Sketches of Social Life in India

Charles Thomas Buckland

Jan 2011 · Library of Alexandria

About this ebook

There are two different classes of people who know very little about India. First there is your old Indian, who fancies that he knows all about the presidency, say Bombay, in which he spent his time, but is as ignorant of the presidencies of Bengal and Madras as he is of China and Japan. Secondly, there is your real rural Englishman, who has had no relations or connections in India, and is, perhaps, still grieving over the untimely fate of some old friend who went out and suddenly died in India. There undoubtedly still exists in many English circles a considerable amount of ignorance and a deep-rooted prejudice against all things Indian. It is possible that this prejudice may be traced back to the ways and manners of the East Indian Nabobs of the last century, whose pompous display of wealth, suspected to have been acquired by dubious practices, was an offence and a scandal to the quiet English country gentleman, and, indeed, to all who did not contrive slyly to make a profit out of the NabobÕs money. The Nabob himself was usually shy and awkward, and almost always irritable and irascible, and remarkable for his peculiar social manners; so that it came to pass, that a general idea prevailed that the picture presented by the Nabob in England was but a reflection and reproduction of the social manners which he had acquired during his sojourn in the distant East. How far this feeling was correct it is not our present purpose to inquire. The race of Nabobs has come to an end. The pagoda-tree of fabulous memory no longer bears its golden fruit. An enormous change has come over the habits and manners of those Englishmen who now practically colonise India. For though colonisation is usually spoken of in a different sense, the British inhabitants of India are virtually a colony. The individual colonists may change, but as fast as one man goes another steps into his place; and thus it comes to pass that over the whole length and breadth of India there is now a large and continually growing colony of English families, who endeavour to maintain their old home feelings and to keep all those old surroundings which remind them of the land of their birth, to which they all hope in due course to return. They treasure in their hearts a warm and kindly remembrance of their old home, and they live in the fond belief that they may be well and kindly thought of by those whom they have left behind.

It is, however, certain that much ignorance, not unmixed with the old anti-Nabob prejudice, still prevails regarding the ways and habits of our countrymen in India. The most absurd inquiries are addressed to people who have been in India, which doubtless sometimes provoke answers more suited to the intellectual acquirements of the questioner than in actual accordance with the real facts of the case. If your fair and charming companion at a dinner-party persists in her conversation in filling all Indian houses with snakes and scorpions, she will be much more gratified to hear a few anecdotes which accord with her own assertions, than she would be to learn that it is possible to live for years in some parts of India without seeing either a snake or a scorpion. When recent editions of popular Indian hand-books solemnly inform the reader that rhinoceros hunting is an ordinary amusement in the suburbs of Calcutta, it is much easier to acquiesce in that information than to urge respectfully that alligators may sometimes be found in the ornamental waters of Battersea Park.