In a Signs that recently came to hand, it was stated in a selected article that surely the students in India who were receiving an English education would never go away from school to become idolators. One might think so at first thought; but when the real nature of idolatry is considered, one must see that mere intellectual education can never smite down the world-old idolatrous systems. Some of the pioneers in educational work in India thought to see caste and superstition vanish before an intellectual awakening. But year after year for two generations, it has become increasingly evident that the higher education is not of itself a missionary factor of great importance. It must not be forgotten that much that is studied as a part of that higher educational system which has obtained in Europe and America, the classics and the philosophy, is the product of the idolatrous schools of Greece and Rome. How, then, could these be expected to down idolatry in India?
I have been told that many a man going up to the university for his M.A. examination does worship to the little image of the elephant-headed god, Ganesa, who is supposed to preside over learning. Ganesa lost his head in infancy, and Brahma sent the father out to bring in the head of the first creature found with the head northward. An elephant happened to be the first so discovered, and its head was fixed upon the infant god. It is apparent that education is but a thin veneer over the native superstition when a full course in the sciences without God leaves the mind in such bondage. Every day one may see educated Indians, men engaged in government service and large commercial affairs, making the gestures of reverence as they pass the shrine of some god.
Education with God in it, the true education of heart and mind, alone can set men free. Educational systems, even in some famous mission institutions, leave much to be desired. As a consequence, there seems a dearth of educated Christian teachers even after many years. One such institution was the other day advertising for a teacher in one department, “Christian preferred.” In the organ of one of the oldest missions some time ago was a discussion as to whether it was better to have on the staff indifferent Christians or out-and-out heathen. The argument leaned toward the side of the professed tho indifferent Christian, tho, personally, I must say, one feels more drawn toward the frank Hindu than the indifferent professor of a Christianity that has not gotten into the life.
In the student communities of India there are to be found the coming men in India. With minds awakened and on the alert, they are in just the place where, as much as at any time in life, the seeds of truth may be sown in their hearts. But too often a science falsely so called is taught them, and they are further than ever from Bible truth. The European or American may allow false teachings to undermine his confidence in the integrity of the Word of God, and still social custom and tradition hold him in the groove of nominal Christianity. Not so the Hindu; everything in custom and tradition pulls him the other way, back under the shadow of superstition.
Principal Wordsworth, a leading Indian educationalist, once said that he formerly hoped to see the educated classes, who were patterning after English political ideas and receiving an English education, using their influence against infant marriage and other debasing social customs. “I have no such delusion now,” he wrote. “I find some of them employing all the resources of the theological sophistry and cant, not simply to palliate but to vindicate what is plainly one of the most cruel, blighting, and selfish forms of superstition and tyranny.” “Collegiate impressions,” says another Anglo-Indian publicist, “are at present like a tinselled outdoor decoration, discarded by their professor as a superfluity in private.” Education in America and Europe does not set men free from some of the most blighting ecclesiastical superstitions; how can it be expected to solve the problem in India?
Presidency College, India.
It is a fact, however, that the young man who goes thru the Indian substitute for the English college course, must have his confidence shaken in the integrity of his own sacred literature. All learning in India was incorporated in the shastas; and, as Macaulay said, they taught an “astronomy which would move laughter in girls at an English boarding-school, history abounding in kings thirty feet high and reigns thirty thousand years long, and geography made of seas of treacle and oceans of butter.”
But Hinduism is independent of sacred books. It is the deification of social customs and the ways that have been from of old, and it doesn’t fall with its old ideas of natural science.
The mission field among the student populations alone is a great one. The Student Volunteer Movement has gathered statistics showing that there are in India more collegiate students than in Great Britain. There are nearly 20,000 of them in the educational centers. About 2,000 are graduated each year from institutions conferring degrees. Including those attending schools which fit only for the colleges, the majority of whom turn to some occupation, the number of wide-awake young men gathered in the cities of India is enormous.
Many in the student towns live with friends or relatives, many by themselves in hired rooms, and numbers find lodging in the student hotels, where numbers mess together, thus reducing the expenses. It is with an odd sensation at first that one sees young Hindu men clad in strange costumes, faring schoolward along the streets with the familiar English school-books in their hands. Education is made easy for them, too easy a good many think. Professor Ladd, of Yale, who went thru India on a lecture tour recently, expressed himself thus:—
I confess to a prejudice in favor of self-help and hard work. . . . In a word, I do not believe in giving away the higher education, or in making it so cheap that almost any boy, irrespective of a determined character and a strong and worthy ambition, can have a try at it. . . . Moreover, it seems to me that the missionary colleges might wisely combine with the government to change, as rapidly as possible, the character of the university education, so as to fit more of those taking the examinations for other and sturdier ways of earning a livelihood. As he says, “the government does not know what to do with so large a multitude of ‘baboos,’ too often they do not know what to do with themselves; for it is a well-known fact that only a small proportion develop any ‘initiative,’ or are ready to tolerate the notion of doing what would be called ‘hard work’ in the United States or in England.”
This repugnance to manual work on the part of the educated is due to that terrible caste idea. But the Christian principles strike straight and lustily at every custom that would hold a man back from being the man that God wants every son of His to be. In among these student communities the mission worker can find multitudes who have a mind to think about principles, and every collegiate town is a grand field for work for the young men of India.
