill-digested ideas entirely

IDEAS ON EDUCATION 133
foreign to their environment, and demanding a
standard of efficiency which is beyond the capacity
of an average student. It is the overwrought
brain and eyes blinded by incessant poring over
the printed page that become hypnotized by the
mirage of political independence, and are respon
sible for the ruined mind and body of hun
dreds. Malabari studied the question fully. He urged
constantly that the whole scheme of studies from
top to bottom should be modified. The higher
studies were, he said, completely divorced from
the history and traditions of India, and made too
great a demand on memory. The elementary
education meant primarily for the agriculturists
gave no instruction in agriculture, and was un
attractive and of little practical use. In provinces
like the Punjab, where people have a language
and a literature of their own, instruction is con
veyed through the medium of a high-flown Urdu
which is intelligible only to those who have studied
Persian. The system of primary education in
many provinces seemed to exist mostly for the
sons of Patwaris and other small officials, who were
scribes by profession and caste.
He often told me that he knew from his own
personal experience that the syllabus of secondary
education was beyond the capacity of the average
pupil, and over-taxed his powers. Our boys

134 B. M. MALABARI
have to struggle with a foreign language besides
struggling with poor health, the result of early
marriage, brain fag, and poor nourishment. The
programme having been prepared without a cor
rect appraisement of the mental and physical
capacity of the Indian boy, only atrophied or else
inflated his youthful brain.
Most of the boys in high schools and colleges
are married men with families at home. They
have to work fourteen hours a day under a terrible
strain. At college they learn to memorize the text
of their lectures, without attempting to think for
themselves, and, in the same way, when they grow
up, they generally merely re-echo the leading
articles of their favourite newspapers. The en
deavour has always been to raise the standard of
education — a praiseworthy effort indeed, if it did
not mean an attempt to make the student absorb
more and more indigestible knowledge which he
can barely assimilate. In short, he was of opinion
that our educational system lacked the spirit and
the breath of life, taking no account of the human
material it has to deal with. It left little scope
for the growing mind to develop on its own lines,
and was therefore bound to fail. At present the
youth who goes through our educational grind is
generally fit for little better than the routine work
of a clerkship, or for the professions which require
no originality or initiative.

IDEAS ON EDUCATION 135
In his walks round Jakko, at Simla, he used to
outline his own ideas on education. The agricul
turists, he used to say, should be better educated
to be better farmers, to have cleaner homes, and
to produce a larger quantity of grain. Every
peasant should receive sufficient education to be
able to protect himself from the abuses of the
police, the Tehsil Chaprasi, and the landlord; in
short, of whoever possesses an official badge, and
consequently claims his toll of oppression. The
present system of primary education was of little
use to the people — the schoolmaster himself knew
little that was useful. People must have bread
before education, and in many parts of India vil
lage people were much too poor to afford any time
for the school. Few of the village schools were
fully equipped to teach even the three R's com
pletely. In the lower primary schools the in
struction comes to an end before the boys have
mastered the barest rudiments of the art of read
ing and writing, and the upper primary schools
were very few and far between. Malabari thought
that the idea of compulsory education was being
pushed much before its time. The right way to
promote popular education was not to compel
village boys to go to school, but to make the
school so attractive that boys could not keep away
from it. If the school became the boast and the
pride of the village, and the boys that went there

136 B. M. MALABARI
became better agriculturists and better artisans,
the school would soon be crowded, and there
would be no need to talk of compulsion. Com
pulsion could never add to the happiness of the
people. We should begin slowly, and on lines that
were natural and spontaneous, and in harmony
with the customs and the traditions of the country.
The school in a village should be a place that the
villagers loved and respected. The schoolmaster
should be a villager himself, familiar with the
simplest modern methods of agriculture, and occu
pying the position of "guide, philosopher, and
friend " to his fellow villagers. Half-a-dozen good
schools would do more to popularize primary
education than a hundred meagre reservoirs of
instruction which teach nothing useful.
As for higher education, Malabari was not
afraid of having too many graduates; he often
said we can never have a sufficient number of
educated men in India. He was, however, entirely
opposed to the present system of high education,
which, according to him, was in need of great
reform. He had great admiration for Lord
Curzon and his work, but he did not think his
educational policy was a success, or that the raising
of the standard of education must necessarily
mean a corresponding improvement in the calibre
and capacity of the pupil. An Indian boy is not
physically as strong as an English boy, he argued.

IDEAS ON EDUCATION 137
It is cruel to cram his atrophied brain with too
many subjects.
Sound education is an equipment for life. A
system of education that impaired health and
robbed the individual of his capacity for healthy
enjoyment did more harm than good. The boys
who join colleges come mostly from families who
have for generations earned their living by the
pen. They must pass the examination or starve,
and they bow to the inevitable, but other classes
leave it alone. It is beyond them and not to their
taste. Minds are far more various and infinitely
more subtle than the bodies, gross garments of
the soul, Malabari used to say. It was madness
to attempt to have the same standard of education
for weak Indian boys as for sturdy English lads.
The Indian Universities prescribed a syllabus and
held examinations which left little scope for indi
vidual development. The result, Malabari said,
was that, man for man, the educated Indian of
pre- British days was better fitted for life than the
modern B.A. He had a mind of his own, and was
able to procure for himself a certain amount of
genuine intellectual pleasure. The educated man
of to-day with his drill coat and trousers, and his
copy-book politics can hardly order his own life
in a comfortable manner, and is for ever at war
with himself and the world.
Malabari insisted that the courses should be

138 B. M. MALABARI
graduated to suit the capacity of an average Indian
boy, leading him to the gates of the "King's
Treasuries," and leaving him to draw upon them
according to his own God-given brain power. He
used to deplore deeply the disappearance of re
ligious education from the country. He did not
believe that it could be imparted in schools and
colleges. The religious emotions are awakened by
the mother, and implanted in the infant mind by
her selfless love and devotion. He thought no
religious education was possible till mothers be
came the teachers, and the wide gulf bridged over
which separates the ideals of home and school.
" If we regard home as an educational institu
tion, a circumnavigator of the world is less in
fluenced by the nations he has seen than by his
nurse," remarked Jean Paul, and Malabari always
said that all moral tendencies find their real
nourishment in the atmosphere of home. What
advantages, he asked, can a home offer which is
the centre of ignorance and superstition ? Woman
especially must learn to see beyond and above the
horizon which for centuries has limited and ob
scured her vision, before she can make her home
a shrine of sacred fire, kindling youthful hearts
with devout aspirations. She must feel the struggle
which is in progress between the new life and the
old prejudice, " between the obstructive indolence
and inertia of the many, and the generous mental

IDEAS ON EDUCATION 139
activity of the few," to give the new movement an
inwardness which it can never acquire without her
support. Malabari fully recognized that the educational
problem needed generous financial support and
the co-operation of all classes and creeds. He
often argued that endowments made for public
purposes should be used for public purposes. If
all the charitable endowments were brought under
proper control, they would provide sufficient funds,
he thought, to start a movement for the education
of women. He was for levying an educational
cess on all religious endowments, and gradually
increasing it till it became the means of financing
female education. In his own small way he en
deavoured to create a new centre of education in
his Seva Sadan which he founded in Bombay
with an ambitious scheme of training " Sisters
Ministrant," who, he hoped, would diffuse know
ledge in crowded cities and village hamlets. The
idea is full of immense possibilities, but there are
no funds to help the institution in its great work.
The educated public has neglected it completely.
What good are social conferences and academic
discussions when the heart within refuses to accept
the verdict of truth, and genuine work receives
no support? The mothers, wives, sisters, cling
tenaciously to customs, which have acquired the
sanctity of religion in their eyes, and even the most

140 B. M. MALABARI
advanced Indians have to endure the yoke. Never
theless it is considered wise to allow them to
remain in ignorance. Who is to help the growth
of the larger ideas of life?
It is in the hearts of our women, pleaded Mala
bari, that the gospel of the new life must first take
root, manifesting itself finally in the mountain-
moving faith which works miracles. Without their
education, no education for men is possible. This
was his last word on the question.

CHAPTER XIII
POLITICAL WORK
THE publicist who "ploughs his lonely fur
row " does not generally command 'popu
larity. At best they call him an unpractical
idealist, and Malibari from the very beginning
refused to identify himself with any party — though
he was ready to help all good causes. He stood
between the officials and the people with an up
raised arm telling them both to look above and
beyond the horizon. The Government can gain
in strength, he said, by securing the confidence of
the people in its sense of justice, and in its earnest
desire to serve the best interests of the country,
and he told his own people that national unity
must precede political freedom.
" What is prestige without love and confidence
to support it? " he asked of the rulers. "You have
equipped him (the educated Indian) for a new
life, and yet you would condemn him to the old.
Is this fair, desirable, possible?" Turning to the
people he fearlessly reminded them that " the
Government of India is, after all, but a human
institution, subject to all the frailties of human
141

142 B. M. MALABARI
nature, and groaning under all its limitations of
power. Remember, the public life of a nation is
but an elaboration of its family life. The marriage
system of India is, indeed, her problem of pro
blems, the mystery, the passion play of her daily
life, stamping all her national concerns, arts,
sciences, industries, commerce, and agriculture
with its own mark of premature development,
arrested growth and early decay."
It was social reform more than political institu
tions which India needed, he thought, and all
through life he worked towards its attainment.
As a young man he was caught by the idea of an
Indian National Congress. He would have given
his life to organize a national movement of earnest
workers drawn from all classes and creeds, with a
clear understanding of the past and a true vision
of the future, devoted to the cause of national
unity and to the removal of all that goes to make
national life impossible for Indians. He hoped
that the National Congress would devote itself to
nation building, and that it would create a centre
of unity drawing Hindus, Muhammedans, and
Christians into bonds of brotherhood, and firing
them with a common aspiration to realize Indian
nationality. Such a movement would have been
truly national in its character, and if it might have
appealed but little to the Government, it would
have appealed greatly to the people.

