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CASTE AND OUTCAST
CASTE AND OUTCAST
BY
DHAN GOPAL MUKERJI
AUTHOR OF “KARI THE ELEPHANT’’
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 FIFTH AVENUE

Copyright, 1923
By E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
All rights areaerved
TNS S
First Printing, . . April, 1933
Second Printing, . . Aug., 1983
Printed in the United States of 4 merica
DEDICATED
Qſa jig 3riends
EMILY SPACKMAN
CATHARINE AND CLARENCE BISHOP SMITH
LUCY HoRGAN
*-
y *. ...” “... -- 3 # 3%
\; A & 5 *# 3.
Trai º"' .. % , arrerº *T2
§ - \, …º.º. ÅA ºf 3 ºf
CHAPTER
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
X.
XI.
XII.
* * , º, ºr
~$ºxº; \;' ſ}:
-- ū
• *
PART I. CASTE
CHILDHooD
My LITTLE SISTER
THE HOLY MAN
INITIATION
PILGRIMAGE, BENAREs
PILGRIMAGE, THE HILLS
THE CASHMERE SHAwL
IDOLS . . . .
THE PRIEST . . º
TRADING SHAwLs . . .
My BROTHER’s MARRIAGE
PAGE
3 I
62
74
II.
III.
IV.
VI.
VII.
EAST AND WEST
PART II. OUTCAST
. INITIATION INTO AMERICA .
My SocIALIST “FRIENDS.’’
THE Second YEAR IN COLLEGE
SoMETHING OF FRANK’s LIFE
... WHAT IS THE ANswer?
IN CALIFORNIA FIELDS
SPIRITUALISM . . . . .
EPILOGUB.
85
IO2
I IO
II9
127
137
I53
I65
I88
2O7
225
252.
264
283
299
CASTE AND OUTCAST
Part I
CASTE
CHAPTER I
CHILDHOOD
I AM a Hindu of Brahmin parentage, and I was
born and brought up in a small village near
Calcutta. Though the early part of my life was
much like that of other children of my caste, I find
that in attempting to describe it to English
readers, I am at once in a dilemma. The
narrative, slight as it is, seems to require continual
interruption in order to explain the real meaning
of the simple incidents of my childhood and youth
—simple, that is, in the Hindu's experience. But
there has been so much misconception about India,
especially with regard to our education and social
customs, that I am tempted to let the narrative go
to the wall in favor of what a western friend of
mine calls “the oriental's fondness for vague
philosophizing.”
Indian life cannot be understood with even
moderate justice, if its constant background of
religious thought remain unrealised. That is the
difference between the point of view of the most
3
4. CASTE
humble Hindu and such a brilliant painter of
Indian life as Mr. Kipling. I use the word painter
advisedly, for everything that the eye alone can
take in, that Mr. Kipling not only sees but com-
pletely conveys. No one, however, except a
Hindu, to whom the religion of his country is more
real than all its material aspects put together, can
understand Indian life from within. But here is
the dilemma—to convey this in a manner con-
sistent with the western idea of what a book ought
to be. I fear it is impossible. However, when I
came to America, I encountered, as you will hear
if you will follow me so far, an object which
figures much in American controversial, if not
philosophic life—I mean the “soap box.” And
when my western auditor sees me mounting this
humble platform to quote and expound, I hope for
a degree of sympathy with my effort to present a
more intimate impression of eastern life.
As I look into the past and try to recover my
earliest impression, I remember that the most vivid
experience of my childhood was the terrific power
of faces. From the day consciousness dawned
upon me, I saw faces, faces everywhere, and I
always noticed the eyes. It was as if the whole
Hindu race lived in its eyes. As I grew up,
wherever I went on all my pilgrimages and travels,
CHILDHOOD 5
I continued to feel the wonder of faces, the faces
of nature, the faces of animals, the faces of people.
There was a vast procession of ideals and desires
moving before me as I watched these faces and
behind each I caught the gleam of a thought and
began to form an idea of the person himself.
The jungle is the next thing that I remember.
Our house was situated at the edge of the forest
not far from the town. In the evenings, after the
lights were out, we used to sit by the open window.
looking towards the forest. I remember one even-
ing especially; though I must have been a very little
child at the time. I was gazing into the darkness
outside when I saw something that appeared to me
like a huge jeweled hand. This hand, with rings
gleaming on all its fingers, was slowly coming
toward me out of the jungle. The movement of
the hand in the darkness was intense and terrifying.
I cried with fright, and my mother, putting her
arms about me, said: “Fear not, little son. Those
are only the eyes of the foxes and jackals and
hundreds of other small jungle dwellers coming
and going about their business.” I was overawed
by the fierce power of life, and I watched in silence
the tremendous black masses of dark trees with
the emptiness gleaming all around them, and the
innumerable fireflies flitting about. My grand-
father, who was fond of quoting poetry, said:
6 CASTE
“The earth is mocking the stars by throwing out
her illumination,” and at last, soothed and quieted,
I was put to bed.
We lived in the outskirts of a town near Cal-
cutta, my grandfather, father, mother and my
brothers and sisters and I. As we were Brahmins,
we had charge of the village temple which had been
in the family for generations. I was the youngest,
and of an enquiring turn of mind, I imagine, for
my grandfather used to say I asked more ques-
tions than any other child he had ever known.
Perhaps that is why I observed and remembered
many things that to the average Hindu child might
be so usual in daily life as to be unconsidered and
forgotten.
I remember every hour of our ritual, and there
is a ritual for every hour of the day in India; the
ritual peculiar to Brahmin households like ours,
and the ritual of the peasant and the workman.
The members of my family, the townspeople, the
laborers in the field, the many beggars—each fol-
lowed an intricate and age-old pattern of life,
from sudden sunrise, through fervid noon, to the
heavy fall of night and silence. I used to hear
people before dawn making ready for the sun. In
the jungle the elephants had bathed and the tiger
had gone, and all the small animals had come home
to their lairs. Then I heard the song birds, and
CHILDHOOD 7
afterwards the darkness rose and the sun came
galloping up like a horse of flame, and hundreds of
people outside our temple gates and in the streets
and in the fields waited to greet him. I used to
watch them from our windows when I was too
little to go out alone. They lifted their hands and
chanted the verses that every day, for four
thousand years, have greeted the rising sun in
India:
O blossom of eastern silence, wandering
upon paths dustless and untainted by the feet
of man, bring thou the dawnward way, and
be our advocate before the speechless God!
Later in the day the schoolchildren trooped by,
their hands full of flowers. They were bringing
them to our temple on their way to school, and they
held them carefully, never smelling their perfume,
as that would be considered contaminating to a
holy offering. As they went, they repeated:
Come, gather flowers for the temple!
The wind falls like audible silence | The
winged and the four-footed ones dance to
mark the beat of the steps of silence.
They used to enter the temple and leave their
flowers with my brother, who was at that time the
8 CASTE
priest in charge, and then they would go on to
school singing:
With hands dipped in the colors of music
and wisdom, bless us, O Goddess of Learn-
ing !
This is the usual custom that all Hindu children
observe.
As the day wore on the beggars would come
and sing, asking for food or small coin. When
I grew older I took an immense interest in these
people who throng the streets of Indian towns,
especially near a temple. I remember how they
would sing from door to door and often stop and
talk with the people. One old man who came to our
house and received a bowl of rice from my sister,
gave me while he was eating, this definition of
truth. “If you put all the good deeds of men in
one scale of the balance and the search after truth
in the other scale, the scale that has the search after
truth will always be the heavier. Truth is that which
holds the world together. Truth is that which
feeds the universe on its heart as the child is fed
on the mother's breast.”
I must have been still a little child when I
learned to watch for the lantern man, who before
dusk would come through the lanes of our village
blessing every house. I used to creep out and
CHILDHOOD 9
listen to him intone these words: “O Lord, may
goodness wash away any malice that abides at
these doorsteps I’’ -
In our household, my mother was the first one
to rise in the mornings. She got up about five and
would always sit and meditate for half an hour so
as not to disturb the morning silence. In India a
woman is a goddess and must be ready at all times
to be worshipped. When we children were up, we
would go to her and bow before her and remove
the dust from her feet. Every morning I would
salute my mother and my father. To my mother
I said, “You are my God, my way to God,” and
to my father, “You are the Way, and the End.
O my father, teach me to find the Way!”
My mother was a very simple woman. She
did not know how to read and write. This will
seem strange to western readers, but it is in accord-
ance with the traditional education of a lady in
India, and my mother being of the old school, con-
sidered that anyone who could count beyond a
hundred was too forward to be a lady. She used
to say: “Don’t you think an understanding heart
knows, if not more, at least all that is in the
printed page? The heart is the king who knows
all things and has all things. The head is only the
palace. If your prince be dead, what good is the
empty palace?”
IO CASTE
My mother was a busy woman, for in India it is
the mother who takes entire charge of the children
and their education until they are ten or twelve
years old. There were eight of us, and a large
household to run, and my mother never spent less
than three hours a day in prayer and meditation.
Yet her life and personality were so quiet, her
duties were conducted so softly and with so much
gentleness, that as I look back it seems to me as
though it must have been tranquillity and not energy
that was the motive power in our home. My
mother could cook and did so, for cooking is a
sacramental act and is part of the day's religious
ritual. At midday she would meditate and no one
was allowed to disturb her, but in the afternoon
she would recite to us from memory parts of
the epics, the old religious tales of India. She had
been taught by her mother, and her mother by her
mother, and so on back for generations. We
would listen for about half an hour at a time and
then repeat what we had heard. Sometimes she
would have two of us chant the lines, sometimes
one at a time.
I am afraid I was more intent upon the
brilliant pictures evoked by stories of gods and
goddesses and heroes, than by the deep religious
significance of these ancient legends. As I was
obliged to commit them all to memory, however,
CHILDHOOD II
I gradually absorbed their inner meaning, and
when I grew older, the memory of my mother's
face as she recited, and the intent yet remote ex-
pression of her dark eyes seemed to impress upon
me the sense of their spiritual import. We have
few books in India, so each mother has to pass on
the legends by word of mouth to her child, and
he memorizes them, usually before fourteen years
of age. By that time he has a thoroughly trained
memory and this is the chief part of his early
education.
All through my childhood and even after I had
grown up and been away on a pilgrimage, my
mother would come to me when I was in bed for
the night and sit beside me and ask me about
everything that had happened to me during the
day. Then she would say, “Now it is time to go
to sleep. Have you enjoyed anything especially
in the day's experience, my son?” When I would
answer, “Yes,” she would reply, “Well, that was
God's presence which you felt.” With these
words she would leave me for the night.
It is well for the Hindu child to have these
human and tender associations with his religious
teaching, for otherwise his prayers might rest
too coldly upon his young heart. We were taught
many and I give this one about God as an example
of their quality: -
I 2 CASTE
In the howling wilderness of the beginning,
who was it upheld the germ beginningless?
Who wandered in that chaos of silence? As
the waters gave birth to land, the secret of
life was incarnated in that which dwells in
land and water, the tortoise. Then as the
earth grew firm, the tortoise gave place to
the boar, and from the boar came the lion,
as the next cycle of God, and from the lion
came the dwarf, the animal that is animal and
man, and after that came the full man. Then
came the warrior, and after that the priest,
and then the prince of peace, Buddha.
Once in a great while my mother would say to
me when I came to her for my afternoon lesson,
“Little son, I do not wish to instruct you now; I
wish to sleep. Give me your hour !”
I did not like that and would say, “Why should
you sleep, when I wish to hear the epics?”
She would reply, smiling gently, “O son, you
must learn to take care of your mother, because
when you are a man you will have others to take
care of and must not be unprepared ſ”
In the evening when our father, her lord, came
home, he would send his servant to my mother's
maid; and his servant would say, “The lord of the
house, now that he has bathed and is untainted by
CHILDHOOD is
the dust of the street, wishes to see the goddess of
the house, if she permits.” Then the maid, after
delivering the message to my mother, would
return and say, “The consecrated one will receive
you before the dusk hour.” After my mother had
seen my father, came her evening meditation, last-
ing about an hour.
She had a strange healing power, and when we
were sick, she would put her hand on our fore-
heads and say gently, “It is not. It is not. It is
not.” And when we went to bed restless or fever-
ish, how well I remember her coming to us and
telling us to say these words to ourselves, over and
over again, until, soothed and peaceful, we would
fall asleep. In a day, or sometimes two, we would
be well. People used to bring their children to
her and she would tell them to say the words for
themselves, “It is not. It is not,” and ask God to
cure them. This appeal to the subconscious plays
a large part in the lives of Hindu children. In
India a mother will say to her four-year-old child,
“Say to yourself, you are brave, you are infinite.
Nothing can be added to you, and nothing can be
taken away from you.” Those two phrases grow
into the child's mind. Again, he is taught that he
must control the conscious and learn the art of the
unconscious; therefore he must learn to fix his con-
I4. CASTE
sciousness on the following thought, saying to him-
self, “I am free. I am brave. I am perfect.”
Perhaps here it would not be amiss for me to
explain briefly the Hindu conception of mind, so
often mysterious to the western intelligence. For
the Indian splits the mind in two. The conscious
mind takes coffee at eight, the train at nine and
then runs through life making a terrible racket and
calling it achievement. The unconscious mind is
the eternal part of ourselves—the soul. The con-
scious is the thing that the unconscious has ap-
parently created to do its work. Thus if the child
continually says to himself, “I am infinite,” his con-
scious mind slowly grows into a feeling of infinity,
and the unconscious, which is infinite self, gradually
becomes identical with the conscious and the two
become one. In India all the prayers, such as,
“Lead me from the unreal to the real; from death
into immortality” or “It was never born; it shall
never die,” guide the conscious mind to a sense of
immortality, which is inherent in the nature of the
unconscious. Thus in the course of such medita-
tion, the conscious and the unconscious are merged
into one. This is what is called the education of
the real self; and it is surprising to find how much
wisdom the Hindus have mastered, whose con-
scious minds have been so little instructed.
Children in India are taught religion without
CHILDHOOD I5
knowing it. The purpose of religion, or rather the
purpose of life, is that we should find friendship,
love and spirituality in our souls. Ritual in every-
day life is like drilling in military life. Soldiers
are continually drilled, not because drilling in itself
has any meaning, but because it keeps the soldiers
trim, and when the battle comes they are prepared
for it. It is the same with ritual in relation to the
moral fibre of man. Our Indian religion has no
dogma, but it has ritual, which serves two pur-
poses. One is to drill the soul, the other is to
induce a spiritual experience through symbolism.
The whole civilization of India is organized to
induce a spiritual experience for everybody. My
mother used to say: “Ritual is a flower-laden way
by which you teach the young to be law-abiding.”
I was taught our golden rule: “Until and unlessy’
you treat man and all living creatures with the same
consideration that you wish to treat yourself and
be treated yourself, you have not attained religious
consciousness.” Buddha says the same thing: “It
is not enough to take refuge in wisdom. You must
take refuge in constructive brotherhood, and you
will find joy in the result.” -
Every evening the mother talks to the child
about the things that have interested him, so that
she may find out what has dominated his imagina-
tion most. After she discovers it, she tells him to
I6 CASTE
follow out that dominant experience and adhere
to it, since that is the way to God.
Once I asked my mother during one of those
quiet evenings with her, “Does every path lead to
God?”
“Yes, if you follow it out logically to the end.”
I asked, “Even the path of evil?”
She said, “Yes. You remember God had a
servant once who transgressed His will and fell
away from heaven. This servant was Ravana.
He said, “But, Lord, I want to come back to You.’
“God said, ‘Then go and do penance on earth.”
“‘But I want to come back to You very soon.’
“And God answered, “Then go and be my
enemy.”
“‘Your enemy, my Lord?' said Ravana.
“God said, ‘Yes; if you are born as my enemy
and lead men astray I will come down to earth to
destroy you and save mankind, and by destroying
you, I will liberate you and bring you back to
heaven.’”
So my mother said, “If you could do evil like
that, logically following it out to the end, even then
you would find God. Never stop halfway on any
path. Go on like the rivers, to the end, and you
will find that in the end you have reached God.”
When I was about ten years old, my father sent
me to a Scotch Presbyterian school. He said, “I
CHILDHOOD 17
have discovered a Christian saint in Dr. D ?
the head of the school. I want you to learn
Christianity. If you are convinced it is wrong, fight
it; if you are convinced it is right, embrace it!”
When my training was over, I brought a picture
of Christ to my mother while she was meditating
and asked: “Why do you meditate in the presence
of a false God? This is the real God I have
found.”
She said, “I have heard of Him from others.
He has no quarrel with my God. He is one of
my Gods. He is another name.”
We pushed the image of Vishnu to one side, put
the picture of Christ in the sacred niche in the wall
and burned incense and meditated before Him.
My mother said, “He who brings about a quarrel
between God and God is a more dangerous sinner
than he who causes war between man and man.
God is one. We have given Him many names.
Why should we quarrel about names?”
When we quarrel about names we fall away
from religion and come into dogma. Religion is a
spiritual experience—and in that sense the Hindus
are religious, as are the Chinese, the Jews or the
Mohammedans.
An ordinary Indian boy, who was not born like
myself into the priest caste, would have gone to an
Indian or an English government school. There
I8 CASTE
are certain schools where he could learn to read
and write, but not many. There are old Indian
schools where he would have studied the Scriptures.
I attended school about ten years altogether, as I
remember, but in order to be a good Brahmin
your studies never stop. You learn even from the
Christian saints.
While I was at school, I still continued to hear
my mother's stories. Once I said to her, “Why do
we have waves in the Ganges P”
She replied, “Don’t you see? In the beginning
the mountains had wings and used to fly and cast
their shadows. And the stars and sun and moon
grew jealous, so they declared war against the
mountains and clipped their wings with a thunder
bolt. Some of the mountains took shelter under
the water where the thunder could not reach them.
And now they sometimes fly in the water and you
see their wings showing above, and thus we have
waves.”
I used to spend hours watching the Ganges and
not a fraction of a wing could I see sticking out of
the water. And other such tales she used to tell
me many times.
“Why is there poetry?” I once asked her.
And she told me this story:
“There was a man avid for riches. The only
way he could obtain wealth was to kill people and
CHILDHOOD I9
take their goods. His name was Ratnakar. Once
he attacked a saint, and said to him, ‘Your wealth
or your life I’
“‘I have only my life,' the saint replied. “I am
a man who believes in holiness, and I spend my
life in wandering and prayer. But tell me why
you try to take other people's possessions?'
“‘Because I want imperishable riches,’ said
Ratnakar.
“The saint replied, ‘All riches are perishable.
Why don't you write a life of God? That will
give you imperishable wealth.”
“‘But I am no poet,” said Ratnakar.
“‘Then you are the very man,’ replied the
saint. ‘Go and meditate until the thing becomes
clear to you.’
“So Ratnakar meditated for so long a time that
the ant-hills grew over him and he was called ‘the
ant-hill covered man,’ which in Sanskrit reads
‘Valmiki.”
“One day he saw the epic poem about God clear
in his mind and the song in his heart. He rose
from his meditation, broke through the ant-hills
and took a bath in the Ganges. Then he filled his
pitcher with holy water. As he was going on-
wards, he saw two herons loving each other on a
tree, and as he was enjoying this spectacle, a fowler
shot an arrow which pierced one of the herons.
2O CASTE
The wounded bird fell to the ground shrieking, and
the fowler hastened to take his prey in his hand.
Valmiki, who had been a thief, but whose heart
had been purified by meditation until he had be-
come a poet, cried,
“‘Oh thou low born 1 Thou wilt never attain
ascendency in this world, for thou hast killed a
love-intoxicated one ! But I will give life to the
bird by the miracle of holy water.” -
“He poured holy water upon it and the bird
flew up to its mate. -
“Thus,” my mother concluded, “poetry was
born. The sorrow of lovers is the song of poets.”
My mother told me the following fable to show
that he who is, is greater than he who does:
“Once the mother of the universe was sitting on
the golden throne of eternity. She had two chil-
'dren, the god of wisdom and the god of war.
They wanted to get on her lap, but she said: ‘I
cannot take both of you; who will be the first?
Run a race around the universe, and he who wins,
I’ll take on my lap.” The god of war went off on
his peacock steed. The god of wisdom had an
elephant's head but he had no way of carrying it
and nothing to ride. He could hear his brother
going at full speed. Then the god of wisdom went
to his mother and sat on her lap. When the war
god came back, he was, of course, very much put
CHILDHOOD 2 I
out and cried, ‘Why do I see him on your lap?
He didn't run a race l’ She answered, “He didn't
run, but it isn't going around the outside of the
universe, it is going around the centre of the
universe that counts.’”
Beside the fairy tales, our mother, like all Indian
mothers, talked to us about various philosophical
and religious problems. We would ask her, for
instance, “Why do the sacred books conflict?”
My mother answered, “Truth is one, but sacred
books have tried to give it many names. Why
quarrel about names?” That is the sort of thing
she would say. The sum and substance of my
mother's teaching was this: “All religions are one.
There have been prophets before, there will be
prophets again, and prophets are here. You are
your own prophet.” She said, “Religion ought to
be like a great banyan tree, continually growing
and branching out, and, like the banyan tree,
throwing down new roots, so that all the homing
birds of life may have their nests in it. Keep this
tree growing, and within its branches and its shade
all the other religions will grow their roots and
branches too, and all human souls, like homing
birds, will find their nests there.”
My grandfather taught me poetry. His
memory was going when I was nine or ten, and in
order to exercise it, he taught poetry to me. Now,
22 CASTE
in the Scotch school, they gave me a book to study,
called geography, and there was no end of talk
about places. One day I was reading about
Calcutta. I showed my geography to my grand-
father and said to him, “We are reading about
our own city,” and then I gave him a list of our
export and import trade.
“But that is not geography,” said the old man.
“I have it in an ancient book and I will show you.”
So he went and got Kalidassa’s Cloud Messenger.
He read and translated to me the following tale
from the Sanskrit: -
“A Titan was employed in the Himalayas by
God to look after the treasury, but he defaulted
and was exiled a whole year at the southern point
of India. Being homesick, he wanted to send a
message to his wife, but had no messenger. Sud-
denly he saw the July cloud rising from the Indian
ocean. “I’ll send a message through this cloud.’
“So he said:
“‘In the first flush of July the clouds rise; as the
elephant charges the mountains with its tusks, so
the cloud charges the sky with its tusks of light-
ning. O you born of the sun of the gods ! O sun
of the wandering heavens, take this message to my
wife, and as you go, I will tell you how to reach
my home !’
“Then he gave his directions:
y
CHILDHOOD 23
“‘When you come to the blue mountains, you
feel the breeze becoming different. The wind
caresses you. The white cranes make eye-pleasing
circles before you. Peacocks stand on branches of
the trees, their fans outspread, dancing to the
drumming of thunder. At last you reach the
Himalayas. And you will see where the rainbow
bends its glory to make an entrance for the gods.
You will find a woman there whose bracelets are
too big for her wrists, because she has grown thin,
longing for me. She is my wife.’
“That,” said my grandfather, “is geography, not
exports and imports.”
I have spoken of my father. He had read a
great deal, and used to tell us many strange tales.
I remember one in particular that delighted and
mystified me, about two curious people named Don
Quixote and Sancho Panza. He used also to sing
to us and he talked with us at all times, yet we
never seemed to lose our awe of him, and in
spite of our intimate family life, he always re-
mained to us a kind of god. I remember him
as an Olympian who was lost in this world, and
I think he must have been dejected about it, for
there is a distinct impression of melancholy in my
mind associated with his tall, thin figure and
delicate, aquiline features. Perhaps this was due
to his ill health, however, for when I was a child
24 CASTE
he had hardly recovered from a severe illness that
seriously interrupted the course of his life.
Although a Brahmin he never became a priest. He
was a lawyer by profession, and after his illness he
gave up his practice and studied music for many
years with a very old Mohammedan musician,
named Moradali.
This most remarkable man would sometimes
come to stay with us, and in this case we
would break the laws of our caste, and my
mother would cook meat for him. He had
become my father's spiritual adviser, and there-
fore whatever he ate was spiritual. As we were
Hindu children, he taught us Vishnu hymns. He
was a very old man and was always telling his
beads and I am afraid we used to make fun of him,
but he never minded it. He had a terrific way
of opening his mouth when he sang, and we used
to tell him that he almost swallowed the universe.
He taught my father music for twelve years. A
certain rich man, a friend of my father, used often
to share his lessons. One day Moradali said to
this rich man, “I cannot give you any more in-
struction.”
“Why not?” he said. “You are teaching Mukerji
so much.”
“You see,” replied Moradali, “Mukerji is a
poor man. I have given you the training of a
CHILDHOOD 25.
critic, so that when good musicians come you will
know enough to support them and they will be able
to remain good musicians; but Mukerji will have
to make his living by music, while you criticize it.”
Moradali told us about the six great Indian
melodies, sung at three, six and nine in the morn-
ing, and then at noon, six and twelve at night.
There are also many other melodies, variations and
combinations of these. He told us that the people
are continually making wild melodies which violate
all these fixed rules and which are called “jungli.”
Moradali had a curious history. He had
suffered a terrible grief in his youth from which
he never recovered. He was the court musician
of the Emperor of Delhi at the time of the mutiny
in 1857. He was eighteen when this occurred; the
Emperor's son was shot in his presence after being
captured by Nicholson's men. Then the Emperor
was taken prisoner, and Moradali escaped from
the town where the Emperor was held a captive, a
musician dispossessed of his dignity. Soon after,
the Emperor lay dying and he cried, “Where is
Moradali to sing to me now? I have paid him all
his life.” But the Emperor died before the news
of his last desire could reach the musician.
Moradali was in despair. He said, “I have eaten
my master's salt all my life, but at the end I could
26 CASTE
not serve him ſ” He then composed a song which
is known as the “Remorse Song.” g
O my king, for your sake I go as a mendi-
cant of song from door to door, but desola-
tion greets me as a great shadow on either
hand 1 The glories are gone and wild animals
prowl through the palaces. But the wild
animals that prowl through my heart, who
can take them away?
You can hear this song now in India. It is a
terrible cry of anguish.
All India knows the six o'clock melody; the
world rises to it, and all the morning music that
is made is based upon it. It cannot be altered.
The evening melody is called the “Tiger Beauty.”
I have heard Moradali sing it. He would stretch
his lips, narrowing them in the corners, so that they
took the sinister form of a tiger's mouth giving the
hunger cry. At ten o'clock in the evening he would
sing his Remorse Song, always, when he was with
us. And though we children used to make fun of
him sometimes, we all worshipped this man.
Once I said to Moradali, “Grandfather, tell me;
why music?”
He replied: “When the Lord made the universe
He made men righteous, but they did not remain
CHILDHOOD 27
so. He gave them sculpture to reclaim them.
They played with it for only a few hours. Then
He said: ‘I will give them the power of melody;
through it they will come back to Me.” So He sang
out the sun, and rolled out the thunder melody.
(But this tune has been lost for two thousand
years.) Thus music was created to bring man back
to God.” .
I said, “Did you go back to God in this way?”
He shook his head and would say no more.
I asked my father once, “Why music?”
He answered, “I don’t know, but I think this.
Once on a time there were nine stars and one of
them was attracted by the life of the world and
fell away to come to earth. No one knows what
happened, but it lost itself in everything that lives.
From time to time it cries out to the other eight
stars; that is music.”
As my father's health became better, he re-
newed his practice of law for nine months in the
year, but during the vacations we used to go in a
cart drawn by bullocks from the court of one
rajah to another, where he sang. And now that
he was well and again practicing law, he had the
idea that he should never take money for his
playing.
While we travelled in the bullock carts, my
father was always talking. He would tell us about
28 CASTE
his begging time and the Sepoy rebellion of 1857.
We passed through places where he had seen
massacres. One night we had an adventure with
a tiger. As long as a cart moves, a tiger will never
attack the oxen because the motion of the wheels
frightens him. If the animals stop, however, he
will fall upon them. We were all fast asleep. The
bullocks stopped. We woke, missing the motion.
The driver was asleep on the prow of the cart.
We raised our heads and saw two very beautiful
green eyes in the distance. The bullocks were
shivering and you could smell fear. The driver
woke up and said, “O my father, it is a tiger!”
“Shut up, fool, let us see him l” my father re-
joined.
The driver stopped shouting, we looked at the
tiger and as we looked, the green eyes grew larger
and larger. Saying, “He is going to leap !” my
father tore open the straw mattress upon which we
were lying, lit a match and the straw went up in a
flame. “Grrrrrr!” With this growl we heard a
swift movement in the air, followed by the crash-
ing of a branch, then a thud in the jungle. The
bullocks began to move again, but for an hour we
kept burning the straw until the tiger was com-
pletely frightened away.
There are 30,000 people killed every year by
the tigers, but you have to be a very important man
CHILDHOOD 29
and take out a license from the Government before
you are allowed to carry a gun in India.
My father, when it was possible, would travel
by boat upon the rivers which ran through the
jungle. Once when we were sitting on the boat we
saw a boy on the river bank playing a flute and we
noticed that a crocodile was creeping up.
My father shouted, “O thou great fool and the
grandchild of an arch fool, a mighty crocodile is
upon thee!”
The boy replied, “Oh, hold thy tongue, there is
no crocodile in the river !”
My father answered, “Thou shalt see, but it will
be too late l’’
The crocodile came up and struck at the boy and
he fell backwards. When we came up, we found
he had fainted from terror. We revived him and
my father reprimanded him.
He said, “I beg your pardon. I did not know
you were a Brahmin. Brahmins are sometimes
wise.”
My father used to anchor his boat in the middle
of the river at night. Sometimes we saw the tall
grasses on the banks go like waves in the moon-
light. My father would say, “Watch I It waves
like silken stripes.”
“What is it?”
“It is the tiger.”
3O CASTE
Suddenly we would see the fierce eyes of the
monster on the bank. But being uncertain of the
distance between himself and us, he dared not
attack us. If he sprang and fell short, the
crocodiles would seize him.
Once in these travels, at the court of a certain
rajah, I saw what impressed me as being very
royal manners. We were received at the palace
and were sitting around the rajah. I was behind
my father. In India they give you tobacco
braziers with charcoal burning in them, and one of
the braziers did not fit the rajah's hookah, and the
burning charcoal fell on a beautiful old rug. The
court flatterers cried, “Call the servants 1” But
the rajah picked up the coals one by one with his
own fingers and put them back again in the
brazier. When the servants appeared in con-
sternation, the rajah merely remarked, “Strange
things are happening these days”—then the music
began and everything went on as before.
CHAPTER II
MY LITTLE SISTER
MY sister, nearest of an age to me, was con-
stantly with me sharing the attention of our
mother and playing with me in and about the en-
closure of the temple. I remember vividly one occa-
sion when she and I had been sent with offerings for
the shrine. We were passing through the courtyard
of the temple, when a monkey jumped down in
tawny grandeur from the yellow sandstone roof,
like a piece of the stone itself suddenly dislodged.
He stood before us and grinned so menacingly that
we dropped our offering to the ground in terror,
whereupon he sat himself down on his haunches
and began to devour our carefully selected bananas
and sweetmeats. At this my sister (she was about
eight years old at the time) lost her temper com-
pletely and kicked the monkey in the face. He,
poor beast, screamed wildly and ran for his life.
Then my sister burst into angry and remorseful
tears. She stood amid the scattered fruit and
sobbed, “Vulgar and indecent monkey, to make me
3I
32 CASTE
behave in such an unladylike fashion I Oh, the
shame of having kicked anyone in public!” I can
see her now, a slender little figure painted on the
gold background of yellow sandstone; the sharp
contrast of her very long black hair; the big,
black, tearful eyes and straight little nose in a
round and serious face.
This sister was the youngest of our large family,
an amiable child on the whole, and not given to
quarreling. My mother had a good influence over
us all in this respect and used her increasing deaf-
ness to much effect when any differences arose be-
tween us. When she was appealed to, to settle
disputes, she used to say, “I didn't hear a thing—
you must have been quarreling on my deaf side.”
So when my little sister, at the age of seven, in-
vented wonderful stories about herself, and in-
formed us that she had had a monkey for a nurse
who used to give her rides in the sky every day,
and affirmed loudly, “It is true, it is true; ask
mother,” my mother's deafness was very notice-
able.
The child was a quaint mixture of impulse and
reflection. She had a strong religious instinct
which was, of course, fostered by her training.
Her favorite occupation was making grotesque
symbols of divinity out of mud. She had a small
wooden stool where she enshrined the mud gods
, ºr,
MY LITTLE SISTER 33
and burnt incense before them, morning, noon and
night. No one god lasted very long. After a week.
the symbol would bore her and she would throw
it away, saying to my mother, “I must make a new
worship, the old one was not good and I threw it
into the river.”
“Yes,” said my mother. “Worship, if it is not
ever fresh, palls both on gods and men.”
Little sister would sit on the red-tiled cemented
floor in a gorgeous yellow robe, and chant hymns
by the hour. I used to say, in superior, elder-
brother fashion, “Why do you sit on the floor;
why don't you kneel?”
“The floor is hard, it hurts my knees. I don't
think the Lord likes us to endure pain.” She
never could bear to suffer, poor little sister, which
perhaps may have been for her an incentive to
philosophy.
I remember that she was very fond of ornaments
and was wrapped in gloom for a week after the
loss of one of her trinkets. At last one day she
suddenly became cheerful again, and announced
without preface, “Every woman must have lost a
ring when she was a little girl.”
When she was old enough to go to school, she
was sent to a girls' mission and the New Testament
took strange hold of her young fervid religious
imagination.
34 CASTE
“Mother,” she said, “can you tell me—you who
have four great sons—how I can bear a son?”
“What do you mean, little daughter?”
“Why, mother, I want to be another Miriam
(the Virgin Mary) just as good as she; and have
God for my son as she had. Can you tell me how
to do this?”
My mother replied quietly, “If you meditate
and are pure in heart until you grow up, God him-
self will tell you about it.” -
“I do hope He will not cheat me,” my little sister
sighed.
Mother fostered her religious instincts, but
differently from mine, laying more emphasis on
symbolism, as the Hindu custom is in the education
of girls. For instance, one evening when we were
at the temple listening to the recitation of the
epics, the name of the wisdom god, Ganesa, was
mentioned. My mother explained the symbolism
of the god to her but not to me. Ganesa has
four hands and my sister told me later that these
four hands stood for the four Vedas. When God
revealed the four Vedas He did it so fast that
it took four hands to write them down. Whenever
I wanted to know something about the gods, my
sister could always tell me a story about them. She
was trained to be a teller of tales, for “Woman
MY LITTLE SISTER 35
must weave the tales around which man's life
grows.”
Manners also were an important part of her
training. One day she ran across the room to
speak to me and made rather a noise about it.
My mother called her back, saying, “No daughter
of my house brings misfortune by making her
footsteps audible to others.” When she took her
turn with her older sisters in serving us food, she
had to learn a certain grace of gesture. She was
told to stoop, bending like a Swan's neck; to sit
down and rise silently like a fawn leaping in the
dusk. She was taught to salute by putting her
palms together and touching her forehead to them
at the thumbs.
She learned by heart portions of the epics and
the dramas, with particular emphasis laid on sig-
nificant phrases. Once I lost a piece of silver.
When I came home and told her, she quoted from
the Upanishads: “We realize God by renouncing
the things of this world.”
A cousin of ours came to us after a long pilgrim-
age to Juggernaut. She talked continually about
the riches of the pilgrims she had met and my
sister said to me later, “Our cousin went to
Juggernaut with a load of illusions, and has re-
turned with her load still heavier. ‘Whatever
36 CASTE
thought we carry, that is the destination we shall
find,’” was her conclusion.
She was nearly twelve years old at this time.
Every afternoon at four o'clock, after bathing and
dressing for the evening, she used to put flowers
in her hair and I had to find the flowers to bring
her. But one day, when a mendicant monk was
staying at our temple, she gave him fruits, although
I had just brought in her afternoon flowers. I said
to her, “Why don’t you give him flowers?”
“I am a woman,” she replied, “he is a monk. I
cannot give him flowers, only fruit; because fruit
has no sex.”
One day I was swimming in the lotus pond to
get flowers for my sister and I caught my feet in
the stems of the lotus. I thought the water god
was angry with me and was going to take me to
his home, the moon palace, under the water. So
I screamed and yelled for help and continually I
felt the water god, pulling at my feet.
Suddenly this same monk appeared. “O thou
brainless brother of a wonderful sister, why dost
thou shout ‘water god,” when it is nothing but lotus
stems that have caught thy feet! Dive under
water, open thine eyes and release thyself.”
Choking and gasping though I was from the
struggle, I managed to shout, “O pretender of holi-
MY LITTLE SISTER 37
ness, dive thyself and open thine eyes under this
muddy water if thou canst!”
He plunged in and rescued me and my flowers.
But he would not let me bring the flowers home.
He said, “I have touched them. Take them to the
temple, not to a woman.”
Once my sister and I were standing outside our
front door when a strange man came and stopped
before us. He had a cord around his neck and he
began making a queer sound like the lowing of a
cow. We spoke to him and he lowed again, con-
tinuing to make the same sounds in answer to all
our questions. At last, much to our relief, our
mother appeared upon the scene and we felt secure
at once, for nothing ever frightened mother. She
went about always unprotected wherever she
wanted to go. Fear was not in her make-up. She
looked now at our singular visitor out of her calm
and steadfast eyes that never moved to the right
or the left like those of some women, glancing this
way and that in search of other eyes. She seemed
to feel with her gaze rather than see, and she said
to me, “Go fetch me my box of money.” When I
returned with it, she took out a piece of silver and
gave it to the man, who bowed his thanks and
departed.
We pestered her with our eager questions.
“That man,” she said, “has killed a cow by accident.
