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188
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
(JUNE, 1905.
I can recall of the results of anthropological ignorance is the bad Case of the Nicobar Missions in the Bay of Bengal. Of and on for two hundred years, missionaries of all sorts and nationalities attempted conversion and colonisation of these islands. They were well intentioned, enthusiastio, and in one sense truly heroic, and some of them were learned a well, but they were without practical knowledge and without proper equipment. Their lives were not only miserable, they were horribly miserable, and every mission perished. What is more, so far as I could ascertain after prolonged enquiry, their efforts, which were many and sustained, have had no appreciable effect on the people, indeed apparently none at all. And this has partly been due to an anthropological error. They worked with their own hands. It may seem a small thing, but with the population they dealt with, it meant that they could secure no influence, and it is a truth that, wherever you go, if you are to have influence, you must have anthropological knowledge. There is a mission in the Nicobars now, and when I last heard of it, it was flourishing, but the leader has been a contributor to the Journal of the Anthropological Institute, and has had it borne in on him that a knowledge of the people in their every aspect is essential to his success. Many a time has he used his knowledge to the practical benefit of the islanders, converts or other.
So far we have been discussing the case of those who dwell and work abroad. Let us now pay a little attention to that of a very different class, the arm-chair critics, academical, philosophical, political, pragmatic, doctrinaire - those gentlemen of England that live at home at ease. It is a commonplace amongst Anglo-Indians that the ignorance of the home-stayer of India and its affairs is not only stapendons : it is persistent and hopeless, because selfsatisfied. But the home criticism is of great importance, as the ultimate power for good and evil lies at the headquarters of the Empire. It must be so: and what is true of India is true also of any other outlying part of the world-wide dominion of the British race. But do the glib critics of England pause to dwell on the harm that severe criticism of their fellowcountrymen abroad often does? Do they stop to consider the pain it causes P Or to ponder on the very superficial knowledge, on which their strictures are based ? Or to think that there is no adverse criticism that is more annoying or disheartening than that which is wholly ignorant, or springs from that little knowledge which is a dangerous thing ? Indeed, the chief qualification for a savage onslaught on the striver at a distance is ignorance. He who knows and can appreciate, is slow to depreciate, as he understands the danger. I do not wish to illustrate my points too profusely out of my own experience, but, on the whole, it is best to take one's illustrations, so far as possible, at first hand, and I will give here an instance of advice tendered without adequate anthropological instruction. For some years I had to govern a very large body of convicts, among whom were a considerable number of women. Some pressure was brought to bear on me among others from England, to introduce separate sleeping accommodation among the women, on the intelligiblo grounds, that it is well to separate the unfortunate from the bad, and that in England women who had found their way into jail, but were on the whole of cleanly life, highly appreciated the privilege of sleeping apart from those whose lives, thoughts and speech were otherwise. But I avoided doing this, because the Indian woman in all her life, from birth to death, from childhood to old age, is never alone, especially at night, and if you want to thoroughly frighten the kind of woman that finds herself in an Indian prison, force her to sleep, or to try to sleep, in a solitary cell, where her wild superstitious imagination runs riot. It is an act of torture.
Now, those who fill posts that bring them constantly before the public eye soon become callous to the misinterpretation that dogs the judgment of the ill-informed critic. They are subjected to it day by day, and the experience early comes to them that it does no personal barm. But the case is quite different with men who lead solitary lives on the outskirts of the Empire, surrounded by difficulties Lot of the ordinary sort, and working under unusual