POLITICAL WORK 143
He joined the Congress when it was started,
but left it soon after, as it devoted itself more and
more to what he called " transcendental politics."
He was, however, of opinion that the officials
were wrong in keeping away from it. He always
thought that unless officials made the aspirations
of young India their own, and took part in the
various movements that are now coming into ex
istence, there was a risk that the gulf between the
Government and the people would be widened.
The Government, being foreign, must study the
trend of thought in India, and join popular move
ments to guide patriotic energies into fruitful
channels, and secure the confidence of the rising
generations in its good intentions.
Malabari, on the other hand, was afraid that if
men of light and leading continued to employ
their intelligence and power in opposing the Gov
ernment, the peril to India would be real, and
ultimately a serious crisis might arise in Indian
affairs, which would delay the progress of the
country indefinitely. He was convinced that the
country was not ripe for self-government, and as
far as his vision could see, the possibilities of a
Government on colonial lines were remote and
uncertain. He was, however, sincerely of opinion that the
basis of the Government in India should be broad
ened by making use of all the talent that the

144 B. M. MALABARI
country produced in the government of the country.
The scheme of constitutional reform, introduced
by Lords Morley and Minto, owes not a little to
his discreet but chivalrous advocacy. India has
always produced individuals fit to adorn any posi
tion in life, and no Government could afford to
ignore, or drive into the opposite camp men who
came with God-given powers to be the leaders of
men. In the olden times the Court of a king
made room for poets and artists and men of good
families. Now they can only find scope for their
powers on public platform or in the press, and
most of them wasted their time, and wasting it
bred discontent. They had no place in the govern
ment of the country, and their influence was being
used against the Government and was a source
of danger. Malabari therefore rejoiced when the
Councils were enlarged and Indians were allowed
seats on the Executive Council. He would have
liked to give all the provinces a Council and an
Indian member. It meant, in his opinion, addi
tional strength to the Government.
He had, however, grave misgivings as to the
ultimate success of separate electorates for Hindus
and Muhammedans. He was very apprehensive
lest it should intensify sectarian jealousies and
undo the work of the last fifty years, which was
slowly advancing higher ideals of justice between
man and man, irrespective of caste and creed.

POLITICAL WORK 145
He was afraid that if District and Municipal
Boards were also to have communal electorates,
they would only serve to spread animosity between
the Hindus and the Muhammedans in the vil
lages, where all communities had hitherto lived in
peace. He held that all those who live in India
have common interests, and that ill-will between
them can only retard the moral and material pro
gress of the country and weaken the Government,
as its strength lies in doing even-handed justice
without fear or favour. Malabari, therefore, wished
the Government to retain its British character and
allow each community to develop on its own lines,
animated by a spirit of healthy rivalry, each
emulating the other in attainment to its own
maximum of strength, and thus adding to the
power and capacity of the nation as a whole.
He was anxious that the Government of India
should retain its vantage ground of doing justice
to all, and give up "living on shifts and expe
dients," which only put off the evil day. The
British Government has done much for India, he
used to say, but there is a great work to be done
in the future, more difficult and perhaps more
thankless, in preparing a congeries of many
nationalities for a homogeneous life, and holding
out the promise of free institutions as the crown
of its administrative effort.
He was of opinion that the time had come when
L

146 B. M. MALABARI
Government ought to have a definite policy. No
Government can afford to live on its past and
neglect the measures which all Governments,
whether autocratic or democratic, have to take in
order to carry popular opinion with them. The
Government of India is singular in this, that it
has neither introduced Western methods of win
ning public confidence, nor has it adopted the
Eastern methods which dazzle the public mind by
the splendour of court pageantry and by occa
sional displays of lavish generosity and spectacular
justice. It is content to administer the country in
its own way and is disdainful of policies, without
which no Government can continue to be success
ful. Malabari held that what is wanted is a dominant
ideal which may inspire the people and the officials,
and unite them both for its attainment. The
Government of India was becoming more or less
a machine, and losing that personal touch which
counts for so much in India.
An English officer of former days took pride in
his work, devoted all his energies to push forward
schemes of public utility. It used to be his dream
to administer the land, more or less according to
the traditions of his own country. The people
under him marvelled at his goodness, looked up to
him as Ma Bap — "Father and Mother" — and
more or less constantly acquired the habit of
appealing in their difficulties to his higher nature.

POLITICAL WORK 147
He indeed tried to be a father to his people,
and to live up to the ideal which they had of him.
He was loved, respected, and often reverenced.
The modern official, like the people, is passing
through a period of transition. He has changed
and is still changing. He finds it difficult to
reconcile the surging of the new life with the
placidity of the old. He condemns what is often
nothing but the exuberance of youthful spirits.
He sometimes ignores the policy followed by
higher authorities, and fails therefore — often un
consciously — in loyalty to his own Government.
" Loyalty does not mean the selfish humouring of
one's own sweet will," Malabari observed, " but
disinterested attachment to the crown and the
nation they have come out to serve." The official
in an ordinary district usually takes his cue as to
Indian character from time-servers who come to
"salaam" to him every morning. He perhaps
resents the presence of men of independent views,
whose sense of personal dignity has survived
many trials. He frequently forgets that India has
always produced men of great culture, courage,
and political sagacity. Sir Henry Verney once
asked an officer of great experience, " Did you
ever know a native whom you would trust as you
would an Englishman?" "As many as in Eng
land," was the answer. But it has become the
habit with some to run down Indians, forgetting

148 B. M. MALABARI
that India has up to this day preserved her code
of honour among the right stamp of men. A race
proud of its past is naturally sensitive of its Izzat,
which it values above everything, and yet some
officials think little of such things. Lord and
Lady Hardinge have set an example of cultivat
ing personal friendships which, if followed, will be
rich in fruit. Loyalty in India can be only to per
sons. It has never been given to principles, and
it is hopeless to seek it by statements of profit
and loss accounts.
Malabari often told me that we had no leaders
among either officials or non-officials who could
see into the future, and work patiently for the
realization of a definite object. We want men of
strong personality, he used to say, to lead us to
higher levels of thought and action. He was
strongly opposed to the unmeasured use of words
which only excite prejudice and rouse popular
passion. He had no faith in hereditary leaders. The
salvation of India rests with the aristocracy of
intellect, and with the English people generally,
he thought. He wanted the English to take up
the "white man's burden" in real earnest, and
work in the cause of peace and progress with a
zeal that would carry conviction home. Malabari
was certain that in the dazzling light of true and
inspiring work no dark shadows of misunder-

POLITICAL WORK 149
standings could exist. The Anglo-Indian Press
should display true imperial instincts by greater
generosity and self-restraint, acting as an im
partial interpreter between the officials and the
people, and commanding the confidence of all
classes. Such a change in the Anglo-Indian Press,
he held, would be sure to exert a healthy in
fluence on the Indian Press and on opinion
generally. Malabari was by no means opposed to honest
criticism. He held that it was the duty of a vigilant
press to show up abuses with unflinching courage,
but with this difference, that we should never
forget that British rule is a necessity, and that
India's future is linked up with the future of
England. After centuries the discordant elements
of Indian society have been brought under control
to realize by contrast the bitter fruit of disunion
and the golden promise which unity of hearts and
minds holds out for the future.
There can be nothing, he often said, more use
less than to be constantly looking back to a past
that has left us such a legacy as our present. In
tellectual activity, unless translated into action, is
a vain pursuit leading to wasted energy and
emptiness of life. It is idle to look up to Govern
ment for what must be done by ourselves. He
never agreed with some of our politicians who
seem to think that, like the doctrine of Vedanta,

150 B. M. MALABARI
political doctrine has only to be accepted by the
intellect to awaken National Atman in all its
boasted freedom and splendour. Such thinkers
light-heartedly brush aside essential factors of
public life, and play with the passions and pre
judices of the multitude as they play with the
problems of existence in philosophic wrangles.
The country can gain no more from this political
play-acting than it has gained from its meta
physical speculations and the emancipating doc
trine of the Vedanta.
Malabari refused to be led into speculative
politics, even though many of his friends were
ranged on the side which he called "transcen
dental politics." Anybody can denounce an abuse.
It needs valour of the highest kind to show that
the programme to which your friends are com
mitted is not right. He never faltered, and bravely
adhered to his views, endeavouring always to
secure a policy of active co-operation between the
rulers and the ruled. He could not believe that
God has brought India and England together for
purposes of exploitation and mutual hatred. The
destiny of the two nations is being shaped silently
by invisible hands, he thought, and no one can
say what the future is to be for each. Shall Eng
land become Indianized, speculative, despotic,
a juggler in words and deeds? Shall India be
come Anglicized, free, independent, self-reliant?