38 CASTE
Now he has put the cow's rope about his own neck
and is going through the community begging for
forgiveness. Everyone gives him a piece of money
which is a sign of pardon. People forgive easily
an accident of that sort, and he soon has enough
to take to the priest, either to buy food for the
people, or a new cow for the temple—generally the
former as even a lame calf costs more than he can
collect. In this way he expiates his sin.”
“What happens,” I asked, “if he kills a man
by mistake instead of a cow P’’
“He ought to be allowed to repent and be par-
doned,” said my mother.
“But he isn't, is he?” said I. -
“No, but he ought to be,” my mother insisted.
“I suppose it's different—killing a man”—this
from my sister.
“Man, of course, believes so,” said my mother,
“but if you asked the question of the cow, what
would be her answer, do you think?” But this
was too much for our young heads.
My sister was taught many rituals, different
from those I learned. One of these rituals was
fasting. My father was opposed to this, but my
mother said, “My lord, some day her husband may
die, and as a widow she will neither eat nor drink
for twenty-four hours every moon. Is it not better
MY LITTLE SISTER 39
to practice fasting now, in case the hound of
calamity leap upon her in the future?”
My father said, “There must be a change for
the better in these customs. No widowed daughter
of mine shall fast in my house.”
And my sister answered, “O foolish father, if
the life's light is gone, what matter how long one
fasts?”
Widows are now allowed to marry by Hindu
custom and yet as this practice was unknown for
many centuries, most widows consider it too shame-
less even to be thought of. And when my eldest
sister became a widow, she would not let my father
mitigate any of the rigors of widowhood. My
father, in spite of his principles, fasted with her,
a not unusual practice. He did this out of love
and sympathy. He used to say, “Since men have
made such rigorous laws, it is good that a man
should submit to them with a woman.”
But my little sister was not to know in this incar-
nation either the glory of being a mother or the
sorrow of widowhood. When she was about
twelve years old, she fell ill one evening near sun-
down. It was the plague, and at dawn the next
day her soul set forth again on its eternal vagrancy.
My mother was taken ill that same night. I heard
their delirious talk and firmly believed that they
were conversing with God, because they were so
4O CASTE
soon to be with Him. How did I sense the near-
ness of death, I wonder? Did someone tell me
of their peril? My mother recovered, but how
long she was ill I cannot remember, nor any of
the details of my sister's death. In India we live
with death on more intimate and friendly terms
than in the West, and it makes less impression
upon us.
A Hindu woman's education initiates her into
the primal wisdom of the race and trains her emo-
tions through ritual. As my mother once re-
marked, “Woman must create friendship and love
and must learn to face death, for she cannot give
life without risking life. Thus woman's task is to
sit between two deaths giving life through her
breasts.”
The peasant girls too have their training but it
is less rigorous. We lived on the outskirts of the
village, as I have said, and I used to wander in the
fields at dawn, watching the maidens at their first
morning rite, which was to gather flowers for their
household shrines before which they burned a little
incense to begin the day. I have often heard a
young mother at dawn repeating to her baby:
“O my blessed child, raise your head Î It is the
hour of your worship; the sun has been lit in your
temple. By giving you to the world, I may give a
MY LITTLE SISTER 4 I
god to the world, therefore you are God-given to
be nursed by me.”
The country girls do not work very hard;
indeed, their duties are more picturesque than
arduous. They make garlands of flowers and put
them around the oxen before the men lead the
beasts to the fields, and they milk the cows and
sing the while:
As the milk sings into the pail,
The milkmaid's breast aches with the urge of
motherhood.
They go about gathering flowers for the temple,
and at half past nine there is the “parliament of
women.” In the houses thirty or forty women
get together and gossip. The parliament is from
half past nine to twelve o'clock. Then the heat
comes and they have to sit still and meditate.
Their most interesting occupation is drawing
designs on the walls of the house, usually lotuses
and conch shells. The lotus is the symbol of
spirits and the conch means speech of the gods.
All over the walls are these mural decorations,
and every three or four months they have to be
changed. This decoration is the duty of the girls.
Reading and writing they never learn. They learn
numbers by putting seeds of some kind together
42 CASTE
and counting them. I have seen Indian girls
trained by many foreign methods, but I have
found our way to be the best for them.
In the afternoon they put on their prettiest
clothes and visit each other and gossip. They give
dramatic talks, and I have seen them do plays. In
the evening, just before sundown, every girl goes to
the river with her pitcher on her hip, her anklets
jingling. And by the rhythm of the jingling
anklets, you can tell whether the pitcher is full or
not. Men make songs about it:
You go to fetch water in the dusk, which is
tremulous with the music of your anklets.
O, if I could, I would drown the dusk with
the beat of my heart.
Later in the evening, the cattle come home with
the men, weary after the day's work. This is
called the cow-dust hour, because the cattle's feet
bring the dust up in the air. The cow-dust, we say,
is the cry of life to God, “How long, O Lord, how
long?” The girls attend to the animals first.
They give them to drink and lock them up. After
the evening meal, the girls wait for the dusk to
come, all sitting quietly. Then a very delicate
thing, the consecration of the dusk, takes place.
When twilight comes, they take a lamp in their
hands and go softly around the house saying a
MY LITTLE SISTER 43
prayer of consecration. In the evening they sit
about and talk with their men folk. Then if there
is a woman in the whole village who knows how,
she will take down the Sacred Book and read it to
the assembled men and women. Outside, the tiger
may be walking by; within they will be discussing
the question . . . “and the soul was never born,
how can it condescend to die?” Outside the tiger
is walking, but inside they talk of immortality
One of the most vivid impressions of my child-
hood is associated with a little girl with whom my
sisters and I used to play, and as it may throw
some light on a certain Indian point of view, little
understood by outsiders, I will set it down here,
just as it impressed itself upon my young mind.
This little girl was named Rangini. We did not
know where she came from. At a certain time
Rangini disappeared and I asked my sisters where
she was, but they could tell me nothing. Then
everybody forgot about her.
A long while after, when I was in the city for a
few days with my uncle, I happened to see her late
one evening standing at a balcony, and I at once
knew what she was; she was a dancer, for it was
a dancer's house. I stopped and she turned and
went in without seeing me, and presently I saw her
again inside dancing; her shadow was falling across
the wall. She began to sing:
44 CASTE
I came to fill my pitcher,
Why have you filled my heart?
She sang it, over and over, and it went through
the open windows like a cry from the heart of
Calcutta. I could vaguely see a throng of her
admirers sitting in a circle around her on the floor.
She danced toward them and swayed back; then
sideways, and behind her on the porphyry wall her
shadow trembled like a flame. One of the men
was beating a drum, another playing an instrument
with bells on its handle, which jingled in time with
the bells on the girl's ankles, and with the throbbing
of the drum. As she moved toward them, her
flower-decked hair flicked their faces, and they
sang: “What pleasure you give, O straying hair!”
And Rangini sang:
I came to the black waters of the river to
fill my pitcher and bring it home, but you
stood in the way and now I go home; my
pitcher is full, but my heart is empty. Who
are you standing in the gloaming of the eve-
ning? I know you. You are the plunderer of
hearts. Will you tell me which is the most
beautiful heart you have stealthily garnered
tonight?
Dancers are not necessarily prostitutes; the
better the dancer, the more austere her life. The
MY LITTLE SISTER 45
Indian understands perfectly to what grade these
women belong—the professional dancers are
usually nothing more than dancers. Of course
there are prostitutes, but even to them is given an
ideal of purity. Mr. Kipling makes a passing
reference to this in his story On the City Wall.
He says, “Lalun belonged to the most ancient pro-
fession in the world, and she was married to a tree
who saw everything and said nothing.” Those who
know Hinduism from within can explain this.
When, after watching Rangini through the
window that night, I returned to my home, I asked
my grandfather to explain what I had seen. I said
to him, “Has this girl been wedded?” My grand-
father answered, “O thou curious beyond thy age,
dost thou not know that even she has been
wedded? No woman is denied that consecration,
but certain women, friends of folly that they are,
might fail when they attain their growth to remain
true to marriage, and so they are wedded to a tree
or to some inanimate object, whom they cannot
betray. Their marriage remains an absolute vision
of purity. Even to the lowest of the low the door
of God must always be left open.”
CHAPTER III
THE HOLY MAN
THE holy man, as we know him in India, is well
presented by Kipling in Kim. The Indian
holy man attains the simplicity of a child; the more
childlike he is, the more holy. The holy man has
a sense of humor; he is so holy that he has for-
gotten his holiness. This is the ideal of all Hindu
life. To attain the spirit of childhood is the aim
of Indian education.
I knew such a holy man. It was one of the great
experiences of my life. I was about ten when I
first met him. I do not know how he came to Our
village. He was a very peculiar person; he never
ate more than one meal a day and he used to say,
“If you know how to get nutrition out of food,
one meal is sufficient.” He never did miracles or
tricks; people who came to him found him ignorant
of the things they knew, but nevertheless they
went away happy that they had seen him.
As a young man he had left the world suddenly,
46
THE HOLY MAN 47
and wandered and wandered, and twelve years
later he came back, because every twelve years a
holy man is supposed to return and see his birth-
place, and then go on wandering again. This is
an old custom; I do not know its origin but every
Indian feels the obligation; it is a law of the gods.
My holy man came back to the village where his
wife had been all this time, and took up his
residence under a big tree near the house. He
would go to see her in the morning saying, “I must
go to the mother.” This is according to the
strange Indian belief that it takes two women to
produce a holy man: his mother who gives him
birth and his wife who, through meditation, con-
Sumates his spiritual birth.
He was a man of about forty, not very tall.
When he arrived, the village went into ecstasies:
“Our holy man has come !” When a holy man
comes, there are torch processions and drum beat-
ing; it is an old saying that “wherever a holy man
steps, there a new Benares springs into being.”
But there is also this saying, “no matter how great
the procession, the time comes when the holy man
has to eat his soup alone.” g
I came to him in the morning when the crowd
had left and said to him, “You are alone now?”
“Yes,” was all he answered. He did not talk to
me but I smelt his holiness as bees scent a flower.
48 CASTE
Soon people from the neighboring villages
seemed to know where he was. As it has been
said: “The fragrance of the lotus goes with the
wind, but the fragrance of holiness goes even
against the wind.” Wherever a holy man is,
people will flock to him like swarms of bees, and
they came mile after mile in caravans, on camels,
on elephants and on foot, journeying six or seven
days even, to see this man. They left presents,
and he said, “They come to find in me what I
search for in children,” and he gave away all the
presents.
One day he put his hand on my shoulder and
said, “Little son, what are you going to do?”
I was nearly eleven. I said, “I don't know.
What do you wish me to do?”
“What do you like to do?”
“I like to play.”
“Can you play with the Lord?” I could not
answer him but he said, “Do you know, if you
could play with the Lord, perhaps it would be the
biggest thing that has ever been done. Everybody
takes Him so seriously that they make Him dull
as death.”
A large part of my life at this time, because I
was the youngest son, was taken up in performing
rituals—the marriage ceremonies and the burning
of bodies. I had to give blessings to people whom
THE HOLY MAN 49
I hated. Then this holy man came and said,
“Away with rituals; go, play with the Lord!”
At another time my holy man said that if we
could banish hate and fear, our souls would be
holy, and since animals have souls, our souls could
speak to theirs. He said, “The dumbness in the
eyes of animals is more touching than the speech
of man, and the dumbness in the speech of man is
more agonizing than the dumbness in the eyes of
animals.” -
Through all life is running the golden thread of
consciousness which binds the world together—
man, animals, stars. In the Upanishads and the
Bhagavad-Gita God says:
I am the golden thread of continuity run-
ning through all. I am the seed eternal blos-
soming through all. I am the endless fire of
truth stretching from planet to planet, from
man to man, to the silence of the gods, and
beyond them into my ultimate silence, which
is the energy of repose.
We can recognize in all animals this fact of the
unity of life. Young children in India are taken
into the jungle to learn it. My holy man inter-
preted the jungle to us, saying, “The animals are
our brothers. They want to talk to us; we must
5O CASTE
understand them.” This brother talk fascinated
me because I understood nothing of it. He took
two or three of us to the jungle at midnight, where
each bough was hung with silence. One could feel
the living jungle, a moving tide of being, but in a
moment all was still. Nothing stirred. Every
animal was frightened into immobility. We
climbed into a tree, because our breath exhaled fear
and hate, and kept the wild creatures away; but
the holy man sat on the ground. In the moonlight
we could see him, and presently the animals com-
ing and going as if no one were there.
He used to play a flute in the forest and the deer
would come and listen to him. The deer and the
snakes are fond of flutes and perfume. Perfume
hypnotizes them. He used to say that there is a
power in sound that would put flowers to sleep if
you knew how to play.
Once when I was alone with him in the jungle,
he asked, “Are you afraid?”
“Yes, I am,” I answered.
“I noticed it,” said he; “you smell to me like a
meat-eating animal, there is a stench of it. Put
your back against a tree and sit still. Nothing can
attack you from behind.”
I did so. He too sat down and played an in-
strument which he had brought with him, and the
song he sang went something like this:
THE HOLY MAN 5I
The moon is whispering into the shell of the
jungle,
She is gathering up the echoes of her own
music.
Gradually I could see animals moving. And he
said, “Are you still afraid?”
“No, not now.” Perhaps it was the music that
had quieted me.
He said, “Don’t talk, listen!” And he
whispered, “Do you sense the change of move-
ment in the jungle? Now it is the homing hour;
the feet of the animals are feeling for their lairs,
and their steps are surer than when they are going
forth at daybreak.”
We sat through the night until the animals came
out to bathe. “Now they are purified,” said my
holy man. “Feel them weaving dawn threads
through the jungle ! Their movements are like
threads of stillness drawn from all directions !”
Then suddenly came a screech of gold in the
sky and the garment of daybreak was complete.
All the threads were woven in, and life was re-
leased to greet the morning.
That sense—how to greet the day—has been
taught to the Hindu race by the animals. Life
stands still for a moment and all the four-footed
ones hesitate. The winged ones in the tree-tops
52 CASTE
give the word, and then comes the thunder crash
of sunrise. Every blade of light is like a poniard
stroke in your eyes. You seldom find a Hindu
woman in bed after dawn. She is meditating; she
has learned from the animals how to greet the day.
I came and told my mother all about that
night's experience. She asked, “Do you want to
follow this man?” w
“I’d love to,” said I.
But my mother shook her head, “Your time
has not yet come.”
After a while, my holy man visited our house.
My mother saw him turning somersaults in the
backyard to amuse the children and said to me,
“He is indeed a holy man. You can follow him ſ”
How did he know when to turn handsprings in
order to convince a woman that he was holy?
At last the day came when he said, “It’s time
for me to go.” All the village knew that our holy
man was going. We all cried. He took me and
five or six other boys with him, and we went about
from village to village.
One day a very rich man came to him and said,
“Are you the holy man?”
My master replied, “You know I have a pair of
spectacles on my eyes; I don’t see people as they
really are, but only as they appear to me.”
“How do I appear to you?” said the rich man.
THE HOLY MAN 53
“I see a goat's head made of gold on your
shoulders,” was the answer, and the man was very
angry and went home.
A woman came for charms. “Why do you want
charms?” the holy man asked.
“I want many children and all the wealth in the
world,” the woman said.
“I have no charms,” he told her, “but I will
tell you what to do. Adopt one of these boys and
keep him in your house; he will bring you .
happiness.”
“But I want my own child,” she protested.
Then the holy man said, “I cannot give you your
own children. It is very well that you have no
children, because you have desired a child so
terribly that no child could live up to that desire.”
One night we came to a rich man's house.
Everybody bowed to us and gave us blessings and
showed us every kindness, and boy-like I throve
on it. To this house came a political agitator and
made a speech. He said: “Since the British came
to our country, many millions of people have
died ſ” Then everyone was excited and the whole
place was agog with rancor and terrible feeling, as
he went on with this kind of talk. When he had
finished, my master said, “I want to speak to the
people, will you let me?”
54 CASTE
“Yes, of course,” the master of the house re-
plied.
My master then arose and said: “This man has
told you that millions have died in India as a result
of British rule. For four thousand years spiritual
immortality has been our heritage; how dare you
bow your head to a Western myth called death?”
The crowd gathered around him and begged,
“Tell us more ſ”
“There is nothing more to be said. Why don't
you all look at each other and laugh?” he replied.
“What do you mean?” they asked.
“I cannot understand why you should create
hatred amongst you, when you can be cured of this
terrible distress by laughing at each other,” was
his answer.
Then the other man said, “You are nothing but
a liar and a hypocrite and thief, and you have not
the welfare of your country at heart!”
My holy man answered, “My friend, if you
bring presents to a man and he does not accept
them, what happens?”
“I take them home.” -
Then my master rejoined, “I do not accept your
abusive words. Better take them home with you!”
Once a man who had been nursing in the cholera
epidemic came to my master and said, “We have
THE HOLY MAN 55
seen nothing but death. What do you make of
it?”
“We don't really know,” said my holy man.
“You notice, of course, that there is a great deal
of fuss made about being born and dying; but
suppose we had been born and had died all at
once? . . .” He was continually saying something
of this kind: that our birth and our death had
taken place at the same moment. “For example, a
thing may happen in time,” he said, “in the sixty
years between birth and death; but in reality these
sixty years have always been in existence. It is
only in the material world that they seem to be
passing by us.” His point was that in reality we
live and die at the same point of eternity. Later on
this was confirmed by my mother's teaching, and
later still, on the other side of the world, I heard
learned men discuss something called Relativity,
and although the terms were different, occasionally
their ideas seemed to me very like my holy man's.
At another time he said a terrible and beautiful
thing, “The urge of life is for happiness and yet
when you find happiness you are mortally
wounded.” We were sitting under the tremendous
boughs of the jungle that day. “See this vine
which touches my forehead like a snake,” he con-
tinued. “Early in the morning it hears the call of
light and goes straight toward it. The same
56 CASTE
creeper comes back in the evening, burned black;
it has been mortally wounded by the sun and lives
only a few days. The tragedy of our climate is this
urge for the sun; the tragedy of our people is that
we have all heard the call of God, and having
found Him, we are lost. It seems we are like the
creeper; we want something so big that it kills us.
Therefore, India disappoints. It is the land of
the death god, Shiva. The dead live, and they are
the reality of India. Shiva is alive because he is
dead; he goes around India every three thousand
years, riding on a bull, and he will go three times
round; you smell Shiva's presence and continual
death !”
Once my holy man took us to a neighboring city,
where we stayed in a rich man's house, and in the
evening many learned people came to see him.
They discussed whether God was one or many, and
of course they asked my master to take part in the
discussion. He said, “God is one to those who
have found Him one, and many to those who have
found Him many.”
One man was very bitter in his speech and I was
quite curious about it. “Master, what's the matter
with him P’’ said I.
“Don’t you see,” he answered, “the hunger for
God is a genuine thing in the human heart. In his
heart there is a tremendous emptiness. He is try-
THE HOLY MAN 57
ing to fill it up with words; he is a sick man; no
wonder he is bitter ſ”
They asked my holy man if he had seen God.
He said, “Even if you touched God's hand, he
would remain unknown. He is the origin that an-
nihilates all origins; He is godless, that is why I
call Him God. The moment you make Him a
person. He does not exist.”
They said, “You are joking.” *
He answered, “Yes, God is the greatest Joke of
the universe. Otherwise, why is it so many dull
people are serious about Him?”
Once I said to my holy man, “I am so weak.
What shall I do? Some people can reason God
out. I know that God is the ultimate cause, but I
cannot reason about Him; I am too much the
victim of my emotions.”
He said, “My son, your weakness should be the
source of your strength. Emotion will lead you to
imagination. Intensify your weakness so that it
becomes your strength. Then you will find that
it is nothing but a veil drawn over your strength.
By intensifying your weakness you will break it.”
Another time I asked him, “Why do good
people suffer in this world?” He said, “Capacity
attracts. When you pray for the rain you are
also praying for the thunderbolt. When the tiger
of calamity comes, may you not be found wanting!”
58 CASTE
For a young boy it was all very hard to under-
stand. I said to my master, “I cannot do all this.”
He answered, “Why do you try? You do not
have to work so hard at it. You can reach God
through your football. Play with God! He is
the ultimate playmate of the world.” He meant
that all actions are related to the inner experience
which is God.
His tongue was not dipped in honey; though his
essential quality was compassion, he had no sense
of charity. He did not want to impoverish one by
his kindness, but to heighten one by his strength;
he used to say, “Humble the Himalayas by being
tall.”
My fellow disciple was a great syllogizer. He
always saw things clearly. I envied him but my
master said, “That boy sees things so clearly that
he is like a blind man in a dark room who will
always find his way out, whereas the secret is to
sit still in the darkness and let the Lord come and
find you.” -
People began to seek him more and more, and
they would sit around him and never speak, and
suddenly one or two would break into tears and go
home.
As I had my master, so had my mother hers.
Although a Brahmin, he had renounced his caste,
as all holy men do. But somehow his appearance
THE HOLY MAN 59
betrayed his Brahmin origin. He could not help it.
Though he wore the Sanyasa ochre-colored robe,
he appeared to possess two superfluous yards of
it which gave his walk a long flowing movement.
His trident had three rings, to symbolize spirit,
intellect and matter. Despite all this formality he
used to play with us as my holy man did, and his
favorite game was a sort of blind man's buff. He
would blindfold all the children and would walk
around stealthily like a cat, jingling his trident
from time to time. The children always failed to
catch him. At the end he would say, “Thus we
perceive God here and there, but we can never
reach Him.”
We never knew when this monk was coming to
our house. It was very strange, but he used to
arrive whenever my mother was in trouble. He
always seemed to know it; no one knew how. He
would suddenly appear and ask, “Where is my
daughter?”
“My lord, she is in meditation.”
He would say, “I will wait.”
He played with us while waiting. Then he and
my mother would have a conference; after that he
would disappear again. He never asked for any-
thing.
The last time I saw him was just, as I was
about to leave India. He said, “Your feet are
6o CASTE
itching for distance, but have you the power to
destroy distance?”
I said, “How do you destroy distance, my
lord?”
He answered, “By sitting still.”
A man can travel with a great deal of freedom
if he wears the yellow robe of a Sanyasin, and
although all monks are not holy, they will some-
times wear the yellow robe in order to deceive
people into thinking that they are. A monk,
whether holy or not, will sometimes sit in your
backyard without asking for anything, and with-
out eating for three or four days.
Before a man becomes a Holy One he generally
goes through a training of ten or twelve years.
Then he has a spiritual experience or revelation
which is looked upon in the light of a divine con-
secration, setting him apart by a sort of accolade
of God from common men.
After some weeks of wandering with my holy
man, I returned to my parents and my schooling.
These sudden excursions in search of religion are
a very common part of Indian life. It is the
custom to leave the world at forty, take a begging
bowl and go on a pilgrimage. Some never come
home, others return in a short time. Both my
parents left the world and traveled. When my
mother went away, she was gone hardly three
THE HOLY MAN 6I
months before she came back. “The Lord is
within me,” she said, “why should I go all over
India to find Him?”
My father said, “Everything is illusion.” He
kept on traveling for twenty years, but he never
found the Lord. -
“But why all this concern about God?” you ask.
If the Lord exists, nothing matters. If the Lord
does not exist, can anything matter? What are
men good for if they may not become gods? Our
fellowmen have become Christ and Buddha.
CHAPTER IV
INITIATION
O every Indian comes his day of initiation.
It is something like confirmation in the
Christian church. Also the girls are initiated,
though I do not know much about that.
Before my own time came, on one of my many
journeyings, I saw in an isolated village of the hills
the initiation of a carpenter. His mother brought
the boy, after he had bathed in the river, to the
family shrine where the altar fire was burning and
the father and others of his caste were waiting.
His father asked him first, “Do you wish to follow
the vocation of our family?”
The boy replied, “Yes.”
Then the priest asked him the same question.
He took his oath: “I swear by the fire, by the
elements, by my parents, by the deities, by the
Living God, I will be a carpenter in order to
create beauty and utility for man.”
The father brought the old tools of the family
62
INITIATION 63
and said to the boy, “These are your younger
brothers. They want fulfillment and you, who
have a soul, must help them. By using them to
create beauty and utility for men, you will realise
their destiny as well as your own.”
The boy took the tools and vowed: “By the fire,
by the elements, by my parents, by the deities, by
the Living God, I will never prostitute these tools,
but will use them to create beauty and utility for
men.” Thereupon, he went out to work, and
first having been shown the oldest plows of the
village, he set about to make one himself.
We Hindus look for no material solution of the
problem of poverty. We have no devices for
multiplying production. We think that we cannot
change the situation mechanically, and that there-
fore we must solve it emotionally. So we make
each man a poet, by consecrating him like a priest
to his task, and this is the meaning of initiation.
Industry is organized so that each man in his own
trade, by working with his own tools, may release
his creative spirit.
The time came when I was to become a priest.
I was asked whether I wanted to be one. At the
age of thirteen or fourteen to be a man and bless
others is rather an alluring idea, so of course I
said yes; I consented at once.
On the day of my initiation my mother took me
64 CASTE
to the river bank. We went out to where the dead
were being cremated. The lights of the fires
seemed to bite the shoulders of the Ganges. I said,
“I don’t like it.” f
“But remember there is no death !” she
answered. “We throw off the body as man throws
off worn-out garments for new ones. So does the
soul rise out of the worn-out body.”
I asked her, “Why do you tell me this?”
She replied, “How could I have given you life,
if I could not explain death?’”
After I had bathed in the Ganges, we went home
together, and I went in to my initiation.
As we came into the room, my mother's hand
in mine, I saw that the altar fire was lit. All the
priests were there and the head priest and my
father were standing together.
My mother said, “My lord, I have given him my
last instructions. I have prepared him before he
was born and after he was born. I consecrate him
to you.” -
My father took me over to our family priest.
He said, “I consecrate this boy to you because he
wishes to learn the secret.”
“Do you wish to learn the secret, my son?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Do you wish to learn the secret, my son?”
“Yes, my lord.”
INITIATION 65
The family priest then took me over to the high
priest. “Do you wish to learn the secret?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Has anyone urged you to learn the secret?”
“No, my lord.”
“Have you any motive for which to learn the
secret?”
“No, my lord.”
“The boy is ready. Shave his head. Take him
out.”
They took me out, shaved my head, gave me an
ochre-colored cloth to put on. I came in again.
My mother was gone. Only the priests and my
father were standing there. My father said, “You
wish to take this vow P”
“Yes.”
Then I went over with him; he and I stood on
one side, the others on the other side of the altar.
The high priest turned to my father.
“You have kept the vows of wedlock as you
promised?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Do you consecrate the child in all purity?”
“Yes, my lord.”
He turned to me, “And do you wish to be a
Brahmin P”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Do you know what a Brahmin is?”
66 CASTE
“No, my lord.”
“Only he who has seen God face to face or lives
every moment in order to see God face to face, can
be a Brahmin. Can you live that life?”
“I can, my lord.”
“You swear by your father and your mother?”
“Yes, my lord.” *
“You swear by the elements and the fire, by the
unknown gods?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“You swear by the Living God you will keep this
vow you are going to take?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“What is your name?” I told him. “Have you
a father and a mother on earth?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“You have no more father and mother!”
“No, my lord.”
“You have no relation to anyone any more l’’
“No, my lord.”
“You are standing all alone before the sacred
fire, and from this time on the fire that will be
given to you will be lonely, and you will be lonely
with it. Are you ready to accept that loneliness?”
“Yes, my lord.”
Then we sat around the fire. He took my hand
and we meditated twenty minutes or more, and
then I was told the most terrible thing of all.
INITIATION 67
“He is not on earth, nor in the water, nor in the
sky, nor even in the father and the mother. He is
the End ever sought but ever beyond reach. He
is in you, in your parents, in every living creature;
and being in everything, He is the most lonely. He
is the Loneliness that is within you. He is that
Terror whose beauty you must seek throughout the
world, and He is that Beauty whose terror has
kept the world away from Him. Therefore,
carry this Terror within your heart, and go from
door to door and say to each person, ‘I stand like
a mirror before you. Have you your perfection to
reflect in it?’ And this is the aim of your life, to
be a living mirror before every face that comes
near you. Now swear by the fire, by the elements,
by your father and mother, by the Living God;
forswear all and go begging and be a mirror
before the world !”
I took my vow. Then he said the last thing,
“Your parents are dead. Your relatives are dead.
You are dead. Only one thing remains—and
that is your vagrancy for eternity. Go forth !”
As I was going out, my mother knelt on the
threshold. She held my foot and would not let
me proceed. “Go now, my lord, but come back to
me! She who has taught you, lies at your feet to
be taught again. Go gather wisdom—but you owe
me wisdom before you give it to the world. Come
68 CASTE
back—there is another woman who must be a
mother too. If you do not promise, I shall never
let you go.”
“Lady, your will is done.”
She released me, and taking my begging bowl
and staff, I went out.
So it was over. I had renounced the world and
entered upon my two-year period of beggary.
You cannot be a priest if you do not know how
people live, and the best way to find out about
people is to beg from them. So there is a law of the
priesthood that before officiating in the temple, you
must go begging from door to door. But at
fourteen, to be turned loose in the world—even
after forswearing it, makes one feel rather forlorn.
I did not know where to go. So with the child’s
instinct still strong within me, I went back to my
mother's house, knowing that here I would not be
refused, and said, “Give alms to the beggar !”
My mother came out with a bowl in her hands
and said, “My lord, here is your rice.” She bowed
her face to the ground. Before that, every morn-
ing, we used to take the dust from her feet; this
was the first time she had tried to take the dust
from mine.
I went to the river's edge, made a fire with some
charcoal and a few sticks and boiled the rice. I
INITIATION 69
was about to eat it when a beggar came along and
said, “Brother, I have nothing to eat.” At four-
teen there is a limit to unselfishness, yet I had to
give him the rice and sit there and wait until he
was satisfied before I could have any of it myself.
I decided that it took even more than the
tremendous words of the ceremonial through which
I had just passed to enable one to abandon earthly
considerations. Then I went to the river bank and
wandered through the town and again sat by the
river thinking.
I had often noticed the boats piled with fruit
going down the river in the morning—heaps and
heaps of all kinds of fruit, for India is given to the
madness of much. This afternoon I saw the boats
coming back, laden with grain. I saw the bare
bodies of the oarsmen as they rowed, and the
golden sunlight falling on their bodies. There
were thirty or forty boats. The Ganges burned
like tiger's eyes—fierce, tawny, strange. The men
were singing as they rowed. It did not take me
long to find out that they were singing one of
Rabindranath Tagore's poems, and it was borne
in upon my mind how complete was the union that
exists between poet and people in India. Tagore
has taken their songs and put unity into them.
This is what the boatmen were singing:
7o CASTE
The red clouds dance to lead us astray, and
behind us is a mocking of dark.
The sky quivers with its weight of gold at the
water's edge, and we see you
Smiling on the prow of our boat, O river
goddess!
Do not drown us in the night.
If you must destroy us, let us be wrecked on
the speeding wings of dawn.
You cannot have poets if you do not have
beggars. In India we have millions of beggars and
they are always singing the poets' songs. I heard
one of them now as the twilight fell:
In the vast blue the stars are lit, and the
moon is in the midst, for the worship of Him
who made them all. The forest brings its
perfumes and the breezes shake the draperies
of the trees. I miss the trumpet call to wor-
ship. But, O brother, listen to the cry of the
human heart!
That night I went to the bazaar to sleep. When
the beggars come at nine o'clock, it is a sign that the
selling is over, and the game is up, and then the
people tie up their goods. I heard two tradesmen
talking.
INITIATION 71
“How has the day been P” said one.
“Considering how it began, it has not turned out
ill,” replied the other.
“It is not good to have a missionary open the
bazaar with a Christian hymn.”
“What did he say, brother?”
“He said, ‘Come to the Durbar that Bibi
Miriam's son has opened l’”
“Yes, I remember it all now,” said the first,
“poor Bibi Miriam, they crucify her son every
morning in the bazaar !”
Then another merchant remarked, “Now that
the beggars are coming, the trading is done; when
beggars come to the bazaar, it is like vultures com-
ing to the battlefield. The fighting is over. It is
time to shut up shop and go home.”
I approached and said, “Brother, give some-
thing to a poor man.”
He said, “I will give you a copper piece. I had
better do so lest you speak ill of me. Beggars have
loose tongues.”
The other merchant said, “It is wise to make
money, but at the end of the day it is also wise
to give something to a beggar, for who knows in
the next world what may befall one?” All India
is not spiritual.
I slept in the bazaar that night. In the morn-
ing I felt the constable's foot kicking me. “Little
72 CASTE
brother, it is time to go and bathe. The bazaar
merchants are coming to buy and sell. Keep thy
blessing for the midday; when they have made their
profit, then they will give thee alms.” As I was
going to the river, a woman handed me a flower.
“Take this flower. May you give forth holiness
as this flower gives fragrance.” When I came to
the river, I had to beg for the first time among
strangers, but strangers are the best people to beg
from.
One thing I have noticed particularly, that when
you beg you discover the extremes of human
nature. People do not like beggars. They want
to get rid of them, and in order to get rid of them,
they give them a copper or a curse, and a curse
is the easier gift to make.
Once I asked my mother, “Why so much
begging? Why waste time wandering about?”
She replied, “I don't know why. But this is
what I have heard: The Lord of the World,
Shiva, who lives on the top tiers of the Himalayas,
married King Duksha’s daughter. The king never
forgave this match, because his other daughters
had married very rich gods and Shiva, being the
Lord of the Universe, was destitute. In order to
humiliate the newly-wedded pair, Duksha held a
grand reception, to which all the gods and their
wives were invited, except Shiva and his bride,
INITIATION 73
Parbati. Parbati came, uninvited, and her father
repeatedly insulted her in the presence of the com-
pany. He called Shiva naked like the sky, there-
fore shameless; a vagabond, always blowing his
horn of silence to attract attention; a bringer of
death, yet calling himself God of Immortality.
These and many other humiliating speeches killèd
Parbati; she dropped dead. Shiva, who was
meditating in the Himalayas, felt the mountain
shaken to the roots and knew what had happened.
He bounded from crest to crest, clearing the horns
and shoulders of the hills. Suddenly, King
Duksha saw Shiva's two arms lift up the dead
Parbati and carry her back to the heights. The
beggar God was Lord of the Universe. So a
priest, to become like the god Shiva, begins and
ends with begging.”
CHAPTER V
PILGRIMAGE, BENARES
HAD some sort of plan for my wanderings,
and as I wanted to see Benares and the hills,
I joined two or three other young priests who
were going in that direction. We traveled by
train to Benares. It is older than any other Indian
living city today, at least six hundred years older
than Rome, and it has no history. When I reached
Benares, I realised that the very heart of India
was there; I found stone upon stone telling of the
ages that had gone before, but leaving the events
unrecorded; I found the ruins of a Hindu temple
many layers down, and on this a Mohammedan
mosque and above this a Buddhist temple.
Properly speaking, India has no history. We
as a race have no consciousness of it, for Our
history has been written mostly by foreigners—
the Greeks, the Arabs and the Chinese. The con-
sciousness of history as an asset of life and as an
expression of our people, does not seem important
to us. History is the record of man’s relation to
74
PILGRIMAGE, BENARES 75
time, but the Hindu does not believe in time, and
all our life, according to the Hindu's vision, is an
illusion and something to be transcended. You do
not write the history of a dream—you wake up
from it. Perhaps this is hard for the Western
mind to conceive, but after five thousand years of
civilization, we had so much history that we lost
interest in it. This world is an illusion of time
and space, and to treat it as reality is another
illusion; as the Hindu scripture says: “The blind
will walk through blind alleys and will call these
enlightened days. Such is the irony of being
blind.”
The Ganges flows through Benares. The walls
of the houses lean over the river as though to hear
from it some whispered secret of release from the
burden of their mortality; many walls have gone
down as the river eats away the earth. The
Ganges, the Mother of India, is supposed to be
very kind; but as I heard her at night, I felt as if
a razor-sharp claw were tearing at the holy city.
Like an oak tree falling suddenly Benares will go
down some day. The river flows on—and these
walls are leaning a little more forward into the
water each year.
At night, when all the lights were lit, I saw on
the house-tops people reading and reciting, and
inside the houses more people singing, and in the
76. CASTE
stables still more people, singing and reciting. The
whole place was charged with poetry; but below
this flowed the sinister Ganges, the deep, ultimate
Mother, and nothing will remainſ
As I passed the stables, I heard a groom singing:
“I went to the sea and broke away the pearl, I
went to the mine and wrung away the gems, but
you do not smile. Tomorrow I shall go out and
trap the very sun and throw him at your feet, then
perhaps you will love me.” This is what the
common people in the streets were singing but on
the house-tops the cultured were reading; they
would read from the Sanskrit:
“There is only one truth, but there are four
Vedas. There are only four Vedas but there are
hundreds of commentaries. And no doctor of
philosophy agrees with another, lest his egotism be
hurt.” -
And again: “Truth is the bull of the universe,
standing on the four legs of righteousness. He
holds the stars together.”
There were beggars too and there were the
people. Beggars are not all priests by any means,
for at one period or another of his life almost
every man in India goes out to beg, and becomes a
part of the indistinguishable throng. One of
them sang:
“The night like a black panther walks by our
PILGRIMAGE, BENARES 77
door. 6) poet, the fierce word, the word you
are seeking, is in the panther's mouth ! Have you
the courage to open it? And more than that, have
you a heart fiercer than the panther's mouth, to
give the word a more fitting home?”
Beauty in India always has a sinister quality.
In Western art (the art of the last two thousand
years) there is nothing sinister. It is beautiful and
uplifting. But in the art of India there is a quality
of fierceness; the formless is crouching in the heart
of form. Here is another beggar's song:
“You are the beginning of the universe, because
you are beginningless. You are the end, because
no end can trap you. You are the source of all
truth, and yet no truth can completely contain you.
