Colonization and Christianity: A popular history of the treatment of the natives by the; Europeans in all their coloniesHowitt, William
History
Colonization and Christianity: A popular history of the treatment of the natives by the; Europeans in all their colonies
Howitt, William
Indians, Treatment of; Indigenous peoples
of all the religious world on our Indian territories, and excited a
feeling which more than any other cause has led to the changes which
have hitherto been effected. At that period (1806), in making a tour
through the peninsula of Indostan, he discovered that everything like
attention to the moral or religious condition of either natives or
colonists was totally neglected. That all the atrocious superstitions
of the Hindus were not merely tolerated, but even sanctioned, and some
of them patronized by our government. That though there were above
twenty English regiments in India at that time, _not one of them had a
chaplain_, (p. 80). That in Ceylon, where the Dutch had once thirty-two
Protestant churches, we had then but two English clergymen in the
whole island! (p. 93). That there were in it by computation 500,000
natives professing Christianity; who, however, “had not one complete
copy of the Scriptures in the vernacular tongue,” and consequently,
they were fast receding into paganism, (p. 95). That the very English
were more notorious for their infidelity than for anything else, and
by their presence did infinite evil to the natives. That, in that very
year, when the governor of Bombay announced to the supreme government
at Calcutta, his determination to attempt to extirpate infanticide
from Guzerat—a practice, be it remembered, which in that province
alone _destroyed annually 3000 children_![23]—this cool commercial
body warned him, not “even for the _speculative_ success of that
benevolent project, to hazard the _essential interests_ of the state!”
(p. 52). That all the horrors of burning widows were perpetrated to
the amount of from seven hundred to _one thousand_ of such diabolical
scenes annually. That the disgusting and gory worship of Juggernaut
was not merely practised, but was actually licensed and patronized by
the English government. That very year it had imposed a tax on all
pilgrims going to the temples in Orissa and Bengal, had appointed
British officers, British gentlemen to superintend the management of
this hideous worship and the receipt of its proceeds. That the internal
rites of the temple consisted in one loathsome scene of prostitution,
hired bands of women being kept for the purpose; its outward rites the
crushing of human victims under the car of the idol.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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