POLITICAL WORK 151
These are questions which the future alone can
answer. Many Anglo-Indians view with apprehension
the vanishing traditions of autocratic rule which
were not English, and which could not be kept up
by free-born Englishmen. Indians, on the other
hand, have begun to feel the stirrings of a new
life. The impact of the West is generating an
electric current which is accumulating in the air.
Shall it be harnessed to help the progress of the
world, or allowed to run to waste? Who can tell?
It all depends on the way things move in the
West. If the progressive movement in Europe is
affected seriously by luxury, commercialism, and
a crowding out of ideals which have brought glory
and greatness to the West, there is little hope for
India, and her progress will be indefinitely de
layed. If the civilization of the West becomes
what Emerson hopes, "the evolution of a highly
organized man, brought to supreme delicacy of
sentiment, in practical power, religious liberty,
sense of honour and taste," then the West is
destined to set our dull life throbbing with new
born energy, and is bound to raise us to her own
standard of culture, making us a nation among
the nations of the world.
Malabari often quoted Tennyson, that East and
West must unite in the fulfilment of their common
destiny. Once they both recognize that they have

152 B. M. MALABARI
to work as comrades in the service of this ancient
land all misunderstanding will vanish, and they
will hold together for weal and woe. How can
India forget the gift of new thought which Eng
land has given her, and England renounce the
great Eastern Empire which is becoming slowly
a part of the Greater Britain ? The two together
will form an empire such as the world has never
known, and which may eventually guarantee the
peace and prosperity of both Asia and Europe.
This was Malabari's hope of the future, as we
often talked these things together.

CHAPTER XIV
FAMINE VERSUS LAND TAX
MALABARI did not believe that India was
growing poorer, on the contrary he often
said that there were signs of comingprosperity. The
trade of the country has grown enormously, and
the middle men are unquestionably more prosper
ous than they have ever been before. The value
of the land is rising; labour earns better wages;
above all a network of canals guarantees in some
of the richest areas a full measure of crops, and
railways carry the produce to the distant markets
of the world. Everything shows increased activity,
which means increased wealth. The modern towns
with their manifold evidence of humble prosperity,
disprove the theory of the " drain," and their ex
pansion bears witness to the value of British
Rule. But Malabari held, on the other hand, that the
village people, since the time when the Crown
claimed the ownership of the land and exacted a
large share of the produce as its due, have never
been rich. There were great Rajahs, Maharajahs,
153

154 B. M. MALABARI
and Maharaos who were wealthy in the old days,
and their display of wealth stood for the wealth
of India, but the people as a whole were perhaps
poorer than they are at present. There is better
distribution of wealth now, and there are more
individuals who are well-to-do than there were at
any time in the history of India; but the condi
tion of the peasant remains much the same, and
there is little possibility of improvement as long
as the theory of the land tax remains unchanged.
Malabari felt keenly for the poor. Whenever
there was a famine he went out into the villages,
and lived and suffered with the people. He often
told me that he wished at times he were one of
the sufferers, and not a mere pitying spectator, as
he realized the futility of charity doles, when
whole families left their homes in search of work
and bread, and were lying about hungry and fever-
stricken on the roadside, or under the village
trees. During thirty years of active life Malabari
visited many famine camps. He recognized the
praiseworthy attempts of Government to relieve
distress, but he felt it was like allaying the symp
toms, instead of effecting a radical cure. The
disease itself was gaining in strength, and every
attack left the patient weaker with decreased
power of resistance.
There are large areas protected by irrigation, a

FAMINE v. LAND TAX 155
network of railways helps in the distribution of
grain, a benevolent Government is ready to
succour and to save, and yet a single failure of
crop means the starvation of millions. Malabari
tried to discover the real causes. He asked suf
fering men and women a hundred times why
famines were becoming so frequent. " How can
we tell," they replied. " We work from morning
till evening, from year's end to year's end, but we
never have enough to eat. There is no Barkat."
He asked the officials, who, shifting all responsi
bility, replied that the relation of cause and effect
between a good rainfall, abundant crops, and
agricultural prosperity is not more obvious than
between the bad monsoon, deficient produce, and
suffering people. The answer did not convince
Malabari, and he wondered whether, like every
thing else, the quickened life in India had inten
sified poverty. His inquiries pursued for a long
time revealed to him the truth, that land has always
been overtaxed, and that the British Govern
ment has done little to afford relief to an over-
assessed peasantry. The theory of land tax from
the days of Manu has been that all the land was
the property of the Crown, and the State was
entitled to a full rent. The laws of Manu set the
King's share of the cultivators' produce at one-
seventh, one-eighth, or one-twelfth. But in the
cruel days of land farming that followed, all bounds

156 B. M. MALABARI
were ignored, and the cultivators were in some
cases denied even a food allowance.
It is this system which the British Government
found, and somehow failed to approach from a
broad standpoint. It has never been tested by
the standards of taxation which prevail in modern
times. The ryot cares little whether the tax he
pays is called revenue, rent, or land tax. He
knows that the rent realized by the landlord
absorbs half of his net produce, and makes a very
appreciable difference to him and to his family.
The land revenue is fixed at half the landlord's
assets, which means that the landlord takes half
of the produce from the cultivators, which is
obviously too much, as it makes no food allow
ance for the family of the producer. Whatever
the Revenue official may say in its justification, he
too would feel the effect of a tax, if half his salary
went to meet some impost or tax, or whatever name
it might bear. He would then realize that a tax,
when it exceeds certain limits, bears a very direct
relation to the prosperity of those who pay it.
" The land tax is none of our making," says
the Government. And it is quite true. But
surely the duty of a civilized Government is to go
into the question a little deeper, and to inquire if it
leaves a sufficient margin of profit to allow the
cultivator to tide over a year of scarcity, and give
him an incentive for work.

FAMINE v. LAND TAX 157
In the olden times, from the day the crops
ripened, the ryot and his family quietly gleaned
the grain and lived on the crop; whatever was
left was heaped upon the threshing floor, and
divided up by the King's officer, who came on the
appointed day, and a small present to him settled
the details of the transaction. In a famine year
there was no produce to divide, and the remission
of the revenue followed automatically.
It was Akbar who raised the tax to one-third of
the produce, and commuted the Government
share into money, taking the price of grain on an
average of nineteen years. This system continued
till the cruel days of land farming, when the
Government, too weak to realize its dues, farmed
out land to powerful zemindars who were left to
do very much what they liked with the people.
But even then there were no revisions of settle
ment, and no continuous rise in the land tax. In
1826 Sir Thomas Munro wrote on the subject:
" Agriculturists, I think, cannot thrive at the
present rate of taxation. Half the gross produce
of the soil is demanded by Government, which
is really too much to leave an adequate provision
for the peasant, even with the usual frugal habits
of the Indians. Still more, it is an efficient bar in
the way of improvement. It keeps the people,
even in favourable years, in a state of abject
penury, and when the crops fail it involves a

158 B. M. MALABARI
necessity on the part of Government of enormous
outlays in the way of remission and distribution
which, after all, do not prevent men, women, and
children dying. . . ."
There have been many settlements since 1826,
and each settlement has maintained its upward
tendency, the increases ranging from 25 to 60 per
cent, every twenty or thirty years. The continuous
rise in the land tax has been slowly nibbling at
the margin till it has almost reached the van
ishing point, and a single failure of rain means
famine. " No, you misunderstand things," says the
official apologist. " The State would find long term
settlements extremely disadvantageous, if it is
not only to lose all increment during their cur
rency, but also to forgo part of its dues at their
close." Malabari was never in agreement with
this view; he held that whatever added to the
prosperity of the people added to the prosperity
of the Government. He thought the time had
come when the agriculturists should be allowed
some rest, and the land revenue policy modified
to suit modern conditions. It is futile to argue
that things were such and such two hundred years
ago. We must examine how the land is now
assessed in civilized countries. Baden Powell, the
great authority on land tenures in India, defined
land tax as a tax on agricultural income, and his

FAMINE v. LAND TAX 159
definition is broad enough to be accepted. The
ratio of the tax on income should be fixed after
making a food allowance for the producer and his
family. The food allowance can be calculated at
the rates allowed for famine camps and jails. The
surplus can then be taxed. But officials shake
their heads at the suggestion: they say it leaves
little or no surplus to be taxed. And yet they
alone feel for the villagers; they scan anxiously
with him the merciless skies, they watch with him
the withering of the crops, and hear with him the
hungry cries of children. Surely they cannot
believe that the cultivator has occult sources of
income which baffle official scrutiny and provide
food for the farmer and his family. Mr. Pursur
went into the question fully as a Settlement
Officer of Jallandhar, one of the richest districts of
the Punjab, and he found that if an ample food
allowance were made, the land revenue would
have to be reduced considerably. No one has
questioned the accuracy of his figures beyond
saying that the people must be living on nothing
if his conclusions are true. The Punjab is com
paratively well off, because the peasant proprietors
pay much less in revenue than the tenants of a
landlord do in other provinces : but what of other
provinces, where the rents are high and holdings
small and unprotected ? The question of land
revenue will have to be considered with reference