You are that terrible claw of silence which is
burrowing under the house of man's words.” And
again: “Do not perform good deeds to entrap
me. Do not speak of my perfection; I am not
perfect. When you attain heaven, heaven will be
nothing but a chain around your feet. For I am
not heaven. . . . You will find heaven only to loiter
there as a drunkard loiters in a tavern.”
These things are the beauty of Benares. . In
the morning I awakened to the sound of feet
going, going, going. Then the sun rose, and I
watched the life of the river. I saw the people
all coming in their white and yellow robes and
78 CASTE
dipping themselves in the water. India is not
sentimental: Once in a while they do not cremate a
body, and as I watched I saw a corpse float by.
It was the body of a holy man who had just died.
Holy men are not always cremated and as the
bathers knew this, they were not disturbed. They
descended into the flowing green-gold current and
came out with the water dripping from them and
glistening in the sunlight. Then they went up to
the temples. Near the bathing place were the
burning ghats and I saw the burning ceremony
which I had often performed myself.
The dead body is gathered up on a pile of
sandalwood; another pile of wood is put on top
of that, and before setting fire to it certain rituals
are performed by the nearest relative. The burden
of the ritual falls either upon the highest or the
lowest; if the oldest son is away the youngest takes
his place. I, being the youngest son, had had to
cremate many times. We used to go around the
pile seven times and say this to the dead:
“O you who are now homeless on earth, home-
less on the waters, homeless in the deep, do not
seek the vesture of flesh again, but go . . . Go
where our ancestors have gone! . . . Take the
path of silence where the sun wanders in quest of
ultimate truth ! Go, where the gods are waiting
PILGRIMAGE, BENARES 79
for you! Now you must blow the flute of silence,
for death is purified by song.”
Then you set fire to the pile, and when the fire
is burning you must watch it six or seven hours. It
is a curious fact that lean people burn longer than
fat people, and fat people sometimes burn in four
hours; it takes seven or eight hours for lean people
to burn and even then the bones have not com-
pletely turned to ashes. When the body is con-
sumed, the ashes are put into a pitcher of water.
You bring your pitcher of water and break it and
watch the ashes go down into the river: “Go
down with the tawny Ganges into that turbulent
being called the Sea.” In Benares you see this
ceremony continually.
The day moved on. At noon the intense heat
was like a dragon stretched on the ground licking
up the moisture from the earth—all the city
literally cracked with dryness. Inside the houses
they had palm leaves and fountains to cool the
rooms, and there I heard the droning and praying
of the people and the monks. Thus the afternoon
advances, and at five o'clock life begins again.
In Benares you find yellow sandstone walls, and
granite and marble interiors. The houses leaning
to each other, hold together like people in terror.
It is as if they knew that some day the Ganges will
8o CASTE
take them all away, and they want to protect
themselves from this common danger.
As I walked about the city I saw women sitting
fanned by their servants on the balconies of these
houses. Pigeons walked about, gleaming and
iridescent and here and there on the cornices were
perched peacocks with spreading tails.
The owners of these beautiful creatures
naturally wish to show them off to their friends,
but how to keep a peacock at home in the after-
noon has always been a problem. They usually
leave the house in the morning and go hunting for
snakes out in the country, and they do not come
back again until night time. The peacock plays
with the snake before killing it; I have sometimes
seen it standing on the snake's body holding it in
the middle, looking disdainfully down at the
writhing creature. Suddenly the snake will make
a stab at the peacock, thrusting its fangs out, and
then you see a feather fly into the air; but the
peacock has not been harmed, it is so thickly
covered with feathers that the fangs have not
touched its flesh at all. This surprises the snake
very much and it makes another stab; but still the
peacock stands there, as if to say, “Who is this
fellow, trying to bite me?” The snake tries this
four or five times, and the peacock will look at it
in the manner of a scientific man studying a
PILGRIMAGE, BENARES 3I
specimen; but in another moment the snake is torn
in two, and the peacock sits down to its dinner.
People who live in the country usually have a
trained mongoose or a peacock about the house
to protect them from the snakes.
To solve the problem of getting the peacock
home, they have cultivated the drug habit in the
bird. At a certain time of day the peacock is
given a grain of opium: thus, no matter where it
may be, when that time arrives it will come home
begging for the opium. After the opium the pea-
cocks will stay around the house and can be shown
to visitors. The Eastern mind has found an easy
way of bringing the birds home. In the West
people would probably abolish the peacocks, exter-
minate the snakes and paint the cornices in many
colors instead, or invent some similar device to take
their place, but in India nobody will go to so much
trouble. So people spend the afternoon in idle-
ness. Once in a while a monk will come and sit
with them.
The Indian house is built square, and it has
designs painted on the walls of the rooms, and
always a courtyard with a small pool or a foun-
tain to keep the house cool. There is a place
to eat, but not what could be called a separate
dining room; we sit on the floor where the plates and
the rice are served, and do not use forks. The ma-
82 CASTE
jority of the people eat from banana leaves; as soon
as the food is eaten, they throw the banana leaves
outside and the sun scorches them so that they do not
decay. There are many courses to our dinner and
in most Indian houses the fire is never allowed to
go out, and milk is kept boiling over it day and
night, so that in the hot climate there shall always
be a wholesome drink for the children. Near the
place where we eat there are water and towels and
soap. We wash our hands before we come in
to eat and wash them again when we go out.
In the late afternoon I saw the walk of the
young men of India, a panther-like walk. The men
wore yellow togas, their swords were hanging by
their sides; after them came elephants with gold
caparisons, and servants carrying purple napkins,
and there were miles and miles of this rhythmic
walk of colors. Suddenly fell the black thunderbolt
of night, the colors crashed and disappeared, and
Benares, for a time, was shut within pounding walls
of silence. Then the lights began to come out in
the houses.
There is one place in Benares, famous throughout
India, and little known to foreigners—little known
to them because no Hindu can bring himself to
speak of it to an alien, hardly even to another of
his own race, so holy is it, so associated with the
innermost experience of his soul. It is called the
PILGRIMAGE, BENARES 83
House of Peace, and for the reasons I have given it
is impossible for me to do more than allude to it in
passing, although some reference to it I must make
in giving a faithful account of a Hindu's life. Kip-
ling knew the place, but of course from the outside
only. It appears in Kim as the house of the
Tirthankars. Tirthankars means “noble spirits,
the deathless grains of sanctity.” People go there
to meditate—rudderless souls drift down from
all parts of India to Benares with the idea that in
the House of Peace they may meet an unknown
teacher who will reveal to them the meaning of
life.
For some time I had not seen my holy man; I
found him after I had been in Benares about a
week; I asked him many questions and he said,
“Go to the house of the Noble ones; sit there and
meditate, and you will find someone to help you.”
At the age of fourteen it is impossible to sit still
for four or five days at a time and I did not want
to go very much. I had other places to see, but
I went to the Tirthankars. My real problems
were not very deep, so I invented imaginary ones.
The teacher listened to me all day and then he
said, “Will you meditate with me?” But that was
work—I did not want to work at all, and I told
him I had an appointment to meditate elsewhere.
He said, “I see your heart is gay, and the head
84 CASTE
invents strange illusions, but play with illusions:
you will find God through your play.” So this
holy place, where the burdens of many fierce hearts
have been laid, opened its doors to a careless boy,
and sent him forth again smiling, to his play.
CHAPTER VI
PILGRIMAGE, THE HILLS
Aº seeing Benares I started for the hills
with a brother pilgrim. It took us nearly six
months to reach our destination; each night we
stopped and begged a lodging: sometimes we
traveled with the caravans, sometimes with the
strolling players. Once we met a company of
players who needed someone to take the part of a
monk, and the leader said to me, “You are a monk,
a real one, why don't you come with us?” So I
acted in their play. My business was to sit and
listen to invocations and prayers. I had never
before looked at an audience from the standpoint
of an actor: it sat around us in a circle and we
sat in a little cleared space in the center of the
assembly. Whenever a character had to speak his
lines he got up from the seated group and went
forward, and after finishing he would come back
and sit down among us. Women took the parts of
women in this company, which gave it a somewhat
85
86 CASTE
disreputable character, this not being the custom
in India. All the lines were said by the different
members of the cast to the accompaniment of
music, and whenever the sentences reached an
intense climax of emotion, the speaker would
suddenly burst forth into a song which was some-
times improvised on the spur of the moment.
When the song was well known, the chorus of men
and boys would get up and sing the refrain.
My company was acting a folk play, and the
actors took a great deal of liberty with the text;
it was half improvised. I remember one occasion
when the play was going beautifully, the audience
was tense with excitement, swaying in time with the
song of the chorus. The hero and his enemy were
bragging to each other, and the hero said, “I’ll
break your wings and throw you like a mountain
into the sea; you will never rise again!”
The villain replied, “I will break your teeth and
stuff your throat with them so that you can never
speak again!”
“Then give battle!” shouted the hero, and drew
his sword.
This was the cue for the chorus, who arose and
began to sing in very sweet rhythm: “Don, O
heroes, your gilded bravery,” but the audience got
up like one man and tried to stop them, yelling,
“Silence, begetters of he-asses we want to see his
PILGRIMAGE, THE HILLS 87
teeth broken and his throat stuffed!” And the
chorus demurely sat down.
The day after this, we left the actors, and con-
tinued our way into the awful wilderness of the
hills. The only place we could find to stop that
night was in a temple. We were afraid to stay
there, because we had been told that the temple
was inhabited by supernatural beings. Pilgrims
would feel ghostly hands groping about their beds
at night pulling off their blankets. We saw nothing
in the temple but a little idol, before whom offer-
ings of fruit and flowers had been made. The
little idol did not look very terrible, so we lay
down; but we were frightened to death by night
time as we waited to go to sleep, and expected
every moment to have our blankets pulled off. As
we lay in silence we suddenly heard singing, then a
voice said: “I smell human beings here.” Of
course we thought it was one of the demons.
“My lord, we be monks, holy men l’’ we cried.
“What brings you here?” asked the voice.
“O, my lord, we had no other place to go.”
Question and answer went quickly through the
darkness, and as we clung together, a torch was lit
and we saw that we had been talking with a
mendicant monk.
“How do you come here?” We were too be-
88 CASTE
wildered to answer. “Has anybody pulled your
blanket yet?”
“No, my lord, not yet.”
And plucking up our courage, we asked, “Why
should our blankets be pulled?”
“I will tell you,” said the monk. “A monkey
sleeps in a tree near this temple; he steals the fruit
that is offered to the idol, and at night he comes
down looking for his food and pulls at the blankets
of the pilgrims who sometimes sleep here. They
think it is a ghost. The fruit I offer to the idol
sustains the monkey's life.”
“Why do you do this?” we asked.
“I think,” said he, “that the monkey must have
been a priest in the temple hundreds of years ago,
and a bad priest: instead of looking towards holy
matters, he used to fleece his people, and so when
he was dead he was forced to be born in this form
to expiate his sins and pay his karmic debt. The
poor fellow stays in the tree and I feed him: I am
tied up with him somehow.”
We sat about the torch and discussed monkeys.
“Monkeys are very amusing people,” said our new
friend. “You cannot leave money lying near a
window when they are outside. Once I was care-
less enough to leave my purse on the window sill,
and a monkey took it and ran up a tree with it. I
returned and could not find it, so I went all the way
PILGRIMAGE, THE HILLS 89
to the bazaar and got piles and piles of bananas
and put them under the tree where I thought the
monkey was hiding. Sure enough, he saw them
and finally threw down my purse; then he
assembled the other monkeys together and they ate
up all the fruit in no time !”
The monk told us another story: Once an
Englishman killed a monkey near his house. All
the other monkeys came around and sat in front of
his house all day, as if there were a funeral inside.
The monkeys wouldn't move. The Englishman
thought they would kill him, but they sat still and
mourned. In the evening they stole the monkey's
corpse and dragged it to the place where the
people cremate their dead, and there they left it,
and finally men had to come down and cremate the
monkey.
The mendicant asked us what we were doing.
We said, “We are Brahmins and this is our year
of pilgrimage.”
“Why do you want to be Brahmins?”
“Why not, my lord?”
“Can't you be more than Brahmins?”
“What is your meaning, my lord?”
The strange man replied, “Once I was a
Brahmin but I was continually occupied with the
ritual and had no time for God, so I renounced
everything and disappeared. Now, I have all my
90 CASTE
time for God: for instance, I can take care of a
monkey who needs me, instead of bothering with
human beings I’’
“Did you renounce caste?” we asked.
He said, “Yes, because caste stood in the way of
my realizing God.”
“But do you want to abolish caste altogether?”
And he answered, “No.” Then he told us a
story about the flexibility of caste in the early
days.
“Visiva Mitra was a king who longed to be a
Brahmin. Vasistaha, the head of the Brahmins,
said to him, ‘It cannot be.’ The king replied, ‘If
you do not make me a Brahmin, I will kill one of
your eight sons,’ and the lad was killed. The next
year the same thing happened and Visiva Mitra
killed another of the Brahmin’s sons. Four sons
were killed and still Vasistaha would not give his
consent, and at last the king threatened, ‘I am going
to kill your fifth son. Will you make me a Brah-
min?’ Vasistaha replied, ‘No l’ The king was
about to kill the boy; then he stopped and said,
‘What's the use of trying to be a Brahmin if you
have to go to so much trouble?' And Vasistaha
embraced him and said, ‘You are a Brahmin now,
because it has ceased to be of importance to you,'
and the king became a Brahmin that day. The
PILGRIMAGE, THE HILLS 9I
only way to abolish caste is to remove the desire
even for the highest caste.”
I will interrupt the story of my pilgrimage to
explain a little about caste in India. The situation
is a difficult one at present. The young people of
the better classes want caste abolished: the
common people do not want it abolished. A man
in our lower classes may become wealthy and well
educated, but if he wishes to live in India he will
have to raise the level of culture in his own caste
in order to be at home in it; if we abolished this
system altogether it would result in his associating
with the higher classes and deserting his own,
which would remain unbenefited by his improve-
ment. Under our caste system, a man who is born
in the lower station and becomes rich, cannot get
out by marrying someone above him; he stays in
his place and does good to his community.
The caste system originated about four thousand
years ago when the Aryan race came to India
somewhere from Central Asia, the Caucasus or
Norway, and settled in the foothills of the
Himalayas in the valley of the Punjab. They
settled in the same sort of snow-covered mountains
that they had left behind. The word Arya is like
the English word “daughter,” which comes from
the German “Tochter’’: the Indian word means
“female son.” In the early days the sons went to
92 CASTE
war and the female sons carried in the milk and
made the butter. The word “daughter” means the
one who milks the cows—and Arya means one who
knows how to handle a plow and feed cattle. The
people who settled in the valley were agricultural
and raised cattle; those who lived in the mountains
would come down when the harvests were ready.
and take the food away. The Aryans realized that
they must protect themselves, so they formed the
military class, called the warriors. The other two
classes were automatically created—the business
man and the politician, and the priest class. These
three were the original Aryan castes. The military
caste, however, which was created for protective
purposes, became oppressive, and in one thousand
years conquered the aborigines and instead of kill-
ing them made them into the servant caste.
These four castes go on to this day. We have
no intermarriage; we do not eat certain foods to-
gether; rice, for instance, because rice is a liturgic
food. A holy man ignores caste because he has
passed beyond it; and in certain places, like
Juggernaut, the City of the Lord, caste does not
exist at all. A cobbler once came to my mother
and said, “Will you eat with me?” And she did.
I, being much surprised, asked her why she did it.
She said, “My son, equality is an experience which
is never false.” We go to school with other castes,
PILGRIMAGE, THE HILLS 93
they come to our houses, but we do not eat rice to-
gether, or intermarry. If a person marries below
his caste, he or she goes to the caste below. We
may engage in any work whatever, it does not
affect our caste. A priest has to be born in the
Brahmin caste, but a monk, whether he belongs to
the Brahmin caste or not, is higher than a priest,
and if a monk comes into a temple, he occupies the
first place because of his holiness. Though
Vivekananda came from the lower classes, when he
became a monk he was above them all.
The founders of caste were very astute aristo-
crats, who did not believe in equality. Whenever
there was a rebel spirit in the lower classes, for
him they provided a way of escape: the rebel
could never become a Brahmin, but by his power of
spirituality he could become a monk. It is a
curious fact that Brahmins have very rarely
attained God in our history. Always it has been
the other classes who have attained Him. We
Brahmins composed the sacred books, but most of
the prophets and incarnations of God are from
other classes. Buddha came from the warrior
class: he meditated and became God. The only
way to abolish caste would be to renounce the
desire even for the highest caste.
To resume my story: The following morning
we left the mendicant alone with his monkey. '
94 CASTE
When we reached the next village there was no-
where for us to stay, so we went to the priest's
house.
“O, holy priest, give us shelter l’’ we begged.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“We are monks,” we replied.
But still he refused, “I cannot give you shelter.”
“Why not?” we insisted, and this singular priest
only growled, “All priests are like kites looking for
Offal. Can a kite feed a kite?” But at last he
gave us permission to come into the basement of
his temple. He was in reality a thief. At night
he used to steal out and head a band of marauders;
in the day he taught righteousness. “Brothers,
trust one another,” he would proclaim. “Be kind
to one another. Don’t lock your doors I”. Then
he and his band of thieves used to go at night to
rob the places where his too trusting congregation
had left their doors unlocked. One day during our
stay in the village, he was caught red-handed. He
denied his guilt and tried to accuse my fellow
pilgrim of the theft, but no one believed him and
he was finally handed over to the police.
I was once taken for something much worse
than a thief, I was taken for an undertaker I
Undertakers come from the lowest caste, and are
despised because they live by exploiting sorrow. I
was sitting at a burning ghat one day and the
PILGRIMAGE, THE HILLS 95
undertakers, after piling up wood and setting it on
fire, went off to beat a drum and sing songs, while I
sat and meditated upon the illusions of life. Sud-
denly I was roused by a man's sharp question.
“Look here, undertaker, why don't you attend to
your corpse P” he asked.
“What corpse?” said I.
At this he flew into a passion and cried out,
“Art thou drunk? Dost thou not see the corpse
that thou art burning?”
“That is not my corpse,” I protested.
“Oh,” he said, “I thought you were the under-
taker. You certainly don't look too decent to be
One ſ”
“That is because I have renounced the world,”
I answered him, rather pompously, I am afraid.
Then he became still more angry and began to
swear at the undertakers, “O grandsons of thieves
masquerading as undertakers, you have neglected
my dead and left near it a little holy man who
knows nothing !”
In the course of our journey we came to
Brindaban, the holy place where Krishna is sup-
posed to have lived. There are many turtles there
that look like rocks crawling about, and when the
monkeys are tired of jumping in the trees, they
ride on the turtles and pretend to be men riding on
elephants. No one is allowed to kill the animals
96 CASTE
in Brindaban. It is said that once Krishna wished
to drink at Brindaban but had no goblet. He bent
some leaves together and drank out of them.
Since then, in honor to him, all the leaves have
grown cup shaped. *
All kinds of people come to Brindaban—holy
men and rascals. If you go to a holy place in
India you will find two kinds of people: the holiest
and the most unholy. Holy men give salvation and
unholy men take away your purse.
As Benares stands on the Ganges, Brindaban
stands on the Jumna, which is the second holy river
in India. These two rivers are called sisters, for
they spring from the loins of the Himalayas. The
Ganges is white and tawny, the Jumna is dark;
originally she was white, but when Krishna left
Brindaban, Jumna turned black with grief. In the
evening, songs like these go through Brindaban:
O Krishna, O love-god, return to Brindaban;
Green evening stands still for your coming,
And the grief stricken Jumna is sorrow
silenced.
When you come you may not know her.
She is black now, and lo, she has blackened
the sea
When we arrived it was late afternoon. The
girls were going about freely, as is the custom
PILGRIMAGE, THE HILLS 97
there. They were singing, because human feet
should always be accompanied by the breath of
song, a hymn to Krishna :
O friend, I could not see Him well,
Only eyes unblinded of love, see the beloved
well,
So He passed from cloud crest to cloud crest;
And as the cloud heart breaks, so is my heart
broken,
But it cannot shed its love.
And then they sang:
I went to the well to fill my pitcher;
Why dost thou fill my heart?
The town constable was going his rounds.
When he met the girls, he sang:
You have taken my heart in the net of your
eyes;
Do not send me away, O fatal fowler,
I seek to give you my sorrow too.
He sang this to chaff them, and the girls cried,
“O constable, wake up. The thief will steal your
lantern.” He went his way singing. The con-
98 CASTE
º º Ç
& e • *
e e. ſº
•./- .
e
.# Qe
;" º
^ e
stables do not protect the people, and once I re- .
member when a thief attacked us the constable hid
with us, saying, “Why should I risk my life for
seven rupees a month?” A constable has no
pockets but this one had a turban which was
nothing but a pile of silver.
I asked him “Why do you carry silver in your
hair?”
“It helps to keep the turban straight,” he
replied.
We reached the hills at last, just at dusk. The
darkness fell like waters of silence, and the peaks
disappeared. A raven flew by, and his wing-beat
scratched the silence until it almost bled with the
sound. For a long time there was not a single
light visible in the valleys and no star dared put
out its silver foot. Then came the call of the
moon-bird, and silence walked away, giving place
to the night sounds. You could feel animals’ feet
moving through the far spaces, and lights from the
villages looked like tiger's eyes, and suddenly, as
we looked up, all the stars leaped at us.
We slept and were up long before sunrise. As
the blackness of night broke, the sun rose over
the tops of the mountains. It was as if an eagle of
gold smote the heavens and tore asunder the
thunder-throated clouds, while below the fierce
peaks opened like the petals of a lotus. I realized
PILGRIMAGE, THE HILLS 99
the meaning of the words “The lotus is the jewel
of the spirit.” The Himalayas had been closed in
darkness and then the Sun seemed to unfold them.
Toward midday we came to where the
Himalayas began to tell us everything: we heard
the booming of the cataracts falling from far up
in the rocks, and the little rivers screeching, the
moan of the tiger, and the screaming of the eagle,
while above all, the vast white head of the moun-
tains rose saying, “Nothing matters. Sit still. I have
sat still thousands of years, and because I sit still
the rivers flow, the eagles fly and the tigers call.”
Then for the first time I understood what was
meant by silence and being. My holy man had
said:
“By sitting still, you have the world between
your two feet; by lying down, you are present at
all points of the universe. It is swifter than the
swiftest flight of man's mind, this My being,
because I am stiller than the mountains. Find Me
in the very silence of your own heart, where I sit.”
As we went on, I remembered the story of the
fawn: At a certain time of the year, the fawn
begins to smell musk. It runs through the forest
in search of this musk, but never finds it. At last
it falls down exhausted, and in its agony it licks its
own body, and there it finds that the musk is grow-
ing. I had been told, “Do not be like the fawn,
IOO CASTE
perishing in search of the musk in the wilderness
without. Look within and find Me there, because
I am your Infinite Self, waiting to be discovered.
Find Me within you, and you will find the world
filled with Me.”
When at nightfall the darkness came upon the
Himalayas, again the same thing happened. It
was very extraordinary. The stillness began to
rise, and the stillness was like ink, and the light
began to recede from peak to peak, and this
monster inkiness rose up almost to the very top,
and the highest peak stood out alone.
You know stillness is not silence; it is absence of
sound. Beyond stillness is silence. Sometimes
when you hear the approach of silence, it is like the
breaking of the ear drums. In the presence of the
Himalayas at twilight we felt the pounding of
silence like something crashing, and then it was
gone and night descended. The animals began
to move and we heard their night calls.
If there were no mountains there would be no
Hindu philosophy. Below the conscious self of
man is the world of unconsciousness, of real being.
That is what the mountains have taught my people.
This day of my pilgrimage showed me the depths
of man's spirit. The seeker after truth is driven
back and forth from the multitude to solitude,
finding in solitude the truth by which to test the
PILGRIMAGE, THE HILLS IOI
multitude; and when that fails, finding in the multi-
tude the truth by which to test the solitude. Go to
the jungle to find the silence of nature; then go
back to human beings where there are deeper
silences of which nature can never speak!
“I am beyond speech and thought. . . . I am
the Ultimate Silence. Over Me gathers the dust
of sound.”
CHAPTER VII
THE CASHMERE SHAWL
N the hills I saw the making of a Cashmere
shawl. In olden times, as nowadays in the re-
mote villages, men used to weave muslin by hand
and go to the bazaars to sell it. A weaver would
plan his work, put it on the loom, and as the loom
hummed like a musical instrument the man would
become taut, eager. Towards the end, his body
would almost break, as the loom went on and on,
until at last the muslin was finished. Then he
would sell it, calling it by a name—“Morning
Dew” or “Evening Silence.” Even now, families
two or three hundred years old have names for
their clothes; you will hear the daughter say she
is going to wear “Evening Glow,” or the boy will
wear “Noon-day Ease,” and so on.
But the making of a fine Cashmere shawl is a
greater thing than the weaving of a piece of
muslin. About twenty men sit around the loom,
journeymen and apprentices; it is like an orchestra.
They all have a vision of the design, but the master
I O2
THE CASHMERE SHAWL IO3
who has done it hundreds of times to the minutest
detail, he alone knows it. One holds the red,
another the blue, another the russet, the green, the
purple, and so on; all these threads are held like
tongues of flame. The master has a small cane
in his hand; he says a short prayer and the weav-
ing begins, first the red, then the green, then the
purple, and they begin to sing:
What are you weaving? We are weaving
the little garment of a child. What are you
weaving? We are making the dress of a
bride. What are you weaving? We are
making the chaplet of the dead.
So the whole gamut of life is sung.
Day in and day out this goes on. The master
touches this weaver and then that one with the
stick, and each responds. You begin to see the
colors coming out, as if someone had torn the sun
into ribbons and was weaving it into the pattern,
and gradually this flow of colors takes shape and
form. The work lasts about twenty days, and at
the last the body of each one of these men becomes
taut, like a full-stretched bow; the master stands
like an eagle circling over his prey, the threads
are a thunderstorm of colors—the weavers give
a terrific yell! The thing is done ! Then you
IO4. CASTE
see a marvelous Cashmere shawl. And they give
it a name: “The True,” “The Well-Made,”
“The Pride of the Maker,” or “The Pride of
the Possessor.” It is ready, then, for the market.
Anyone who has seen the terrific bow-like stretch
of the bodies of the weavers towards the end of
the weaving can never forget it.
I have seen the traders come mile after mile to
obtain these shawls. Once when a tradesman from
a European country saw one in the making, he in-
sisted that it was only a mechanical process, a work
of habit, and he talked about it so much that in that
village the weavers became conscious of the design.
The secret was lost to the village because the mer-
chant had made the weavers think about what they
were doing and they became entangled in the in-
hibitions of self-consciousness. Even in the
artisan's work he must proceed from instinct to
consciousness and from consciousness to uncon-
sciousness. All his life the artisan has been taught
to work unconsciously, in order to attain
perfection, and the whole effort of the Hindu race
is directed toward the attainment of this uncon-
scious wisdom.
I saw the native potters at work in the moun-
tains. The Japanese and the Chinese clay is care-
fully selected and is excellent, but the Indian is in-
different to the quality of his clay. A potter will
THE CASHMERE SHAWL IO5
take any mud and go to work on it, but while the
material is imperfect, the form of his vase will be
perfect. We rose early one morning and found a
potter sitting waiting for the sun to rise, and as the
sun rose he went to work, and the clay looked like
a little mountain in the middle of the wheel. He
put his finger on the clay and as the chalice was
forming, he sang:
My heart, do not be like the wheel, but be
like the center of the wheel, which is standing
still. The wheel whirls because the center of
the wheel is still.
A potter gives beautiful names to his wares,
“The Nest of Milk,” or “The Homing Place of
Honey.” When he is selling them he asks, “What
will you have? Three Homing Places of Honey,
or Three Nests of Milk?”
We stayed near this potter a long time. He
said he could make any kind of pot or vase, pro-
vided people gave him the order and never came
to ask him how he was making it. We wanted to
put many questions to him but he said, “You should
never disturb a maker by asking him how he makes
a thing; he is like God, too busy creating to answer
questions.” If a potter becomes conscious of the
process he loses sight of the thing itself. He said,
Ioé CASTE
“It is not the clay and the shape of the cup that
is the most important; it is the hollow that holds
the milk that is important, and you must know how
to make the right hollow, or you will not be a good
potter.”
When we came down from the hills to go home
my friend left me to take another way. I came
all alone to a village and sat near a little river,
meditating, when a woman passed me and said,
“Son, you have a sweet face. Why are you here?
How have they the heart to turn such a boy out
into the world?” She took me home and gave me
food; then her husband carried me to the next
village in his ox cart. These villages are nothing
but human dots on the edge of a vast forest: we
have never cut down our forests any more than is
necessary, since the animals are our brothers, and
nature is a mirror of humanity.
As the farmer drove me along, I asked him
about a certain holy man whose fame had reached
us. His name was Pahari Baba.
I said, “Did not he live here once?”
And the farmer answered, “Yes; he used to live
on yonder hill, in a cave. Ah! Since he died, our
village has not been the same at all.”
“Why is that?” I asked.
To which he responded, “Perhaps you have
heard that as long as he lived, the Holy One did
THE CASHMERE SHAWL Io.7
nothing for us and the villagers complained. We
used to bring him rice and leave it at the cave's
mouth; he took our gifts, without even a blessing.
Presently he died, and very soon after that, a crime
occurred in the village, a murder. The five elders
of the village sat together and contemplated the
bloody deed. One of them said, ‘These thirty
years the saint lived on yonder hill, and no crime
occurred amongst us. Now that he is dead we
are beset with evil, there is no one to transmute
it.’ ‘Yes,’ the others said, ‘by his very being he
overcame the forces of destruction.’”
In the next village as I was looking for shelter
I found a peasant tilling the soil, and a Christian
missionary talking to him and telling him that our
God was different from his God. I was very tired
and I sat down near them. At eleven o'clock the
man stopped his work to rest for the hot hours.
The missionary, bidding him goodbye, said, “Now
you understand, there is a difference between the
false God and the true God.”
The peasant answered, “You are an educated
man, and you see the difference; but I, being igno-
rant, feel that God is one. Of Him we have been
given several descriptions, that is all.” f.
Throughout India there is this primary wisdom
of the common people. That night about ten
Io8 CASTE
o'clock I asked a common man, “Brother, what is
happening?”
He looked up and replied, “The moon is gather-
ing sheaves of silence in her arms.”
Many things might be told about the rich well of
Indian life, but there are three hundred million
people in India and what I know is but a
cupful.
Before sunrise I went to bathe. The people
were taking the water of the river and touching
their foreheads with it three times; this signified
a prayer: “O mother, I am going to give you my
impurity, but as you bathe my body, also wash the
impurity of my inner life.” This starts the day.
After bathing, they put a mark on their foreheads
with ashes, or dust or sand, to signify that the
truth cannot be found with the blindness of two
eyes, but by opening the third, the inner eye.
When the sun rises he is the third eye, he is the
messenger. The common, average people that
stay on the soil are continually thinking of the
Lord.
On my way home I stopped to rest beside the
door of a Mohammedan butcher. He sold meat
to the Mohammedans and the Christians. I sat
down and he said, “What do you want here?”
“I am meditating on God,” I answered.
“It's time for me to pray, too,” he said; “I am
THE CASHMERE SHAWL IO9
a Mohammedan, I ought to pray; Mohammedans
are better than Hindus.”
“Yes, I’ve heard that before,” said I.
“But I never pray,” he went on.
I was startled: “Why don't you?” I asked.
He said, “How can I? A cow is larger than
a human being and if you kill a cow, you can kill
a human being. I live by killing, and so I cannot
pray to Allah; yet if I can get to Him at all it must
be through my killing.”
I said, “You are just like our people.”
“No, no,” he answered me, “Hindus are
infidels. They are no good; but I do think it is
terrible to kill a cow ! We do not kill our mothers
because they give us suck, but after we have taken
suck from the cow, we kill her l’’
If I did not find a lesson in one town, I went
on to the next, always searching for an experience
of the inner life.
CHAPTER VIII
IDOLS
Bººk I returned to the duties of the priest-
hood which awaited me at home, I visited
some of the great cave-temples of India. The
importance of Hindu art, like the importance of
Hindu life, lies in the background of its religious
significance. Our art is extremely symbolic; there
is a deliberate endeavor to make it ugly and so
wherever you go in India you will find that all the
beautiful things are marred by symbols. Beauty
is not enough. Beauty is poor fare for anyone to
live on, and we destroy it where we can by the
brand of holiness. -
Children are taught: “We have goodness in
one hand and truth in the other, but we have holi-
ness within us. We go from beauty into goodness,
and from goodness into truth, and from truth into
holiness l” These are the four stages of man's life.
All beauty should be marred by truth so that man
can never escape from that fierce enigma of en-
IIO
IDOLS III
lightenment which lies behind the appearance of
beauty. This is shown in the celebration of Kali
which takes place every year, in the autumn when
we make the image of the Mother of the Universe
—the image of Kali. Kali is the goddess of Time.
She is dancing, because as Time is a succession of
moments, so is dancing a succession of movements,
and the only way in which art can express time is
as a succession of movements.
Kali wears a garland of human heads around
her neck, and she has four hands to symbolize the
past, the present and the future. The first two
hands, holding a sword and a human head,
represent the present; man, the latest embodiment
of human destiny, wiped out by death. The next
two hands give the conventional gestures to indi-
cate hope (the future) and memory (the past).
Kali is shown stepping on Shiva, the snow-white
god under her foot, the embodiment of eternal
renunciation, whom she cannot vanquish. Her
movements are arrested, for Shiva is uncon-
querable by Time. You tell a child to say to Kali,
“O Mother, take away the vessel of Time! Show
me the humble face, the face of thy silence, of thy
love which has been hidden away by the dance of
Time!” And to Shiva, “Lead me from the unreal
to the real, from darkness into light, from death
into immortality! O thou face of terrible beauty,
II 2 CASTE
penetrate me through and through by thy com-
passionate disillusionſ”
When we make the Mother in the autumn, we
get the clay from the heart of the Ganges; the
whole town follows in the procession and it is a
great occasion. I remember going once with my
grandfather. The procession stopped before the
House of Ill Fame and took the dust from the
door of the house and mixed it with the sacred
clay, and I asked, being still something of the
curious child, “Why do we this?” “Don’t you
see,” answered my grandfather, “we make the
image of the Mother, and it is not complete until
all motherhood is included in it. This is mother-
hood utterly ruined, but even those who dwell here
must be reminded that they hold imprisoned some-
thing greater than themselves, and this is the way
to remind them, for without their heart the
Mother's heart is not complete.”
Then we came to the house of Vaskan, the
sculptor. We call a sculptor the sunmaker, for he
puts light behind appearance, and rouses the sun
of form in the formless. Vaskan received the clay
given to him by the priest and all the people; then
we turned away and left him, for in order to be
prepared to make the sacred image, Vaskan had to
fast and to meditate. When the image was com-
pleted, the priest, accompanied by all the village
IDOLS II3
as before, returned to Vaskan's house and we
found that he had represented Kali in one of her
incarnations, as Durga, a ten-handed goddess.
This image of Durga, who was Kali, stood on a rag-
ing lion who, in turn, stood on a slain buffalo.
Motherhood is first a beast of burden, hence the
buffalo; next a beast of conquest, hence the lion.
Durga is ten-handed because she is the mother of
the universe, armed at all points by her sanctity.
When we were gazing at the statue, the priest
invoked the spirit of motherhood to dwell within
the idol. He said: “O spirit that is formless, come
and embrace this form so that we can worship by
visualizing you through this appearance. O you,
that dwell in all things as the Mother, we bow to
you!” Then the procession carried the image to
the temple, and for three days ceremonies were
performed before it, including three miracle plays.
At the end of this time, the image was again
carried in procession and thrown into the river.
That evening people called on each other, irre-
spective of caste or creed, with the greeting:
“Brother, we are motherless today, partake of this
refreshment!” This was a symbolic communion,
and on leaving they embraced each other, with the
feeling that they had been initiated into brotherly
love through these three days’ worship. Now that
the symbol had been destroyed in the river, the dis-
II4. CASTE
embodied soul of motherhood became all the more
powerful, for the form had been cast aside that
the spirit might be retained. So the highest reach
of art is to annihilate art.
According to the Shilpa Sastra, in which the
symbolic art of India has been thoroughly ex-
plained, certain rules have been laid down for the
guidance of artists. One of these is that the novice
should not be taught the technique for the asking.
He must meditate, and find within himself a vision
that clamors for expression, and only then may
his masters instruct him in technique.
In India all our art is ritualistic, especially the
art of the temples and the caves. When I went
to the cave temples, to Elephanta or Ellora, I
found mountains hollowed out, and temples built
underneath them. The columns supporting the
roof resembled elephant legs, and the ceilings and
the walls were gorgeously decorated with the
sculptured forms of human beings and of gods.
About 200 B.C., or earlier, a group of monks
went to meditate under the rock of Ajanta. In
their meditations they experienced ecstasy, and
having experienced it, they carved it on the wall.
The monks who came after them began to dig
in for more space, and built more shrines for the
particular visions that they saw, and in the course
of time they covered one side and then another
IDOLS II 5
of the mountain and gradually built entire valhailas
there. The story of all the gods of India is
carved on these walls, and the youngest of them
all is Buddha : he is a young boy, compared to
Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma. Seven hundred years
of Indian history is written out in these caves,
covering vastness with terrific forms.
