A clergyman's wife in Vancouver, full of missionary zeal for India,
thought it her duty to accord the Hindu exactly the same treatment as to
an American or English immigrant. She took a man as general house
servant and treated him with the same genial courtesy she had treated all
other help in her home. You know what is coming--don't you? The man
mistook it for evil or else failed to subdue the crimes of the centuries
in his own blood. Had he not come from a land where a woman more or less
did not matter, and hundreds of thousands of little girls are yearly
sacrificed on the altars of Moloch? I need not give details. As a
matter of fact, there are none. Asiatic ideas about women collided
violently with facts which any Canadian takes for granted and does not
talk about! No Anglo-Saxon (thank God) is too ladylike not to have a bit
of the warrior woman left in her blood. The Hindu was thrown out of that
house. Then the woman reasoned with the blind persistence peculiar to
any conscientious good woman, who always puts theory in place of fact!
There are blackguards in every race. There are scoundrels among
Englishmen in India. Why should she allow one criminal among the Hindus
to prejudice her against this whole people? And she at once took another
Hindu man servant in the house. This time she kept him in the kitchen
and garden. Within a month the same thing happened with a little
daughter. This Hindu also went out on his head. No more were employed
in that house. That woman's husband was one of the Pacific Coast
clergymen who passed the resolution, "that the Hindus would not affiliate
with our Canadian civilization."
Personally I think that resolution would have been a great deal more
enlightening to the average Easterner if the ministerial association had
plainly called a spade a spade.
IV
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account