160 B. M. MALABARI
to the needs of the agriculturists, and the con
tinuous rise in the standard of living, and the
changing conditions which are slowly changing
India. It is argued that a gradual increase in the
land tax is necessary, as the State cannot call
upon the people suddenly to effect a great re
duction in their domestic expenditure. Are short
term settlements really designed to keep the scale
of living at a low level, so that the tax-payer may
not get used to better things ? Do they mean, in
plain English, that the peasant should always
remain on the verge of starvation, so as to main
tain the anticipated increase in revenue required
to meet the ever growing demands of the adminis
tration ?
No one can assert that land revenue is solely
responsible for the poverty of our peasants, but it
would be absurd to deny that it is one of the con
tributory causes. The cultivator goes on tilling
his field, which his forefathers tilled and pros
pered on, while the purchasing power of the rupee
has fallen, and the demands on his purse have
grown in number. The landlord must have motor
cars and electric light, he must travel in ease and
comfort, and furnish his house in English style.
For this and other luxuries he must have money,
and it is the cultivator who has to pay for every
thing. The poor ryot has no means of protecting
himself, the landlord sends his notice of ejectment,

FAMINE v. LAND TAX 161
and out he goes. He must pay or go, there is no
other alternative. Practically the peasant has been
reduced, in not a few places, to the position of a
serf. He cannot use wheat, milk, and ghee for
himself. He must sell all these to pay his rent.
He must live as he can, on the coarsest grain of
his produce. His home in many parts of India is
a miserable hovel, covered with thatch, which he
is not able to renew for years. He has sometimes
a Charpoy for furniture and a few brass " thalis."
But he has often to do without these, sleeping on
the bare ground, with nothing but straw to cover
him. Husband and wife work the whole day to
eke out a bare existence. Even little children
have to give their share of labour. They have to
weed crops, scare away crows, or take out the
cattle to graze. Thus do thousands of families
live in helpless ignorance and destitution. Even
in normal years their stock of grain disappears
before the harvest is over. And then comes, as it
must come some day or other, the fight against
hunger and illness. A certain proportion of the
village population in ryotwari villages are always
on the verge of starvation. During the normal
years there is work, and they manage somehow
to pull through. But in years of scarcity there is
no work, and they would die off like flies but for
a humane Government providing work to keep
them alive. It is verily a life of desperate penury.
M

162 B. M. MALABARI
There are thousands upon thousands who even
in good years fail to obtain a full meal, and in
time of famine their sufferings shame the glory
and grace of modern civilization.
It is the agricultural labourer who never gets
any relief. If he leaves the village and goes to
the city or the town, he can earn enough to feed
and clothe his whole family. But he cannot for
sake the calling of his fathers. He only knows how
to dig, plough, sow, and reap. The rain falls and
the sun shines. The crops grow and prosper, and
as the monsoon follows summer, and spring suc
ceeds winter, the fields smile with golden grain.
But as soon as the harvesting is over, the grain
disappears from the threshing floor, the landlord,
the Bunnia and the village servant have their
share, wrhile he, the producer, goes home empty
to plough and sow, and live on in the hope of
better times. Nothing is left to him but that
wonderful patience which is his sole inheritance.
The pressure on the soil has increased so much
that even the village commons have been par
titioned and brought under cultivation. Brahmins
and Kchatris, who considered it infra dig. to touch
the plough, have had to pocket their inherited
pride and take to cultivation. Is it right, asked
Malabari, to skim off periodically the little excess
of income over a rigidly defined standard which
the peasant gains by his incessant labour? It is

FAMINE v. LAND TAX 163
said that an Englishman pays 40^. per head in
taxes while an Indian ryot pays only 4^. This
seems astonishing, but the irony of figures be
comes apparent, when it is seen that taxes in
England work out to one-seventeenth part of a
man's income, while in India they represent more
than one-half of the landlords' assets.
Malabari pleaded for some ethical limit to the
land tax, but official opinion refused to recognize
any such obligation. Is it because the agriculturist
has not yet learnt to raise his voice and demand
a hearing? Taxes which affect the articulate
minority are discussed publicly, but the land tax
has been constantly on the increase, and yet we
hear nothing about it in our Legislative Councils
or in the public press. " It cannot be denied,"
said Lord Curzon, "that upon the incidence of
Land Revenue collection must depend the pros
perity of those classes to a great measure. There
should be left to the cultivator of the soil or the
landlord, as the case may be, that margin of profit
that will enable him to save in ordinary seasons
enough to meet the strain of exceptional mis
fortunes." Malabari pleaded for nothing more
than the translation of this statesmanlike view
into practice. He thought the peasantry ought to
be allowed enough time to rest and recuperate
before a new settlement is attempted. Whatever
cripples the resources of the ryot, cripples the

1 64 B. M. MALABARI
finances of the State. If the peasantry were pros
perous they would pay in indirect taxes more than
enough to guarantee the financial stability of the
State and facilitate the introduction of those re
forms that now have to be abandoned or post
poned for want of funds.
Malabari was no sentimentalist. He had lived
with and worked among the people. He under
stood the meaning of their dumb despair, the
eloquence of their sunken eyes. He realized that
the prosperity of India depends on the prosperity
of the peasants. The absorption of twenty millions
of treasure from a population of three hundred
millions may mean only is. ^d. per head, but it is
a poor index of the state of the peasantry. Ac
cording to Sir Bamfylde Fuller two cultivated
acres provide on an average for three people, and
in some localities two persons live upon each acre
in cultivation. It goes without saying that high
rents and revenue can neutralize the yield from
these small holdings, even in good years. As a
matter of fact the yield is small, poor, and un
certain. He was of opinion that the land question
in India was slowly developing into a momentous
problem. And yet apparently the administration
makes no allowance for the changed conditions.
There are murmurs of discontent even in the
villages, a blind groping for escape from burdens
becoming steadily heavier. Year by year the rail-

FAMINE v. LAND TAX 165
road, the telegraph, the newspaper, the school
master, and other agencies are disseminating new
ideas among the people, and slowly modifying the
traditions of unmurmuring resignation. Yet year
after year the Settlement officers go about, in
creasing the land tax, taking the rise in prices as
the basis of increase, though it means also a pro
portionate rise in the cost of production.
The relations of the peasant with the Sarkar
are practically confined to some kind of payment
by him. No law, or act, or regulation exists which
has not its revenue paying section, whether in the
form of direct tax or cess, or toll, or fine, or
penalty, or voluntary subscription.
" His poverty," says an able writer, " is taxed
in the Civil Courts; his inability to protect his
crops is taxed in the Criminal Courts ; his industry
is taxed in the Revenue Courts, and his ignorance
is taxed everywhere. But over and above all
these and other direct or indirect payments which
a ryot has to make, he may have to contribute
something in cash and kind for the propitiation of
minor gods, whose wrath has a greater poten
tiality for mischief."
Can the Indian ryot regard as Ma Bap officers
who come only to tax him ? Even the most dutiful
son will resent continuous encroachments of the
kind. If in a few years there is a wave of discon
tent in the villages, it will not be right to ascribe

1 66 B. M. MALABARI
it wholly to the teachings of irresponsible speakers
and writers. It will be the result of economic
pressure, and the people mainly responsible for it
will be those who now refuse to take measure of
the changing conditions. It is still time to modify
the revenue policy. It may be too late when the
villager, like the buffalo, makes up his slow mind
and shakes his head at all explanations and com
promises. Malabari asked for nothing but a clear
and sympathetic interpretation of Lord Curzon's
Land Revenue policy. He asked for long term
settlements, raising the period from thirty to forty
years, and that land revenue should not be raised
above 25 per cent, on any holding at any revision
of settlement.