I shall never forget my first visit to Ellora,
reached after a two days’ tramp from the nearest
town. When the sages of southern India wanted
to create an image of the universe, they went to
Ellora. They worked for one hundred and fifty
years and used up generations of artists. They
carved a mountain into galleries, and as these
rose higher and higher, they gradually attained the
summit, and the whole mountain was covered, as
the Himalayas are covered, with strange life.
First, there are stone lines like serpents running
around the base, miles of them, interlacing them-
selves, swallowing their own tails; these symbolize
time, the time process. Then come elephants and
lions, above them a whole story of men; then
come the demigods, with their strange faces; then
the supernatural, the ultimate gods, and at the
top shrine is the sanctuary of silence: four bare
walls. It is in this chamber that the supreme
ecstasy was vouchsafed to man.
As I walked in the dim light of these galleries,
II6 CASTE
faces of gods and beasts flashed into life and filled
the air with strange presences. The pythons run-
ning in and out seemed more sinister than real
snakes, peering faces of animals and demi-
gods gave me the impression of a distorted jun-
gle turned to stone. Then I came out by a
small tranquil pool where sat a little statue of
Buddha meditating. Here was the link between
man and the fierce gods. Here was Man-God,
God-Man, that which man can become. The
statue sat as if to tell us that perhaps out of man's
meditation the Heavenly City might appear. Man
is the fulness of the universe; in him is enclosed
the secret; within him lies this vast world of
pythons, gods and the One God. If some man like
Buddha comes again and meditates, perhaps the
Heavenly City may return, more real than all these
stony Presences now shrouded in darkness.
In the cave-temples, after a labyrinth of rooms
filled with saintly presences, I came upon an
empty chamber. First I had passed through the
beauty of the symbolized world and from that
I had entered into this inner world of silence, and
as I sat and meditated, I gradually heard and saw
and felt the silence falling down the walls. That
empty room was the key to the meaning of the
entire scheme of sculpture.
IDOLS 117
In India throughout the ages, the nature of the
human and the supernatural have interlaced, there
has been no beginning. We have no prejudice
against the lower animals, and the gods have no
prejudice against us; the three go together with
never a break. Though nature is implicit in God,
it is continually becoming explicit in the world, and
we think that the purpose of art is to release the
impetus of nature through symbolizing appear-
ances; as the purpose of philosophy is to release
each man's sense of truth; as the purpose of
religion is to release each man's spirituality. In
every branch of Indian activity it is taught that a
man owes no obedience to any master until he has
felt this obligation first within himself.
We are continually testing the infinite in terms
of this world, for if civilization did not have the
infinite, the finite would break down. The whole
culture of India including its art seeks not to
reform the finite, but to inform it with the infinite.
If you do not create God out of your own imagina-
tion, God will not be able to create the universe.
God is the Tiger of Silence imprisoned within you;
bring Him out to destroy the insolence of words!
“I am waiting for my ultimate utterance. Let
Me loose! I want to wipe away the impurities of
life by supreme rebellion. I am the River of
II8 CASTE
Sanctities. Why do you lock me up within and
bathe in the rivers of earth? Unlock Me and let
Me out to purify the world! Uncage Me, the
Infinite!”
CHAPTER IX
THE PRIEST
Y time of pilgrimage was over, and when I
came home I took up the life of a priest.
The priest begins the day by opening the temple.
He blows the conch, opens the doors, and people
come and sit in silence for a few minutes. Religion
in India, as in every other country, is kept up by
women, and all the women of the community come
in the early morning and sit still in the temple.
The priest has to sit still with them to set the
example of quiet, and that is hard work!
At seven o’clock the children bring flowers with
which he decorates the temple, then he goes down-
stairs and into the kitchen, where there are many
servants waiting. After consulting a clerk he gives
them the orders for the day: “I think we may
expect fifty poor people by noon, so prepare dinner
for fifty.” There is an income for this charity, as
all temples are endowed, and the clerk keeps the
account if the temple is a large one, otherwise the
priest does. The temple remains open all the time
II9
I2O CASTE
and the people come and go and the children play
on the stairs.
At nine o'clock the priest begins to read. He
takes down the scriptures and reads purely for his
own edification; people come and sit there and ask
him questions, but there is no sermon; then, about
ten o'clock or so, when he finishes reading, he goes
around the countryside to see what has happened
to the people. When there is sickness, it is his job
or his wife's or his children’s to act as nurse, for he
is nurse, teacher, servant and holy man to them all.
After going his rounds, he returns to the temple.
The food is now ready and the priest, after a brief
meditation with the people who have come in from
the outer court, consecrates the food. During the
afternoon everybody is asleep or meditating. In
the basement, under the trees and all about, the
people sleep.
The temple opens again at three or four. Then
begins the hour of social intercourse when the vil-
lagers come in and sit about and talk. In India
the gods are not disturbed by this sort of thing!
At five a bell is rung and the end of the social hour
has come; there is no cooking after that; no lights
are lighted, the people wait in silence for the dark-
ness. The priest has to meditate with them and
when the hour of silence has passed, he blows his
conch shell and then takes up the epics to read. All
THE PRIEST I2 I
the laborers from all around, high and low, come in
the evening to listen to the epics; after six or eight
years of this they know them by heart—instead of
reading the newspapers our people read the epics.
In a village, about three quarters of the people
come to the temple, which is to them what post
office, town hall, community centre, and church
represent in a place of similar size in America; in
a town, only about a third of the people come.
Every temple is a theatre, as it used to be in
Europe in the middle ages. The priest must give
thirteen plays in twelve months. He has to select
strolling players as they happen to pass through the
town for these performances, which are more or
less derived from the epics. The plays are free to
all and sometimes two thousand people will come
to see them. The temple pays the players, for a
special fund from the endowment is set aside for
that purpose. When a play is over, the priest says,
“O assembled people, do not talk: go home and
meditate and make it part of yourselves I’’
The priest has to do all this; but it is merely
routine work. Although he seems to be occupied
with holy things, in reality he has no time for God.
His duty is that malicious thing, doing good, which
is enough to dry up anybody. Very few priests
recognize that God has a sense of humor; that is
why most of them continue to be priests. Half of
•
I22 CASTE
them never do anything but sit down to this
routine: they are spiritual vultures. But now and
then one of them, when he is about forty,
renounces the world and goes away from it all.
When a holy man comes, the priests give the
temple up to him. My holy man used to come to
our temple once in a while. He had charge of all
the rituals at this time and he would simplify them
very much. He would not read from the holy
books but would sit and tell tales and chant and
praise God. He said, “Praise when you come to
God. Praise is the only way of defining God.”
Nobody addresses the people except the priests
and the holy men, but once in a while a master who
is a scholar is invited. He explains the symbolism
of rituals and speaks for five or six evenings on the
sacred books and then goes away. Thus the epics
are kept alive.
In India everyone is taught through symbols;
therefore we make idols, each one symbolizing
something, and through these we educate the
people. If your prayers are personal and you wish
to ask for something for yourself, you address the
idols. You pray to them for everything you want,
though they never answer your prayers. I asked
my master once, “What is wrong with prayers?”
He said, “Praying is a splendid thing; but every-
thing that I ever prayed for, if it had been given to
THE PRIEST I23
me, would have proved a calamity. We ought to
say, “O Lord, hear me pray but do not grant my
prayers l’” In India we pray to the idols, but to
the ultimate God, never. Idols are the impersona-
tion of our desires which are both released and
satisfied through prayer: a prayer to an idol is like
confessing to a deaf and dumb person. We dare
not insult the real God by asking Him for things.
I remember once an English lady came to see my
father. In Our courtyard she passed a man sitting
before a little stone and praying his head off, and
this English lady said, “How superstitious !”
When he had finished praying, the man's face was
illuminated; he looked up and said, “Madam, if a
stick or a stone reveals God to me, how dare you
despise it?” Idols are symbolic manifestations; we
make them ourselves and to us they symbolize the
temporary God. Every house has an idol and
every evening the people sit still around it. They
make a figure of clay or pick up a stone and say,
“O spirit, come and abide in this l’’ and whenever
they wish, they get rid of it. Although the common
people become attached to their idols and grow
very superstitious, if you ask them why they bow
to them they will answer, “It is not the idol we bow
to, but the spirit we have invoked and put into it.”
Even the simplest people will answer in this way.
In the Brahmin caste both men and women may
pº
I24. CASTE
become priests. Usually when the man of the
family is dead, the woman becomes the priest. My
sister is running our temple now and it is run more
efficiently than when we men were there. This
temple has been in our family for many hundred
years. It is an enormous place with an estate
attached, and my sister collects the rent and spends
it on taking care of the poor. She is in charge of
all the activities of the temple and takes nothing
for herself except two meals a day. About twice
a month she fasts for twenty-four hours. In our
temple two priests are enough: sometimes there
is one priest and an acolyte, but in a large temple
like the one at Juggernaut there are as many as
fifty priests. The Brahmin priesthood is not
organized in the Western way and this gives it the
advantage of flexibility. You can be a Brahmin
without being a priest: you become a priest if you
wish, and if you wish, you are allowed to resign,
but you are still a Brahmin. Two-thirds of the
Brahmins are not priests but lawyers and pro-
fessional men; they cannot intermarry with other
castes; and as they are not priests, they cannot go
into the holy of holies in a temple.
When I came back from my pilgrimage I went
into the temple, as I have said, and did this routine
work. I used to marry young people, take care of
THE PRIEST I25
the sick and read the epics. Besides performing
all these duties, while I was running the temple, I
went to the Christian school, and studied the New
Testament carefully. It was hardly a year before
I gave up being a priest, because I realized that I
was not in my right place.
This may seem very strange to a Westerner
after all I had experienced, but to a Hindu it was
not strange. A Brahmin boy often fulfills the
duties of a priest for a time, but if he finds it is not
his vocation he is expected to resign and to seek
the Lord in other ways. We think the end is holi-
ness, not a profession. I was very young—hardly
sixteen—and I was impelled by an urge which I
did not myself fully understand at the time. All
I knew was, that after seeing the vast spaces of
India, I could not stick to my school, nor could I
see myself continuing to sit in a temple giving
blessings to people who could do without them.
What I should have done perhaps was to have be-
come a monk; religion did not spell priesthood to
me and it never has, it is a call of the soul to go in
search of that Vagrant of Eternity whom we call
God. Distance summoned me. The Himalayas
with their upward gesture and hunger for Heaven
carried me away. No temple spire was tall enough
to take the place of the Dorj, the home of the
I26 CASTE
thunder, and Sumeroo Himadri, white heaving of
the hills; and I could go, I was free, thanks to the
traditions of a race accustomed in child, in boy,
in man, to the restlessness for God.
CHAPTER X
TRADING SEHAWLS
BEFORE leaving home again, however, I
determined to go on studying for a time and to
see what knowledge would do for me. But I only
confused myself. I could not find contentment and
I soon made up my mind that books were not worth
while, and, restless and dissatisfied, I threw them
aside and determined to see life from a totally
different angle. With the longing for the hills, of
which I have spoken, strong within me, I cast about
for some occupation that would take me back to
them and I hit upon shawl trading. This had the
added advantage of the appeal, or the excuse, of
usefulness to my family, who made no objection
to my going. Fortunately for me, Indian life gives
ample opportunity to an unquiet spirit, and, as I
have said, there is nothing in our thought or our
tradition to bind a restless young man in search of
truth to one place or occupation. The significance
of the vows I had taken was spiritual and the
profession of the priesthood incidental. Had not
I27
I28 CASTE
my holy man enjoined me to find God through
play? And something of a play it was to go with
the caravans into the Himalayas and bring back
shawls. I wore a turban made by one of the
Cashmereans, which cost an enormous amount of
money. My shawl was one of the richest ever
made, and I had a servant with me. I must have
had in those days something of the Western idea
of advertising.
One day in the Himalayas this amazing thing
happened: I had left a shawl on a rock and for-
gotten all about it. Six days later I remembered it
and came back, and there was the shawl exactly
where I had put it!
I said to an old man in the neighborhood,
“Father, why didn't anybody steal that shawl?”
“Thieving grows in the poisonous air of the
valley; never in our hills,” he replied.
Once in a hill town I met a beautiful dancer.
Everyone wanted her to dance for him. To whom
would she grant the favor? All the young men
were bringing her presents so I, thinking to outdo
them, took one of my most beautiful and costly
shawls and bore it proudly to her house. Two
musicians were in attendance, and there was a
hookah, but in those days I did not know how to
smoke. The dancer came to me and looked at
the shaw! I had brought her, then she put her
TRADING SHAWLS I29
finger under my chin and said, “Little brother, go
home ! You haven’t yet finished drinking the milk
of innocence.” And I went home with my shawl,
humiliated.
Returning from the hills after selling all my
wares, I traveled by railroad. Now traveling by
railroad in India, as everyone knows who has read
Kim, is a picturesque experience, and I threw my-
self with youthful zest into every encounter. Here
was play indeed, for a common experience like a
railroad journey produces in people of different
race and language the most surprising and amusing
contacts that can be imagined.
One day I was waiting on the platform for a
train to come. After three hours the train was
heard. It stopped at a distance and whistled for
the signal to come into the station.
The man who gives the signals was eating his
dinner and he grumbled, “What does it want, the
fool, screeching like that?”
“It wants a signal to come to the platform,”
somebody said.
“Then let it wait till I’ve finished my dinner,”
replied the man crossly.
When you get into a car and the train is about
to start, a guard walks up and down, calling to the
people to keep their heads and arms inside. “Do
not stick your arms out; they might be broken l’’
I3O CASTE
So the people stick out their legs just to be con-
trary, and laugh at his warnings.
When the train stops at a station everybody
crowds to windows and platform to fill their bowls
with water which a vendor distributes. And at the
same time you will hear the cry, “Beef and bread |
Beef and bread!” And the Mohammedans go to
the window and say, “Bring us meat. Bring us
lots of it. There are too many Hindus in this car.
We want more room.” These Mohammedans,
who are fat, spread themselves out in the train to
eat their meat, and all the Hindus shrink back into
the corners to be as far away as possible and avoid
pollution, and so the Mohammedans get all the
room they want. -
Once I was traveling on a very crowded train.
A lot of men were going to Calcutta to work dur-
ing the autumn; they had left their wives behind,
and they were feeling lonely and homesick and
rather grouchy. Then a young man got into the
train, bringing his wife with him. This excited
them all very much and they began asking shrilly,
“What is he doing with his bride? We have to
leave our wives at home and behold this man in-
dulges in the extravagance of bringing his with
him Let them stand; it serves them right!”
But a man from a minor province—a Kayath
said solemnly, “There must be respect shown to a
TRADING SHAWLS I3 I
woman.” He got up and gave her his seat. He
used, however, the Kayath word for woman,
meraru, and one of the Hindus, eager to pick a
quarrel and relieve his feelings, said, “Thou dost
not even know the proper word! Who stoops to
understand Kayathi !” But the young wife,
evidently a bride of about sixteen, could contain
herself no longer and took her seat with great dig-
nity announcing sententiously to the Kayath, but
loud enough for the whole car to hear, “No matter
what the language, everyone understands when the
son of a hero-mother speaks I’” It had the desired
effect; after that everyone was overcome, and
perfect silence reigned in the car.
The couple needed milk, but the husband was
very shy and when the train stopped he would not
go and get it; he said they could do without. So
she went to the window and bargained with the
milk woman.
Proud of her recent victory, and wishing to dis-
play her knowledge of the world, she began
belligerently, “What kind of water dost thou put
in the milk, ditch water or river water, I would
like to know?”
But the old milk woman was equal to her: “O
thou childless one, my own children drink this milk.
Dost thou suppose in thy ignorance that children
drink watered milk?”
I32 CASTE
The bride asked rather nervously, “How
knowest thou that I am childless?”
“Thy impudence betokens barrenness.”
The bride lost her temper. “If I had thy age
I would have twice as many children as thou—
take thy money and give me the milk.” Her dig-
nity regained with the last word, she drank, then
gave the milk to her husband. But he did not like
to have people see that he was drinking from the
same cup that his wife had used, for he was very
shy; and so he said, “I am not thirsty,” But his
wife made him drink it. Said she, “Oh, drink thy
milk and be quiet!” And so it went, back and
forth between the occupants of that car all the way
to Calcutta.
At another time, we had come across the
Ganges on a boat, and we were taking the train.
But we noticed that on all the cars had been
marked: “Reserved.” There was not a single com-
partment left. I made up my mind I must get to
my destination somehow, so I went into the train
and found a car with bunks, and being agile, I
slipped up on top of one. Gradually the car filled
below.
Some soldiers came in and put their luggage
under the benches and sat down and began to talk.
“It’s wonderful that our prince has whole com-
partments reserved for us,” said one importantly.
TRADING SHAWLS I33
“Our prince is a fool,” retorted another.
“He couldn't have had the brains to think this
out: some fool in his administration gave them to
us.”
“If there are so many fools doing good to us,
nobody need be wise,” said the first.
“Dost thou not know it is the railway's courtesy
shown to the prince's regiment which gives us the
car?” said a third soldier, with a convincing air of
knowledge, and so they chattered until noticing me
on top, one of them called up, “But who is this
brother-in-law sleeping up there?”
Now “brother-in-law” is a very abusive word
in India. They were big men; I knew any one of
them could kill two of me and they were the rajah's
soldiers. Hoping to carry off the situation, I
scrambled up and looking over asked pertly, “Who
wishes to be related to me?”
“Ah,” said one, fortunately amused by my
impudence, “a little gentleman has come in. When
didst thou finish drinking milk?”
“Long before thou didst learn to wear clothes,”
I retorted. So down I came and we talked about
their country. Later they went to sleep and I
climbed back again and went to sleep too in my
former place.
We reached our destination. The first thing
we heard was “Water! Water!” Everybody took
I34 CASTE
water. Then came the call: “Beef and bread.”
The Mohammedans, of whom there were only a
few in the train, had their dinner and as soon as
they had finished eating their meat, the Hindus,
who had filled their pitchers with water, poured
it on the heads of the Mohammedans, saying,
“Now be cleansed, O you sons of pigs ſ” The
Mohammedans were furious, but the train started
on again, and the soldiers said, “It is a wise thought
to cleanse the Mohammedans when Hindus are in
the majority 1” And so moved the ever-changing
pageant in which I was both actor and audience.
The people who have the most difficulty in rail-
road travel are the poor Mohammedan ladies,
obliged to go so closely veiled that they can hardly
see to get on and off the trains. One day I saw a
Mohammedan gentleman pushing a way for him-
self and his three wives through the crowded plat-
form toward the Bombay mail. He reached the
train, which was booked to leave in ninety seconds,
and began trying to hurry his first wife into a com-
partment. She was a rotund, somewhat elderly,
and very voluminous person, and it was quick work
to push her up the steps in sixty seconds. Then
came number two, slighter in build but equally en-
veloped, but by a miracle the Mohammedan gentle-
man shoved her into a place in thirty seconds; then
the engine whistled. The third wife frightened
TRADING SHAWLS I35
and breathless was just putting her foot on the
step behind her husband when the guard pushed
by, shoving them both to the platform and slam-
ming the door. He waved his green flag to the
engine driver and the unfortunate Mohammedan,
seeing two of his wives about to be carried away
cried out, “For the love of Allah, restore my two
wives or let us get in l’’
“Isn't one wife enough for you?” replied the
guard unsympathetically, and the train started to
pull out.
The two agitated ladies in the car had dragged
off their veils in their effort to see what was
happening to them, and their husband turned from
the guard to scream at them, “Hide your faces,
hide your faces, shameless ones Would you dis-
grace me in a railway station?”
All the doors were closed, all the passengers in,
the guard was climbing into his car, the last on the
train, but the now frantic Mohammedan rushed
after him and shouting, “Thou shalt not go with
my two wives l’ held him in a firm embrace as the
train moved slowly out of the station. Then at last
the frustrated guard waved the red flag to make
the train come back. The last I saw through the
car window was the heads of the united family
bobbing wildly as for the second time the train
moved out.
136 CASTE
Full of such incidents my journeyings were, and
rich in character and in color, vastly amusing to
the boy that I still was, but at the end of the
months of travel, in spite of the mighty back-
ground of the hills, in spite of the throb of
humanity beneath their serene summits, I was still
a wanderer, and no nearer a goal than when I had
started. I had had some dim hope behind my
youthful zest for adventure, that I might meet the
supreme experience in the hills, and find, among
the many hermits who flock to the Himalayas in
search of God, a master greater than I had known
before, who would tell me, with all the detail so
dear to the heart of youth, the meaning of my life,
and point out to me my way. But, alas, I did not
find the mighty spirit wandering alone and saying
to himself, “Therefore, O my soul, wander alone
like a rhinoceros ſ” . And very soon I wearied of
the shawls and returned home, disappointed like
many another youth before me, to enter the
University of Calcutta. -
CHAPTER XI
MY BROTHER'S MARRIAGE
SHORTIX after my return, one of my brothers
was married.
Marriages in India are arranged by the parents.
The young people are told at a certain time that
they are to be married; only then are they intro-
duced to each other and asked whether they like
each other or not. They generally say yes, and
soon after, the marriage is celebrated.
Now in olden times, before the conquest of
India by the Mohammedans, women chose their
own husbands. It used to be called sayamvara
meaning “the choice.” If the king's daughter was
to be married, all the kings and princes would come
to the king's door, and the maiden would choose
her husband from amongst them. A story is told
to Hindu children even now which illustrates the
ancient custom:
In times long ago there was a king in India
who had a fair daughter named Sanyukta. Now
Sanyukta's nurse, who had brought her up, always
I37
I38 CASTE
told her wonderful tales about a certain king in
Northern India named Prithvi-of his beauty, and
of his valor, exceeding that of all other men, and
as the girl grew into glorious maidenhood, she had
only Prithvi's image in her heart. But the king,
her father, was at war with Prithvi and she never
saw her heart's idol.
One day the news went forth that the time had
come for the Princess Sanyukta to choose a hus-
band, and all the princes of India who had visited
her father's court, assembled together to contest
for her hand. The nurse, knowing whose image
was graven in Sanyukta's heart, went forth to the
kingdom of Prithvi and reaching the king, per-
suaded him to disguise himself as a beggar and go
to the assembly where Princess Sanyukta was to
choose a husband.
When all the princes of India were arranged in
accordance to their rank, the portals opened, and
Sanyukta walked out of the palace. Her father
and mother watched from the upper balconies,
eager to know whom she would choose. She
passed the most wealthy princes, and then the most
valorous and the most powerful; though the
attendants of each prince sang his praise, Sanyukta
passed on unheeding. She came at last to the
princes whose pretentions were greater than either
their wisdom or their prowess, and still she did
MY BROTHER'S MARRIAGE I39
not choose. Her parents were terribly anxious.
“Is our daughter going to reject them all?” said
they."
Now, the old king, to mock his enemy Prithvi
before all these princes, had put a wooden image
of him at the end of the court, and when the
Princess reached that image, she stopped in front
of it and put a garland at its feet.
“What an insult to offer to the Princes of
India,” cried the nobles.
Then a beggar concealed all this time in their
midst rose and cried, “It is not an insult, but a chal-
lengel I am Prithvi. She has chosen me!” His
white charger was near. He took the girl in his
arms and leaped on his war-horse and galloped
away to his home.
That is what my old nurse told me regarding
the ancient system. This is the last tale of mar-
riage by choice in India. Prithvi was conquered
and killed by the Mohammedans. From that day
on men and women had no time to choose one an-
other. It was necessary to find a system of marriage
by which the men could protect the women from the
invading Mohammedans, for the Mohammedans
intended to convert all India to Mohammedanism,
and since the Hindus were not willing converts but
resisted to the point of death, the only way open
was to force Hindu women to bear Mohammedan
I4O CASTE
children. As the law of the sword had failed to
convert India, the Mohammedans thought they
could succeed by the law of nature. Being polyga-
mous the advantage was on their side. But when
the Hindu men died fighting, the entire female
population of garrison towns, in order not to fall
into the hands of their conquerors, burned them-
selves alive. It was this measure that saved India
from being overpopulated by Mohammedan
children. To this day the Hindus are in the
majority. The eight hundred years of Moham-
medan rule saw in India a new marriage system
totally unlike the ancient sayamvara. Girls before
they reached the age of maturity were irrevocably
betrothed to young Hindus, so that they could be
protected from the Mohammedan enemy. And
it is this system of marriage that has prevailed
until the end of the nineteenth century.
Today young people are told to marry each
other and they do so. If there is any love it is
after marriage, not before. In this respect young
people in America and Europe have a great ad-
vantage. They at least have love before marriage,
no matter what happens later.
In India, after the young people have seen each
other, the betrothal ceremony is held. But this is
no simple matter. The astrologers have to search
their horoscopes to see whether the stars under
MY BROTHER'S MARRIAGE I4 I
which they were born are harmonious. If the stars
are not harmonious, the marriage does not take
place, Sometimes it almost seems as if it were
the stars and not the young people who were to be
mated
No marriage takes place in the day time; they
always wait for evening when the stars are out.
The astrologers enjoy the marriages quite as much
as, if not more than, anybody else. They like to
forecast all kinds of terrible things and sometimes
they come true, the four times they are right keep-
ing out of the minds of people the ninety-six times
they are wrong!
Every family has attached to it from generation
to generation a family of matchmakers. And this
is a very curious institution. These men are able
to enumerate all the diseases of each member of
their employer's family and the information is
handed down from father to son. They are a
singular people, hiding considerable astuteness and
worldly wisdom behind a kind of buffoonery,
always attaching to their profession, which makes
them fill at times a rôle not unlike the old European
jester's.
When the time came for my brother to marry,
our matchmaker was called in to find a wife
for him, as my parents did not know where to
look for a suitable one. The matchmaker, typical
I42 CASTE
of his kind, stood and gazed at the ceiling, then
gazed down, and tapped his head three times with
his forefinger. After a very profound pause, he
remarked, “The diseases of this family are not of
a very violent order. Let me see: has there been
any insanity in the last seven generations?”
“There has been none,” my grandfather an-
swered.
Then the matchmaker asked, “Who was the
young girl who used to have fits of biting people?”
My grandfather replied to this characteristic
witticism, “Art thou truly the grandson of him who
made the match for me, or art thou descended
from a he-ass?”
And the matchmaker answered, “Now I know
I must go to a fool's nest to find a bride fit for
such a family as this ſ” and tapping his head three
times again, off he went. In a short time he
brought news of a maiden whose father was rich,
and in whose family, after consulting the match-
maker and obtaining his inherited information,
Our matchmaker said there were no dangerous
Then my parents made the next move and called
upon the parents of the girl, asking them if they
had any objection to a marriage between my
brother and their daughter. After that my father
took my brother with him and paid a formal visit
MY BROTHER'S MARRIAGE I43
to the young girl. She was thirteen years old.
When my brother returned from the call, he re-
marked, “She does not shine like gold, nor is she
made of brass.”
And so it was settled, and one night we all went
to the maiden's house prepared for the long cere-
monial, and armed with a retinue of relatives,
priests and followers, including our matchmaker
and astrologer as well as our poet and our philoso-
pher, for every family would think itself disgraced
on such an occasion without the services of poetry
and philosophy. Of course, long before this the
astrologers had settled the hour for the marriage,
and the compatibility of the stars under which the
young couple were born.
We accompanied the bridegroom to the place
where the altar fires were burning. He stood
there while the bride was brought in, seated in a
sandal-wood chair and carried by her four
brothers. The seat of the chair was covered with
beautiful lotus designs drawn by the most skillful
woman of the bride's family. These designs sig-
nified: “May you step from lotus to lotus all your
life.” The bride's eyes were veiled. First she was
carried round the fire seven times, and then it was
my brother's turn to go around the fire.
Now they stood facing each other at the altar
and then came the solemn and beautiful moment
I44 CASTE
of the ceremony. He swore: “By my parents, by
the deities of the family, by the One God, I will
cherish and protect and love thee, and even if thou
wert faithless to me, I would wait until the eternal
self overcame the temporal self. What more shall
I say? Not only in this incarnation but through
all the incarnations to come, mayst thou be tied to
me, as the beating is tied to the heart!” She re-
peated this vow after him. Again they encircled
the fire seven times, and then they were asked for
their final consent. A veil was put over their heads
and they looked at each other under it for a
minute or more. This is called “the good look”
or “the consenting look.” Even then one of them
could have withdrawn, but beyond that there is no
divorce, not even on the grounds of infidelity.
The priest asked them again, “Do you swear that
after this look you are satisfied?” And they
affirmed their vows. The elders rose. The boy
and girl joined their hands and said together:
“Thy flesh on my flesh; thy hands on my hands;
thy heart on my heart; and our two hearts
fastened on the heart of God. Thus shall it be.”
Then as a symbol of unity he put on her hand
two conch shell bracelets. The bracelets are made
of this material so that the rich and poor can have
the same emblem of marriage. When a woman
becomes a widow, she breaks her conch bracelets.
MY BROTHER'S MARRIAGE I45
The ceremony was over. We all sat and dined
together. We fed the poor of the community and
the unfortunate, which is a custom always observed
on the day of a wedding.
After the feasting, the next event in the celebra-
tion was matching the family philosophers—ours
against theirs, and our poet against their poet.
The silent discussion between the philosophers was
typical of these occasions. Their philosopher
raised two fingers and our philosopher raised one,
meaning: “You say God is two P” “I say God is
one !” Their philosopher raised five fingers and
our philosopher raised a little finger; they meant:
“Are the five elements God?” “No, He is the
smallest of the small because He is the greatest
of the great.” Then their philosopher showed his
fist with the thumb in, meaning: “God is in the
world,” and our philosopher showed his open
palm, meaning: “He is in all things, yet nothing
can contain Him.” We wearied after a while of
the silent debate, and set our two poets on each
other like hungry dogs. Their egotism was suffer-
ing while the philosophers held the stage.
Our poet said, “Give me the first word”; and
their poet answered, “Ganges.” Our poet re-
plied instantly, “She is the sea-lover, yet when she
finds the sea she is homesick for her cradle of the
snows, and seeking to return to them she makes the
I46 CASTE
rising tides. Now I will give the word and you
must compose a verse. My word is ‘the Swan.’”
Their poet did not compose, but he quoted some-
thing magnificent: “The Swan of immortality goes
out through the senses into the waters of silence.
He is the secret of secrets. He is the dumbness in
the speech of man and the speech in the dumbness
of animals.” º
Next came a play, “The Song of Songs.” This
is the usual ritual followed at weddings. Ap-
parently the play is given to illustrate the meaning
of life. The Song of Songs describes how Krishna
falls in love with Radha, who kindles his senses
though she is unable to satisfy him. He wants
other women and so is led astray, but he finds that
the senses cannot give him what the soul requires.
Radha is waiting, and Krishna, after wandering
through the wilderness of sensuality, finally returns
to her, and cries, “If you will say the word that
forgives, it will unfetter me from my illusions.
Around me coils the dragon of my darkness; cleave
it with the scimitar of your speech Your beauty is
steeper than the sky and my soul goes forth like a
moon-bird to meet you. But why are you so far
away? You are the pang of my heart, and the
thought that scars me; come down, O humbler of
heights I am Radha-mad; un-Radha me not, O
my Radhal”
MY BROTHER'S MARRIAGE 1.47
In that Song of Songs with its beautiful verse,
the whole meaning of the Indian marriage is ex-
pressed, which reduced from poetry to prose, in-
dicates that the soul passes through its sensuous ex-
perience so that the senses may be lifted to
the level of the soul. At a certain period in the
lives of two people their senses unite them and
through the ensuing exaltation their souls are led
into a common understanding of all experience.
That is love, and love has nothing to do with the
time process of this world. Though it may go
astray, ultimately it returns. Nothing can steal it,
nothing can subtract from it. The senses help
the soul to grow from the beautiful to the good,
from the good to the true, from the true to the
holy. The purpose of love and marriage is to help
souls to grow from the least comprehensive to the
most comprehensive experience.
In a Sanskrit play “Sakuntala” the Indian idea
of marriage is expressed in another way.
Sakuntala means “the forgotten self” or “the for-
gotten face.” In this play the king goes to the
jungle to kill deer. He strays into a hermitage
which is kept by the adopted daughter of the
hermit, whose name is Sakuntala. The king falls
in love with her and they are married. After a
time the king returns to his city and she waits in
vain for a message from him. One day Sakuntala
I48 CASTE
is in the garden meditating upon her lord, and
when a saint asks for hospitality, she does not hear
him. He, therefore, curses her, saying, “The one
you are thinking of will forget you.” (Saints in
no other countries lose their temper so often as in
India—and Ireland.) She rouses herself and begs
his forgiveness and is told that the curse will en-
dure for a time, but that when the king recognizes
something which he had given her, he will
remember his bride again. -
Months later while the girl is on a journey in
search of the king, her ring, given her by him,
drops into the river and a fish swallows it. Later
a fisherman is arrested for stealing the king's ring.
He is brought to court and pleads that he found
it in the mouth of a fish which he had caught.
The king looks at the ring, recognizing it as the
one which he had given to Sakuntala. Remember-
ing then his beloved, he sets forth to look for her,
but in vain. At last he comes to the jungle and
finds a boy playing with lion cubs. Thinking to
himself, “This boy is royal, for he is playing with
the cubs of the jungle king,” he asks the boy for
his father. “I have no father, but I know my
mother,” replies the lad. Then he brings the king
to his mother's house and the king recognizes his
wife and they are united once more.
MY BROTHER'S MARRIAGE 149
Thus the forgotten face is remembered, and the
soul finds again what it had never really lost.
Here we notice the characteristic self-abnega-
tion of the Indian. If anything goes wrong with
the world, it is the individual not the world who is
to blame.
But to return to the bride and groom who after
the play had gone into the house. There the ladies
were chaffing the bridegroom while the bride
looked on. It is the custom in India for the
bride's elder sister to tease the bridegroom with all
sorts of embarrassing questions, something in this
wise: “Can you sing a song?” asked my sister-in-
law.
My brother answered quickly, “How can I?
Your beauty has sealed my lips.”
Then another sister-in-law coaxed, “Tell us a
story!”
But my brother shook his head saying, “I am
dumb, for the story of my heart is just beginning!”
Back and forth they chaffed each other further.
“What college degrees have you?”
“The degree of imbecility!”
“Do you know how to love?”
“If you have taught your sister how !”
“In our family love is real; we need no
teaching.”
I5O CASTE
“No wonder, for it is my family that has always
taught yours I”
The night was passed in such pleasantries. In
the morning the bride and groom came to our
house, but she returned the same day. From that
time on until she was fifteen, my brother went to
see her every afternoon, and thus they grew into a
beautiful friendship before the marriage was con-
summated.
When my sister-in-law at last came to keep
house, my mother received her and gave her a
key as a symbol of the family, saying, “The key:
the symbol of wifehood, motherhood, womanhood,
I give it to you. I hope I have passed it on to you
as I have received it.”
In coming to our house, the bride did not step
on the ground. Rugs and shawls and such things
were spread from her old home to her new, so
that she touched no dust but that of her new house.
The whole house was strewn with flowers this even-
ing, called the “flower evening” when the bride
enters her husband's house, and she and my brother
wore the nuptial robes that had been in our family
for generations. Then the bride, to signify that
she would never let the flower of chastity die out,
put a brand into the family oven, which in our
house, as in most Indian houses, is fed by a fire
MY BROTHER'S MARRIAGE 1.51
kept alive from generation to generation. Then
in order to leave the place free to the young people,
my parents went on a pilgrimage for a while.
We believe in India that woman is man's
spiritual superior, though physically man is her
protector. In matters of religion woman is
supreme; in matters of politics man is the master.
A man never interferes with a woman's sphere.
In the household her will is law. For instance, a
man would refuse to wear no charms, however
strange in shape, on his neck and arms if a woman
of his house fastened them there. When he leaves
the house in the morning it is the custom for a man
to ask “Godspeed” from his wife. But if he does
not take her blessing, it is the woman who fasts,
to expiate his neglect.
This is the Indian ideal of love and marriage,
but irregularities sometimes occur. A man we
knew very well was in love with a dancer, and for
a long time could not escape that infatuation. His
wife said to him, “I want you to promise me one
thing only. Always bathe in the Ganges before
you come home to me.” Two or three years later
this man found himself. Someone asked his wife
how it happened. “You see,” she said, “I knew
that his infidelity was but a veil drawn over his
spirit. The only way I could remind him of this
was to have him bathe in the Ganges, so that the
I52 CASTE
cleansing of the body might bring about a cleansing
of the soul.” The word for wife in India is
sahadharmini, meaning “leader in spirituality” or
“companion of the soul.”
CHAPTER XII
EAST AND WEST
THERE is a gulf between the oriental and the
Occidental mind: it is as though each were a
lighthouse on a separate headland, illuminating
the channel on one side and the channel on the
other, but leaving in complete darkness the cross-
ing between. This crossing I was about to attempt,
though at the time of which I write—a period
shortly after my brother's marriage—I had no idea
of the adventure before me, or that I stood at the
beginning of so great a change.
Our large family was scattered. I was hard
at my studies in the University of Calcutta and
struggling against the boredom with which my
teachers inspired me. Study could not help me, my
soul still hungered for space, for some unattain-
able good that remained unrealized except as a
continual goad to my eager, unsatisfied spirit.
My mother's health was failing, and home was
sad to me. Then as a climax to all this, my gifted
poet brother, a young man of great promise, died.
I53
I54 CASTE
Though I did not guess it at the time, this was to
end my life at home. My mother was greatly
affected by the loss of this beloved son; he was
very close to her in sympathy. He was full of the
power of his inspiration and often when a child
and tired of my lessons, I used to seek him out and
watch him write. He would be very slow about
it. First an unintelligible word would fly in from
nowhere and alight on the white sheet of paper.
Then would come another word and sit next it.
It would always upset the meanings I had
associated with the first word, which would be fur-
ther confused by more words alighting one by one
in front of it. Then suddenly the last word would
fly in and take its final place and that would lift
the veil like a juggler, and the flaming sentence
golden with meaning and beauty would dance
before my eyes.
