March 1, 1884.
Bombay
My dear friend Lord Randoph Churchill,
Today looking back at India gradually receding away, I was overwhelmed with feelings of hopes and fear. Although much has been accomplished, I felt the same vague sense of helplessness like exactly two years ago upon leaving Egypt. So I wanted to write to you now, even though I will only be able to post it when our ship arrives in Paris where Anne and I will stop for a few days..
From an aesthetic point of view nothing can be more seductive to a stranger from the West, or more surprising, than the spectacle of Hindu worship at one of these ancient shrines—the processions of women to some lonely grove by the water-side on holiday afternoons with their offerings of rice and flowers, the old-world music of pipe and tabour, the priests, the incense, the painted statues of the immortal gods, the lighted fire, the joyous sacrifices consumed with laughter by the worshippers. No one can see this without emotion, nor, again, witness the gatherings of tens of thousands clothed in white in the great temples of Southern India for the yearly festivals, and not acknowledge the wonderful continuity of thought which unites modern India with its European kindred of pre-Christian days.
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| Meenakshi Temple, Madura |
The worship of idols here is a reality such as untravelled Englishmen know only from their classics. The temples of Madura and Seringam are more wonderful and imposing in their structure than all the edifices of Europe put together, and the special interest is that they are not dead things. The buyers and the sellers still ply their trade in the porticoes, the birds have their nests beneath the eaves. There are sacred elephants and sacred apes. The priests chaunt still round lighted braziers. The brazen bulls are anointed each festival day with oil, the foreheads of the worshippers with ochre. There is a scent of flowers and incense, and the business of religion goes on continuous from old time, perhaps a little slacker, on account of the increasing poverty of the people, but not less methodically, or as a living part of men’s daily existence.
When I had seen Madura I felt that I had at last seen a temple of Babylon in all its glory, and understood what the worship of Apis might have been in Egypt. This worship of the gods—not any theological or moral teaching—is the foundation of the Hindu religion, and what is still its distinguishing feature.
Because of us the English, the friendly bond between Egypt and India through the exchange of trade, religion and education over centuries have now been replaced by an ugly tie of Great Powers politics. With its shortcut to India — the lynch pin of the British Empire – by 4000 miles, the Suez Canal’s opening 15 years ago sealed the fate for Egypt. After Disraeli, with a massive loan from his friend Lionel de Rothschild, snapped up the bankrupt Khedive Isma'il’s shares for Britain in 1875, Gladstone made the final break from thirteen years of compromise with France and pretended respect for the Ottoman Sultan by sending troops under the pretext to suppress Urabi’s uprising and began the bombardment of Alexandria and occupation.