CHAPTER XV
NATIVE STATES
THE gods that dowered Malabari with the
gift of complete understanding brought him
into close relations with many of the Indian
princes. It was as a friend and advocate of the
ruling chiefs and men of noble families that he did
some of his best work. The Maharajahs, the
Rajahs, and Nawabs realized the value of his
advocacy and sought his assistance. He who
came to Bombay friendless and unknown, was
destined to befriend great chiefs, some of them
tracing an unbroken descent from the Sun and the
Moon, and exercising almost absolute power over
the lives of millions of their subjects.
It was the triumph of Malabari's personal char
acter that he extorted their respect and enjoyed
their confidence. He lectured Rajahs and Maha
rajahs, and they submitted to his remonstrance and
advice. It was a position incompatible with the
Indian ideas of kingship, but they found in him a
champion in sympathy with their past traditions,
and deeply concerned in their present welfare.
167

168 B. M. MALABARI
They bowed before him as they would before a
Brahmin. Some of the chiefs, like the Ruler of Udaipur,
are descendants of a house that once ruled India.
They have kept their hold on their little kingdoms
through centuries of stress and storm, cherishing
an intense race pride which even the Moghuls
could not subdue. Other important States like
Hyderabad, Baroda, Gwalior, and Indore came
into existence on the break up of the Moghul
empire. They continue to exercise, even up to this
day, sovereign rights in their States, and exercise
undisputed authority in matters of internal ad
ministration. In the early days of the East India Company
the ruling chiefs commanded strong armies, and
the British Government was eager to secure them
as friends and allies. The Government contracted
treaties with them as between equals, there being
no question of allegiance to the paramount power.
Things, however, slowly changed as the Govern
ment of India passed under the Crown, and
established its hold on the country. The ruling
chiefs gradually felt there was a power above them
that compelled obedience, and expected them to
do their duty by their subjects.
A ruling prince is generally an Eastern prince,
and nothing more. He has little education, but
great ideas of his own importance which he

NATIVE STATES 169
imbibes from his surroundings, and a fearless
adventurous spirit which he inherits from his
fathers. The administrative methods in the protected
States were mediaeval. Theagriculturistsploughed,
sowed, and harvested, and paid the State a share
of the produce on the threshing floor. The scribes
cast up accounts and kept their musty volumes,
and administered justice much to their own
advantage. They were always humble and sub
missive in order to gather in their harvest of gold,
which was dearer to them than life itself. The
chief fought with his neighbours, and occasionally
interfered and did justice to some poor man, and
his simple act of justice passed into a proverb.
The story of Rawal Chachick, the Maharao of
Jaisalmer, reveals the character of the Rajput.
He fell ill, and thought he was dying. He sent a
message to the Muhammedan ruler of Multan,
requesting the boon of Battle, " Judh Din," so that
he might die fighting and attain salvation. He
assured the Muhammedan Ruler that honourable
death was the sole object of the challenge. The
Governor of Multan agreed. The Maharajah was
rejoiced at the prospect of parting with life like a
soldier. He performed his ablutions, worshipped
his sword, bestowed gifts on the priests, and
withdrew his thoughts from the world. He then
gladly went out to the battle-field prepared to

170 B. M. MALABARI
die. The fight continued for four hours, and the
Yadu Prince fell with all his kin, performing
prodigies of valour.
Such are the old traditions of the princely
houses of India, battles fought and lives sacrificed
in obedience to the supposed Dharma of the race.
It is the descendants of these men who have now
to submit to the Pax Britannica. They have to
accustom themselves to steady work, and conform
to the Western ideas of the duties of a ruler.
The Government of India at first refrained
from interfering with the native States, but when
it grew strong enough it began to enforce its will.
The administration in the native States was far
from perfect, intrigues and family feuds gave
ample opportunities for intervention, and the
Paramount Power could not for ever remain an
interested spectator, and allow lawlessness to be
rampant in the States that it protected. A small
beginning was made when political agencies were
established in all the important States.
" This system of agencies is responsible," wrote
Malabari, " both for a great deal of good and not
a little of evil. It has undoubtedly helped to
improve the administration, but it has undermined
the power of the ruler by establishing a more or
less irresponsible control, which causes bitterness
all around. Officers appointed to the diplomatic
service were to act obviously as agents between

NATIVE STATES 171
the Paramount Power and the Native States. But
owing to the incapacity of many of the ruling
chiefs, the political agents slowly encroached
upon the power and authority of the former and
came to exercise, indirectly at any rate, supreme
control. This position has now become crystallized.
The Supreme Government, no doubt, desires to
ameliorate the condition of the Native States and
their people through their accredited agents. But
there are agents and agents. A masterful
' Political ' loves to brush aside the ruler as of
little account, practically relieving him of all re
sponsibility. Lord Mayo described him as ' a
dangerous official.' He himself rules through a
Prime Minister or a Council who intrigue against
their own chief. It is to their advantage to prevent
all good understanding between the Rajah and his
Political." Then comes the system of secret and confidential
reporting to the Government, and some police
officers are' adepts in the art of weaving stories
to earn kudos. In this connection Malabari, the
sanest and the most sparing critic of the Govern
ment wrote: "It (the system of confidential re
porting) lends itself to injustice without a chance
of redress, and is the cause of serious dissatisfac
tion among this class of Her Majesty's allies and
friends. No man should be condemned unheard.
Don't think, because he (the Rajah) smiles and

172 B. M. MALABARI
says, ' Yes, yes ' to everything, that he does not
feel. He is most sensitive when showing most
indifference, most reluctant perhaps when show
ing the greatest willingness."
It must, of course, be admitted that British in
fluence in the majority of cases works for justice
and goes to raise the standard of administration
to English ideals of efficiency. Some of the most
important States are developing into well equipped
administrative units. But the intervention of the
Political Agents does not produce a happy im
pression on the Princes. It is difficult to con
vince them that the acts of the " Political " are not
sometimes due to prejudice, the spirit of contra
diction and a petty desire to parade his own import
ance. " The love of supremacy, born with the average
Briton, is accentuated in this instance," continues
Malabari, " by the position assigned to the ' Polit
ical,' by his surroundings, and by his ignorance
or disregard of the difference in ideals that separ
ates the new mode of administration from the old.
The chief must carry out the policy of the Sahib,
accede to all his wishes, even his whims, or he
will be reported. In that report, marked 'Con
fidential,' it is open to the ' Political ' to abuse his
position almost to any extent. The other party
will have no opportunity of meeting the alle
gations against him, or justifying his inability

NATIVE STATES 173
to accede to the wishes of the accuser. In a
majority of cases the report stands at head
quarters. It is not to be supposed that the chief
is always blameless. If he were, the worst Polit
ical could not do him the least harm. The chief,
no doubt, needs guidance, friendly advice, and in
some cases control, but this should be open, re
sponsible and honourable. How many innocent
men and women have suffered under this system
of reporting, and how many unworthy ones have
gained under it ? Why should not an opportunity
be given to the accused to meet the accusation
made behind his back. ... At present the Rajah
alone, less fortunate than the humblest of the
Queen Empress's subjects, is thus condemned
without a hearing."
Many of our chiefs have taken the line of least
resistance, and devote themselves entirely to sport
or idle amusement. They leave the States to be
administered by Ministers. They would be auto
cratic rulers, or not at all. They have no serious
business in life. In the early days the Princes
were usually brought up to be courageous and
brave. They were expert riders and swordsmen.
Most of them can now only be charged with idle
ness, which leads inevitably to mischief, and the
waste of fine opportunities. " They might be little
gods on earth, and they are mostly jockeys and
fops," said Emerson, of the English nobility of his

174 B. M. MALABARI
day. The remark applies with greater truth in the
case of many an Indian chief.
This is an age of enlightenment, and there are
ruling Princes who are trying to do their duty by
their States and by the paramount power. Un
fortunately, the better educated and more capable
a chief is, the more he feels the anomaly of his
position. The more he wishes to make a stand
for his rights, the more determined is the opposi
tion he has to face. It is here that the system
fails, as it makes no allowances for persons who
are anxious to administer their States justly, and
to do the best they can for their people and for
the supreme Government.
This was Malabari's opinion. Things have
changed in recent times, and the Princes are
allowed much more freedom, and are encouraged
to prove themselves worthy of their high positions,
but in former times, many a well meaning chief
had to leave the administration alone, reserving
himself for dress rehearsals and grand Durbars.
To be fair, however, I must take leave to quote
my own experience. At the instance of Malabari
I was persuaded to accept a position in a Native
State, and I was prepared to encounter much
interference from the political agent. In fact at
the first meeting I told my Political frankly, that
I thought dual control was not in the interest of
he administration, and that I hoped he would not

NATIVE STATES 175
encourage people to talk to him about the internal
administration. I little thought that I should have
to change my views. I found him a friend of
the Prince and the people, always refusing to in
terfere, and ever ready to give all the assistance
in his power for the well-being of the State.
The fact is that the Government of India
guarantees protection to the States, and the sub
jects of these States also look up to the Paramount
Power to protect them, and secure for them the
same rights and privileges which their neighbours
in British India enjoy. The political agent has to
interfere occasionally, but the treaties provide for
no interference of the kind, and the chiefs resent
it. It would no doubt help in the final settlement
and satisfaction of all parties, if the obligations of
the Princes towards their subjects, and the Para
mount Power were defined so as to remove all
future misunderstandings. The Imperial Govern
ment ought to provide a tribunal which may ad
judicate in an open and honourable way in all
matters of importance between the people and the
Prince. At present there is no agency in the whole
machinery of the Indian Government which may
be appealed to when there are serious disputes
between the Rajah and his subjects. The decisions
of the Government of India, so far as the Native
States are concerned, follow no precedent ; and
are as variable as the wind.