All ties seemed to me loosened after his death.
My mother's health failed more and more rapidly
—life was very dark. I cast about for some way
in which to lose myself and the consciousness of
my distress. One of my remaining brothers had
thrown himself heart and soul into the nationalist
movement and India’s industrial future, and when
I found a worthy cause in this brother's hopes for
India, I embraced it eagerly and the new-born
nationalism took entire possession of me. My
EAST AND WEST I55
mother too was in sympathy; her heart responded
to the idea of working for India though she was
unable to grapple with our desire to improve India
by means of Western materialism. To her mind
so simple, yet as I now realize, so much more
mature than ours, it was more important to insure
our country's religious heritage than to acquire the
riches of this world. But she was willing to accept
what my brother and I, in our high hope, believed
to be possible—the attainment of the kingdom of
heaven once we could compete with the European
in his own field.
So when I was offered a chance to go to Japan
to study industrial machinery in order to learn
Western scientific methods of production, I did not
hesitate. We were given a traveling scholarship.
My mother bade me go and said, characteristically,
“Go, my son, and study the inner experience of time
and make it your own. If that gives you the
verity underlying the time process, embrace it. He
who has set my feet upon the path of the timeless,
is waiting to meet you where the path of time
ends.”
I was soon to find that my mother had as usual
struck to the heart of the matter, and how hard
it was to reconcile an alien evolution with the
oriental's innate conception of the meaning of time.
The West believes in time, in the time process, and
I56 CASTE
consequently, in cause and effect, then in results,
then in good and evil. But the East begins by
denying the fundamental reality of time, which
necessarily changes for us the relative importance
of all that results from time. This is the essential
difference between the East and the West.
I had a talk once with my holy man which per-
haps will serve to make this more clear. We were
sitting under a tree together when we saw a West-
ern gentleman hastening by. I asked my master,
“Why do the Western people run?”
He answered, “Don’t you see? They think the
road has an end, and that they must be there before
the rest of the world, while we know that the road
has no end, so we sit still and meditate.” Then
he quoted: “He is more still than the mountains,
yet swifter than the swiftest flight of man's mind;
the sun rises and sets, but it is only a golden mask
on the face of the truth.”
Later on I ran for a train and missed it. I said
to the gatekeeper, “If I had run faster I could
have caught it!”
He replied, “How long have you waited around
in this station?”
“Since last night,” said I.
He remarked jovially, “If you had come night
before last, you would undoubtedly have caught
it.”
EAST AND WEST I 57
So I went home and asked my holy man, “You
say the time process is unreal; then why did I miss
my train?”
He answered, “I never said the time process is
unreal.”
“O Holy One, then it is real?” said I.
“It is real to those who have experienced its
reality.”
“Have you experienced this reality?”
He said, “No ; in an assembly of fools, I have
sat still.” -
Then I asked him, “But suppose you were to
catch a train?”
He said, “I would trap it as a fowler traps a
bird; I would master it, but I would never let it
trap me! The time process is real in the sense
that bathing on a hot day is real, but when it is
done, the rest of the day is for meditation.”
Here are some further illustrations of the dif-
ferences that exist between East and West:
Once at Benares I stopped to bathe in the
Ganges and I saw an old priest who had taken his
bath and was meditating. The sun was out and he
was basking in it and evidently enjoying himself,
when up to him came rushing two Americans, a
man and a girl. The man put his hand on this
beautiful, benevolent priest and said, “Wait a
minute, Jim,” and pointed his camera at him. He
I58 CASTE
added reassuringly. “Don’t be scared; it won't
bite l’’ Then snapping his picture, he hastily put
a coin in the old man's hand and disappeared as
suddenly as he had come. The priest, who had
been meditating upon the Lord, looked at the coin,
then looked at the disappearing people. In silence
he threw the coin into the water. He had been
polluted by its touch. After that he went into the
Ganges and took another bath and meditated
another half hour.
There is a district in my part of India where
people used to make Dacca gauze, or Indian
muslin, which is very valuable. But then cheap
machinery gauze of the West came in and de-
stroyed their industry. The people could not com-
pete with the machine-made gauze, and so, in order
to gain a living, they went into the making of
gunny sacks, from jute. In course of time the jute
industry failed and then they tried to make muslin
again, but their sense of touch had been destroyed
by the roughness of the jute. About five thousand
people had lost this touch, which had taken
thousands of years to create. Their livelihood was
gone, and a beautiful art lost to the race.
My grandfather used to tell me, that when a
man wanted to borrow money from another man
in the old days before the English came, his servant
would go to the other man's servant and talk it
EAST AND WEST I 59
over. Then the lender would slip the money under
his friend's doorstep at night so that the borrower
would not be humiliated. If the borrower did not
pay, the creditor would go and do danna, which
means fasting at the door of the debtor. After
a few days’ fasting even the most conscienceless
debtor was brought to pay his debts. Today we
have stamps and signed notes, and all such pro-
ceedings, yet even so, we do not pay our debts. In
one hundred years of Western rule, the moral out-
look has gone, because stamps are there in place of
morality. Macaulay, the stupidest man of genius
the Lord ever made, gave the British law to India
to take the place of our old complicated, unwork-
able system of law procedure. British law has
been a tremendous convenience in clearing up
affairs—it produces order. The British think they
have brought justice to India, but the Hindus, being
orientals (as Jesus Christ was) think that no
human being can do justice. “Judge not that ye be
not judged.” A man has only one thing to offer to
his fellow man for any offense he may commit, and
that is compassion. .
I was convinced, however, of my ability to
understand both the Eastern and Western ap-
proaches to life and I bravely set forth upon my
way, bravely, that is, except for my farewells. I
£old no one but my mother of the date of my de-
I6o CASTE
parture. The day before, she said to me, “I think
you will do very little when you go to Japan. The
song is in the throat of the bird; the bird will not
find it by wandering in the sky.”
Then I asked her, “What shall I do to make
you happy?” -
She waited a moment and said quietly, “Keep
the doors of your mind open, so that not one of
God’s truths will have to go away because the door
is shut.” And then she gave me her blessing.
The day I started I had not the courage to say
goodbye to her. I knew that if I saw her once
more I should never leave. Yet though broken and
dying her orders were that I should go. I felt
sure I should never see my mother again and I was
right. She lingered another year and died. I knew
when it happened although I did not hear the news
until weeks afterward. I was plunged in sorrow.
Then suddenly, one day thinking of her, the
certainty of God and immortality rushed upon
me—no longer an idea but an experience, and since
then my consciousness of her is freed from any
entanglement of life and death.
After arriving in Japan, I began my studies in
textile engineering. It seemed the nearest way of
getting the experience I desired. We were ordered
to enter the factory at seven, and to leave at six,
EAST AND WEST I61
except twice a month, when we had a holiday of
twenty-four hours.
When the cherry blossoms came in April, we
were given three days’ holiday to go and look at
them. The worship of the beautiful in Japan is
extraordinary. It seems they believe only in
beauty, not in morality, not in spirituality, and yet
when one stands before the Buddha in Kamura,
which is a perfect work of art, it gives a deep ex-
perience of holiness. #
After these three days’ vacation I received my
first shock from the time process. As one of the
girls was tending a machine which I happened to
be drawing, she made a careless gesture and her
hand was caught in the wheel. Suddenly I saw
her face turn white and heard a terrible shriek of
pain. My first instinct was to run to her, but in-
stead I had to run to the engineer to bid him stop
the machinery. When I returned to the girl, she
was sitting on the floor holding a mangled arm
with her other hand. Soon the other operators
came and took her away. The strangest thing is
how little the Japanese cry. I remember that this
girl sat on the floor and swayed with closed eyes
nursing her mangled hand. I heard afterwards
that she was paid five hundred yen or two hundred
and fifty dollars for this mishap. But what
troubled me most was that when her place was
I62 CASTE
taken by another girl, we never mentioned in our
conversation the one who had gone. It seemed as
if we were as callous towards our fellow beings as
the machines were to us.
I soon gave up this work and decided to choose
a happier vehicle through which to experience the
time process. At this juncture I met an Indian
who had been in America. He said, “Japan is no
country for anybody; if you want to see the civi-
1ized use of machinery, go to America.” Then he
drew an Arabian Nights’ picture of the United
States. He said, “Anyone who doesn’t like
America had better freeze up and get out! No
son-of-a-gun that is a knocker need apply there !”
His language sounded extremely romantic after
the Miltonic English to which I had been
accustomed, and I felt irresistibly drawn to
America. But I stayed about Japan four months
longer, because I had not the decision to move, and
I spent all my money except just enough to cover my
passage to San Francisco. Finally I set forth again
to meet this most tremendous change of all, having
broken the ties of my country, my past and my
caste. For alien though I found Japan to be, it
was still an oriental country, but now I was to
reach a place where I could keep none of my
traditions. Some of this I understood, but I had
no conception of the changes that were to come.
CASTE AND OUTCAST
Part II
OUTCAST
CHAPTER I
INITIATION INTO AMERICA
MERICA at last! The seventeen days of
Asiatic steerage seemed like the experience of
another man the very moment the immigration
authorities gave me permission to enter the United
States. The reverence that I felt for this country
was so great that nothing short of falling on my
knees and kissing its soil would have sufficed to
express my feelings. But Americans are a strange
people! No sooner did they see that I had such
feelings for their country than they began to knock
it out of me in a very unceremonious fashion.
The first American I met on landing was a man
very quaintly dressed (later on I learned he was
wearing “overalls”), who had been sent to me to
take care of my trunk. I gave him my trunk,
which he threw from the deck of the ship down to
the wharf–a matter of some eight or ten feet.
Not knowing enough colloquial English, I quoted
to him the magnificent lines of Milton: “Him the
Almighty Power hurled headlong flaming from the
I65
I66 OUTCAST
ethereal sky.” The expressman looked at me very
quizzically and exclaimed: “Cut it out! You're
too fresh ſ” This was my initiation into America.
Somebody directed me to a boarding house
where I spent the night. When I was called to
breakfast the next morning I noticed the sugar
was missing from the table. When after some
fuss the landlady produced the sugar, I said to
her: “This reduces the entire discussion to a
reductio ad absurdum,” she exclaimed: “My God,
what's that?”
Since I had come to acquire knowledge in
America, I did not tarry in the seaport town very
long, but hastened to Berkeley, the site of the
University of California. I had no money except
fifteen dollars that a friend had lent me. I went
to the university hungry for knowledge, not know-
ing that knowledge, like bread, has to be paid
for. So they took fourteen dollars out of my
fifteen under different pretences, such as “non-
resident fee,” “gymnasium fee,” and “infirm-
ary fee,” and to my great consternation, that
drew my last dollar out of my pocket, as the
magnet draws the needle, for I had spent the fif-
teenth dollar already; and there was nothing left!
Yet thanks to a fellow traveler on the ship, I did
have the care of friends. I had met on the ship a
young Jewish-American named Barusch who one
INITIATION INTO AMERICA 167
afternoon came down from his second-class deck to
talk with me in the steerage. A quotation I had
occasion to use from Emerson astonished him and
he exclaimed “Why, you are an educated man.”
Being young, I answered, “Yes—very.” That
made him take pity on me and he invited me to
come upstairs and have tea with him. Tea parties
with him became after that daily affairs of more
importance than I was ready to acknowledge.
They were the only occasions when I ate anything,
during the entire trip, because in the Asiatic
steerage they gave us Japanese food which I
simply could not swallow.
When I decided to go to Berkeley, young
Barusch, who was planning to stay on in Seattle,
gave me a note to his family who lived in Oakland.
They were kind enough to put me up for seven
days. I never told them how little money I had,
and since I could not buy any presents I gave them,
as an expression of my gratitude, the few Indian
rugs and Japanese vases I had brought in my trunk.
I am positive had they known how little I possessed
they would have refused everything, for they were
the kindest and most generous of people.
But I could not go on exchanging Indian art for
American food and so I sought out a Hindu
student, who told me to go and get a job. Ap-
parently he had lived in America a very long time.
I68 OUTCAST
I asked him what kind of a job. He said, “Dish-
washing, taking care of the house—anything. Go
and ring the bell of every house until you find a
job.” So I went on ringing door bell after door
bell. From each opening door came a “No thank
you,” in tones running the whole scale from the
snarl of a tiger to the smile of a lady.
But at last I reached a house where they asked,
“What can you do?”
“Anything,” I said—“washing dishes, taking
care of the house.”
“Can you begin tomorrow?” the lady asked
IIlê.
I replied that I could, but I must first find lodg-
ing for the night. “May I come to you?” I
politely inquired.
In a very businesslike way she replied, “All
right. Your room will be ready in the back yard.”
So I hastened back the same afternoon with my
bundle and one book, a copy of Emerson's Self-
Reliance. I was shown into a little cabin in the
backyard and was given a badly needed meal, for
I had had nothing to eat all day.
Next day my duties began. I did manage to
clean the house somehow. I swept the front porch
and swept the back porch, but it never entered my
head to take the dust away on the dust pan, and I
swept all the dust from the house onto the side-
INITIATION INTO AMERICA 169
walk. My employer's neighbor telephoned her
that the sidewalk must be kept clean, as it is a
state law. I hastened then, in my shirt sleeves, with
my suspenders showing, to sweep off the sidewalk.
But my employer stopped me and said: “Don’t
shame the house by going out like that. Put on
your jacket.” I had never heard a coat called a
jacket before, so she had to explain to me, and by
the time I had understood, most of the dust had
been removed by the wind.
However, this employment did not last long.
By noon time a huge pile of dishes had accumulated
in the kitchen to be washed and my employer said
to me during lunch, “Perhaps you want to wait
until your lunch is over before washing the dishes.”
I hastily assented and began eating lunch. After
lunch I piled up more dishes in the sink, put on my
coat, and went out for a walk in the beautiful sun-
shine. When I had returned from my walk, my
employer sternly demanded, “Why aren't the
dishes done?”
I said, “How do you wash them?”
“Don’t you know?” she asked in astonishment.
I said, “No.”
“But,” she said, “you took the job on the under-
standing that you would wash dishes.”
“I will wash dishes if you will show me how,”
I replied.
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Then in great dudgeon she said, “Will you
please look for another place tomorrow?”
“What place?” I asked.
She answered, “I mean you are fired.” -
I asked again, “What is ‘fired?’” And I was
told, “In good English, you are discharged ſ”
“But,” she added with a smile, “you can stay here
tonight.”
And so I sat in the kitchen chair and watched
her wash the dishes. I watched her very carefully
to see what steps led up to the washing and wiping
of dishes, deciding to make use of my lesson in my
next place.
I was so chagrined at having lost my place that
I made up my mind not to accept the invitation to
spend another night in the house of my defeat
but to set out without more delay in search of an-
other job. So the same ringing of bells and the
same snarls and barks from different doors began
again for me. At one house, after the servant
opened the door in answer to the bell and I told
her what I wanted, she slammed the door with a
great noise. I paused and said to myself, “This
is what they mean in the English idiom when they
say in novels: ‘She shut the door in his face.’”
I distinctly remember that the door almost touched
the tip of my nose when it was banged to.
However, in a little while I succeeded in finding
INITIATION INTO AMERICA 171
a place where I could begin work the next morning.
This time it was washing dishes, waiting on table,
and washing knives and forks. In exchange for
this I was given my room and board free. And
I must remind the reader now, that I was going to
college as well, for the university had just opened
and instruction had begun.
In my new place I washed the morning dishes
very well. There was no waiting on table at
breakfast. It was a boy's club and they seemed
rather nice and noisy. I never knew people could
make so much noise getting ready for classes.
The racket was terrible. At luncheon came my
first experience at waiting on table and I was very
nervous. They gave me a plate of soup to put
before a boy. I hastened from the kitchen into
the dining room and as I was putting the plate
down it struck the boy's head and the soup went
down his back. And then I received my first lesson
in what might be called the American language 1
The Chinese cook, at once understanding that I
knew nothing of waiting on table, put on the white
jacket which he had given to me, and waited on
table himself. I watched him from the door and
was filled with amazement to see a man putting a
plate of soup down before another man without
the slightest trembling of the hand. The cook felt
kindly towards me and so he taught me many
172 OUTCAST
things concerning waiting on table, the washing of
dishes and the polishing of knives and forks. -
But I lost this job because of something very
different from inexperience. I found that every
day the cook invented new work for me to do.
From waiting on table and washing silver I was
asked to wash the glasses and since I learned to
do that well, I was asked to wipe the kitchen dishes
after the cook had washed them. I feared lest
pretty soon I might be asked to cook as well. So
one day in great exasperation I threw up the job.
This was the first inkling I got that employers
could be immoral. . . . .
Again I began to look for a job and after a few
fruitless hours of search I found an excellent
position in a fraternity: room and board and ten
dollars a month for washing dishes, waiting on
table and making beds. But I did not have to
make the beds the first two days because the boy
they had employed previously stayed on, so he did
that work and I never went into the bedrooms.
On the third day he left, and after washing the
breakfast dishes and sweeping the house, I went
off to my classes, for the morning. Then I came
back at noon and waited on table and again washed
the luncheon dishes and went to classes again.
When I came back in the afternoon I started to
make the beds, but as I went into one of the bed-
INITIATION INTO AMERICA 173
rooms I found a Chinese boy at work. “What are
you doing here?” I asked him and he answered,
“I making bed.” I said, “Why do you do that?”
“Because you filed !” he announced.
I learned later on that I should not have
neglected the beds until the afternoon; I should
have made them in the morning, and that was the
reason the Chinese boy was sent for and I was
“filed.” However, I watched him make up a bed
and so learned how to do it.
I think I had a few cents given to me as wages
for two days’ work. With that in my pocket and
with my bundle under my arm I looked for a job
all day. Then night came. I had nowhere to go.
And it was the first time in my life that I had to
walk the streets all night because I had nowhere
to lay my head.
In the morning I lost all patience. So with part
of the money I still had, I paid for a good break-
fast, and then said to myself, “I’ll hang on to the
rest of this money, even if I have to drop dead.”
In the course of my wanderings, I came to a
boarding house where the landlady asked me if I
could wash dishes.
I said, emphatically, “Yes!”
She asked, “Can you wait on table?”
I said, “Yes. I never spill soups.”
Then she asked me, “Can you make beds?”
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I answered, “Yes. I have obtained the knowl-
edge of making beds.”
“All right!” the lady said. “You can begin work
this noon, my boy has left me.”
This time I did everything well, so there was no
cause for apprehension.
But I was beginning to feel disgruntled with my
studies. For it must be remembered I had come
from the University of Calcutta, where even as
matriculation students we suspected the integrity
of our instructors. We always felt that the in-
structors, being employed by the government,
would only tell the truths that the government
would sanction, and if I remember correctly, at
that time certain books on the French Revolution
were forbidden by the authorities. One of the
texts that was allowed to be taught in the
university was Burke's Reflections on the French
Revolution, which, after all, was a very tame book.
As I go back I recall vividly having had hot dis-
cussions with my fellow students regarding the
state, society and the future of man. And a very
large majority believed, with me, that professors
were not allowed to teach the truth because it was
dangerous. So whenever we were assigned a dan-
gerous topic such as the French Revolution, or civil
war in England under Cromwell, we read up more
books on the subject than were prescribed. We
INITIATION INTO AMERICA 175
did it for the purpose of contradicting the pro-
fessor and finding out the truth.
I must say I missed this intellectual stimulus alto-
gether in the American university. The under-
graduate took notes as if the professor's utterances
were gospel truth. There was no questioning and
probing. And what astonished me most was that
even if a student knew that the professor was not
up to the mark, it did not enter his head to file a
protest. Of course in India, protests were of no
avail, but the entire student mentality in America,
at that time, seemed to me to be purely apathetic.
They were there to pass examinations and learn a
vocation, and as long as they did that well, they
did not care whether the professor was right or
Wrong. -
One day as I was waiting on table, one young
man looked up at me and said, “I see you in my
class. Come up to my room and let's have a talk.”
Of course I had the oriental’s attitude of a servant
to his employer. I just bowed to him and went on
waiting on table, and never let him know by even
the slightest sign that I had understood. So when
the meal was over he came into the kitchen, where
I was eating my meal, and said: “Do you get me,
that I want you to come upstairs to my room?”
And I answered, “Which room?”
He said, “You know my room.”
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“All right,” I said, “I’ll come.” So when I
went that evening to call on him, he received me
warmly and spoke to me with a great deal of
kindness.
During our talk he abruptly asked, “Do you
know anything about anarchism?” I said I did
and that I believed in Kropotkin's communism.
With this he sneered at me and said, “That's not
anarchism. That's mush.”
And I asked, “What is mush?”
He replied, “The damned stuff we eat in the
morning.”
Of course I was perplexed, because Kropotkin in
his Conquest of Bread never mentions mush.
Leo—for that was his name—went on explaining
the difference between mush and mush, and then
between Kropotkin's mush and Tolstoi's mush.
And he ended with a tremendous defence of
Proudhon's Anarchism which was anti-mush. Of
course I had heard of these gentlemen, though I
had not read them all. Tolstoi I knew by heart,
Proudhon only by name.
Leo told me to take a good look at the pictures
on the walls of his room. They were, first, Adam
Smith, second, Tolstoi, third, Bakunin, fourth,
Kropotkin, fifth, Karl Marx, sixth, Victor Hugo,
and seventh and last in the room, Jesus Christ.
When he reached the last picture he said, “This
INITIATION INTO AMERICA 177
man doesn't belong to a church, you ought to know
that much.”
And I answered, “Yes, I can quite conceive of
that.”
He got very excited and said, “You can conceive
of that? Why, man alive, if you went with Him
and showed Him the church and said it was His
house He wouldn't recognize it.”
I replied, “Don’t you think He belongs in the
very first row?” -
And with a Jesuitical smile, he said, “The last
shall be first.”
I asked him to tell me about himself. How did
he come to know about so many things which
questioned the very foundation of modern society?
And he began:
“I was born in an Irish family. Both my parents
died in a railroad accident in Ireland. I and my
two brothers were brought over to America by a
maiden aunt, to live with an uncle who had made
a fortune practicing law in California. My uncle
brought us up. My eldest brother was trained to
go into business. I was to become an Irish
Catholic priest—and my third brother, who was
much younger, was being trained for the bar.
“When I was young I was sent to a Jesuit school
to be trained for the priesthood. There I studied
Latin, French and a little Greek. They lectured
178 - OUTCAST
on the Church fathers, and the history of the
church. Gradually they built up a tremendous
system before my mind, of ritual on one side,
subtle thinking on the other, and both held together
by the infallibility of the Pope. When I watched
these Jesuit fathers trying to teach me, I realized
that if people were religious they would be like
them, accepting poverty and teaching the truth as
they saw it.
“We were not allowed to read any books outside
of our studies unless they were books bearing on
the lectures. But one of the Jesuit fathers took
me to his room and showed me his library and
incidentally pointed out a group of books which he
called agnostic writings. One book in particular
attracted my attention. Its title was Introduction
to the History of Civilization in England, by
Buckle. After the father was called away and left
me there alone, I took down the book and read a
few pages. It gripped me so that I could not put
it back. I took it to my room and read it all night.
“The next night I again burrowed into Buckle,
and somewhere I came across a sentence like this:
‘If there were a change in temperature and a slight
dearth of oxygen in the air, the earth would be
peopled by creatures entirely different from our-
selves, and their conception of things would be
totally different from ours.' I closed the book and
INITIATION INTO AMERICA 179
I began to muse. Hitherto, I had to believe that
truth was absolute, as God was absolute—nothing
was relative, not even good and evil. But suppose
what Buckle said was true. Then we who would
be the people of that earth under different circum-
stances would be a different people ! And our
conception of God would be different, likewise of
good and evil! Likewise of the infallibility of the
Pope 1 Therefore, there is nothing absolute, I said
to myself.
“I left the book in my room, walked out quite
convinced that I could not accept the Absolute
God when everything was truly relative, jumped
over the fence of my college and disappeared into
the night!”
In amazement, I asked, “What did you do?
What did they do?”
Leo answered, “They notified my people. But
I, who had been taught to hate the Socialists, went
next morning straight to their headquarters. I did
not tell them where I had come from, and they
gave me Darwin and Spencer to read. I filled my
mind with the Darwinian viewpoint. Page after
page vanished, and I began to feel the entire
structure of my belief and disbelief not only
severed, but as something that had never existed.
And yet, I did not know at the moment that the
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philosophy that was severing it had no structure
either.
“To make a long story short, I began to speak
from soap boxes for the Socialists on different
street corners, but as I associated with them, I
came to see that the majority of them had perfectly
ragged minds. They did not have the finish or
system of the Jesuit fathers who had taught me.
They began to pall on me, for in order to overcome
the system of the church, the Socialists gave me the
system of social order, and that seemed even more
gruesome. It had none of the sanctities, nor any
of the sacerdotal superstititions which I had been
accustomed to, so I threw over the whole Socialist
régime and took to individualistic anarchism.
“I read Tolstoi, Kropotkin and a lot of others.
This suited my temperament. It substituted ‘no
system’ for ‘system,” liberty for authority, and
personality for social gregariousness.
“But you see, by this time my people had found
out where I was, and what I was doing and because
they were good capitalists, they became quite
worried. They urged me to give up this useless
life of vagabondage and study. They promised
me a monthly allowance if I would go to college
and study law. So here I am, trying to acquire
knowledge out of the darkness in which all pro-
fessors wander.”
INITIATION INTO AMERICA 181
His words went to my heart, for I too was sure
of the palpable darkness of the professorial night.
He asked me a lot about my country and my
problems, but I knew they did not interest him.
All he really wanted was to know if I would become
an individualistic anarchist. There again his
Jesuit training showed. He was always looking
for a convert. -
In the course of another week, Leo and I had
become very good friends. He decided to leave
the boarding house and suggested that he and I
should take rooms together and live on his
allowance. Instead of three meals a day, we would
eat two, and the rent he paid for the room in his
boarding house could easily pay for a room with
two beds in a cheaper quarter. I jumped at this
proposal. Not only would it bring me relief from
the drudgery of dish washing, but it would also
give me the companionship of a man whose ideas
interested me tremendously. So we started out
with our new system of housekeeping, which we
called “batching.”
Now began feverish hours of study. We never
studied less than fourteen hours a day. We began
to explore authors new to us, although familiar to
others. We discovered Walt Whitman. We gave
a passing glance to Bernard Shaw. We tarried at
Plato's door, but found he was of the old order.
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Then we went on to Proudhon's What is Property?
and were delighted with his answer, “Property is
robbery.” We discovered Thoreau. And last of
all, out of a clear sky fell Nietzsche's thunderbolt
when his Zarathushtra told us “God died long
ago.” After the latter we felt that our education
was complete. -
But true to the sinister working of fate, the
examinations came. It caught Leo unprepared,
and I only escaped by the skin of my teeth. So the
next term found me alone, for Leo's people would
not give him any more money to squander in
studies which brought him no profit. This
embittered Leo terribly and he said to me: “Now
do you see the capitalistic conception of studies?
If you pass your examinations you are considered
intelligent. No wonder I didn't pass them.”
Then he took his bundle of books on his back and
disappeared. *
Again began for me that dreadful search for
work. I rang door bells, and more door bells, but
found nothing. Once in a while from nowhere,
Leo would appear and call on me for he knew that
the rent for our room had not as yet run out.
Usually he would find me sitting on the bed try-
ing to solve at least one problem, Hunger. He was
good enough, whenever he came, either to bring a
loaf of bread or a few cents, I kept myself alive
INITIATION INTO AMERICA 183
on bread and water. I remember distinctly Leo
giving me over my protest fifteen dollars for my
college fee. “You must take it. Who knows?
You might find out how capitalists manage to be
what they are, and if you can get that secret, we'd
break them with their own power.” Here we were,
existing on water and two doughnuts a day which
we divided between us while we discussed the
capitalist system whose fall we placed in five years l
I was only nineteen years old at the time.
At last I found a job in a girls' sorority, washing
dishes, taking care of the house and lawn, and
waiting on table. For that, I was paid ten dollars
a month and given my board. They paid me by
the week! every Saturday afternoon. When the
end of the week came, and I was given two dol-
lars and a half, I felt like a king.
I remember taking a street car Sunday after-
noons and meeting Leo. Usually he was stand-
ing on an inverted tub on a street corner holding
forth to a crowd. I would wait until he had
finished and then he would say, “My Hindu
comrade will pass the hat.” The hat never
brought more than fifty cents and out of my week's
wage I would add enough to make a complete
dollar for Leo. After his speech, we would hurry
to a restaurant, eat as little as possible, and talk till
midnight. And often when bidding him good-
184 OUTCAST
night I would beg him to come and share my room.
But he would say, “No l the more I walk the
streets at night the more I learn of the horrors of
capitalism.”
I realized for the first time that one could wear
the same suit of clothes for a whole year, but the
same pair of shoes are not as serviceable. My
shoes were in holes by the time the rainy season in
California set in. The cook in the sorority was
a Negress. One day she saw me walking into the
kitchen with streams of water leaking from my
shoes. She said to me, “What's the matter?
Hasn't you got no good shoes?”
I replied, “No, these are all I have.”
“Why don’t you buy some?” she asked.
And I said, “I haven’t got the money to.”
“You mean,” she replied, “that you poor devil
hasn't got no money to buy yourself a pair of
shoes?”
I said, “I am no devil, but I have no money.”
This was too much for her. “Think of it,” she
said, “that fool Clarence, my son, goes to ball
games and wastes my money, and you goin’ with-
out shoes.”
“Mrs. Rhodes, it's the fault of the capitalistic
system.”
She gave me five dollars on the spot, and said,
INITIATION INTO AMERICA 185
“Go and buy a pair of shoes and then come back
to work.”
But I said, “I can’t take your money.”
“That's the fault of your system,” she laughed
and at the same time drove me out with the warn-
ing that unless I came back with a new pair of
shoes I would not work in her kitchen. So I went
and bought myself new shoes. Later on when I
had the money to pay back, the Negress refused to
take it.
As the work dragged on day after day in this
girls' club house, the monotony of it all was re-
lieved one day by the arrival of “Clarence's
father.” Seeing a black man standing outside the
window I asked Mrs. Rhodes, the cook, who it
Wa.S.
“That's Clarence's father,” she replied. “I
divorced him long ago. It's time for him to get
some more money, so he's come.”
“How much money do you give him?” I asked
her. t
“Oh, I don’t remember,” she replied, and with
a smile added, “Take it from me, Gene, when
you are married you'll live off a woman too.”
Then Clarence's father came in and we all ate
together: Clarence and Mrs. Rhodes, Mr. Rhodes,
and I. Mr. Rhodes asked me where I came from.
I86 OUTCAST
On hearing that my home was in India, he said,
“Are you a Christian yet?”
“No, I am not a Christian,” I confessed.
“Poor heathen,” he said, “you'll never get any-
where.”
Then I asked, “Mr. Rhodes, are you a Chris-
tian P”
“Christian ſ” he said. “I am a parson I have
passed more people into heaven than other people
have prayed for. But never mind me. In your
country, what do you do—worship sticks and
stones P”
I said, “Yes, sticks and stones and other things
besides.”
He then made a very extraordinary statement:
“No wonder you are a rotten people. Look at us
Americans. We are the best people in the world
because we are Christians.”
But I remember well his taking two gold pieces
from Mrs. Rhodes before he left. And she
said to me, “Don’t you believe a word he says,
Gene. He's not a parson. He's one of them
folks that stands on the street corners Sunday and
shouts his head off. It does him more good than
anybody else.” I asked her why she had given him
up. She replied, “Because he won't work and
when I worked he drank with my money, and
now he can't drink much, so he talks every Sunday.
INITIATION INTO AMERICA 187
Look here, Gene,” she added, “if you ever need
money, don't forget me. I never seen a fellow so
nice as you. You work all the time. Do you think
you've got any brains?”
“I don't know,” I said, and evidently neither did
she for she shook her head dubiously.
CHAPTER II
MY SOCIALIST “FRIENDS”
T IME passed, and the spring examinations were
coming. Leo began to visit me more fre-
quently and to borrow books, through me, from
the university library. I borrowed and gave him
Hegel to read. Then he went back to Aristotle,
and then he borrowed Schopenhauer. Leo was
now able to give a lucid statement of Hegel's phi-
losophy and I know that he never had more than
one meal a day during this entire period. Once I
said so to him, and he answered me: “A full
stomach is opposed to philosophy. Thank God I
can starve.”
When the summer vacation came, I left the
university and went to San Francisco to find a job.
Leo, who went with me, vowed that he would never
work again. “Why should I work and enrich the
capitalist system?” he asked.
“But somebody's got to work,” I insisted, to
which his only answer was: “Well, you go to work,
if you like.”
I88
MY SOCIALIST “FRIENDS ’’ 189
“I’ll have to,” I said, and so I found an all-day
job in a boarding house taking care of thirty
people, waiting on table, washing dishes, making
beds, and answering the telephone. The work took
ten hours a day, but it left my evenings free. For
this I received twenty dollars a month, including
room and board. Every evening I would go and
meet Leo and he would give me the résumé of a
chapter of the book he had read.
While in this last place, I came across a very
strange form of stupid cupidity. The landlady,
who rented out rooms, had an enormous family of
her own. Her husband didn’t work; her sons
didn't work. One of her sons never came home
sober. She had three daughters, one of whom
was married and living there with her family. So
it seemed to me out of the thirty paying guests
that she had, this poor landlady was supporting
thirty guests that never paid—her own children
and their descendents. The men seemed utterly
callous. You could always find one of them loaf-
ing about doing nothing. The telephone could be
ringing on and on, and they would never even
answer it. Their father was a perfect ruffian,
always quarreling and shouting. Their mother
seemed like a saint but one who tried to make
money out of everything, counting every penny to
earn enough to support this horde of dependents.
I90 OUTCAST
What annoyed me most was the way her
daughters used to flirt with her paying guests, and
in the course of time I discovered that that was one
of the reasons why the paying guests stayed on.
Underneath it all, I found out that the daughters
did not enjoy doing this sort of thing, but they
had to do it in order to support their enormous
family.
They exploited everybody who worked for
them. Any time the servants wanted to take a
vacation, they had to pay fifty cents an hour
Out of their wages. I used to find at the
end of the month that five dollars out of
my twenty dollars had gone, deducted for the
laundry, deducted for time off, deducted for
broken plates. Every apron that I wore, and
every white jacket that I was made to wear when
waiting on table, was deducted out of my wages.
With this steady practice of petit larceny I began
to see the capitalist system soaring upwards and
reaching its apex in the head of that old woman.
But it left me my evenings to myself. That was
the advantage of this employment.
One evening Leo came and asked me to go and
meet a well-known anarchist, whom I will call
Jerry. Jerry had been held up to me as the ideal
anarchist. So I felt extremely confused at the
prospect of meeting him.
MY SOCIALIST “FRIENDS” 191
As I was arranging my necktie, Leo said, “Bah,
if you wear a white collar, Jerry will never shake
hands with you.”
“But you can’t go through the streets without a
collar!” I exclaimed. -
“You see what a bourgeois you are,” replied
Leo. “The capitalist system has implanted in your
soul what it demands from everyone. You are a
slave. You've got the slave psychology.” We
sauntered out, without collars, and came to a place
called the “pinochle joint” where in the back room
we found a gray-haired man reading by a lamp.
Hearing our footsteps, he stood up and
stretched out his hand to me and said, “How do
you do? I am Jerry.” I was extremely em-
barrassed and nervous at meeting this man of
whom I had heard so many splendid things. I
vividly recall the power of his paw with which he
shook my hand, and then as I drank the whiskey,
almost the first I had ever tasted, which Jerry
offered, I felt as proud as any anarchist that ever
threw a bomb. I gave him back his flask, which he
emptied, and we all sat down.
Jerry asked, “What makes you so interested in
anarchism P”
I replied, “Why, it's the vision of the future.”
“That shows you know nothing about it,”
laughed Jerry. “Vision of the future | That's a
I92 OUTCAST
bourgeois phraseology. They tell that in every
church, every Sunday. You are not an anarchist.
An anarchist never uses phrases that are grandiose.
By the way, why don't you go back to India?
Your ancestors found the truths you are seeking
thousands of years ago; Buddha was the greatest
of all anarchists.”
“But you, surely, don't believe in God, do you?”
I asked very much astonished. -
“Why not? God is nothing but a phantasm as
I am a phantasm myself,” Jerry replied. “It is
good to hail a brother phantasm anywhere.”
“But,” I said, “Jerry, you are an anarchist.”
He answered, “Yes, if spending twenty-seven
years of your life without doing a stroke of work
makes one an anarchist, then I am the only
anarchist that exists. I have not worked for the
last twenty-seven years, because I was present at
the ‘Haymarket' in Chicago. You remember when
that bomb was thrown, because the police beat up
the crowds. What was it about? Those poor
people were agitating for eight hours a day. I
was there on the spot. I saw the policeman
charge with their sticks. And then out of the
terrible welter of humanity came a fierce, an awful
noise that made everybody stand still, policeman
and crowds alike. The world shook for a moment.
And that convinced me.”
MY SOCIALIST “ FRIENDS ’’ I93
“Of what? Didn't you have any philosophical
background or anything?” I asked him.
“No,” said he, “that explosion was my back-
ground. And now I pray to myself, ‘Let it be my
foreground as well!’” Jerry rose before me like
a god, a sort of Triton from the deeps—an ex-
plosion before him and an explosion behind him.
I said, “What did you do?”
“I never did a stroke of work since, and I vowed
to myself that I’d never help the capitalist system
with the slightest exertion of a single muscle.”
I could not understand. “How do you live?” I
asked.
