No More Learning

Here is Bishen
Singh--shall we ask him about the Congress? "

But Bishen Singh, who approached with a respectful salaam, had never
heard of it, and he listened with a puzzled face and obviously feigned
interest to Orde's account of its aims and objects, finally shaking his
vast white turban with great significance when he learned that it was
promoted by certain pleaders named by Orde, and by educated natives.
He began with labored respect to explain how he was a poor man with no
concern in such matters, which were all under the control of God, but
presently broke out of Urdu into familiar Punjabi, the mere sound of
which had a rustic smack of village smoke-reek and plough-tail, as
he denounced the wearers of white coats, the jugglers with words who
filched his field from him, the men whose backs were never bowed in
honest work; and poured ironical scorn on the Bengali. He and one of
his brothers had seen Calcutta, and being at work there had Bengali
carpenters given to them as assistants.

"Those carpenters! " said Bishen Singh. "Black apes were more efficient
workmates, and as for the Bengali babu--tchick! " The guttural click
needed no interpretation, but Orde translated the rest, while Pagett
gazed with interest at the wood-carver.

"He seems to have a most illiberal prejudice against the Bengali," said
the M. P.

"Yes, it's very sad that for ages outside Bengal there should be so
bitter a prejudice. Pride of race, which also means race-hatred, is the
plague and curse of India and it spreads far," Orde pointed with his
riding-whip to the large map of India on the veranda wall.

"See! I begin with the North," said he. "There's the Afghan, and, as
a highlander, he despises all the dwellers in Hindoostan--with the
exception of the Sikh, whom he hates as cordially as the Sikh hates him.
The Hindu loathes Sikh and Afghan, and the Rajput--that's a little lower
down across this yellow blot of desert--has a strong objection, to put
it mildly, to the Maratha who, by the way, poisonously hates the Afghan.
Let's go North a minute. The Sindhi hates everybody I've mentioned. Very
good, we'll take less warlike races. The cultivator of Northern India
domineers over the man in the next province, and the Behari of the
Northwest ridicules the Bengali. They are all at one on that point.
I'm giving you merely the roughest possible outlines of the facts, of
course. "

Bishen Singh, his clean cut nostrils still quivering, watched the large
sweep of the whip as it traveled from the frontier, through Sindh, the
Punjab and Rajputana, till it rested by the valley of the Jumna.

"Hate--eternal and inextinguishable hate," concluded Orde, flicking the
lash of the whip across the large map from East to West as he sat down.
"Remember Canning's advice to Lord Granville, 'Never write or speak of
Indian things without looking at a map. '"

Pagett opened his eyes, Orde resumed. "And the race-hatred is only a
part of it. What's really the matter with Bishen Singh is class-hatred,
which, unfortunately, is even more intense and more widely spread.
That's one of the little drawbacks of caste, which some of your recent
English writers find an impeccable system. "

The wood-carver was glad to be recalled to the business of his craft,
and his eyes shone as he received instructions for a carved wooden
doorway for Pagett, which he promised should be splendidly executed and
despatched to England in six months. It is an irrelevant detail, but in
spite of Orde's reminders, fourteen months elapsed before the work was
finished.