176 B. M. MALABARI
Malabari held that the Government should try,
with the more enlightened of the chiefs, a policy of
confidence and hearty good will. The younger
generation differ from their ancestors in many
respects. They want more freedom of action and
movement. They do not like asking for per
mission in matters of detail, which are of no great
importance. What is necessary now is to provide
the States with a constitution to guarantee con
tinuity of good administration, and to strengthen
the possibilities of progress. The Maharajah of
Bikanir has shown the way, and the Government
of India provides a good model for a constitution,
which, if followed in all the important States,
would greatly help to place their administration
on a sound footing. This would make the work
of the political officer easier, and improve rela-
lations between him and the chief.
The problem of the social relations between
officials and non-officials requires adjustment
almost all over India. Besides the three hundred
ruling States, some of them as big as the British
Isles, and and others no larger than two square
miles in area, there are many thousand families of
as noble a descent, with pedigrees losing them
selves in remote mythology. They have their
own traditions and characteristics, known within
a radius of fifty miles, with an hereditary tenantry
bound to them by ties of long connection. Then

NATIVE STATES 177
there are millions of soldierly families, with tradi
tions of fearlessness and Izzat, each living on its
own small estate, known and respected in the
neighbourhood. Are these chiefs, nobles and
soldiers never to play any part in the administra
tion of the country — which their forefathers ruled?
The Western educated classes look down upon
them — and the officials take notice of them only
on ceremonial occasions. It is a miracle of English
character that, without any special training, the
Civil Service has built up such a glorious reputa
tion, and established an administration which is
the envy of other nations, but the time has arrived
when a special training would be of great use.
An Indian civilian has to act as a policeman,
judge, magistrate, political officer, and later on
as head of a Provincial Government. Is pro
ficiency in mathematics, or languages, the best
equipment for such a ruler of men ? How can
European classics or mathematics serve a man
who is usually ignorant of the language, history,
traditions and administrative machinery of a
people so different from his own? He acquires
his knowledge of Indian life from criminals and
beggars, respectable or otherwise, who every
morning come to see the " Sunny face of the
Huzoor," and to secure a post for " the slave's
son." He naturally acquires an unconcealed con
tempt for things — Indian. N

178 B. M. MALABARI
" I can imagine nothing more mischievous, more
dangerous, more fatal to the permanence of Eng
lish rule in India than for the young civil ser
vant to go to that country with the idea that it is
a sink of moral depravity, an ant's nest of lies, for
no one is so sure to go wrong, whether in public
or private life, as he who says in his haste : All
men are liars." Thus wrote Max Miiller, and
Malabari was of opinion that any one who felt
himself above working with us, should not be
allowed to join the civil or military services in India.
He held, too, that a course in Indian history,
Indian law, and Indian languages should form the
principal features of an examination for the Indian
Civil Service. " Let us ask our English rulers
and fellow subjects," he wrote, " to treat us as their
equals, and, where we are wanting, to push us up
to their level, rather than keep us where we are,
on a crust of comfort, such as we throw to the
lame dog whom we do not wish to kick off the
stile. In short, within the measure of our capacity,
and the circumstances of the country, there should
be an approximation in the methods of Govern
ment between India and England, with equality
as the basis both of public administration and
personal intercourse." In India the Englishmen
have no precedents to follow but those of their
own making. The beginning may well be made
with the ruling chiefs. They should be educated

NATIVE STATES 179
and trained for their high calling and their auto
cratic tendencies controlled by a constitution,
and a clear definition of their responsibilities
towards their own people and the Paramount
Power. Let it be understood that Anglo-Indians
are not alone to blame for the gulf between the
rulers and the ruled. Much more to blame
generally are our own countrymen, who lead the
English officials astray by maligning and mis
representing their own kith and kin. Let every
Englishman coming out to India approach his
work with high ideals, such as inspired Sir William
Jones. " India," wrote Max Miiller, " wants more such
dreamers as he was, standing alone on the deck
of his vessel, and watching the sun diving into the
sea with the memories of England behind, and
the hope of India before him, feeling the presence
of Persia and its ancient monarchs, and breathing
the breezes of Arabia and its glowing poetry.
Such dreamers know how to make their dreams
come true, and how to change their visions into
realities. And as it was a hundred years ago, so
it is now, or at least so it may be now. There are
many bright dreams to be dreamt about India,
and bright deeds to be done in India if only you
will do them. Though many great and glorious
conquests have been made in the history and
literature of the East since the days when Sir

180 B. M. MALABARI
William Jones landed at Calcutta, depend upon
it, no young Alexander here need despair be
cause there are no kingdoms left for him to conquer
on the ancient shores of the Indus and the
Ganges."

CHAPTER XVI
HIS CREED
SIRDAR UMRAO SINGH, who, all through
life, has been a student of comparative reli
gion and philosophy, once summed up Malabari's
creed in the words of Hafiz :
" Do what you like, but do no injury to an
other. For in my religion there is no sin greater
than this."
Malabari was too religious to accept the meta
physical abstractions or broad generalizations of
Pantheism, and too-positive in intellect to conform
to useless rites. His own creed was very simple.
He believed in a personal God and asked no
questions. Our finite mind cannot comprehend
His infinite nature, he said, and life is too sacred
a trust to be wasted in subtle speculations. How
can we know Him who transcends all knowledge?
We can feel His presence in our best moments,
and experience His love in our hours of trial. It
is traced upon every human heart blessed with
lowliness and simplicity. Every human action is
subject to laws which act with mathematical cer-
181

182 B. M. MALABARI
tainty. The fruit of a moral act is peace ; of an
immoral act, restlessness and misery.
" In this world two principles are working side
by side, the principle of goodness or self-denial,
and the principle of evil or self-assertion. The
more we assert ourselves the more we commit
ourselves in the net of causes and effects, which
know no grace or forgiveness. All our actions are
determined by forces of our own creation. It is
only when we have learnt to deny ourselves, and
seek refuge in Him, that we find freedom and
peace. From time to time great prophets come
to point out the path of self-denial for the salva
tion of man. Those who follow the path are freed,
and find the Kingdom of God; those who wander
away from it learn, through suffering and pain, dis
appointment and despair, that in Him alone satis
faction is to be found. We cannot know the why
and wherefore of things. But we know that the
world is His, and our souls are His, and He is
' All-Father ' of the universe, as the Vedas call
Him. The more we try to solve the mystery of the
universe the more we are confused. But when we
surrender ourselves to His will, we feel His pres
ence, and a strange peace steals over our troubled
minds. The more we adore Him, the more we
feel the inflow of a new strength — a new faith and
a strange approximity to Him, our Father."
Malabari, however, did not believe in the sub-

HIS CREED 183
jugation of intellect in its own sphere. He thought
that reason must have full freedom to judge mun
dane things, and to analyse all that prevents the
soul of man from rising to the source of his being,
remembering, however, its own limits as the ser
vant of the soul. The message which the prophets
have delivered, he said, was the message of God
to man sent through his accredited messengers,
who came to point out the path of salvation. His
creed was, therefore, a curious blend of positivism
and theism.
He often told me that one must die to an un
real life to enter upon the real life, that it is
adoration of self which is the root of misery.
Men and women chase bubbles and barter their
happiness in the vain pursuit, and yet bubble after
bubble bursts, leaving in the hand " which crushes
it a cold damp drop of disappointment."
In his moment of trial, Malabari sought con
solation in prayer, and he said that when the
heart was pure, and the mind concentrated, he felt
as if God's grace flowed into him, transcending all
his faculties. The fragrance of such moments
lingered for days and days.
None of the world's miserable antipathies limited
the outgoings of his love, " broad and deep and
wide as the heart of God." He once read to me
Harrison's " Confessions of Faith " as if he were
reading the Bible. It almost sums up his own

1 84 B. M. MALABARI
ideas ; and I cannot do better than quote it in full
to convey the sum of his own belief: " The faith
of each man is bound up with the destinies of his
fellows. As they suffer, he suffers, as they flourish,
he flourishes ; as they live hereafter, he lives here
after. To live with them and for them, to die with
them and for them, it is all we can desire for happi
ness and peace. Thus let each live in zeal and in
joy, clearing from life all doubt, inaction and
gloom, seeing ever more clearly the solid founda
tion of his faith, the proved truth of human life,
feeling ever more deeply that duty and happiness
can meet only in this: To live for others, yet ac
knowledge ever more devoutly the sublimity,
which overrules us, loving ever more ardently the
boundless goodness of human nature, its perpetual
grace and truth and beauty, and in it seeing the
spirit of its Maker. Thus at last the soul within
and the activity without may join in one harmony
and one work, devoted only to return, by affec
tion and sacrifice, some infinitesmal fraction of
that life-long service, which each of us from birth
to death receive from each and all. Thus each
may live happy and active, accepting every task
and any lot, with humble cheerfulness and wise
content, and dying when death comes, as they die
in battle, over whose bodies their comrades pass
in victory, regretting only that they fall in the first
hours of the fight.