“Why, people give me food,” he said. “You
call it charity, why not? If you are an anarchist
there is no pride nor humility for you, no matter
what happens.” -
And I asked, “Do people give you enough P’’’
“Oh, yes!” Jerry said. “Man is a strange slave.
If he is not the slave of love, he is indeed the slave
of pity. If you arouse his pity he'll do anything
for you. I seem to do nothing but arouse every-
body's pity. I despise them for it. I am nothing
but an occasion on which they exploit their own
emotion. I continually feel like a victim.”
I put another question to him. “Yet, do you
believe in a better future for humanity when you
despise mankind?”
I94. OUTCAST
His response was typical, “I despise the common
herd, but I cannot despise the individual man.
Whenever he stoops to pity I think of the common
herd, but whenever he flays me with his insolence
I think of the individual man.”
I exclaimed, “Jerry, I’ll give up everything and
go with you and study under you!”
He said, “No. You couldn’t stand it.”
“But why not?” I asked.
“It is terrible,” he replied, “to be beaten in
prison, to be kicked, and then sometimes given a
good dinner. You couldn't endure it twenty-seven
years. In your country you have exalted beggary
by making it a religious affair, but in our country
we have reduced beggary to such a crime that even
thieves think they are disgraced if they beg. You
cannot do it. To you begging is a religious ritual.
You can’t beg in the West. No.”
I asked him if he had been to India.
“No,” he admitted, “but one can fathom India.
I can feel them, those old Hindus. Once in a while
I have read a scrap of their writings, and I have
felt then that they were the primordial anarchists.
Isn’t it one of your ancestors who said, ‘This world
is not, is not, is not P’’ I admitted this. “Then,”
he barked at me: “Why in hell do you want to
be an anarchist? I am an anarchist because I am a
MY SOCIALIST “FRIENDS ’’ 195
leader. I am not an anarchist because I am an
example.”
“What do you lead us into ?” I asked him.
“Into a greater sense of social danger,” he re-
plied. “I want to lead you from security to
bravery.” -
I bade him good-night and went to my little
hole to sleep. I met him again the next day, and
we had more discussion. I was still clinging to my
belief that through anarchism, humanity might
come to better things, still believing that environ-
ment creates character, so that if we did change
environment, the world would be better. I asked
Jerry, “Do you really believe that man comes
from the monkeys, as Darwin says?”
And he answered, “That's nothing. What
frightens me is that man is going back so fast to
the monkeys.”
“Isn't civilization adaptation?” I asked. There
was a Socialist, Gordon, present who thought that
it was Spencer who had said this.
Jerry said, “Who is Spencer, anyway? If
Gordon quotes him, there is nothing in it.”
Gordon got furious and argued. He was one
of those sticklers who make a point of pointless-
ness. “If you want to win a point I’ll make you
a present of it,” was all he could get out of Jerry.
Gordon repeated, “Civilization is adaptation.”
196 OUTCAST
“No,” said Jerry. “Let me tell you a story.”
“One of Mukerji's ancestors came to a river one
day when it was running fierce and full. He
bowed to it and said, “O Mother Ganges, I must
adapt myself to your beauty and wrath !' I suppose
you would explain this old Hindu's behavior as
adaptation. The river flooded his hut, and he
built another. He kept on adapting himself. But
this old Hindu's great-great-great-grandson saw
One day a log on the water. That gave the great-
great-great-grandson a new idea: he tied six or
seven logs together, made a raft and crossed the
river. He, you will say, started civilization. I
agree with you. But would you call it adaptation?
No. Its real name is exploitation. This man
exploited the water. Civilization is exploitation
and not adaptation. Your Spencer man is wrong.”
“Bah! Oriental stories,” was Gordon's com-
ment. “You may convince an Easterner like
Mukerji. After all he's a damn fool. But I want
logic.”
And Jerry said, “Mythology is the logic of
imaginative races, as logic is the mythology of the
dull races.” Gordon left us, furious.
I said to Jerry, “Do you believe that Gordon
might be right?”
He answered, “The curse of these Socialists is
that they are always right. They haven’t the
MY SOCIALIST “ FRIENDS ’’ I97
courage to be wrong. But let us forget Gordon.”
And Jerry added: “They are always barking
and howling and clamoring. They don't realize
that the thing is too deep. A system of doubt will
never overcome a system of belief.”
I must say that Jerry and Leo were not earn-
ing a penny, and it was time I got my twenty
dollars. With five dollars deducted from it, I
did not feel inclined to give them five dollars,
and yet I felt bound to do so, because they
were improving my mind. All day they studied
and at night they would tell me what they had
studied. Thus they took me across Hegel and
Hume. They also took me across what are called
the thick and thin kinds of social theories.
One day when I came with my salary of
fifteen dollars in my pocket, Leo said: “Dhan,
we've got a job and we're going to take it. We
are going to lecture for the I.W.W. They are
the only branch of Socialists we can support. They
are going to give us as compensation the floor of
their hall to sleep on. Jerry and I won't have to
sleep on the streets any more, and sleeping in box
cars is tiresome.”
I asked, “What do you do in exchange?”
“We are supposed to speak twice a week on a
street corner,” Leo answered, adding, “Do you
mind carrying the soap box for us?”
198 OUTCAST
I said, “No. I will gladly contribute that much.
We must destroy the capitalist system. My carry-
ing the box is another stroke of the pick at the
foundation of capitalism.”
Soon the first evening's lecture began. I had
borrowed an apple box from my employer's house,
and carried it way up there to Fillmore Street. I
took it on a street car, and the passengers thought
I was carrying a cat in it. Then when they saw
an empty box they looked at me, as much as to say
that my mind was as empty as the box. At last I
reached my destination and put the box down.
Leo stood on it and said: “I want to abolish the
State and the Church and Society.” That fetched
only one man as audience. And I said to myself,
“if he has abolished those three and got only one
man, what else can he abolish to get some more?
There is very little left.”
The audience said to Leo : “Say, what are
you?”
Leo answered, “I am an anarchist.”
The audience said, “I get you. Go to it.”
“What's the use of going to it?” responded Leo.
“Get about five more people.”
Our one convert agreed to this. “Take my
advice,” he added, “don’t talk. Let us stand
around a while.” So we waited and watched Leo
who stood on the box firm as a statue. This ruse
MY SOCIALIST “FRIENDS'' 199
had a tremendous effect. It brought a lot of
people. Then Leo flung out an arm at them and
pointed with his finger and cried: “You are the
people who support the State, the Church and
Society.” And these people grew interested and
frightened
Then Leo launched into his speech. And as he
went on the crowd became more and more
interested. He talked for more than two hours.
Then with a great gesture Leo said, “Now my
Hindu comrade will pass the hat.” I could see a
swaying movement in the crowd. The greater
part of it melted into the night. Those who re-
mained gave us a dollar and a half. Then Leo
announced: “The collection is quite satisfactory.
I hope I shall meet you next Monday night, when
my comrade Jerry will address you on the abolition
of marriage.” jº
But before the week was out many things
happened. The most important in its consequences
was that my employer said to me one evening:
“Do you mind staying in and answering the 'phone?
We are going out on very important business.” So
I stayed in and answered the telephone that
evening. The next two evenings the same request
was made, and I gave the same answer. In the
course of the week, it was taken for granted that
it was part of my job to answer the telephone in
2OO OUTCAST
the evening. I was loath to give up this position
because it was not a very bad one, and as long as I
had my evenings there was some compensation.
Now they were making it absolutely impossible for
me to attend the evening conferences with Leo
and Jerry after the day's work.
I reported this fact one evening to Jerry. He
said, “You must stick to this job for none of us
is earning anything.” I replied, “But I am tired of
being exploited.”
“Well, then, give it up,” Jerry said, “I don't
care. But take my advice: save money.”
I was quite worried, so one evening when the
woman announced, “We are going on very im-
portant business, please answer the 'phone,” I
said, “No. I have a very important engagement
and I must keep it. I cannot do it. I must go.”
“If that's the case, out of this house for good
you go tomorrow !” she stated.
I clung to my determination. “All right,” I
said, “I’ll be willing to leave tonight.” I went out
and met the boys and we had a lively discussion on
“What is the relation of man to society?”
Jerry said, “The basis of the relation of man to
society is fear.” Leo maintained, “The basis of
the relation is ignorance. The more you know the
more unsocial you are.”
Then I realized that man's relation to society
MY SOCIALIST “ FRIENDS ’’ 201
was something neither of them knew anything
about! I had just come away from that woman's
wrath and I knew my relation to her was very
delicate, because I wanted to preserve my job. I
told Jerry what had happened. He said, “You’ll
keep your job tomorrow. They won't fire you.
No one will ever find a perfectly pliable fool like
you. You have too damned much non-resistance
in you. That's what's the matter with you.”
I went home that night and as I lay asleep I
heard someone banging at my door. I woke up
and heard furious swearing accompanied with
more poundings. I was very much frightened but
soon found out what it was. My employer had
told her drunken son that I refused to answer the
telephone. He came home and wanted to throw me
out, and he raged all night but could not get at
me. When in the morning I opened my door I
found him on the floor in front of my room fast
asleep. I went up and called the old woman to
help; then we put him to bed, and as he was going
to sleep after a few wakeful moments, he said,
“You damned heathen, I will smash your head I’’
With that he fell asleep.
I told the old woman I must leave because I had
been insulted. “Your son raged at my door, and
called me a damned heathen,” I explained.
“I don't call that an insult,” she protested.
2O2 OUTCAST
“What do you call an insult, then?” I asked.
“If he had hit you, I would call it an insult,” she
said.
I left that job. I couldn't wait to be hit.
Now began the most difficult part of my life. I
could not find a job at once. We were allowed to
sleep on the floor of the I.W.W. place, but the
boys had to make four speeches a week for the
privilege, and as Leo said, “No man can make
four speeches a week without being a perfect hum-
bug.” So it came about, that whenever they
needed to make a speech, I was made to carry the
box. Any time that any of the group felt inclined
to deliver himself of a course on the abolishment
of the Church or marriage, he always looked for
Mukerji, because he was associated with the box.
Then there came a quarrel as to policy between the
I.W.W. and Jerry. Jerry insisted that even in-
dustrial control should not be in the hands of the
workers, because that would be a violation of
individualism, and the I.W.W. said he must
always insist in his speeches on industrial control
by the workers. As Jerry refused, the I.W.W.
people declared, “Then you don't sleep here.”
“All the better,” said Jerry, “I’ll be rid of your
vermin.”
They said, “All right. We'll keep our vermin.
You get out !”
So we left, all three of us. And we made a
MY SOCIALIST “FRIENDS ’’ 203
present of the box to them because we did not need
to make any more speeches for a sleeping place.
Walking the streets at night, instead of sleeping,
has its disadvantages. Of course we slept all day
long in the park. It was summer time in
California; there was no rain. But the stupidity
of policemen is unfathomable. They were always
accusing us of something or other, and their
monotonous motto was: “Move on ſ”
One day Jerry thought he would placate a park
policeman by talking to him of Irish nationalism,
of the Phoenix Park tragedy, and of Parnell.
From that time on the policeman was our friend,
and two benches under the bushes became our
sleeping quarters undisturbed by any one of those
who used to chase us away.
Eating was more precarious than sleeping. We
would run errands for people—that is to say, I
ran the errands and Leo and Jerry sat on the
benches and studied. I took the job of looking
after a book shop. This was a Socialist book shop
where I dusted old books upstairs and made a
record of them. It was three hours' work a day,
but the Socialists I found very stingy people who
would not give me more than twenty-five cents an
hour. Whenever I made seventy-five cents I
would not work any more but we would all go and
eat a meal.
One day Jerry said, “You know, lack of food
2O4. OUTCAST
undermines one's system. One of us must go
to work.” So I went and found a job. This
time it was twenty-five dollars a month, room
and board, and the same sort of work I had
done before, so I had no difficulty. But the
place was rather shady. There were a num-
ber of suspicious-looking people, coming and
going, and no one stayed more than a week.
So after I had my first week's wages I took
them over to Jerry and Leo and told them the
nature of the place. “The more suspicious it is,
the better,” they said. “That means that people
won’t demand very good service, and you’ll have
more time and tips. Some of these people are
loose. And you know it is the loose that are
generous.”
They were right. There was much less fas-
tidiousness, and less economy. People did not
mind tipping and did not mind if I neglected
certain things. The person there most interesting
to me was a widow who lived on her own income.
She was the only one who stayed there all the time.
One day I saw her reading Locke's On Human
Understanding at breakfast. Unable to restrain
myself, I said, “Do you understand Locke?”
“How dare you!” she exclaimed, evidently very
angry.
“But Madame,” I tried to quiet her, “Jerry
MY SOCIALIST “FRIENDS'' zo;
tells me it's a profound book.” In spite of this
bad start I had many pleasant talks with her and
added to my store of knowledge.
One day I said to her, “Do you believe in
abolishing marriage?”
“In my case I have abolished it,” she replied. .
“I am not a widow. I am a divorced woman.”
This was the first time in my life that I had
come across a real divorced person and I did not
know what to make of her. “How does it feel to
be divorced?” I asked.
“You feel well rid,” she answered. “Rid of
what, you ask? Well, I cannot explain to you,
but I’ll tell you: Never live a lie!”
“It must be the fault of the capitalist system that
people live lies,” I told her, true to my teaching.
“All right, have it your own way,” she agreed,
and then added, “Have you ever read Ghosts, by
Ibsen? In Ghosts a woman lived a lie for many
years.”
This started me reading Ibsert, arid I found that
the connection between The Doll's House and
Ghosts was perfect. And what convinced me of
Ibsen's greatness was the fact that this woman had
lived and verified Ibsen's theory.
When I told Jerry about my new friend and
Ibsen he protested that Ibsen was a back number.
As he put it, “Ibsen isn't quite sure of anything.
2O6 OUTCAST
He questioned and questioned and questioned, and
pretty soon he wasn't sure of his questioning even.
But since Sophocles no one has written with such
simplicity.” -
The next day we took down Sophocles and began
to read him. When we had finished in two or three
days, Jerry asked, “Do you see now that Shake-
speare was a ranting fool compared to this man?”
“What's wrong with Shakespeare?”
“There's nothing wrong with him, except that
he had the tremendous belief that two worlds could
be kept up by the same man. He compromised
with the earth as well as with heaven. Shakespeare
accepted the order of this world and he also ac-
cepted the order of the inner world. He never
found out that both needed simplification, but in
Sophocles the two are brought into a unity.”
I asked him again about Ibsen. He said, “Ibsen, if
he had had a higher medium like the Greek language
and contemporaries like Socrates and Pericles,
would have been just as great. But the trouble
with Ibsen is that his contemporaries were men like
Gladstone. But, Mukerji, your ancestors knew all
this and never were troubled about it. It is strange
that you should come to us to find out what you had
at home. It's time for you to go back.”
It was time for me to go back to college. Vaca-
tion was over.
CHAPTER III
THE SECOND YEAR IN COLLEGE
WHEN I came back to the university, life
seemed extremely flat. There was the same
dull monotony of study, and the routine of lectures.
Not that the lectures were necessarily shallow, but
somehow I did not want to listen to the wisdom of
my masters.
Leo used to come and see me once in a while,
and so did Jerry. It was toward the end of the
semester that the real importance of college life
began to emerge. I felt that the only thing uni-
versity life could give a young man was a love of
books. Yet the wisdom to implant a love of the
real books is not within the power of a professor
to give but is an acquirement that a student must
seek out for himself. Out of every ten books that
I read only one was of any value to me, and as I
blundered through book after book I at last at-
tained a sense of certainty about them. I did have
to blunder through ten books to find the one. Then
my taste for reading left me. All books seemed
2O7
208 OUTCAST
to wear the same stupid expression. Each one
looked as bald and spectacled as its neighbor—very
much like a series of college professors preserved
in mummy cases. -
It was very fortunate that that semester ex-
hausted all my love for the dead. One day Jerry
and Leo came to see me. At this time I was work-
ing in a boarding house for room and board and
ten dollars a month. Whenever the boys wanted
to see me, they came to my room in the basement
and we had long talks. I told Jerry what had hap-
pened to me. I said, “The books have died.”
Jerry replied, “Books are the reflections of great
characters. When a young mind acquires the
power to discern the character of man, he will
cease to be interested in books. Books are shadows
and it requires sufficient youth to be in love with
shadows.”
“But there are great books like those of
Shakespeare and Sophocles,” I protested. +
“Oh, yes,” he admitted, “but today I could no
more love a play of Shakespeare's than I could
love a mountain. It seems so heavy and unneces-
sary. On the contrary the man, Shakespeare, gives
one’s mind a spacing which nothing else can give.
Books are dead when you have attained the psychic
qualities of knowing them without knowing their
contents.” -
THE SECOND YEAR IN COLLEGE 209
“But there is one thing about books; they help
us forget life,” Leo assented.
“Yes,” agreed Jerry, “books are opium. The
Chinese take it by the lump and we have it spread
out on paper. It has the same effect on our minds
in the alphabetical order as when taken in lumps.”
Then I answered, “I am going to give up col-
lege.”
“No, stick to it,” Jerry urged, “for some day the
human race will become alive and because these
strongholds will fight for the dead, for the sake
of the living we will have to destroy them. Those
who know their secrets are the ones that shall be
needed at that hour.”
I was now feeling hungry and proposed that the
three of us should dine on the dollar that I had
in my pocket, for I knew that I was a dollar richer
than my two friends. So we went to a restaurant,
and as we were eating, in walked a man, his face
covered with a golden beard and his head thick
with a beautiful mane. “How do you do, Jerry?”
he said, coming up to our table.
Jerry turned around and said, “Hello, Frank!
I thought you were in jail in Australia.”
“No,” said Frank, “They didn't catch me and
as I am a political offender, they cannot take me
here.” Jerry then introduced him to us. His name
was Frank Bonnington.
2 IO OUTCAST
Bonnington said, “Is this a meal in which every-
one can join P’’
Jerry answered, “Ask Mukerji, because he is the
one who has the power.”
“Ninety cents are gone,” I said, “but you may
get what you can with ten cents.”
“That means a lot to me,” replied Frank. “I
haven't eaten a thing for three days.”
“What happened to you in Australia?” I asked.
“Oh, I led two syndicalist strikes and put a fac-
tory ‘on the blink.” Then a guard had a warrant
against me, but I got wind of it and stowed away
in an American boat. I left Sydney a month ago.
When they found me I had already starved, three
days, but they gave be some work to do and let
me land in San Francisco. I thought that the
Socialist movement was so rampant in America that
a man could find his comrades anywhere.”
Jerry said, “That's just what's the trouble with
the Socialist movement here. There are as many
Socialists in America as there are fleas on a dog!”
I asked Frank whether he had any extraordinary
experience in the course of his work. “No,” he
said, “my skull was broken in two places once and
another time I had to stand all alone keeping watch
Over a group of women and children, whose hus-
bands had been arrested. The most terrible part
of it all was that the children cried for milk and
THE SECOND YEAR IN COLLEGE 2 II
the women cried for food and I had nothing to give
them. The only thing that tided us over was the
singing. We sang the ‘Marseillaise' so that in
the delirium of it we forgot everything about
hunger.”
“But how can you think with a broken skull?”
asked Jerry.
To this Frank said, “I have never been more
lucid than now. I wish your skull was broken in
three places, then you could think much better.”
“It is not the broken skull that I am objecting
to,” Jerry said, “but how can you think lucidly
when you are a Socialist? No Socialist thinks
clearly, he thinks emphatically.”
Frank then told us that he had a job at
eighty dollars a month editing a Socialist weekly.
“Well, that will keep us all going, I think,”
Jerry said, and then he pointed at me. “Look
here, Frank, this fellow wants to give up col-
lege and go hoboing with us, but I don't think
he is fit for it.” Whether or not I was fit to
be a hobo, I assured them I was not going
back to college as I had found the life there
altogether flat, and I wanted to give my life to
humanity. To this Frank answered, “All life is
flat; even getting your skull broken, if done often
enough, is very tiresome. And as for giving your
life to humanity, humanity has heard that sentence
2. I2 OUTCAST
so often from young men that she does not care to
answer whether she wants it or not! Why do you
want to crucify humanity always by giving it your
life P”
“But have you not given your life to humanity?”
I asked him.
“No,” said Frank, “I give my life to a dream
that I pursue. I was born a gentleman—my grand-
father was a slave owner, my father fought in the
Civil War to preserve the slaves that we owned.
After the war I was sent to the University of
Virginia to be a gentleman and after spending four
years there, I found out it was the one thing I did
not want to be. So I left the East and walked west
to California. I have been kicked out of res-
taurants for eating without paying for food; I
have been locked up in different police stations as a
suspected thief; I have eaten food out of garbage
cans; I have slept beneath the stars under the
Allegheny mountains as well as the Rockies, and
let me tell you, I had no desire to love humanity.
I had no desire to do good; I had no desire even
to improve myself. But a sudden vision seized me
and compelled me to believe that a higher social
order is essential for the growth of the free spirit.
I believe that there will be a dissolution of church,
state and society in a higher human organism. I
THE SECOND YEAR IN COLLEGE 213
believe in freedom so heartily that I am enslaved
to my dream of freedom.”
Here the talk drifted into diverse channels,
mostly about books to read and people to know
and finally ended with a discussion on Nietzsche.
All agreed that Nietzsche was looking for the
morally strong man and that in order to make
clear to his contemporaries what he meant by the
moral man and the strong man he was so
vehement that people mistook his vehemence for
his truth. *
Jerry ended by saying, “Oh, well, he was a
dreary windbag. If you are really strong men
you have never served yourself to your fullest, and
if you are immoral men, you have clean forgotten
what is good or bad. An instance of that is the
German who goes and dances all over Europe tell-
ing us that the morally strong man is himself. The
result is Europe thinks he is not immoral but
weak.”
“But what would happen to humanity if we all
took a stand like that?” I asked.
Jerry said, “Humanity! What about your
ancestors? They sat in the Indian jungle and
meditated while tigers came, elephants went and
the crocodiles bobbed up and then sank down again
in the Ganges. But these Indians did not care.
They would pursue a truth which was larger than
2I4. OUTCAST
humanity—larger than themselves and so they
could forget to be annihilated by the truth of pur-
suit. The trouble with us is that we have such
small lives and such small truths. We are like very
sanitary pig-stys Open for inspection as if there
were a royal visit on. This humanity that you talk
of is a thing you know nothing about. A million
human hearts beat, but how many have you
counted P Of thousands and thousands of years,
how many have you dared to look into ? And
those terrible sufferings that are all hidden from
our vision? How few have we dared to curel
And then we sit here and want to give our life to
humanity. We want to die-martyrs to truth. I
hate the word, martyrdom | It smacks so of
charity Do not be charitable to humanity. It is
so unkind.”
“Well,” I said, “I want to tell you something
very frankly. I am going to lose my job. They
want to save money so they are going to fire me
anyway, but what is the use of going to school?”
“How much money does it cost you to go to
school?” Frank asked.
“Forty dollars a month,” I answered.
“All right,” said Frank, “I will give you half of
my salary and you go to school on that while with
the other forty I will take care of Leo, Jerry and
myself.”
THE SECOND YEAR IN COLLEGE 215
I was staggered by this proposition and in con-
sternation I said, “Why do you do this? I do not
need schooling. Look how much you know with-
out depending on a college professor.”
But Frank would not abandon his plan for my
education in favor of his own. “Colleges are far
kinder than anything or any place else,” he said.
“They give you knowledge without hurting you.
On the other hand bumming around is the stiffest
way of acquiring wisdom. It hurts you most; for
it destroys your self-respect. Do you know, many
times after going without food for days, and being
unable to bear it any longer I have gone to a
restaurant and ordered a meal. Naturally they
would ask me to pay for it at the end. Well you
know the rest.” Frank waved his hand.
“What do you mean by the rest?” I asked.
Frank shrugged his shoulders and explained, “I
offered myself to be kicked out of the restaurant;
which they did with great alacrity. . . . Now you
see what it means to be a hobo P. It means that you
lose your greatest asset—you have no faith in any-
thing, even in your own greatness.”
“How do you endure life under such trials?” I
questioned.
“You put all of your life out of yourself,” he
answered. “You think and live in a far future when
man will be as the Titans. Since you live in the far
216 OUTCAST
off, you don’t mind the here and the now. Your
intellect weaves a splendid mantle of self-delusion
which armors your ego.”
“Well,” said Jerry, “what is intellect for if it
is not for the purpose of hypnotizing us into
believing that the position we are in is the highest
and most envied by all?”
“However that may be,” Frank closed the
argument, “you must go to school and leave the
expenses to me.” So I dragged through another
semester at college. When vacation came, I went
to San Francisco and took a job. It was full day's
work for room, board and twenty-five dollars a
month. It was pleasant to feel that I was work-
ing there to save up money for college and also
to pay back Frank.
One day, after my day's work, as I went to a
little cigar store where we all were in the habit of
meeting, I found a huge crowd talking very
anxiously in whispers. I found out that they had
received news that Emma Goldman and Riteman
had been in San Diego where they were tarred and
feathered. All the radicals were so excited
What was to be done ! Well, I sought out our
group. Jerry said, “This is the most lively news
in a decade, for at last they have consented to take
notice of anarchists. What an advertisement for
the cause ! How fortunate l’’
THE SECOND YEAR IN COLLEGE 217
“Jerry, does it feel awful to be tarred and
feathered?” I asked.
“I do not know,” he answered. “My devotion
to anarchism never went to that length.”
“What are we going to do?” I asked.
“Well, the situation is very difficult,” he said.
“There are the MacNamara brothers who are
being tried in Los Angeles for having blown up the
Times Building and killed so many people. Here
are Emma and Riteman in a scrape. Now reading
the thing from the standpoint of the bourgeoisie of
Los Angeles, tarring and feathering is a pretty
mild form of punishment. But these people are
our comrades, so I do not know what to do.”
“Jerry,” Frank said, “you ought to go down to
San Diego at once and help poor Emma. It is a
rotten trick to play on a woman.”
“There you go,” Jerry said, “always conven-
tional. When did anarchists ever recognize bar-
riers of sex? A male anarchist is just as good as a
female. There is no difference.”
“Well, are you going to go down and help
them?” asked Frank.
Jerry said, “Yes, I will.”
So the next day Jerry set out. When he reached
San Diego, matters had been straightened out, so
he decided to go to Los Angeles. He went to the
court room where the MacNamara brothers were
2I8 OUTCAST
being tried and there he met his brother, who was
one of the lawyers interested in the case. The next
day we received the following letter from him:
“Dear Leo:—I have found my brother. That
is to say he has found me. He is a lawyer. He is
just as bad a character as my other brother who is
a real estate agent and when he saw me in the court
room he let everyone know that I was his brother,
which was extremely disconcerting since we had
not seen each other for sixteen years. There is
something very embarrassing in being called a
brother by a man whose ideals are alien to you.
And the most embarrassing thing happened when
he gave me $1 OO.OO to buy clean clothes and good
shoes in order to take me with him to Chicago for
a family reunion. Will you please send me a copy
of Stierner's Ego and His Own, and Nietzsche's
Beyond Good and Evil? The bourgeois hounds
are after me. For God’s sake, save me. I need
the books badly.”
Leo and I re-read the letter and wondered what
to do for Jerry. Leo said, “We have no money—
at least he has that and what is the use of sending
him books? We have only two books left and if
we send him both, where would we be? If he has
met his brother—well, after all, a fellow ought to
have some family experience anyway!”
THE SECOND YEAR IN COLLEGE 219
“But,” I said, “his family will gobble him up
and that will make him a bourgeois.”
Leo said, “Jerry has not worked for twenty-five
years. You cannot destroy twenty-five years of
inactivity by a trip to Chicago. Jerry is the solidest
anarchist we have.”
Leo was right. In three days Jerry appeared—
his pockets bulging with money. He said, “Now
we are sure of a good homestead for the next five
or six months at least. I am going to rent a room
for all of us so that anyone of us who wants to
sleep will have a place in which to sleep. There
are three of us—twenty-four hours—so each one
can sleep eight hours. Let us go and find a room.”
Jerry added, “Now, Mukerji, you can give up
your job and come over here and we will all study
together as long as the money holds out. When
all the money is gone, we will again disperse and
each go his separate way.” So I went to my em-
ployer and gave him notice that I would leave at the
end of the week. This was the first time I had re-
signed before being discharged and I felt very
proud.
We got together in the evening of the following
day and began to discuss all sorts of things. It was
the first time that Jerry told us the secret of his
life. He said, “We were six children in our family
with an ailing mother and with an erratic father
22O OUTCAST
forced to emigrate to America from Ireland. My
mother died in the basement of a tenement house
in New York when I was ten years old. We did
not go to school for fear that the day would be
wasted, so we worked as errand boys or newsboys
to make money to support our three sisters. Well,
our father sometimes got a job and sometimes did
not and once in a while he would come home and
beat us all to relieve his nerves. One day one of
the girls was sick. And among us all we had just
twenty-eight cents. The rent was due. We hoped
and prayed that our father would bring at least
ten dollars home that night.
“He came home at nine o’clock reeking with the
smell of whiskey. He was quite drunk. We asked
him about the money that we expected. Our ques-
tions maddened him so that without the slightest
warning he hit my eldest brother in the face. Then
he hit the second one. As if that had urged him
on to do something more brutal yet, he began to
beat the girl who was sick in bed. Unable to bear
it any longer, though frightened almost to death,
with a sudden and desperate courage I attacked
him. His blows fell all over me. But I clung and
tore at his neck. Then like a bulldog. I fastened on
his throat with my teeth. He hit me again and
again to make me loosen my hold. But I would
not let go. I was afraid to, for I knew that once
THE SECOND YEAR IN COLLEGE 221
freed from his pain he would waste no time in
catching me. Then suddenly I felt a strange taste
in my mouth. My father groaned most pitifully.
I felt so sick—now that I had tasted blood. So I
let go not caring for the consequences. My fathers
reeled back, then fell. I waited for his next attack.
But he lay on the ground and moaned. My heart
grew heavy. Now that I saw my brothers and
sisters crouching in dread and terror in the corner
of the room I felt sick in my soul
“I walked out into the night. . . . I wandered
through New York. At daybreak I returned
home. The children were fast asleep, but my
father's bed was empty, and I could not find him
anywhere in the house. My brothers and my sick
sister were roused by the noise I made in my search.
They told me that father went out right after I
left the house. They could tell me nothing more
about him. Even to this day no one knows where
he disappeared to. e
“His going away like that put the burden of sup-
porting the family full on the shoulders of us
boys. And I must say we did it very well for the
following two years.”
“What happened then?” asked Leo.
Jerry answered, “The thing that settled my
destiny. One day as I was coming home from
work I saw a lot of people walking in a parade.
222 OUTCAST
They were an awfully ragged-looking lot. They
were a bunch of unemployed. It was raining like
anything and yet they walked on. I went home and
talked to my brothers but they just laughed at the
matter and said, ‘if they are out of employment,
it's their own fault. The trouble with these people
is they do not want to work. No wonder they are
unemployed.’ I left the house and walked back
toward the park. It took one hour and a quarter
to walk there. The rain was pouring and I was
sopping wet. I found men and women standing
under doorways, their clothes all wet and their
eyes green with hunger. For the first time I
realized that hunger is a universal fact. Mankind
experiences more truth through hunger than
through anything else. When I went back home
it was midnight. I hung up my clothes and went
to bed. Next day I did not go to work.
“I must tell you a little about my brothers.
They were not only working wonderfully but they
were going to night school and bettering themselves
all the time. One of them had set his heart on
}aw as his vocation and the other had not decided
on anything so he was taking a business course.
We really had enough money to take care of the
girls, so after seeing them employed I stopped
going to work. I cursed everything and then
after that an emptiness set in that I could not con-
THE SECOND YEAR IN COLLEGE 223
trol. I sat in an empty house waiting for the girls
to come back from school and the boys from work.
I had dinner ready for them. They could not
understand me when I told them why I had not
gone to work. The emptiness began to grow
apace. Again I walked out into the night and
watched for the unemployed, who were looking for
shelter in all kinds of strange places. All night I
walked. When the day broke, I could not go
home.
“Then began my vagabondage. In the course
of my wandering I heard all kinds of tales about
distribution of wealth, and increase in production;
but the only man that ever gripped my imagination
was a fellow called Emerson, whose Conduct of
Life fell to my hands. Queer bird, Emerson 1
He lived through the Civil War. There is very
little mention of this fact in his journals. For the
first time in my life I came across a man who could
live through a war and yet not be touched by it. I
read all the journals and everything written by this
man. Today the thing that I remember is that
slight phrase: somewhere, he has said, ‘We must
be counted singly, individually, alone.’ He made
me an individualist.
“Within a year or so I went to Chicago and was
present at that parade at Haymarket where the
bomb exploded. The first counterstroke of labor
224 OUTCAST
against capitall Then I walked from Chicago to
New York, all the time devouring more of
Emerson. I came home and stayed there to work
in a factory and study in a library, but the thing
that bewildered me most was this: my sister who
was brought up in poverty was now in love with a
young man who gave her expensive presents. My
brothers, who were poor, were now branching out
into rich vocations and there was I, a factory
laborer yet.
“Suddenly this truth dawned on me—that en-
vironment does not shape a man's nature. Here
was my sister brought up in the same environment
as my brothers and I. They had all gone in for
wealth and here was I yet wondering as to the
meaning and the nature of the universe. I con-
cluded that we are not determined by our environ-
ment, but we are determined by our character.
There is no such thing as a material determinism
but there is the primordial truth of psychological
determinism. Was it Emerson who told me this
or was it life?”
CHAPTER IV
SOMETHING OF FRANK’S LIFE
A" the end of his story of his boyhood, Jerry
got up impatiently and said: “Now let us go
and find a room.” After a short search from place
to place, we came across a nice landlady who
rented us a room for six months. Jerry asked her:
“Do you mind if three people sleep in the same
bed P’’ &
“What do you mean, sir?” the landlady said.
Jerry repeated, “May three people sleep in the
same bed?”
She said, “Do you mean man, woman and baby,
Sir P” - fty
“No,” said Jerry, “I mean one man the first
eight hours, another man the second eight hours,
and a third man, the rest of the time. Can they
sleep in the same bed? Do you have any objec-
tions if three people sleep in the same bed suc-
cessively?” -
The landlady at last understood our proposal
225
226 OUTCAST
and said, “I do not care who sleeps in the bed as
long as the rent is paid.”
Jerry then took out a roll of money from his
pocket and said, “Here is money for three months’
rent. Is that enough?”
She nodded as she counted the money and the
three of us filed out of the rooming-house. When
we came out to the park bench where we had spent
many nights, we were rather perplexed as to who
was to begin sleeping in our common bed. After
a great deal of debate it was decided to cast lots.
After we tossed up we found that Leo was to sleep
first, either Frank or myself the second eight hours,
depending on which was out of employment, and
last it was for Jerry to go to sleep.
Jerry, however, said, “This looks like a regular
bourgeois arrangement, everything according to
law and order. I won't abide by it. Are we to
lose our freedom because we have rented a room?
We will sleep whenever we please, that is all.”
Then we went to a restaurant and ate our meal.
I went on to my own place where I had been work-
ing, to spend the night and I did not see the boys
for several days.
It was the fourth night while I was just getting
into bed that I heard someone scratch the window-
pane of my basement room. I was frightened, but
after a few moments I realized that it was one of
SOMETHING OF FRANK's LIFE 227
the comrades. So I went outside and found Leo.
When I had brought him in, he said, “Will you let
me sleep with you tonight?”
I said, “What's the matter?” -
He explained, “Well, Frank is there to sleep in
that bed and Jerry wanted to sleep, too, though his
turn hadn’t yet come. So what could I do? Frank
has come out from the other side of the Bay and
there was Jerry and me. The three of us wanted
to sleep, so I left the two other fellows there.
Now, if you will let me get into bed . . .”
The next night Frank was sent to me to sleep in
my bed while Leo was to sleep in Jerry's bed in
the rented room. After we had been in bed a few
moments, Frank said, “What the devil is that
biting me? Has anyone else been here besides
Leo P”
“No,” I answered.
“Do you know what I think?” he said after a
little, “I think that the place we rented is full of
vermin and Leo has brought all the vermin from
there to here and I have brought some of my own
since I slept there. However, if we have stood the
capitalist system these many years we can stand
the vermin one night.”
So we slept and scratched and slept and scratched
again. -
Early next morning Frank departed to give up
228 OUTCAST
the room and to give that vulture of an old woman
a piece of his mind. Hardly had he stepped out
of the back door when he came back with Leo in
a great hurry. “Something terrible has hap-
pened,” Leo said. “Jerry has been arrested.”
“Arrested for what?” I asked.
He answered, “Why, for burglary. Jerry was
walking home last night about ten o'clock when he
heard a shot fired in the neighborhood and a man
dashed by a few minutes later. Two cops ran
along and arrested Jerry, saying that he was the
man who had held up a grocery store. From the
police station he telephoned to me this morning to
come and get him out on bail.” -
“Well,” remarked Frank, calmly, “now the
police station will be full of vermin, as he has slept
there one night already. Those poor prisoners will
have a hell of a time from now on.”
“But what are we going to do about it?” Leo
asked.
“Do nothing at all,” Frank answered.
“Do nothing !” I exclaimed.
“No,” said Frank. “This isn’t the first time
Jerry has been arrested, but as far as I know they
have never been able to sentence him yet. Since
it is quite alien to his nature to appropriate other
people's property, they will not be able to convict
him.”
SOMETHING OF FRANK’S LIFE 229
“But he might rot in jail all the time before the
trial comes up,” I objected.
“Oh no. They will let him off,” Frank said.
“The police are extremely thick-headed; they will
find a much better man to take the thief's place.
Though they generally don’t know the difference
between a hobo and a criminal, they won't keep
Jerry too long.” w
“But they may railroad him into jail,” I pro-
tested.
