INDIA OF TO-DAY | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 11, 1893

INDIA OF TO-DAY.

[Condensed from an article by the Rev. James Johnston, Bolton, England, in the Missionary Review.]

The march of empire over the "Eye of Asia," the name by which India is occasionally designated, presents features of deepening interest, and prophetic of more remarkable changes. Advances in her moral and material condition and in civil and religious development plainly indicate that India is assuredly taking a right place among the progressive nations east and west. The pacific revolutions of the last generation or so in her social and national life have amazing significance. Those degrading heathen customs, the self-immolation of widows on the funeral piles of their husbands, the dedication of favorite daughters at idolatrous temple services, the trampling to death of imbeciles, the drowning of aged persons, the universal practice of female infanticide, and the cruelties of child marriage and widowhood, have been wholly or partially swept away, and at the present day fresh campaigns initiated against the abominations which still linger on the horizon of India's humanity.

In point of population the Indian census offers an array of figures not easily grasped. The British possessions contain 221,172,950 souls, and the feudatory States 66,050,480, making a grand total, for these two divisions, with the territories of Upper Burmah, North Lushai, and Kashmir, now included for the first time, of 288,000,000 human beings. Natives in British provinces occupy an area of 962,070 square miles, and those of the feudatory States 595,310 square miles. The pressure of population on the land during the last decade has risen from 227 to 249 per square mile in British territories, and from 107 to 123 in the native States, or if the whole of India, inclusive of the new tracts, is tabulated, the British divisions give 230 persons and the feudatory States 111, or an average of 184 to every square mile of greater India.

Pressure of population on the soil has its highest provincial density in Oudh, returned at 522 persons to the square mile; in Bengal, 471; in the Northwest Provinces, 411; in the Madras native States, embracing the crowded shores of Travancore and Cochin, 385; in Baroda, 294; in the Madras Presidency, 252; in Bombay, 207; Ajmir, 207, the last two being the remaining provinces or States, which have an aggregate density of 200 to the square mile. Upper Burmah, with an area of 83,500 square miles, has a population of 35 to the square mile, and Kashmir, 31. Comparing these figures with countries having dense city populations, a condition of existence uncommon in India, there are 498 people to the square mile in England and Wales, 21 in the United States of America, and 5 in the habitable parts of Canada. The returns of the current census denote an influx of people from congested Indian centers to regions of virgin soil, an increase more noticeable in the feudatory than the British States. Just in proportion as the feudatory States are safeguarded by laws does the Indian peasant feel himself tempted to migrate into new pastures. The first advance across a British feudatory frontier is effected by marriage relations, by daughters being given as wives to villagers on the other side of the border line. In many cases the rural emigration has not passed the initial stage, which shows a marked percentage of females over males. Save in certain localities an extensive migratory movement from British to feudatory States is unreported.

From the aggregate returns of population there is not, it appears, a uniform increase of both sexes. Throughout India the average proportion of women to men is given at 958 of the former to 1,000 of the latter in 1891, while in the towns it does not exceed, as a whole, 886 females. Some of the city populations of India are making rapid strides. Bombay has 821,760 people, and Calcutta, with its two adjoining suburbs, a population of 741,140, or, counting the dwellers in the environs, where the growth is specially noticeable, Calcutta has a return of 978,370. The population of Madras is 452,520; of Hyderabad, 415,000; of Lucknow, 273,030; and of Benares, 219,470. In 22 other cities there are populations of 100,000 or upward, and in 48 towns the populations average from 50,000 to 100,000 inhabitants. The natives of India, occupying a country equal in size to the continent of Europe, excluding Russia, speak 106 different languages, as distinguished from dialects, and of these 18 are used by more than a million persons. Racial differences are further accentuated by social and religious prejudices and conflicting material interests. Every type of humanity has its representatives on the arena of India. Ghonds, Pathans, Rohillas, Belochees, and numerous fierce tribes, half clad, bloodthirsty, head hunters, wielding stone weapons and indulging in degrading superstitions, dwelling in caves, on the hills, and in forest deeps, are the survivors of prehistoric times, in contrast to whom stand the Parsee and Brahman, the embodiments of polished manners, scholarship, philosophy, commerce, and Western ideas. Beyond its own vast possessions British rule exercises no little supervision over 117 native States, the theaters of loose tribal communities, warlike chiefs, and princely rulers.

Very curious facts are furnished bearing on the religions of the myriads of people in India. The difficulty to register these is increased, because of the indistinct lines which separate Hinduism, Sikhism, and kindred systems. When the lower superstitions, such as ghost worship, tree and animal worship, or demon worship, are taken into account, the perplexities are intensified. Amid these peculiarities it is evident, from recent enumerations, that Hinduism is absorbing steadily the hill and forest tribes accustomed to practice strange primitive rights. If these animistic tribes, together with the 3,050 Brahmos and 39,950 Aryas, be added to Hinduism, the combined groups of Hinduism, semi-Hinduism, and reformed Hinduism, number 75 1/4 per cent of the total; Mussulmans, 19.96 per cent; Buddhists, 2.48; Christians, 0.80; Sikhs, 0.66; Jains, 0.49; Parsees, 0.03; and of miscellaneous beliefs 0.02 per cent.

Putting the religious census in another form, Hinduism claims 207,500,000—the term, it may be remarked, signifying "any religion which is not Mohammedan;" Islam, 57,000,000; Buddhism, 7,000,000, and Christianity, 2,225,000. The Jews count 17,180, and the Parsees in all 89,887 persons. Of theists, agnostics, and atheists 289 are enumerated. Taking the "animistic group" alone, they represent 3.23 per cent of the whole population, which allows them to stand next to the Mussulmans in numerical strength. Hindus and Mussulmans have increased 10.74 and 10.70 respectively, in proportion to the growth of population; Buddhism has increased 24 1/2 per cent at a pace with the growth of the general population in Lower Burmah; while the Christians have multiplied at the rate of 22.16, including large conversions from the forest tribes, particularly in the Chutia Nagpur territories. Gratifying results of the triumphs of Christianity come from the Punjab, the Northwest Provinces, the Karen districts in Lower Burmah, Madras, and the west coast seaboard, where the native Christian population is growing at an astonishing rate.

Of "Young India," considering the population as a whole to the age of fifteen, the Indian return shows that 63.90 per cent of the boys and 82.47 of the girls are unmarried; and of the married under fifteen years of age, 5.09 boys, 17.02 girls. In every 10,000 of the population there are left as "widowed" 20 boys and 51 girls under the age of fifteen years, and of this "widowed" category 20 per cent of the boys and 35 per cent of the girls are under five years old. The state of education presents terrible backward features in the adult sections of the population, where, again, there is disparity between the two sexes respecting capacity to read and write. From returns affecting 262,000,000 people, it is tabulated that 89.1 per cent of the males and 99.4 per cent of the females are unable to read or write. In the male section, consisting of 133,500,000, only one in nine can pass this double test, and in the female division, comprising 128,500,000, barely one in 173 women. Of the total population in India having a knowledge of reading and writing in English, the census makes a return of 360,000 natives. For the training of the young, public and private institutions number 138,054, and pupils 3,682,707. Allowing, therefore, that 18,000,000—a liberal estimate—of India's people have the advantage of an elementary education, it leaves the enormous number of 270,000,000 of Hindus buried in calamitous ignorance. Out of the few millions able to read and write a very small proportion have any acquaintance of English.