HIS CREED 185
" May something of this spirit yet grow in me;
may I yet have time to begin my duty to undo
the sin and waste of youth, to give my mite also
to the common good, growing each day more clear
in faith, more zealous in act, more loving and
gentle and true. Thus may I live, if I have yet
to live, in labour and in trust, and die, if I am
now to die, in sure hope of good to me and to all
men." Malabari read this with such intense feelings
that I too was deeply moved. " Some such creed,"
he added, " will be the creed of the future. What
terrible persecutions have darkened the pages of
History in the name of God," he murmured, after
a pause, " and yet all mankind bows in worship to
him who is our Father. May it not be that it is
through sorrow and suffering, through streams of
blood and oceans of tears, that the human spirit
is destined to rise to the realization of the Father
hood of God and the brotherhood of Man?"
" No one really seems to believe now," I re
marked; " Hindus, Muhammedans, and Christians
alike have become worshippers of Mammon. Even
the Parsis have been conquered by insidious doubt,
which is more irresistible than the march of an
army. What good are Towers of Silence, when
the faith in the sacred fire is gone? "
" It is considered," he replied, with a far away
look, " more a la mode to speak of religion with

186 B. M. MALABARI
contempt. I often doubt whether what we call
narrow and sectarian may not be better than
no belief at all. India has enjoyed from time im
memorial the reputation of being the land of
spiritual aspirations, and even here superstition
has usurped the place of religion, and a subtle
philosophy sapped the foundations of faith. The
poor and ignorant seek salvation in fetish worship,
and often make tremendous sacrifices for what
passes for religion. Why should there be such a
tangle?" "There could be nothing more broad than the
philosophy of the Vedanta," I rejoined, "and yet
it offers no consolation to the human heart. The
Brahma knows not love, nor hate nor forgiveness,
and in the words of Mallock it has a 'heart of
frost or flame, without even the tenderness of
tears.' How can it draw human hearts to love and
devotion? If you take away the Vedanta, then
Hinduism is nothing but a system of rituals."
"I don't believe," Malabari went on, "in
elaborate ceremonials. Truth is simple, and it
alone has the power to quell spiritual discords
and to heal the heart-ache. Everything else is a
mere palliative, a dose of opium which allays the
symptoms, but does not cure the disease. The
Vedanta is clothed in intellectual garments of
splendour, but it is useless for the purposes of
salvation. The highest aspiration of a Vedanti is

HIS CREED 187
to reach an intellectual frigidity in which there is
no room for the warmth of love. How can it
satisfy the eternal cravings of the human heart
for love which understands all and forgives all ?
The East has given the world many religions and
it may yet give another, firing elements of moral
beauty in a blaze of devout aspirations. This is
not a vain hope. The world is becoming more
and more a united whole, and with the vanishing
of geographical boundaries and barriers of lan
guage, men may find that they are one at heart
though not in creed, and that God is the All-
Father. The subtle filaments which unite humanity
are becoming more and more defined, and where
people formerly saw an antagonist, they are be
ginning to find a brother. Hindu, Christian,
Zoroastrian, and Muhammedan may some day
find that the mental spectrum, which broke up the
divine ray, has vanished, leaving an unbroken sun
beam to vivify all the religions of the world."
" Mystics in all ages have proclaimed this inner
unity," I said, " and it is the triumph of their
creed that its truth has endured for all countries,
all nations and all times. Perhaps as elder brothers
of humanity they realized what will become the
common knowledge of the whole world in its
manhood: unity of God and the brotherhood of
man." " The Yoga system of the Hindus speaks with

188 B. M. MALABARI
the certainty of experience," he replied. "It does
not discuss eternal verities from a mere philosoph
ical standpoint, but, in a hundred aphorisms, lays
down rules of conduct for the attainment of higher
knowledge. It affirms that he who has the power
to rise to a divine ecstasy, or Samadhi, can do so
by complete self-surrender to God, and laying
bare his heart to grace. It is affirmed that God
Himself takes up His abode in the heart of His de
votee, when he sees, feels, hears nothing but God.
The knower, the known and the knowledge be
come one. The religion of the mystic will probably
be the religion of the world, uniting all beliefs in
one organic faith. Perhaps the new religion will
rise in India. Here Christianity and Islam, Zoro-
astrianism and Buddhism, Hinduism, with its many
sects, act and react on one another, and may all
merge into one grand world religion. In the glow
ing hour of a new-found faith all mysteries will
become clear from without, and transparent from
within." This was Malabari's hope for the future.

CHAPTER XVII
THE TAJ GARDENER
MALABARI hardly ever stayed in Bombay
for a full month. He was always on the
move. He met men of all classes and conditions.
He learnt from them that happiness was not the
monopoly of the wealthy, as people imagined;
it came like sunshine to rich and poor alike. It
was particularly the inheritance of those who had
a complete understanding of life and found the
joy of existence full, perfect, and all sufficing. For
himself, he said, he had the best years of his life
as a boy when he wandered in the streets of Surat,
and that later travelling was the great solace of
his life. He was never tired of visiting Agra, and
spending his evenings at the Taj. His remarks
about the Taj gardener may well be read with
advantage by our educated countrymen.
" Drove to the Taj in the morning with Mr.
Baij Nath," he writes. "Met Mr. Smith, the
gardener. Could not help admiring at a glance
his appearance and intelligence. Tall, well-built,
handsome in green old age, not only a gardener,
189

190 B. M. MALABARI
but also a student and a politician, with an eye
for almost everything that is beautiful in nature
and in art, and familiar with the outlines of
modern science. This is Mr. Smith, the Taj
gardener. He discussed the social topics with us
for a few minutes, then drew us on to his favourite
subjects — agriculture and landscape gardening.
He told us something about the books he had
been recently reading, and finally passed on to
politics. He spoke about the situation in Ireland,
about Mr. Parnell and Mr. Gladstone, showing
how he feared the Premier was halting between
principle and expediency. Then he spoke of the
politics of Queen Anne's time, and of the glorious
days of Cromwell, winding up : ' Upon my word,
I cannot see what is going to happen this time.'
As I strolled about with Mr. Smith listening to
his shrewd, intelligent remarks on things gener
ally, I confess I felt humbled to the dust. What
was I, a leading journalist, a thinker, a patriot,
and a heap of other things as the newspapers
describe me, before this simple English gardener.
I have been sometimes addressed with two and
sometimes with three letters after my name, also
as Town Councillor, and so on. An eminent
civilian the other day pointed me out as a likely
member of the Secretary of State's Council.
About four years ago, I narrowly escaped quarrel
ing with my old friend, Colonel Waller, by telling

THE TAJ GARDENER 191
him I was nothing at all. Happening to be under
his roof for a night, I asked Colonel Waller how
he had obtained his V.C. He spoke to me about
his Chitral campaign, and then asked (in poor Ali
Baba's style), how I had smuggled myself in the
cerements of a CLE. at so early an age? I told
Colonel Waller there was some mistake. But he
laughed knowingly. He then asked if the Town
Council gave me about a couple of hundred for
pocket money. I again pleaded not guilty, at
which the gallant Colonel was fairly roused.
'What? you are not going to tell me you ain't a
member of the Town Council, the Corporation,
and all that? I have read your name in the re
ports.' I assured him I was an honest man, at
which he laughed again, and said he would have
satisfaction out of me in the morning. At break
fast the Colonel was restored to equanimity: ' Oh,
I think it is a Parsi gentleman from Bengal, who
is a CLE.,' he explained. I asked, as the light
dawned upon me, ' Don't you think Bengal and
Malabar are wide apart?' ' By Jove they are, but
you deserve to be a knight,' added my warm
hearted friend. I said I preferred another cup of
tea from him, and as I took it, I explained how it
was, that I wished and prayed to be nobody in
particular. But the superstition is wide spread.
Outsiders often mistake me for somebody ; at
times for a big swell. All that is nonsense. But

192 B. M. MALABARI
though I am nobody in particular, I will not affect
to be so modest as to deny that I am as decent
and intelligent a person as any of my years and
position. That is my opinion about myself. And
yet I, a public journalist, could but feel my worth-
lessness in the presence of Mr. Smith, only a
gardener, whom I look upon as almost in every
way my superior. What makes him so? I tell
myself, Mr. Smith is a whole man, whereas I am
less than three-fifths of a man with all my preten
sions. And what made Mr. Smith, the gardener,
a whole man ? He is not an M.A. of the Bombay
University, nor a B.L. of Bengal, nor a D.C.L. of
Lahore. Where on earth did he get all his know
ledge and culture from? How did he learn to find
true happiness in his knowledge, and to diffuse
that happiness ? I say, he got it mainly at home,
from his mother. It was maternal influence par
ticularly, and domestic associations generally that
made Mr. Smith the whole man. He is a force
in politics as in social matters — one likely to make
an excellent householder, patriot and public man.
Thus at the very outset Mr. Smith had an im
mense advantage over me, which he takes care to
maintain. He was born under natural conditions,
and is free from most of the ailments to which I
am a prey. He did not marry early, as most of us
Indians do, ruining body and mind, and marring
prospects of public usefulness. The difference

THE TAJ GARDENER 193
between the English patriot and the Indian is
little more than the difference between the mother
in England and the mother in India. What griev
ously unfavourable conditions we have been work
ing under ! Are we not, many of us, abortive births
physically? Born in misery, we grow up in ignor
ance at home. What can our mother teach us?
Then we go to school and are taught grammar
and geography. Some of us pass on to College,
and stuff our muddled heads at the expense of the
decrepit body. Soon after, in many cases even
before this, we have to find food for hungry
stomachs at home, and at the same time we are
expected to be thinkers, philosophers, and patriots.
All this, of course, we cannot do. What little we
can do under the circumstances indicates the
marvellous vitality of the race. But in attempting
to do a little, we generally break down in mid
career. We are old before forty ; our women old
before thirty. General culture, the power of being
happy, is out of the question. It is hard to say,
but say it I must, that I know few native gentle
men, the best educated, the most advanced of my
acquaintance, who are his equal."
He who would raise the flower must cultivate
the proper soil. Malabari often said : " The British
can do no more than guarantee peace and give free
opportunities for development. They have shown
what absence of caste and love of freedom com-