“Railroad your grandmother!” Frank ex-
claimed. “They will never do any such thing. It
is too expensive to keep a man like him in jail.
They will let him out, and we will have to feed
him.”
Hearing the house stirring upstairs and knowing
it was time for me to begin my work, I urged Frank
and Leo to get out. -
“All right,” said Leo. “I will go to the police
station and see what can be done.”
I spent the day at work and in great excitement.
But I could not find the boys anywhere, either by
telephoning or by going to the rooming-house
where we had that common bed. Later in the
evening as I was reading, I heard the same scratch-
ing on my window pane, and in stepped Jerry.
“Hello, I thought you were in jail,” I said,
“What happened, have they bailed you out?”
23O OUTCAST
“No,” he answered, “they let me off.”
“Do Frank and Leo know?”
“I don’t know. I haven't seen them since morn-
ing.”
“But,” I said, “they had gone out to get you out
on bail.”
He said, “Well, I suppose they are looking for
the bail yet. In the meantime the police have
found the real thief, and as they did not need me
any longer they let me go.”
“Did they treat you badly?” I asked him.
“Well,” Jerry answered, “the State is always
stupid, you know. Whenever the State puts its
hand on you, it generally leaves you a little dam-
aged after the transaction. Until you have abol-
ished the State, my boy, you will have no individual
freedom. Can you imagine two fat-heads dressed
in certain uniforms behaving as if they were
Almighty God and taking liberties with any citizen
walking in the streets P But it is no use, we will
have to abolish the State, the Church and Society
before we have peace and freedom on earth.”
“Where do you think the other two are?” I
asked.
He said, “I don’t know and I don’t care. Prob-
ably they are sleeping in our room. But let's go
and see, maybe the two fools are wandering about
looking for someone to go bail for me.”
SOMETHING OF FRANK's LIFE 231
We went out and wandered around Fillmore
Street and lo and behold, from two different street
corners Leo and Frank were haranguing the crowd.
I heard Leo say:
“Until you abolish the State, we will have no
freedom. The State is an absolute authority in a
given territory. As long as there is so much
authority there is little freedom in that territory.
So, ladies and gentlemen, let us imprison, abolish,
put to death the arch criminal that preys upon
humanity—the State.”
At the other corner, standing on an inverted tub,
Frank was saying:
“Ladies and gentlemen, I have already proved
to you that life isn't worth living and it is much
less worth living if we have to be sandwiched be-
tween the Church and the State; between the upper
and the nether millstones. We are not only ground
exceedingly small, but we are really ground down
to nothing. I believe in the sanctity of the indi-
vidual, and you, as individuals, have just as much
chance to be yourselves as a cow has when she is
giving milk. If you only had the wisdom of a cow,
you wouldn't be what you are.”
The audience applauded him with great gusto.
He saw me and Jerry in the audience, and said:
“Now I will stop, and my Hindu comrade will
pass the hat.”
232 OUTCAST
So I passed the hat, and we made two dollars
that evening. Frank was glad to see Jerry and so
was Leo at the end of his harangue. Leo was
rather more surprised because this was the first
time he had come anywhere near an experience of
jail for himself or his friends. Jerry held forth on
his jail experiences. He said:
“The first time I was jailed it was in Chicago.
I was caught with a lot of laborers and put in
prison, but later on they found nothing on me so
they let me out. That one month of my incar-
ceration was full of brilliant thoughts. When you
are busy you don’t think much. But in jail each
criminal let me know his life experience between
whispers and broken sentences. Then I learned
that it is just as easy to get accustomed to live
within four walls as it is to live in space walled up
by the sky. Prison does not make criminals of us,
but it does make perfect animals of us. I don't
see, however, why we should have any prejudice
against animals. Perhaps it is very interesting to
be an animal. However, it is rotten to adapt one's
self to everything as animals do, no matter what
befalls them.
“The second time I was arrested it was for
white slave traffic. It was in a brothel where I
had gone to look up a young girl I had seen walk-
ing the streets at night. I had a talk with her. I
SOMETHING OF FRANK’S LIFE 233
brought her to my house and gave her room and
shelter, but her procuress came and wanted to take
her away from me. “Return my girl to me,’ she
demanded.
“And I told her to go to hell. In a week's time
I was arrested for indulging in white slave traffic
and the case against me was perfectly clear. I was
the man, according to the evidence of the prosecu-
tion, who had brought this girl and sold her into
prostitution. Then later I had violated my con-
tract with the procuress and took her with me for
further transactions. They found me red-handed,
as the girl was with me being made ready for
further transactions in another city of the Middle
West, as they were prepared to prove. -
“Well, the thing looked pretty bad, and I knew
by this time, in spite of all innocence, there was no
escape for me. I tell you frankly that you may be
as innocent and harmless as a dove, yet you cannot
escape injury from the malicious people that live in
this world. These people do harm as naturally as
a snake secretes poison in its fangs.
“So in course of time the trial came off. The
jury was selected: three rich merchants, one clergy-
man, I think, and the rest were nondescripts of one
profession or another. The evidence came off with
a great deal of ease. I was identified by two
people—a railroad conductor and a negro porter
234 OUTCAST
of the brothel. They corroborated each other in
saying that I was the man who brought this girl
to the brothel and that after bringing her there, I
removed her from the place for further business,
as I have already mentioned. -
“The thing looked perfect. I could see no way
of putting a hole in the evidence of the other side.
The district attorney raged like a gigantic bull who
had seen a red flag. I thought the jury would blow
up under his raging, but they sat there like twelve
vultures, waiting to see which way the corpse was
going to fall. The judge was very much like an
old undertaker who had lost all interest in corpses
and death. To him it was the routine of business.
No wonder he looked glum. The whole thing was
solemn like a gigantic funeral service in which I
was the man lying in the casket. The vast ritual
of law poured upon me like holy water. I tell you
frankly, if you want to be buried at all, be buried
in a law court. Elsewhere rituals are not as alive.
“However, I knew my mind. I said to myself,
‘There is only one way to puncture their evidence
and that is, to play cat and mouse with the evidence
of the Negro.’ So I said that I wanted to cross-
examine the Negro. The district attorney smiled,
signalled the Negro to get into the witness stand,
and I began:
“‘When did you see me come in P’
SOMETHING OF FRANK’S LIFE 235
“He said, ‘Last October.”
“I said, ‘What date of the month?’
“‘Don’t know, sir. It was Friday.”
“‘What kind of clothes did I wear?'
“‘Don’t know you wore any clothes, sir.’
“‘What did I look like?’
“Negro: “Like a gentleman, sir.’
“‘Can you recognize a gentleman when you see
one?’
“The district attorney: ‘I object.”
“The judge: ‘The objection is sustained.’
“‘Do you remember when I came what I had in
my hand?' - -
“‘Nothing, sir.’
“‘Do you remember how I entered the house?”
“‘You sneaked in like a skunk, sir.’
“‘Did I smell like a skunk?"
“District attorney: ‘I object.’
“The court: “The objection is sustained.”
“‘After I came into the house, what happened?”
“‘Nothing, sir.’
“‘Are you quite sure I went in all alone?”
“Negro: ‘Yes, sir. No one that am a gentle-
man goes with somebody else. I see all kinds of
gentlemen come and go, but I never see one come
with nobody else.'
“‘Then you are sure I had no one else with me?’
“‘No, sir.’
236 - OUTCAST
“‘Are you sure I had no one with me, man or
woman P’ t
“‘No, sir.’
“‘But you said in this evidence that I brought
this young lady with me.’
“‘So I did, sir.”
“‘Then, which is true? Did I come alone or
did I come with the young lady?’
“‘I don't know, sir, you got me all mixed up.”
“‘Can you tell me who taught you to tell the lie
that I brought the young lady there to your place?”
“The Negro was going to say who it was when
the district attorney got up and objected, and the
court was overruling the objection when I said:
‘Your honor, I do not need to pursue this matter
any further. This shows that the poor Negro does
not know his own mind and I wouldn't be a bit sur-
prised if he was tutored to give this evidence.”
“Then I also cross-examined the conductor.
He, however, remained consistent in his statements
all through the cross-examination and the only
point he yielded was that he was not sure where I
got on the train with the young lady. And he was
not sure whether I got off at Englewood or
La Salle Street.
“I wanted to go on with the case a little further
and examine one or two more witnesses, but I saw
that it was useless. I asked the Negro to come on
SOMETHING OF FRANK’S LIFE 237
the stand again, and he broke down and cried. He
wailed, “Please don't ask me no more questions !
I ain't done nothing. It is them white folks that
put all them notions in my head. I ain't done
nothing.’
“So the jury returned a verdict of not guilty.”
“What happened to the girl?” asked Leo.
“Well, she had a varied career afterwards. I
took her under my charge and brought her around
to a sense of decency. I taught her reading and
writing, that is to say, reading and writing worth-
while English. Then I took on a job for two years
as a bartender in a saloon and the money that I
made there I spent in giving her a commercial edu-
cation.” t
I said, “What a filthy thing to do, to sell things
to put an end to men's minds. You didn't sell
alcohol?” -
Jerry answered, “How do you know that your
ideas do not smother people's minds just as much
as alcohol does. Only one you call ideas, the other
intoxication. That is all the difference.”
“But what happened to her after that?” Leo
asked. -
“Well, she became a lawyer's clerk,” Jerry
answered. “Then happened the usual thing. The
lawyer fell in love with her, divorced his wife and
married her. And thus ended the career of a girl
238 OUTCAST
who might have grown into something noble and
great. But women have a fear of greatness.
They prefer the security of marriage. Why? I
don't know.”
“What do you know about women?” I asked
him.
“Very little,” admitted Jerry. “In my time I
have known great women, too, like Louise Michel.
I have met Mrs. Bridges Adams of England. I
have heard Annie Besant lecture. I have known
young ladies, aspiring, unaspiring, animals, intelli-
gent, all sorts, and all as comrades and friends, and
I find the majority of them quite incapable of mad-
ness. It takes a man to go mad Over an idea.
That is why the majority of the prophets of the
world have been men. Women somehow see into
the relation of things; men see things as they rise
up in prominence, one upon the other. And it is
their power to give prominence and their devotion
to the most prominent thing which drives them
mad. And if they are not mad, they are so inspired
that they look mad.”
Frank said, “I don't agree with you at all.
Women are not at all different from men, but men
like to think that women are different, that is all.
I once met a woman with whom I was in love. She
was rich and I was poor. She was a capitalist and
I was not. It was during one of my Socialist
SOMETHING OF FRANK’S LIFE 239
harangues from a soap box at a street corner that
I saw her. She came again and again to hear me.
“One day she invited me to dinner and I came
to her house. She was a well-to-do widow. As we
grew more and more intimate I introduced her to
the writings of Bernard Shaw, Anatole France and
Mirabeau; and I could see her mind grow as grow
the trees in the tropics, swift and green. But you
see I was in love with her, but she was not—at least
not to the extent that I was. So one day I made a
fool of myself. I proposed to her and told her
that I wanted to marry her. She said, ‘No,' and
I asked her the reason.
“She said, “A woman or a man may marry as
often as they like, but a time comes in one's life
when an experience of love is as insipid as overripe
fruit. I am weary of love and people that make
love. They are so selfish that they think they want
to give themselves away. You see I have grown
really unselfish. I have no desire to give myself
away.'
“Then I said to her. “But you are hurting me.’
“She answered, ‘Love makes us so vain that
everything hurts us.”
“I left that night. Within a week I got a letter
saying: ‘I am going to be married to So-and-So.
I want you to come to the church and be one of my
witnesses.’
24O OUTCAST
“I gasped in consternation, “No l’”
“Yes,” said Frank. “She behaved exactly as a
man does, for I too was married in a month.”
All three of us exclaimed, “You, married 1”
He said, “Oh yes. I was married, loved, and
then given up for good.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“I married a lady in Virginia. I lived with her
about eight months, when I found out that there
was no more love between us than there was be-
tween myself and this lamp-post. We were victims
of the dull monotony of sex. Having realized that
one day, I left. No one knows what happened to
her. It is sixteen years now. Yet I feel that per-
haps if I went back to Virginia, I would find her
the same sweet, kind, somewhat unintelligent
woman, trying to be happy in a world where life is
not a case of happiness, but a means to knowl-
edge.”
“But is it a means to knowledge?” asked Jerry.
Frank said, “I don't know. It seems so to me.”
“No,” said Jerry. “The orientals are right.
Life is a problem involved in will. How to express
one's will is the problem of life, while we in the
West have made of life a problem of knowledge.
And look at the mess we are in. The whole
Western civilization is a civilization of ignorance
and blindness. In the East they don't go in for
SOMETHING OF FRANK’S LIFE 241
knowledge, so their ignorance does not hurt them.
They express their will and that is all; or they
don't express their will and that is enough. Yes,
we are the victims of the most elusive hopes in the
universe.”
“Then do you advise me,” I asked, “to go back
to India?”
“Yes, I do,” said Jerry.
“But,” I said, “what about the future of human-
ity?” -
Jerry said, “Let humanity alone. Humanity is
the sewer through which we are all passing. We
do not see why we should improve the sewer unless
it clogs our passage too much. If I were you, I
would go back to India and sit under a tree and
dream my dreams. In the West we are commer-
cializing our dreams. Even the utopias are being
made so practicable that nobody has any interest
in them. You have at least the power to dream.
We haven't got that much even.”
“But what about anarchy? Aren’t we going to
bring anarchy into this world?” I asked him.
Jerry answered, “Anarchism is an attitude which
only the healthy souls can acquire and since it is an
attitude of the soul what is the use of making it a
problem of education. The whole Western mind
is imbued with the idea that you can teach some-
thing. You can no more teach a man anarchism
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than you can teach a man how to angle for
stars.”
“But what about your third jail experience,
Jerry P” Leo asked him.
“My third experience in jail was really an
authentic one. Has any one of you committed a
theft?” he asked.
Leo and I shook our heads sadly acknowledging
our own unimportance. Frank, who was older,
was not as vain as we were. He asked Jerry,
“What did you steal?”
Jerry answered, “I forged a check and stole five
hundred dollars.”
“Were you arrested?”
“Yes.”
“How long were you sentenced?”
“I was sentenced to a year's imprisonment.”
“What did you do it for?” I asked.
“Just for experience. Besides, I needed the
money.”
“What could you need such an amount for P”
“You remember the procuress who wouldn’t let
go of the girl from that brothel because she had
paid for her?”
- “Yes.”
“Well, after the girl departed from town I gave
her five hundred dollars which the girl owed her.
I knew that was the best thing because the girl was
SOMETHING OF FRANK’S LIFE 243
married and I did not want the procuress to follow
her up.”
“And whose check did you forge, Jerry?”
“The owner of my saloon. He was dead drunk
and I made him believe that he signed his own sig-
nature and gave me the five hundred dollars.”
“But you said you were sentenced to one year's
imprisonment?”
“I was, because he denied from the witness stand
that he had written out his own signature and given
me five hundred dollars.”
“So you served a year in prison, Jerry?”
“Yes, and it taught me one thing. Man is in-
capable of great love. That is why he is so fond
of pity. You know why Christianity dominates
half of mankind? Not that it loves Jesus Christ,
but it loves Christ's pity for all that suffer and are
heavily laden. Man isn't made for the sublime
rôle of being a lover, but he lives for the beggar's
alms, the pity of the world. And it is the poorer
side of Christianity that is the religion of half the
world.” *
“But as for you, Jerry,” Leo asked, “didn't you
love this girl?”
“No, I pitied her,” he answered. “I did not
love her. I do not think I can love anything but
the squirrels and the birds in their cages.”
“But I remember,” I accused him, “that I saw
244 OUTCAST
you at the dog fancier's who sells birds over there.
I have seen you every now and then save up money
to buy a bird or squirrel and then free him in the
park.” J
“Yes, it is the one thing I enjoy most,” he ad-
mitted. “Whenever I have money I go and buy
one of those poor captives and set him free. O
God, what is it that keeps us from being noble
lovers? We are always pitying, pitying, all of us
and everything that we do ſ”
I had now come to the conclusion that if I stayed
in the city I would pretty soon be giving up my job,
to talk and wander with the boys. I saw that talk
wouldn’t do. I must go and earn money and finish
up my college work and although Frank had prom-
ised me forty dollars a month I did not want to
take his money. So I decided to try my luck at
work in a factory out over the Bay. However, I
wanted to spend a whole fortnight with the boys
before I went off, so we decided that Frank would
stay across the Bay where he worked for the Social-
ist paper, and I would share the bed with Jerry and
Leo.
The following day, after doing some odd jobs
for twenty-five cents an hour, I came to the room-
ing-house at half past five to go to sleep. I saw
Jerry standing in front of the house, his face wear-
ing an expression of great annoyance.
SOMETHING OF FRANK’S LIFE 245
“Hello, Jerry,” I called out. “What's the mat-
ter?”
“I have given it all up,” he answered.
“Given what up P’’ I asked with not the faintest
idea of his meaning.
“I have given up that bed,” Jerry answered
firmly.
“What do you mean?” I said, “I came here to
sleep.”
“You can't understand, I suppose, but to me it is
terrible,” he almost wept, “we were using the bed
all the time. Either you were sleeping or I was
sleeping or Leo was sleeping. Think of it! The
poor bed never had any rest. So I gave it up. One
should not exploit even a bed. Now I am going to
buy some more squirrels and set them free in the
park,” he concluded. -
That finished me. I said, “All right. You have
the right to give up your bed. We are all free.
We owe nothing to each other. I am going up
tomorrow to the factory.”
He agreed that this was the wisest thing to do.
“You see, Dhan,” he said, “you come from another
civilization, and you are not tough enough to stand
this bumming. You must be brought up in shelter.
This hard life of freedom is hell. Hungry, with-
out a coat on one's back, the men yet love their life
246 OUTCAST
of freedom. Well, goodbye, go to your factory.
Let's see each other once in a while.”
So I went to the factory in a town called Can-
nington. We were to work twelve hours a day.
The factory ran twenty-four hours a day with two
shifts, one at night and one during the day. I had
secured the position of assistant chemist through
correspondence with the company.
When I went to the laboratory the first day, the
chief chemist said, “Will you analyze this sample?”
Then I had to confess that I knew absolutely
nothing of chemistry but that I must keep this posi-
tion to help me through college. The chief did
not seem to think much of this new assistant but
agreed to give me a trial.
“Instead of twelve hours a day, you had better
put in fourteen at least,” he advised. “You may
learn to memorize the analyses, and if you do it an
hour a week you may pass for a sugar chemist.
Most of them don’t know sugar chemistry, and
those that know sugar chemistry don't know any-
thing else.”
So I learned all kinds of strange words: polar-
ization, evaporation, carbonization, carbonation:
strange, fantastic words like strange animals com-
ing out of the Himalayas. My chief was a fine
man. He was arrogant, vulgar, uncouth but very
kind. His heart was as big as an elephant. At
SOMETHING OF FRANK’S LIFE 247
heart he believed in union hours, but when he came
to speak he always voted for twelve hours a day.
So the factory rumbled on. It whistled at six in
the morning, it whistled at noon, at six o'clock in
the evening, and at midnight. Into the belly of this
monster crawled men and women like roaches
walking about in a hot kitchen. It was ghastly. I
had never heard so much filthy talk from anybody
as from some of those factory laborers. I have
known the vulgarity of the people of my country,
but it was picturesque vulgarity. When a person
called another names, he said: “O thou grand-
daughter of a he-ass.” But when a modern indus-
trial man swears, he neither reverses the sex of the
person he is swearing at nor does he give the per-
son such a delectable ancestor as a he-ass.
It really was terrible. In a community of four
hundred laborers the majority of whom were not
married, they had a red light district, where there
were three prostitutes. Once in a while one could
see three or four rows of men going in and out of
these houses. What a vast difference between the
vices of the East and West !
In the East a prostitute is a woman of art. She
knows how to sing and dance. After all she is a
dancer and singer. She attracts by more than sex.
But here in this vile factory town, human flesh and
human souls were sold like hogs or oxen.
248 OUTCAST
One very hot day after a night of work I was
wandering through the town, quite worn out from
lack of rest and too hot and tired to sleep. I took
a walk through the town and I went into a drug
store to buy something or other, when a loudly
dressed woman smiled and bowed to me and went
Out.
I met her another day about a week after our
first encounter. She said, “Come and take a walk
with me.” -
She and I walked into the park and sat down and
talked for two hours, I telling her a little of my
life in college and she telling me the tragedy of her
life and evidently thankful for the genuine interest
I showed in the hurts a fellow creature had suf-
fered. I learned that she had been a student in a
well-known woman's university, but the sordid
story of her fall, I need not recount.
“But you know it doesn’t pay to be unhappy very
long,” she ended. “In truth, I can’t be unhappy at
all. I talk like this and I feel as if I am not telling
the whole truth. Well, I think I had better be
going. It is now half past five.” -
She got up, shook my hand and walked away. F
knew it would be soon six o'clock and that the
human beast must rage in the pig-sty of sex after
the day's work. I went back to the factory to
work.
SOMETHING OF FRANK'S LIFE 249
In the factory I had a set-to. My chief called
me and told me I had been seen walking with a
dirty woman in the streets.
“What of it?” I said.
“Well, nobody recognizes this girl when they
see her,” he answered. “Suppose it's true that
quite a number of them recognize her in her house,
that is where she is to be recognized, but the man
who recognizes her in the streets of this town is a
dirty dog. And if you go about with her again,
we will fire you and you will have to leave town.”
“But a great many of the men know her,” I
insisted. -
“Yes,” he agreed, “but they never speak to her
outside of the district. It would be a hell of a
community if she were to associate with everyone
out of her place. Pretty soon there would be no
distinction between them and respectable women.
Look out, pretty soon you will lose your job.
Maybe some one will smash your head, too.”
The colossal impudence and vulgarity of it be-
came more and more evident to me. Man after
man came to me and said that if I were again seen
speaking to that woman on the street, I would be
run out of town. I must not speak to her out of the
place “where she belongs.”
This made me hot. I said, “I don't know where
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she belongs. It takes fellows like you to know
that.”
Suddenly the wheels stopped—it was about mid-
night. The factory stopped rumbling and the
monster just lay lazily panting. All the lights went
out and everywhere little lamps were lit to investi-
gate what was the matter with the engine.
“Why has she stopped P” they asked each other.
It turned out that a lizard had crawled up into
the dynamo room. Not being versed in engineer-
ing I could not understand what they told me. In
that darkness with little lamps between us, I recited
to the chief chemist: “We are such stuff as dreams
are made of and our little life is rounded with a
sleep.”
“What the hell makes you talk poetry?” was my
chief's rejoinder to this.
I answered him, “Sorrow is the source of song
and singing relieves sadness.”
“Poetry don’t buy you bread, you nut,” he said.
I answered him, “No, but it sustains your spirit.”
“It does, does it?” said the man of action.
“Well, as you are so incompetent in chemistry and
so damn competent in poetry, why don't you learn
chemistry to buy you bread? Poetry keeps you
ragged and poor. You look like a starved rat,
Do you ever think of that?”
“But what is the good of it all?” I asked him.
SOMETHING OF FRANK’S LIFE 251
“Say, if you are going to talk like that,” he
answered, “you had better hire a hall and then you
can talk all you want. When I went to college I
wanted to study chemistry, but I found that I had
to study poetry even if I wanted a degree in chem-
istry. They make you go through Shakespeare,
Dickens, and all those guys, and what a mess they
make of it.”
“But don't you see,” I said, “if they give you
Shakespeare as a task you never love him, and if
ou have to pass examinations on a thing it becomes
so dull you acquire a loathing for it that hurts
beyond the grave.” ***
The whistles blew, the electric lights were turned
on and the monster groaned, panted for a few
moments and then the whirl and the tumult of
wheel and engine began.
The next day—I don’t know why—I gave up my
position at Cannington, and took the first train to
San Francisco.
CHAPTER V
WHAT IS THE ANSWERP
HEN I reached San Francisco I found that
the college had opened already. I paid my
fees there and found a good job under a Negro
woman, waiting on tables, washing dishes, keeping
the house clean. My zest for anarchism was com-
ing to an end. I began to see that there was noth-
ing to do but to find a new philosophy, something
that had little concern with the material future of
mankind. It was during this period that I began
to rediscover India. -
We had reached the fall of the year nineteen
hundred and twelve. Things, both political and
otherwise, were fermenting in India. Batches of
Indian students began to come to America for wis-
dom and knowledge and the more I saw these men
coming, the more I grew convinced that they were
coming through a desert to slake their thirst with
the waters of a mirage.
By now I had drunk the dregs of the Western
civilization. I found it had its vulgarity, its bitter
252
WHAT IS THE ANSWERP 253
indifference, its colossal frauds. It has made just
as many mistakes as India has in her time. And
yet there was something constructive in both of
these civilizations.
All these Indian students I met were national-
ists. They wanted to free India. As if a politi-
cally free India meant an India traditionally and
uniquely herself Bitter quarrels ensued between
myself and many of these Indians. These people
thought that if India had factories and a govern-
ment as well as an army and navy of her own, she
would be one of the civilized countries of the earth.
Take the typical Indian revolutionist. Many
people remember him in San Francisco. He
wanted to cut the throat of every English official
just as he wanted to cut the throat of every Indian
traitor. He meditated such a gigantic slaughter
that he seemed to me like an epic poet of death.
He contemplated vast holocausts as magnificent
offerings to the god of Patriotism. He devised
ingenious plans to blow up garrisons of English
soldiers as a disinfectant and a preventive of politi-
cal hells, and once in a while he would grow lyrical
about the joy of belonging to a free people. He
imagined very suave massacres, and delicate assas-
sinations.
One day I told him, “Look here, why should we
supersede British massacres by our own, except
254 OUTCAST
that our own may be a little more radical? Theirs
are only practical and utilitarian.”
He said, “Their massacres are continuous.
Ours would be only momentary and purely un-
avoidable. There is economy in killing. If by
killing a few hundred English you could create a
free India, then it must be done. I am looking at
it from the standpoint of economy.”
“That is what wearies me so much,” I answered.
“Your economy is so scientific, your massacres are
so hygienic, that I have no more interest in them
than I have in conic sections. All your assassina-
tions are mathematical and well founded in fact
and if they really came off they would be more
cruel than the massacre of St. Bartholomew or the
Russian pogroms. These at least had a religion
and a ritual to make them bearable.”
To this he said, “You talk like a slave. Not
only have the British conquered us, but they charge
that rebellion is unholy, and a destructive profan-
ity. If you could see their soulless railroads
piercing through the sacred places throughout
India, tunnelling the Himalayas like a monster
driving its tentacles into the vitals of your body and
sucking out your life blood l If you only realized
and imagined these things vividly you would not be
sitting here talking like a fool.”
“It is true that this industrialization of Asia is
WHAT IS THE ANSWERF 255
terrible,” I admitted. “It is sucking out the life
blood of Asia, but your quarrel is not with the
British nation, but with Western capitalism.”
He shook his head and said, “No, if we had our
own people exploiting the natural resources of our
country, and if we had our own army and navy, we
would be spending our money in our own country.
Our money wouldn't be spent in England and
Europe as it is spent by giving salaries to European
officials. Think of it! If our dividends were paid
to Indians in India, how much better off our country
would be.” *
So he wanted to overcome imperialism by a
nationalism just as crude and as greedy. I told
him so, and added, “I do not like to interpret you
this way.”
“I don't care how you interpret me,” he an-
swered. “Your interpretations are tainted with'
pro-Western bias. You are a slave.”
“But why,” I asked him, “don’t we think in
terms of two classes, the possessing class and the
dispossessed classes, throughout the world? These
two marching against each other are to my mind
the forces of the conflict. I cannot make out much
difference between imperialism and nationalism.”
To this his rejoinder was that I talked like a
soulless Socialist.
“I am not a Socialist,” I said. “I hate Social-
256 OUTCAST
ism. Socialists only want to create a new authority
in the place of an old one. What I want is to
create a sense of freedom in people's souls. Then
all will be well.”
“How dare you talk about souls when the bodies
are starving to death? How dare you insult a man
dying for lack of food with your talk of philoso-
phy?” -
“Yes,” I agreed, “you are right, but one must
talk of souls after the body is fed. It is the most
important thing according to our ancestors.”
He was becoming more and more provoked with
me and now sneered, “What do you know about
your ancestors?”
I tried then another way and asked, “Tell me,
how can I serve my country?”
He answered, “By holding your tongue.”
However, I saw all kinds and shades of opinions
regarding nationalism in India. The most pathetic
one that I came across was the following from
another Hindu. I shall call him Nanda.
I said to Nanda, who was a recent arrival from
India at that time: “Look here, I have been living
in the West nearly three years now, and I am quite
convinced that I have nothing to learn from the
West. What we have to do is to go back to the
belief of our ancestors that there is nothing wrong
with this world. Whatever is wrong with the
WHAT IS THE ANSWERP 257
world is wrong with us first. So as we purify our
own hearts and become holy men ourselves, the
problem of the world will be solved. We must
become like the gods. Then we shall want nothing
because we have overcome our sense of want within
ourselves. If we control our appetites by our soul,
we will have very little to fight for and against. By
changing ourselves we automatically change the
world.
“You remember when Buddha walked by the
harlot's house, the house became purified because a
spiritual human being walked by it. So I think,
Nanda, that the road open to us is not the way of
the college, but the way of the spirit. And I do
think in this matter our country can teach the
West.”
Nanda replied, “I agree with you that we have a
spiritual wealth which is more important than our
material wealth. The material wealth that we
have underground in India combined with the
cheap labor that lives above the ground is the thing
that attracts Western exploitation. Western cap-
italism finds in those two factors enough induce-
ment to come to India and to tear up the whole
system of personal relationship founded on do-
mestic industry, substituting in its place this terrible
Western ‘civilization.” Peasants are driven from
their fields where they worked eight hours a day
N
258 OUTCAST
to other people's factories where they work twelve
hours a day. When a peasant breaks the ground
he sings, when he works in a factory he spits and
swears.”
And I added, “In order to overcome this great
industrialization of the East by the West, we must
overcome ourselves first. If we want to fight this
gregarious gluttony which the West brings to us,
we must overcome our own gluttony. If we free
ourselves from ourselves first, we will be able to
save Asia from the West, I think, almost auto-
matically.”
“Well,” said Nanda, “that is true. India has
material resources and untold riches, and think of
her subjective background of spiritual wealth. If
the West could only tap this wealth ! But how to
give it, that is the problem. If we come to the
West and say, ‘We have spiritual wealth—take it
from us,’ the West will say, ‘How can you be
spiritual when you are a conquered race? Races
that are truly spiritual have their own economic
system and are masters of everything.” How are
we going to meet this question of the West?”
I said, “I don't know. Do you?”
Nanda said, “The West will never accept the
spirituality of the East until by force we free our
country from any Western domination. In order
to give the spirituality of India to the modern bar-
WHAT IS THE ANSWER: 259
barism of Europe we must beat them at their own
game. We must go through the necessary step of
nationalism and nationality. Until we have a vic-
torious India free from all foreign control and
domination no proud Western nation will ever care
to listen to our spiritual talk.”
That afternoon with the thought of Nanda in
my mind I went over to visit Jerry. What Nanda
said troubled me. Must the East also be hooligan-
ized in order to give the West its spiritual truth?
Was it necessary?
At this time Leo and Jerry and Frank were
living together and from San Francisco Frank was
editing his Socialist weekly. He had shaved off his
beard, and now that I did not need his money, with
some saving, he had managed to buy for himself
and the other two, new suits of clothes. When I
came in they were all sitting together and talking.
Frank asked me, “Dhan, how long have you
owned that grey suit?”
I said, “Two years.”
“Well, when next week's salary comes I will go
and buy you a new suit,” Frank said; but Leo
objected, urging immediate action.
“They will let you have it on credit;” he said,
“and you can pay them next week. Dhan looks
like the devil in that suit, it looks like the national
26o OUTCAST
flag of India. I can recognize it from any dis-
tance.”
So we went to the tailor's and they gave me a
ready-made suit. These were the first new clothes
that I had worn in nearly three years. I was so
proud of them that I felt hurt because people didn't
look at me. They always used to look at me when
I came in with the other suit.
We adjourned to a pinochle joint, and discussed
philosophy. I told Jerry what had passed between
me and Nanda.
Frank said, “You know, Nanda must be a bril-
liant fellow !” - -
“I don’t like it,” said Leo. “These brilliant
Indians, in order to overcome the intellectualism of
the West, are creating a rival intellectualism of
their own. I can quite imagine Gladstone or rather
Lord Salisbury saying solemnly, ‘We are forced to
conquer the world in order to give it the benefit of
the spirituality of our nation. England must take
over miles of “undesirable territory” in order to
give other nations her spiritual institutions, her
moral wealth, and her Shakespeare. These In-
dians ought to know better than to tell us that they
have to conquer us first in order to give us their
spiritual wealth.’”
Suddenly Leo turned his gaze on me and asked,
“Do you notice how the Western ruler is conquer-
WHAT IS THE ANSWERP 261
ing India mentally? You are thinking in his
terms l’’
“That is true,” said Frank, “but I think there is
an aim to this whole thing. You know the Jewish
history. The Jews are an oriental people. If I
remember their book clearly, the greatest events
came to them when they were either in exile or in
captivity. Their important prophets arose when
they were persecuted, and their greatest prophet
came when they were groaning under the Roman
rule. *
“There is a curious thing. When Jesus was
asked whether the Jews should pay taxes to Caesar,
he said, ‘Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.’ By
this he meant to say to the Jews that it was easy
to placate their Roman lords by sacrificing a few
ounces of matter, gold or silver, which had no im-
portance. But it was their relation to God which
was of real value."
“Now I think,” Frank continued, “that the
Indian should look at it in that way. He must not
try to overcome Western materialism with a rival
materialism of his own. The Indian who is an
oriental must give an answer like Christ's—'I am
so busy with my spiritual business that I have no
time to pay attention to you who are demanding
something material.” And it is not a humiliation
to belong to a conquered race. The people that
262 OUTCAST
are most humiliated in this Indian-British transac-
tion are the British. They are damning their souls
by exploiting a race in the name of British liberty.
They are selling liberty as a prostitute sells her
body.
“The Indian, on the contrary, is selling very
little, so if I were to choose between the conquered
or the conqueror I would prefer to be the con-
quered. At least your soul is saved. Give your
spirituality to the British as Christ gave his to the
Romans. And it is because you are conquered that
you are spiritually sound. If you were not con-
quered you would not be spiritual.”
I looked at Jerry because I knew that he did not
have Frank's systematic way of thinking, but he
had a mind which like the lightning cleaved the
sky.
Jerry said, after a long pause, “It is all so un-
necessary. You may have a free country, but it
does not follow that you have a free soul. To give
a man a vote in a so-called free country is like giv-
ing a lantern to a blind man. What use is it? We
are in this world to destroy our blindness and then
see the light. And these fools come and want to
make a ghastly mockery of blindness by giving it
a vote. Because every blind voter has a vote which
is his lantern, it does not necessarily follow that he
will find the road to freedom. By stringing blind
WHAT IS THE ANSWERP 263
men to blind men, you do not create vision. The
sophistry of these Indians is very brilliant, and like
all sophistry has its uses, but it always misleads the
young, and the young love to be deceived.”
And Leo asked, “And the old, Jerry?”
“The old live by deceiving the young. The
men work; the women work and spend. Every
folly thus is balanced with irony, and every irony
in turn begets its folly. This is the description of
that brilliant chaos we call the universe.”
“But, Jerry,” I said, “what is the answer to all
this P”
“There is an answer somewhere, but he who has
found it, as some of your old Indian sages have
done, knows that the little chalice of the human
word cannot hold it.”
CHAPTER VI
IN CALIFORNIA FIELDS
IT was about this time that I ran into a bludg-
eoning of Socialists by the police force. I do
not seem to remember now what the cause of it
was, unless that the Socialists had become too
prominent in the main cities of California. Of
course we did not belong to the Socialist party, in
fact, even to this day, I do not know why anybody
belonged. --
One of the chief leaders of the Socialists in town
was a blind man named Jones. He was a very
keen thinker, but being blind, he did not meet very
many people, and did not go out at all. He had a
lovely wife whom he bored by always talking about
“the system.” He seemed to think that if a thing
could be traced to the capitalist system, it could be
cured, so no matter what came up—nationalism,
militarism, anarchism—he would always search
and examine the subject till he found its relation
to capitalism, and then with a sweet smile on his
264
IN CALIFORNIA FIELDS 265
lips, he would conclude, “it is up to you to abolish
the system.”
Here was this brilliant fellow looking forward
to a catastrophe which he thought must come,
though he did not like direct action. In fact all
he liked was prominence and power. He was one
of the first men who gave me an inkling that
Socialists are no different from capitalists. Every-
one wants to express his sense of power. Every-
one wants to preach his own truth. Everyone
wants to assert his own authority. This is the aim
of each human being, no matter what group he
belongs to. So I heard the voice of egotism when
blind Jones talked to me. Though his eyes were
shut he was just as blind as those who could see.
Jones had arranged a protest meeting through
his henchmen. In this protest meeting two things
were to be done. One was to protest against the
closing of the street corners to Socialist speakers,
and the other was to initiate Mr. Jones into some
office. I have never found out what the nature of
that office was.
By seven o’clock the hall was full of men and
women and boys and girls. The motion was put
before the house that Mr. Jones should take the
chair, which he did. With a great speech, the blind
man announced that the proceedings would
commence. There was a lot of talk by many
266 OUTCAST
speakers, some of whom had a good many nice
things to say about the chairman.
Then Jerry got up and addressed the meeting,
saying: “Ladies and gentlemen, Jones has been put
into this office. By whom? We have always had
a great deal of love for Nietzsche's Uebermensch.
