India occupies an unenviable prominence as a land where immoral tendencies have flourished and brought forth their fruit with tropical luxuriance. There is a panoramic variety in the India. phases of its social vice, the ill-concealed obscenity The moral condition of of much of its sacred literature, and the immoral aspects of some of its religious rites and festivals. The social demoralization which attends vice is revealed there to an unusual extent-the tell-tale stringency in the seclusion of woman, child marriage, low views of woman's place and function in society, a contemptuous estimate of her character and capacity, tainted family. life, unseemly marriage customs, obscenity in talk and song, prostitution, concubinage, lax views of adultery, and the contamination of so-called religious rites and services with uncleanness. The spirit of that now happily obscure phase of nature-worship which is known as phallicism is distinctly traceable in India.1 Its symbols and signs are still visible at many of the shrines of Hinduism. Its grosser and more intolerable features have been permitted to lapse in recent times, but that unhallowed association of fancied religious fervor with lustful abandon is still hardly masked in some of the religious festivals and customs of Hindu society. It could hardly be otherwise when even the sacred literature is not free from gross impurity, and many of the gods worshipped are examples in vice; 2 when continence is not inculcated; when widows, often young and helpless, are condemned by necessity either to a life of social misery or shame; when the zenana system involves the frequent separation of husbands and wives, the former compelled to be absent, and the latter hidden in unnatural seclusion;3 and when social customs and even religious observances encourage and minister to lewd license. The nautch dancing, so common, gives to immoral women social éclat, which is too often stimulated and enhanced by European patronage; 5 harlotry is notoriously common in the towns and cities, although village life is comparatively free from it, and village women are as a class morally well behaved." Hindu temples are in many instances disgraced by indecent symbols and sculptures; while the old Greek custom of having female attendants attached to 1 Sir Monier-Williams, "Brahmanism and Hinduism," Index, sub Linga and Yoni. 2 J. Murray Mitchell, "The Hindu Religion," pp. 32, 33. Wilkins, "Modern Hinduism," pp. 412, 413. ་ ་་ 'Purity Reform in India,” pp. 16, 25–28, Papers on Indian Social Reform, Madras, 1892. 5 Ibid., p. 16. Wilkins, p. 412. the temples is a well-known fact in many of the Hindu shrines of India. These dancing-girls call themselves deva-dasi ("slaves of the gods"), and in the sense of being at the service of every comer, of whatever caste, are also the slaves of men.1 Young girls are frequently dedicated in infancy to some popular Hindu god, and the simple meaning of this is that they are devoted to a life of shame-branded and married to the god, to be forever known as consecrated to depravity in the name of religion. In fact, immorality is more distinctively a feature of Hin duism than morality. It is not to be supposed that Indian society without exception is wholly given over to this state of things. There are multitudes of worthy natives who regard these features of Hinduism with contempt and loathing, but they are exceptions, and they have broken with Hinduism, or at least with its moral laxity. English army life in India, and to a deplorable extent the habits of foreign residents, present a sadly compromising feature of social vice. The repeal of the Contagious Disease Act, although a moral victory, has been too inoperative to remedy entirely official complicity in the supervision and regulation of vice, as the evidence before the Committee recently appointed by the Indian Government on this subject clearly shows.3 This fact was brought to light chiefly by the testimony of Mrs. Elizabeth W. Andrew and Dr. Kate Bushnell, two American ladies connected with the W. C. T. U., who in the service of the cause of purity in India gave themselves to the heroic investigation of the true status of this question. The English Government is not unmindful, however, of its moral responsibility and its evident duty to deal vigorously with this burning subject of immorality in India. Penal codes and official regulations seem to open the way for the suppression or restriction of many forms of vice, but the evil is so gigantic that it can elude and defy the law, while in deference to the fanatical religious temper of India a significant exception has been made by the Government. In the clause of the penal code against obscenity in literature and art is the following caveat: "This Section does not extend to any representation sculptured, engraved, painted, or otherwise represented on or in any temple, or on any car used for the conveyance of idols, or kept or used for any religious purpose." The various governments of India, British and native, united in expressing their judgment, with reference to the above exception, that "native public opinion is not yet sufficiently advanced to ་ ་་ Purity Reform in India," p. 26, Papers on Indian Social Reform, Madras, 1892. 2 Ibid., pp. 27, 28. 