194 B. M. MALABARI
bined with a constant desire for improvement can
accomplish. Our leaders must now realize that
you cannot revive a dying tree by sprinkling
water on its leaves and branches. The roots must
be opened out to sun and air to receive fresh
nourishment; without a social readjustment there
can be no Indian nation."
Malabari went north and south, east and west,
devoted to his mission of liberating women from
ignorance, and men from caste and superstition.
He found his men apathetic, slow, and all hope of
the future lay in enlisting the sympathies of
women in the cause of reform and progress. It
was after many years' experience and mature
thought that he conceived the idea of a Seva
Sudan for training Sister Ministrants. The Seva
Sadan was to afford shelter to young widows and
others who wished to consecrate their lives to
service, irrespective of caste and creed. He wished
to inspire them with ideals of service and sacrifice,
so that they might go out into the crowded cities
and sunbaked villages to preach their gospel of
social freedom. He hoped at the start that his
countrymen would respond to his call, and when
they failed him he resolved, on a small scale, to
make a beginning and giveia model " Home " of his
own. He knew what he wanted. His purpose
was to point the way by a concrete example ; his
hope, that others would be found to follow the

THE TAJ GARDENER 195
lead and carry out the idea. There was, however,
hardly any response, and he therefore continued
his makeshift work. All through life he was driven
into undertakings to which he felt that his powers
and opportunitieswere unequal. The torturedeffort
and the heavy sense of disappointment that fol
lowed, explain the intensity of the mental strain
that gave him sleepless nights, and yet till his last
pulse beat he never failed or faltered in giving his
best to his motherland.

CHAPTER XVIII
THE END
MALABARI was very reserved and shy
with strangers. His sensitiveness followed
him into Society, and constituted his pleasure and
pain. It was only in the circle of his own imme
diate friends — those whom he loved and trusted
with all the fullness of his heart — that he could
throw off the whole burden of his life which
almost overweighed him. In his happier moods
he diffused the most fascinating cheerfulness
around him. He loved to be away in the hills,
and took a keen delight in arranging excursions
whenever we were together. It seemed a relief
to him to forget the sorrow and disappointment
which his multifarious activities brought him. His
heart opened out under the sunshine of love and
comprehension, and he drew out from each all
that was best and purest. He loved nature, and,
above all, beautiful autumn days in the Hima
layas. A gloomy day affected him like a mis
fortune, while a bright day filled him with joy,
and he became radiant like a child. He was very
196

THE END 197
fond of watching the sunset on the snowy ranges,
and he would describe the essential points of form
and colour in clouds and sky with a far away
look, as if he had sent out his soul to dip in rivers
of glory.
One evening we were returning from Kufri.
We had wandered into jungles and rested on
emerald carpets. We had enjoyed the immanent
repose of the hills and all the wondrous loveliness
of one of those incomparable days which we occa
sionally have in Simla. The evening had slowly
crept on as we came to the main road near the
Viceregal " Retreat." Malabari stopped with a
strange light playing upon his face, and with up
raised arm pointed to the sky : " Look, the gates
of Heaven have been flung open," he murmured.
" I should like to pass on, on some such evening,"
he murmured after a pause. The sun was setting
behind the fleeting clouds of gold, and a great
glow of light illumined the hills linking heaven
and earth for a moment in its splendour. We
walked on in silence. It was not long before his
wish was fulfilled.
Malabari spent lavishly for others ; he was ready
to give himself, his money, his powers, his peace.
For himself he wanted nothing; he grudged even
the few annas which he spent on himself. He
bought a ready-made suit of clothes and kept it
for years, and yet hardly a post went out without

198 B. M. MALABARI
a cheque or two from him to those who sought
his help. He yearned for peace, and till the last
moment he worked for others, thinking it was his
duty to the work-a-day world he was born into.
He always said: "There is but one thing that
never can turn into suffering, and that is the good
we have done. The soul that grows nobler has
everlasting treasures." He did not believe in what
goes by the name of progress, as long as it was
only material. He would only allow the name to
moral improvement, to the growth in increasing
numbers of better and nobler men and women.
He wanted Society to become an organized whole
in which the wise rule. We talked for hours to
gether, and he was never weary of speaking on
subjects which he thought deserved far more
attention than they received. He asked me very
often to carry on his work in the cause of female
emancipation from child widowhood, purdah, and
social inequality.
In the summer of 1912, I and others of his in
timate friends were gathered together at Simla.
But he was much too occupied with his Seva
Sadan, and threatened to remain in the swelter
ing heat of Bombay. The institution was giving
him a good deal of anxiety. We wrote and en
treated, but he bravely held on, till Umrao Singh
reached Simla, and we wrote a joint letter asking
him to come. He could resist no longer, and tele-

THE END 199
graphed that he was coming. Zulfiqar Ali Khan
went to receive him at Kalka, and Umrao Singh
and myself welcomed him near the Railway Station.
It was such a pleasure to be with him again, and
we were all so happy to be together. He was
looking unusually well, and full of wit and humour.
We had our walk round Jakko the same evening,
and on our return General Sir O. Moore Creigh
called, and they sat talking together. They were
great friends and talked on, till it was late, and I
stepped in to say good night. They both rose
and shook hands as the Commander-in-Chief also
found it was time for him to make a move.
" We shall resume our talk again," said Malabari.
" Of course and soon," said the Commander-in-
Chief, little knowing that he had shaken his friend
for the last time by the hand.
When General Sir O. Moore Creigh read my
" Rambles " in manuscript, the gallant old soldier's
eyes grew moist. " It is like talking to old Malabari
again," he said. We had our walk together next
day. It was raining on the third, and he sent me
to Viceregal Lodge to see the Maharajah of
Gwalior, who wanted me to go away with him for
a few days. He had already obtained Malabari's
consent, though I was reluctant to leave him so
soon. However, it was all arranged, and I was to
return quite soon, and report progress to our
friend. We had tea together, and then I left with

200 B. M. MALABARI
a promise to come back in the evening. I was
detained by the Maharajah till seven p.m., and as
it was then drizzling, I thought I would go home,
and see him in the morning. Alas! that was not
to be. He was waiting for me all the while, and
just before going to dinner, he said, " Jogi won't
come." I telephoned to him after dinner, and we
had a good long chat. He had been rallying Umrao
Singh, telling him he could never depend on
Punjabees, and then suddenly left the telephone,
and went up to his own room. Hardly five minutes
later Zulfiqar Ali Khan telephoned saying that our
friend had fainted, and that I must come at once,
and then almost immediately " our friend is no
more." I could not believe the news, and hurried
to Bothwell Lodge with a doctor, but it was too
late, he was gone. It seemed God wanted him at
once and he had to go.
His Majesty the King wired to His Excel
lency the Viceroy : " Please convey to the family
of Malabari the sincere regret, with which the
Queen and I have heard of the death of our
old friend. His death will be a loss to the
country." The Viceroy and Commander-in-Chief sent
their representatives and His Honour, Sir Louis
Dane, Sir Edward Maclagan, Sir James Du
Boulay, accompanied the funeral, with Nawab
Zulfiqar Ali Khan, Sirdar Umrao Singh, Mr.

THE END 2oi
Framjee and myself as pall bearers — while the
Honourable Pundit Madan Mohan Malaviya repre
sented the Hindus. The Maharajahs of Gwalior,
Patiala and Bikaner sent wreaths, and the whole
of India mourned the loss of a man who had done
so much to sweeten the life of his people.
His body rests in the Parsi Cemetery at Simla
just as he had desired, in the middle of a forest of
deodars and in the heart of the Himalayas. Years
before his death, he wrote :
i.
If I have, O God ! my duty done,
What need for more? a tattered sheet
And — owing smallest debt to none —
An humble grave in length four feet,

Obscure and nameless in some wild
Or at some mountain-foot be raised :
And in Thine honour be engraved
These three words only — God be praised.
A year has come and gone since our rambles
on this earth came to a sudden end. His son
Pheroze and other friends gathered to offer our
prayers for his soul on his death anniversary. It
seemed to us he was not dead. His spirit surely
was with us, and we should meet again be
yond the border.
Pheroze wanted a gravestone for his tomb,

202 B. M. MALABARI
though I am sure he would have preferred to let
the grass grow over it. We walked into the adjoin
ing cemetery to select a design, and lo, the grave
stone that appealed to me, was the one that
covered the grave in which Mr. Smith, the Taj
gardener, rested. It is a strange coincidence— but
they have come near each other again, and re
newed their friendship, and perhaps again found
their joy in flowers and fragrance together.
Though he is gone, he will live in the hearts of
his friends, and I shall consider the few years I
passed with him as the greatest thing in my life.
May peace be his!

THE END

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