We do not mind the rule of nature's superman,
but it is a damn shame that we are going to be
ruled by Jones's undermen. Why should his people
engineer this meeting and put him in the chair?”
At this there were shouts of “Shut up.” “You
are an Anarchist.” “You don’t belong here.”
So Jerry sat down.
Then another man got up and made a speech and
said that the Socialists and Anarchists are the same
people; that if they would spend much less time
quarreling with each other and would devote more
time to fighting their common enemy, the capitalist
system, the world would be better in ten days.
Jerry shouted: “I wouldn’t make the world
better for a single Socialist; I prefer to make it
worse.” -
“Take him out,” someone shouted. -
“Will someone put the resolution before the
meeting?”
So the resolution was put; the assembly resolved
that the authorities in control of the city govern-
ment were treating the Socialists like an outlaw
IN CALIFORNIA FIELDS 267
community. “To all of which we do solemnly pro-
test,” and so forth and so on.
Hardly had the resolution been passed when a
terrible shriek arose from the rear end of the
house, and the crowd moved like cattle in a flaming
cowshed. Policemen's clubs were rising and falling
and men and women were hurrying about, diving
under chairs and tables. Above us sat Jones on the
dais, a blind man who could only hear, but see
nothing.
Next to me there was a woman, and next to her
was Frank. Suddenly, from nowhere, we saw a
club rise in the air and come down over the
woman's head. I put out my hand and Frank
dove right into the woman and pushed her out of
the way, and the club came down on Frank's head.
The next thing I knew was a shooting pain on my
shoulder and then another and still another that
gave me a sense of pleasing blackness all around.
Even then I saw more clubs falling. I remember'
vividly a club descending on Jones's head, but
quickly Jones was pushed aside before the club
reached him. Now a fierce darkness possessed me
and I was lowered into an abyss of perfect calm.
When I woke up I found I was in an unfamiliar
room, but I heard Frank's old familiar voice
saying, “Are you awake, Dhan?”
I said, “Yes, what was it?”
268 OUTCAST
“Oh, you are remembering? You will re-
member all pretty soon.”
I asked, “Was anyone killed?” 3.
“No, those fellows never kill,” he answered,
“they just hurt.”
“How are you, Frank?”
“My head is broken again, but it has saved a
pregnant woman from being beaten up,” he
answered.
I said, “Thank God for your head, Frank.
The next day when we saw Jerry he had a
broken club in his hand. “I broke this club on a
policeman’s head,” he told us. “He had hit me on
a vulnerable spot. But I finished his arrogance.
He fell supinely with one stroke of the club.”
“How is Leo P” Frank asked.
“Leo is in the hospital,” Jerry answered. “They
have broken his arm, but he will be all right to-
morrow. This being clubbed is getting to be
monotonous. I am going to chuck the whole show
and go in for something more varied.”
“What do you want?” said Frank. “Do you
want to go and live in the Palace Hotel for a
change?”
I asked Jerry what started the fight.
He said, “Like fools the Socialists did not lock
the doors in the back, and there was no way out
in the front. So we were caught between two
IN CALIFORNIA FIELDS 269
streams of police coming from two doors, and
there was nothing to do but hurl chairs and save
one's neck. And the people are so helpless when
they are caught in flank attacks. But it does not
matter. They all took their beatings soundly, and
that in itself is a winnowing of Socialists. Well,
let us put out the State, let us put out the Church,
let us put out Society, for where there is nothing
there is God.”
I murmured the same prayer and fell asleep.
The rest of this semester nothing interrupted the
dull monotony of life and the even pursuit of living,
so as soon as vacation came around I took up out-
of-door work. I went out to the country to work
with the Hindu laborers. I found them very hard
working people, living almost wholly on vegetables,
and having in general such a low standard of liv-
ing that the native Americans were agitating
against Hindu immigration on the ground that my
countrymen were pulling down the wages and
getting all the jobs.
First I worked in the asparagus fields. It was
a ghastly performance. We got up at half past
three, and before the first faint daylight was visible
we were ready for work. We were paid by the
piece, and if we filled up a whole box of asparagus
we received ten cents. They gave us miles and
miles of asparagus rows. As soon as I had knelt
270 OUTCAST
down with my knife and cut out one head and put
it in the box, there would be another one sprouting
before me. Then I would have to stoop again, and
it was this continuous picking and stooping that
made it a terrible form of exercise. It is walk and
bend, bend and walk, from half past four or there-
abouts, until seven in the evening.
What used to disgust me so with these men was
their love of work. They worked longer hours
than any other laborer would dream of working,
and it was no wonder the American union laborer
wanted to exclude them. They were underselling
the Americans in their own fields.
Into these asparagus fields once in a while would
come the boss—an American foreman—and he
would say, “Hurry up ! Hurry up !” goading the
human cattle to more energy and more work.
Sometimes the men would be so weary that they
would go and fetch liquor with which to drink
themselves into forgetfulness. Soon I came to see
that my countrymen, who had few vices at home,
with six months of this kind of work had been
reduced to such a condition that they were drink-
ing up their wages in order to forget they were
alive. All the old Indian bringing-up was being
swept away by a few months of inhumanly cruel
work.
There was a Hindu woman in this place. She
IN CALIFORNIA FIELDS 27I
was in love with another man than her hus-
band, and the two men wanted to kill each other.
This was the first time I saw the morality of the
Hindu woman give way under the pressure of
work, but the soullessness of the job told even upon
her.
One day while her husband was working, word
came that she had run away with her lover. The
husband left us the next day and in a week he
brought back his recalcitrant wife. He had given
her a terrible beating and now wanted to break
her lover's neck. In India this could never have
happened, for Indians dare not raise a hand against
their wives. But now that work had reduced both
the men and the woman to the condition of beasts,
they had lost their Indian delicacy. Had they ac-
quired in its place American delicacy that would
have been just as good. Alas, the truth was that
the men and the woman were thoroughly soulless.
She accused her husband in an American court, and
succeeded in substantiating her charges of cruelty.
He was sentenced to prison. All his relations with
life hitherto had been objective. Now he was shut
out from the objective world and since he had no
subjective background to lean upon, he suffered
torments.
Once I went to visit him in prison. And he said,
“I see no green grass. There is no sun. There is
272 OUTCAST
nothing. O God, if I could only kill myself. I can-
not endure it any longer l’’
As if God had heard him, within a year he
- died of consumption. When this news came to the
wife, she left her lover. And it is said that she
took ship for India, but never reached home. She
committed suicide at a Chinese port.
From the asparagus fields a little later I went
to work in the celery fields. We were all working
together, and as most of the people knew no
English I interpreted for them whenever the occa-
sion arose. -
One day as we were all busily working, some
people in blue caps with red bands around them
approached us, but we went on working and paid
no attention. When you work on the soil too long
you pay no attention to many things that pass.
So we all went on with our work without regard
to the visitors. But they evidently were not dis-
turbed by our lack of interest in them, for one of
them called out in English: “Brother, have you
thought of your sins P”
The men asked me, “What does the fool want?”
I translated to them: “He wants to know about
your sins.”
“Our sins?” they replied. “It is none of his
business. Our sins belong to our priest and our-
selves. Who is he?”
IN CALIFORNIA FIELDS 273
I asked the man who they were. He replied
that they belonged to the Salvation Army.
I translated this into our language saying:
“They represent the Militarism of Nirvana.”
The workers rose as one man, dropped their
tools automatically as if they had seen a ghost in
the dark.
Then the Salvation Army man said, “We bring
you peace.”
So I told the men, “He brings you peace.”
One of the men said, “How can he bring us
peace when he militarizes Nirvana 2 What does
he wish with our sins?”
So I asked him in English, “What do you wish
to do with our sins?” t
“I want to wipe your sins away with the blood'
of Jesus,” he answered.
So I interpreted to them, “He wants to convert
us to Bibi Miriam and her Son.”
“Oho, so he is the ambassador of the Son of
Bibi Miriam,” said one of the men. “Ask the
brother-in-law what he has done with his own
sins.”
(‘Brother-in-law is a term of insult in India.)
I asked him, and then translated his answer:
“The Bibi Miriam's Son has wiped away all his
sins.”
And another of the workmen answered, “If his
274 OUTCAST
sins are wiped away, why doesn't he go singing
songs of joy? Why does he look for other
people's sins like a rat looking for holes?”
I translated as best I could for the benefit of the
Salvation Army man.
He said, “Brother, I wish to bring you the
light.”
I translated this to the workers: “He is a pur-
veyor of the Sun.”
“Tell him we do not need Bibi Miriam's Son.
We have our own Light,” said one.
Then I said, “But he wants money.”
At this the crowd laughed and an old man said,
“Oh, truly he did not come for sins, he wanted our
money.”
Then one of the younger men said, “Oh, get rid
of him. Give him whatever he wants.”
So we raised a small collection and gave it to
the Salvation Army man and his companion. Then
they said a prayer for us before they left. One of
the Indians said, “Why do they shut their eyes
when they talk to God?”
I said, “Canst thou tell me why we open our
eyes when we talk to God?”
And the man laughed and said, “Indeed, that is
a good jest.” -
So we all set to work again.
The work we did was very difficult in that it
IN CALIFORNIA FIELDS 275
required much bending over and walking fast on
tiptoe through long rows of celery fields, planting,
or rather transplanting, plant after plant.
We had an extraordinary boss. He was an
Italian constantly swearing and spitting. He
seemed to think that if he shouted hard enough at
everyone he had done his duty and so we evolved
a very clever trick. Whenever he shouted we
worked hard and as he stopped shouting we re-
laxed our speed. As it is humanly impossible to
shout all day long, even for an Italian, our boss
would leave us after shouting continuously half an
hour or so. Then we would slacken our speed
and relax. “There he is coming back,” someone
would shout, and by the time he could see us we
were working again at a terrific rate. We nearly
always heard him before we saw him for he was
noisily drunk half the day and the other half he
fretted because he was not drunk.
Then the time came to pick fruits from the trees.
This was the most enjoyable form of work. With
our baskets we disappeared above the boughs and
plucked all kinds of fruits. From our tree tops
we would see the boss coming 'way off in the dis-
tance and when he reached us he found us working
very hard.
Once he stood under my tree when my basket
was half full and I was standing on one of the
276 º OUTCAST
limbs. He began to swear and curse from below
and I felt so nervous and so driven to work in a
hurry that I tried to do too many things at once.
To my dismay the basket fell on the boss's head.
A deluge of apples choked the oaths that were
coming out of his mouth and to crown all I fol-
lowed the apples.
I lay flat on the ground waiting for him to strike
me but he was knocked unconscious. After a few
moments when I saw him lying prone without the
slightest movement to indicate that he was going
to get up, I raised myself on my elbow and
watched. He was lying in a dead faint. I shouted -
for help. The other workers stopped work and
we managed to carry him to his shack and all of
us spent half an hour reviving him. It was the
most joyful diversion I have ever had while picking
fruits.
Later on I worked with the Japanese. Once
when I saw this same boss coming at a distance, I
said to the Japanese, “Boss is coming, hurry up.”
One of them, whose name was Kanagawa, an-
swered back, “Hurry up-O, hurry up-O no good,
work too much, all work finished; our job gone.
Work slow, and job last, savvy?” *
So between Kanagawa and myself the work that
should have taken a week lasted a fortnight. We
IN CALIFORNIA FIELDS 277
always worked rapidly while the boss was about,
so no one reproached us.
From fruit picking we went to hop picking.
This time I was with Mohammedans from the
northwestern border of India. They all spoke
Hindustanee, prayed in Arabic and told filthy
stories in Pushtu. The last mentioned trait created
a strange solidarity among them. They enjoyed
their own vulgarity without divulging what it was
all about. *- -
Once they translated one or two stories to me,
and that is how I happened to know later on by
their snicker and laughter what kind of narrative
they were indulging in.
This is one of the specimens of their stories:.
A man went away from his home and two years
later his wife wrote him that a child had been born
to her, and the man felt very proud and showed this
letter to quite a number of his comrades. They
asked him how could she have a child while he was
away so long? But the man shook his head
wisely and said, “But I write her letters.”
These men were extraordinary. Their religion
forbids drinking, so any time one of them wanted
to drink, he would have to buy his liquor and go
into hiding in order to indulge his appetites. No
man knew what the other was doing during these
periods of retirement. I, not being of their
278 OUTCAST
religion, was invited on more than one occasion to
come and have a drink on the solemn promise that
I would not tell anyone.
The time came for the fasting of Muharram.
They fasted from moon to moon and ate a little
at certain appointed hours. Sometimes the fast
lasted forty-eight hours. Quite a number of them
ate in stealth, but a very large majority went with-
out food for two days and worked hard in the hop
fields eleven hours out of twenty-four.
With the hop pickers there was a priest whose
name was Hadji, since he had done a hadj, that is,
a pilgrimage to Mecca. He was the only one who
could read the Koran in Arabic. They would not
read the Koran from the level where they all sat.
That seemed sacrilegious to them. So they piled
up bales of hay about eight feet high and then
Hadji climbed up there and read from above to
the crowd, quite a lot of whom were listening, and
quite a lot of whom were playing checkers. This
reading was interrupted only the few hours during
which Hadji slept. At four o'clock in the morning
we could hear his shrill voice calling the faithful
to listen, and praying “O Allah, the Almighty
Allah, the Compassionate,” etc.
But the owner of the hay wanted to take the hay
away to the stable to feed the horses, so bale by
bale the Koran began to come down to human
IN CALIFORNIA FIELDS 279
level. One afternoon we brought two Americans
to hear the Hadji read. These Christian infidels
very soon shut the book without asking his per-
mission, told him to step off from the bales of hay,
and removed all of them from under the Koran.
Their excuse was that they had been sent by the
owner to fetch all the hay. The consternation
among the faithful was something indescribable;
but what could they do? The Mohammedans
wanted to fight these Christians, but the Christians
had revolvers and all kinds of weapons and they
had none. So they went about and gathered to-
gether more hay and built up a new altar on which
the Koran and Hadji were hoisted. Then the
reading was resumed.
Once I asked Hadji if they allowed any mercy
for the Christians or the Hindus. “Nay,” he said,
“they shall pass under the edge of the sword of
chastisement, and their souls shall be given over to
everlasting flame.”
And I answered, “That is exactly what the
Christians say about the Mohammedans and the
Hindus.”
He said, “The Christian God only threatens,
but Our God will do it, so you had better be a
Mohammedan in a short time.”
I said, “Those of us who go to heaven, what
happens to them?”
28o OUTCAST
“They enjoy paradise.” He did not give me
the description of a paradise of the senses which
I had expected of him. He rather described it as
a serene place of exaltation. -
I said, “Shall we see the face of God in
Paradise?”
He answered, “No, even there when we come to
the glory of the Lord, our faces will be down in
the dust, for He indeed is Allah, the Terrible.”
At last the period of fasting was over and the
feasting began. The Mohammedans would not
buy the American butcher's meat, for animals
whose flesh they eat must be killed by having their
throats cut and in no other way. So they bought
three big rams and after a great deal of prayer and
benediction, cut their throats. The poor creatures
writhed in mortal pain for a few moments as the
blood gushed out and wet the ground. -
I said to Hadji, “Why do you kill them this
way?” -
“It is the way of our Lord; it is in the Koran,”
he answered me. “We never question such things.
We would never eat anything that is not
slaughtered this way.”
That night they gorged themselves with superb
ardor. After the feasting was over they beat tin
cans and sang all night. They had one refrain for
all these songs, which being translated reads thus:
IN CALIFORNIA FIELDS 28I
“Your hair is like a panther's shadow. Your eye-
brows are like the curve of a hawk's wings.”
These Mohammedans had another way of
cheating their employers, unique and original.
Since it was forbidden in their religion to tell lies
they generally employed a Hindu or a Christian to
keep their books and at the end of their time there
would be found in those books the names of forty
men instead of the thirty that had actually
worked.
I once asked this bookkeeper why he wrote down
such things. He said, “Why shouldn’t I tell lies,
since if I don't somebody else will, and take my
salary away from me?”
But not long after this they found a very clever
Mohammedan who could keep books, so they dis-
charged the Hindu. The Mohammedan never
entered forty men in the place of thirty in the book.
His trick was something very different. Since he
could not tell lies and since he knew very little
English all he did was to talk to the overseer, and
the overseer would interpret his thought through
his broken words. Whenever the bookkeeper said
thirty, the overseer translated thirty into forty.
The bookkeeper would then make a profound bow
as if the overseer's word were law, and there was
no overseer on earth who could resist that bow.
This form of cheating we later on called
282 OUTCAST
“bonus” and we gave the name of “bonus monger”
to our bookkeeper. And it is true that the “bonus
monger” was a very religious man. He always
said his prayers five times a day. He never forgot
a single one and said them according to the tradi.
tions prescribed in the Hadith and Koran. Before
long all were following his example. The result
was, I noticed, that instead of working eleven hours
a day, they really worked only ten, one hour being
consumed in prayer at the employer's expense.
In the next place we went to after we had
finished in this hop field, the employer said, “I will
give you fifteen cents apiece more, if you cut out the
prayer.” They all agreed to pray three times a day
instead of five,
CHAPTER WHI
SPIRITUALISM
LEFT the hop fields about three weeks before
college opened and went back to town to see
my comrades. When I reached town Jerry told
me that there was a woman who wanted to rent a
room free to a Hindu. So I looked up this lady,
and she really gave me a room free in her house,
and what is more, she asked me to put on my
Hindu robe and sit in the parlor one hour a day in
exchange for which she offered to give me my
meals. I was astounded at this kindness. She
never put any hindrances to my coming and going
and I ate my meals there whenever I pleased. |
This gave me the opportunity of being with the
boys, who had by now discovered Bergson's
philosophy and were reading William James as
well. We spent no end of time discussing free will.
Every evening when I came back to my house
I always found the parlor door closed and heard
people whispering. Every morning at a certain
hour I was asked to put on my Hindu robes and
283
284 OUTCAST
come down and sit in the parlor for an hour. At
last my suspicions were aroused and I asked my
landlady, “Is there nothing else I can do for you?”
She said, “If someone asks you what you do
here, will you please tell them that you dem-
onstrate.”
“Demonstrate?” I asked, not having the
slightest idea what she meant.
She said, “Yes, materialize, you know.”
“Materialize what?” I asked, more and more
mystified.
“You know,” she said, “the thing that you do in
the old country.”
“What do we do in our country?”
She said, “You know—the spirit.”
“Spirit what?” I asked.
“Why, the spirit of the dead?”
. In amazement I exclaimed, “What the devil are
they doing in this house?”
She waved her hand and said, “Don’t you
understand? Didn't Jerry tell you?”
“He told me nothing,” I replied.
The woman said, “Why, we materialize the
spirits here and ask for messages.”
I said, “You don't mean to tell me you are a
spiritualist?” -
“Of course,” she said. “Aren't you one?”
“I don’t think I am,” I answered.
SPIRITUALISM 285
“Every Hindu is one,” she insisted. “Spiritual-
ism comes from India.”
“How do you know it comes from India? I
have never seen it there,” I declared, “except
among very questionable people.”
She said, “But in America they are very re-
spectable people, people like myself.”
“Are you sure you are respectable?” I asked
her.
“My Lord, what a question to ask!” she ex-
claimed, not in the least offended, and continued,
“Look here, you come to our séance tonight in this
house at eight o'clock and then the medium will be
here, too.”
So I went to the séance at eight o'clock in the
evening and met all the people, who were obviously
very ignorant and hopelessly credulous. The
medium lay on the table and we sat around her,
and pretty soon somebody tapped my head and
said, “Here is one who is doubting.”
“It is our Hindu brother,” someone announced.
I said, “I don’t doubt it, I believe it.”
Then the medium said, “I am your mother's
spirit. Do you remember the yellow-eyed cat at
our house?”
I said, “If you are my mother's spirit, why do
you talk about cats?”
The medium answered, “It is to remind you that
286 OUTCAST
I haven't forgotten anything about the house.
What is it you want to know?”
I said, “What is happening in India this minute
in our home?”
The medium said, “Everybody has gone to
sleep.”
I said, “No. It is just the opposite. They are
all waking up from their sleep. They are going to
work.”
Then something hit me on the head with a great
bang. The lights were turned on. The medium
said, “The spirit refuses to communicate.”
I apologized for my stupidity and skeptical
attitude, and said that I really believed. “But
somehow I don’t really see any usefulness in this
sort of thing,” I added. “This spirit who knows
all eternity talks about cats, and what good are
cats P”
Then they said, “But why don't you answer a
sensible question?”
“But your spirit was wrong,” I insisted.
The medium said, “But you must not contradict
a spirit.”
Well, they let me go and went on with their
séance. The next day as I was sitting in the draw-
ing room with my turban on, a woman came into
the room. She was about forty, well dressed, and
SPIRITUALISM 287
she was introduced to me as someone who wanted
tC See Ine.
She said, “Do you remember?”
I looked at her with a puzzled expression. She
said, “But you do remember.”
I puzzled some more in my mind as to what she
was reminding me of. “Remember what?” I asked.
“Why, the first time we were in Babylon to-
gether,” she answered. “You were a priest and I
was a temple dancer. You remember? You
ruined me and turned me loose in the streets, and
for that later on I murdered you. Now we are
both on this earth to expiate our past deeds. Now
do you remember?”
I answered her question by another, “Are you
positive about this Babylon affair?”
She said, “Positive? Why, when I saw you in
the semi-darkness the other night during the
séance, I went home and the entire fabric of our
past opened up in my dream. Now I come to you
to say I forgive you. Will you forgive me?”
“But this is crazy,” I told her.
She said, “Don’t be naughty. I remember you.
and you loved me, but I didn’t love you. But now
you are forgiven. In the next world you will be
rid of the taint of the past deed. My dream told
me, so I had to come and say it to you out loud.
288 OUTCAST
Goodbye, brother. I am not a good spiritualist
for I believe in rebirth.”
She kissed me on the forehead and sailed out of
the room. -
To crown all, that night about eleven o'clock
when I was in bed, I heard a rap on my door and
I got out of bed and opened it. I saw nothing,
heard nothing. I went to bed again. Hardly had
I lain down when there was another rap on the
door. I again opened it. There was no one.
Now I dressed myself quietly in the dark and lay
on my bed. Again another rap. I ran to the door
and opened it. Nothing.
As I stood in the doorway I heard someone com-
ing up the stairs. It was my landlady. “Quick,”
she said, “the spirit is calling you.”
“Calling me? What for?” I asked.
“I don’t know, it wants to speak to you. Come
down.” And she spoke with such eager whispers
that I could not resist. I hastened into the room
where they were having a séance.
I could see very little in that room where every-
thing was wrapped in a shadowy light which
deepened the darkness all the more. A voice from
the ceiling was saying, “And this I say to you, do
not doubt any more. We are going to show you
the mysteries that have been kept from you.
Therefore go forth on the morrow believing in
SPIRITUALISM 289
your sixth sense and make the unknown known to
mankind.” The voice ceased.
A murmur of adoration greeted this. Then the
lights were turned on and I saw a dozen people
sitting around a table in the center of the room.
I said, “Why did you call me?”
“The spirit wanted you to hear what it had to
say,” I was told.
“Did any of you go and rap on my door three
times?” I asked. “My door was rapped upon
three times successively, but I found no one there.”
At once on fire with pleasure, they all assured
me that not one of them had left the room for over
an hour. “It is the spirit,” they declared.
I then asked my landlady, “Who sent you up
to my room to call me?”
“It is the spirit,” she repeated. “Now you be-,
lieve, don't you?”
“Yes, I believe,” I agreed, “but what's the use
of believing such things. I never said I doubted
it.”
“But don't you believe we live after death?” she
asked me.
I told her that I did, “But if you live in the
manner of this spirit,” I added, “life beyond the
grave hardly seems worth while.” Then I quoted
to them from the Gita: “Never the spirit was
born, the spirit shall cease to be never; weapons
29O OUTCAST
cannot cut it; flames cannot burn it. As man
throws away worn-out garments so the spirit
throws away worn-out bodies. The spirit is
eternal, born of the same intelligent substance as
God. It is infinite.”
“That is what we believe in,” they declared.
“But if you believe in it,” I asked them, “why
do you talk of the spirit in terms of door mats,
wash basins, cats, and broken sticks?”
Before anyone could give me a satisfactory
answer, the lights went out and we were again in
darkness. A voice said, “I am the spirit of
Leonardo da Vinci. What do you wish to know?”
A young girl's voice broke the long silence that
followed with, “I am a painter. Will you please
tell me how I can be great?”
The voice of Leonardo answered, “You do not
have to be great.”
Another said—a man's voice, “Will you tell us
about alchemy?”
Leonardo said, “It is in my writings.”
Then someone said, “Have you seen Dante?”
Leonardo said, “I just left him in paradise.”
“Do you know where Shakespeare is?” asked a
WOIY la I1.
“It does not matter where he is,” answered
Leonardo, seemingly irritated.
SPIRITUALISM 29I
Then the young painter girl again asked, “Will
you kindly tell me what I ought to paint?” -
“Paint with your thoughts,” Leonardo told her.
“But I do,” the girl almost cried, “and my
canvas looks so horrible.”
Leonardo dismissed her. “She annoys me,” he
announced.
Someone said, “Will you please tell us if there is
a hell ?”
“No,” said Leonardo, gruffly.
“Then is there a paradise?” someone else asked,
to which Leonardo gave a positive “Yes.”
I asked, “How can you have a paradise without
hell?” And I got a terrible whack on my head
for my question. The light was turned on again.
Leonardo had disappeared because I had insulted
him.
They asked me if I believed in all this. “Of
course I do,” I said, “but what's the use of it?”
“There is a great use,” they said very solemnly,
as the meeting broke up. Yet to this day I have
never known what this use could be.
The next day a police officer said to me as I was
going out of the house, “Say, are you the fortune
teller? You had better look out, the place is going
to be raided. We think it is a gambling joint.”
I answered him, “It is worse than that. They
gamble with the unseen.”
292 OUTCAST
“But aren't you the high priest of that crowd P’’
he continued. “That's what everyone thinks, that
you are the Hindu Yogi. You can tell the past,
present, and the future. You talk to the spirits.
You tell people's fortunes. But I think it is a
gambling den. Take my tip, kid, don’t go back
tonight. The place is going to be raided.”
I then went straightway to Jerry and said to
him, “What in the world did you mean by putting
me in a place like that?”
“I thought I would get you a soft berth,” he
answered. “They are a crowd of spiritualists and
as the Hindus are supposed to be the ancestors of
all this weird stuff I sent you over there to help.
Your presence has brought them a lot of customers.
You have authenticated their claims by being
there.”
Then I told him what the constable had said.
“Go and get your things and get out of the
place then,” Jerry advised and added, “I don't
mind the unseen being made honorable and real by
your presence, but it would not be pleasant to see
you behind prison bars.”
So I posted back as fast as I could but the police
were there ahead of me. One officer was standing
in front of the house and two others were leading
my landlady down the steps. Seeing this I dis-
appeared and when I did return the following week
SPIRITUALISM 293
to get my belongings I met my landlady who
accused me of playing the stool pigeon.
I had no idea of her meaning and asked, “What
is a stool pigeon?”
“You know, you dirty hound,” she said, “but we
are honorable people and they didn't find any-
thing on us that was questionable. We gave you
a home and comfort. Then you went and betrayed
us. You orientals are all alike.” With that she
flung my bundle at me.
Thus I took my leave. But even to this day
I do not know what it was that rapped at my door
three times that night.
The experience served to show me that people
in the twentieth century are just as credulous as
they were in the time of Christ. If the Son of
God came to earth today, they would still be ask-
ing for miracles and charms. The majority of
mankind is spiritually incapable of understanding
the larger majesty of God. They want tricks,
magic and miracles. Only a few grasp the deep
inertia of the sublime, which the mind cannot
fathom and words cannot measure.
This year at school we organized a club for the
study of Socialism. Hardly had we arranged our
program when we were invited by the deans of
our respective departments to a consultation. We
were told that it was very intelligent of us to open
294 OUTCAST
such a club of mental activity, but we were
strongly advised to keep our minds open and not
to be too hasty in coming to conclusions.
Whether this advice was necessary or not, I do
not know, but apparently the youth of America like
the youth of India is not trained enough to be able
to handle radical thoughts without being led astray
by them. I do not know the way out of the
dilemma. You cannot learn to swim without get-
ting into the water, as they say. Nor can you be-
come familiar with radical ideas and learn to keep
your head straight without danger of complete loss
of mental balance.
It was a severe winter this year. There was un-
employment everywhere and it was pitiful to see
thirty thousand people wandering about the out-
skirts of the city looking for places to sleep during
the night. More than once I have seen people
prowling about the garbage cans like mangy dogs.
If they saw me, they would run away. Girls and
boys, older men and women stood in the rain and
sun while waiting for a scrap of food to be handed
to them.
It was New Year's night. It had been raining
steadily for hours and the streets were flooded.
Through the windows of San Francisco's best
restaurants we could see women covered with gems
SPIRITUALISM 295
and men dressed in evening clothes clinking their
glasses and wishing each other happy New Year.
Outside hungry girls were offering to sell their
bodies, but the supply seemed to be greater than
the demand. I saw a drunken woman step from
the sidewalk into the flooded street. As she reeled
and fell I ran and picked her up. Then as I helped
her, we walked across the street and in the door of
a restaurant she turned and gave me a silver dol-
lar, and mumbled a half understandable expres-
sion of thanks.
I walked away to where three men were stand-
ing under a doorway near an electric lamp. I said
to them, “Come on, boys, here is a dollar for you.”
At first they wanted to have a drink, but they
readily agreed to my suggestion to eat seventy-five
cents' worth of food and to spend only the balance
on drinks. The men were wood choppers out of
work, and this was their second meal in three days.
Their eyes looked like madmen's.
While I was later walking down Market Street
in the rain a girl came to me and said, “Say, kid,
can you give me a bed?”
“I haven't money to buy you a bed,” I told her,
“but you can have mine. It is across the Bay.”
“But I want a bed here,” she said. “If you
give me the money, I will buy one. Besides, it
would cost me ten cents to get there and back.”
296 OUTCAST
I tried to persuade her by pointing out the
chances for a job on the other side.
“What do you think I am?” she asked me.
“Keep your dirty job. Do I look like a working
girl? No, sir, you won't get me into a house again
to peel potatoes.”
I said to her, “What are you going to do? You
don’t look like the other sort.”
“I am not fool enough to be the other sort,”
she answered. “Come, buy me some milk toast
in the lunch counter and I’ll tell you what I am.”
“I have never heard such people—telling all
about yourselves,” I exclaimed.
At that she looked at me pityingly and said,
“Good God, what a fool you are l It's because you
are a stranger I can tell you. Do you think I could
tell it even to my own brother?”
As we sat down she went on, “I was one of the
girls that went to that house during those night
séances and I used to go into a spell and tell all
kinds of stories. There was a man there and he
used to come at night and make a few passes over
my face with his hands and then I felt happy and
talked my head off. I didn't know what I said.”
“So you were the medium,” I said. “What
happened to you? Wasn’t the place raided?”
“Yes,” she said, “but there wasn't anything
wrong and so no one was held. Afterwards they
SPIRITUALISM 297
gave up that kind of work and the man dis-
appeared. Now they run a fortune-telling joint.”
She was a forlorn object as she sat before me.
“You are soaked with rain,” I uttered more to my-
self than to her, wondering what I could do for
her. -
“Oh, that's all right. I am used to it,” she said.
“When the sun comes out I will go to a park.
There's a corner there where I'll hang my clothes
all up on a tree and they will dry out.”
“You just beg for money?” I asked.
“That's all I do. Honest to God, I swear that
is all I do, nothing else.”
“But you have a head on you. Where are your
people?” I continued.
“I have no people,” she answered. “My father
died in an accident three years ago. My mother
married a man with whom she deceived my father.
As soon as they were married, they put me out.
I saw an advertisement in the newspaper asking for
a young, good-looking girl. I went, and became a
cloak-room maid in the Palace Hotel. Then I was
a waitress, and it was as a waitress that I met the
man who makes the spirits talk. Then I had that
job until you came and squealed to the police and
busted up the show. And now I have nothing, so
I wander about and beg.”
“But you look more vicious than you talk,” I
298 * OUTCAST
said to her, at which with a “Oh, you make me sick,
go to the devil,” she suddenly rose from the table
and left the restaurant.
I paid for her half-eaten milk toast and went
out into the rain.
I had only fifteen cents left. I walked toward
the ferry wondering what was the meaning of
life. But before I had gone very far I saw the
young girl being helped into a gorgeous limousine
by a half-drunken man who followed her into it,
and I think I heard the man saying to his chauffeur:
“Hotel I’’
This was America—neither worse nor better
than India. All life was a wretched joke and every
joke was a sordid travesty. I could bear it no
longer. I turned my face toward the East and
thought of India. - -
EPILOGUE
HIS was the last of my I.W.W. friends. I
got my degree, gave a course of lectures on
comparative literature in a college and later began
to make lecture tours which brought me into con-
tact with many other kinds of Americans.
I found the United States divided into four
psychological groups; the East; the Middle West;
the South; and the Pacific Coast. The first sec-
tion, the East, is in direct touch with Europe and is
more like Europe than it is like the rest of America.
The second has very little contact with any great
external influence. So its culture is more pro-
vincial and more indigenous. The South is ex-
tremely difficult to make clear. It might seem open
to the influence of the Africans, yet that is not the
case. It has no great indigenous element. It is
full of the eighteenth century European con-
servatism. But if the climate can be trusted, the
Southern men and women will build a tropical
culture—sinister and beautiful.
As regards the Pacific Coast, it cannot resist the
culture of Asia, as the East cannot be impervious
299
3OO OUTCAST
to Europe. Oriental decorations along with
Oriental aloofness are becoming discernible
elements. In the homes of the Pacific Coast I have
found that the people are aloof. They build a
Chinese wall of pride around themselves. On the
Pacific Coast one also finds something Spanish, not
altogether European, but rather Africo-Saracenic
in character.
Suppose that the forces of race and culture that
I have mentioned go on permeating the whole con-
tinent. Then will it be too much to say that in five
hundred years America will have a culture unique,
magnificent and overpowering? America's tradi-
tion is her future. A Hindu, who bears the weight
of forty centuries of tradition, is drawn by no
country as by America. Europe cannot attract a
Hindu. It is not old enough to be benign, nor
young enough to be blessed. There is nothing out-
side of Greece that goes to the heart of a Hindu.
There is nothing in Europe that matches the sky
hunger of the Himalayas and the fierce fatality of
life in the jungles. India has spaces so acrid with
loneliness that the greater part of Europe, even
Russia, is sweet by comparison, yet Europe is not
sweet enough. So a Hindu, who wants to find a
complete antithesis to his race and culture, had
better avoid Europe and come straight to America.
The future of this country is more staggering
EPILOGUE 3OI
than the past of India. A supreme desolation is
America's, and this desolation is as alluring as that
of the Himalayas. I found in America's air the
sharp taste of freedom, not freedom from politi-
cians, not freedom from economic conditions, but
freedom from the dead. No dead generations
rock the cradle of the new-born here. I felt in
America, as in Asia, an anti-human outlook. In
Europe, on the other hand, life is homocentric and
man is the measure of all things. The nausea of
humanity that seizes one in Europe is not present
here. --- - --
In America, man is what he is in Asia; he is, as
he ought to be, an episode, in the life cycle of a
continent. He learns that the universe is not
homocentric, but cosmocentric. Man's life in
America seems like the flight of gnats in a wind-
swept field.
The American is right when he says that he has
no time for art and literature. He is a tool, con-
scious or unconscious, in the hands of a force that
is carrying America through a materialistic cycle.
Though an individualist, he is not an individual.
He has to will the race ideal in spite of his will for
his own happiness.
The American woman, too, is chained to the
purpose of the race. She has to make her home in
a continent fierce with homelessness. In every race
3O2 OUTCAST
it is man that progresses while woman represents
continuity. It is the task of the American woman
to weave an evergrowing thread of continuity into
the changing warp of her life. She cannot, as a
woman of an older civilization might do, conquer
by her inner sense of rest the restless spaces of
America. She has to create a higher restlessness
of soul, which by the repose of its energy will give
peace. She is already at her task. She is an
amateur. She is yet feeling for her part and she
makes many mistakes. She may change her
religion every six weeks. She may be a humble
student of a dozen different schools of art at once.
She may pay foreign critics to come and vilify her
country. She may allow all the minor poets of
Europe to patronize her in her Arab's tent—but
all these antics are forms through which the
spirit of the race is passing. It is more than the
spirit of the race, it is the world spirit.
America is a seed continent. All the world and
all the nations are planting their best and their
worst seed in this spring-smitten island. Asia has
planted her mysticism, Europe has sown her seeds
of diverse intellectual culture, and Africa has
offered her innocence.
America is victorious, India is conquered.
America is carefree. India is careworn. America
lynches Negroes. India illtreats her untouchables.
EPILOGUE 3O3
America is abyss-wombed. India has given birth
to her abyss. America believes in herself. India
is too old to believe in herself. India has caste.
America aims at equality. Thus run the re-
semblances and differences between the two
countries.
The differences are so extrem, : that the extremes
must meet. Both India and America are mad.
India has been mad with peace and America is mad
with restlessness. It is this madness that has
drawn me to them both. Europe is poor fare for
my hungry Hindu soul. I want the fecundity of
America. I cannot live twenty-four hours a day.
I want to live two days in one.
America was discovered in the name of India.
Columbus, whose first name was “the Christ
bearer,” set out for the land of Buddha—for India.
He found instead a new land where Christ and
Buddha shall meet. The voyage of Columbus
ended in a mistake. The next five hundred years
will prove that his error was an accuracy of the
gods.
THE END
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
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