108
PARTISAN REVIEW
cruel to women and talk incessantly about money; as a people who take
it upon themselves to despise Western science and hence are rotten
with malaria and hookworm ... he will say that in a hot climate wash–
ing in running water has its points, but that in cold climates all Orientals
either wash as we do or as in the case of many Indian hill tribes-not
at all; he will show, and I shall agree with him absolutely, that no West–
ern European can walk through an Indian village without wishing that his
smell organs had been removed beforehand; he will assert, and I am
not at all sure that he is wrong, that eating with your fingers is a bar–
barous habit since it cannot be done without making disgusting noises;
he will be confident that the English room, with its comfortable arm–
chairs and friendly bookshelves, is infinitely superior to the bare Indian
interior where the mere effort of sitting with no support to your back
makes for vacuity of mind,' etc. etc. etc.
Two points emerge here.
To
begin with, no English person would
now write like that. No doubt many people think such thoughts, and
even utter them behind closed doors, but to find anything of the kind
in print you would have to go back ten years or so. Secondly, it is worth
asking, what would be the effect of this passage on an Indian who hap–
pened to take it seriously? He would be offended, and very rightly. Well
then, isn't it just possible that passages like the one I quoted from Mr.
Fielden might have the same effect on a British reader? No one likes
hearing his own habits and customs abused. This is not a trivial con–
sideration, because at this moment books about India have, or could
have, a special importance. There is no political solution in sight, the
Indians cannot win their freedom and the British Government will not
give it, and all one can for the moment do is to push public opinion in
this country and America in the right direction. But that will not be
done by any propaganda that is merely anti-European. A year ago, soon
after the Cripps
mi~sion
had failed, I saw a well-known Indian nationalist
address a small meeting at which he was to explain why the Cripps offer
had been refused. It was ·a valuable opportunity, because there were
present a number of American newspaper correspondents who, if handled
tactfully, might cable to America a sympathetic account of the Congress
Party's case. They had come there with fairly open minds. Within about
ten minutes the Indian had converted all of them into ardent supporters
of the British Government, because instead of sticking to his subject he
launched into an anti-British tirade quite obviously founded on spite
and inferiority complex. That is just the mistake that a toothpaste adver–
tiser would not make. But then the toothpaste advertiser is trying to sell
toothpaste and not to get his own back on that Blimp who turned him
out of a first-class carriage fifteen years ago.
However, Mr. Fielden's book raises wider issues than the immediate
political problem. He upholds the East against the West on the ground
that the East is religious, artistic and indifferent to 'progress,' while the
West is materialistic, scientific, vulgar and warlike. The great crime of