3 "Report of Committee to Inquire into Prostitution in India," London, 1893. permit the destruction of such indecencies." The result of this policy of non-interference on the part of the authorities with the religious customs of the people is that, however much of a saturnalia their festivals and celebrations may become, they are free from legal restraint if their indecencies are becomingly pious and their wickedness is under the shelter of religion. The British Government has already accomplished a beneficent rôle of reform in several respects where the interests of humanity required it, and the time will come-Christianity indeed is hastening it-when the unclean scandals of Hinduism must go also, and the various unsavory abominations of temple, festival, and pilgrimage will be consigned to oblivion. The status in Mohammedan lands, and in and the Pacific Islands. The Mohammedan lands of Afghanistan, Arabia, Persia, Turkey, and Northern Africa are not above other sections of Asia characterized by exceptional immorality among the sexes. Prostitution is not carried on as a profession, except in the larger cities, where it is as well known as elsewhere; South America, Africa, but easy divorce and lax arrangements as to marriage relations open the way for a whited-sepulchre species of promiscuity gratifying to the pious Moslem, since it is sanctioned by his religion and counted as socially respectable. As is usually the case, however, where the relation of the sexes is severely guarded by artificial restrictions in a low moral environment, the prevalence of unnatural vices shows that the stream of lust if barred in one direction makes for itself a channel in another. There are aspects of vice in Mohammedan lands, and indeed throughout the Eastern world, which can only be referred to in veiled phrases as veritable mysteries of iniquity. The South American Continent is, with Central America, Mexico, and the West Indies, notorious for profligacy. The tone of society is dissolute. The influence and example of the Romish clergy are in favor of laxity. Society both high and low is exceptionally unchaste and vitiated by an atmosphere of suspicion, distrust, and prurient sensitiveness. Respectable parents guard their daughters with the utmost watchfulness until married, while their sons, with few exceptions, give way to vicious indulgence. The masses concern themselves little with legal restraints or formalities.1 If we turn now to the barbarous and savage races of the African Continent and the Pacific Islands, we find a state of morals which is truly ap 1 Statistics of illegitimacy in these countries are startling in their significance. In Central America they range from fifty to seventy per cent. In Jamaica they have been reduced within sixty or seventy years from one hundred to sixty per cent. "The forty-per-cent. rate of legitimate births is clearly the result of mission palling in its bestiality.1 The morally gruesome details are too repulsive to admit of an attempt even to summarize them, and we must forbear. 5. SELF-TORTURE.-This is usually practised under the stimulus of religious fanaticism either to secure merit or reverence or to quiet superstitious fears. It is especially common in India on the part of the devotees who court veneration on account of supposed sanctity. As the torture is self-inflicted, at first thought one is inclined to denounce its folly and withhold sympathy for the sufferer; but when we reflect that it is often endured with a sincere, although mistaken, zeal as a religious act, one is rather inclined to pity the victim of such a delusion. The system of ascetic legalism which encourages such selfinflicted pain is largely responsible for the folly of its victims, and the spirit of the Gospel only will banish the haunting consciousness of condemnation which drives men to such cruel expedients to secure the favor of God. Self-torture in India, China, and Mohammedan lands. There is a ghastly variety in the methods of self-torture practised in India. Some of them, such as hook-swinging, have been abolished by the British Government as offenses against society. In several of the native states, however, it is still in vogue, and recent reports in many directions seem to indicate defiant attempts to revive the barbarous spectacle even in British India. Devotees and fakirs are accustomed to give themselves up to torture by fire, or by reclining for a long period upon beds of spikes or sharp stones. Others will refuse to give themselves rest, or abstain altogether from sleep, or hold some limb in a painful position until it becomes shrivelled and rigid. Others will allow themselves to be fed on any kind of revolting or improper food, having made a vow to reject nothing which is offered them to eat. The tests to which they are put are often horrible in the extreme. If they should refuse what is offered them they would thereby forfeit their sanctity and the veneration of their credulous admirers. A common practice is to pierce the body with large needles. Frequently iron skewers are thrust through the cheeks and tongue, which are thereby work." The ratio in the South American States is also high. Infants can be easily disposed of by placing them in the turn-cylinders provided at the convents. 1 Macdonald," Religion and Myth," pp. 201-203; Slowan, "The Story of Our Kaffrarian Mission," p. 24. 2 The Missionary Herald, January, 1893, p. 16; July, 1893, p. 292; October, 1893, p. 38. |