Background
““ITT HAT you see in a thing depends very much upon V T its background.” The words bear a wide interpretation. You return from an itinerating tour thankful for any sign of victory, but heart-sore because of the triumph of evil, and foot-sore too, for so often you trod upon graves that appear not; sometimes such small child-graves that the pity of it appealed. If you have any voice left, you sing choruses of praise and gladness as your bullock-cart slowly trundles along, but through the choruses, often and often from somewhere very deep within you, the cry cuts its way out: “Oh, let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end!” The end seems far enough distant to-day. The sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them — yes, but when? Come, Lord Jesus! Come quickly!
The bullock-cart blunders through the village, and turns into the compound. There is a dab of colour at the gate. It moves, scatters, resolves itself into dancing dots of crimson and blue. Then there are shouts of welcome, sadly unmodulated probably, but very sincere. Little happy children are running all about, bewildering the bulls, climbing into the bandy, lifting up raptured smaller ones to be pulled into the bandy and kissed. Dark in the distance is the background. Poor little child —
“They left thee in thy peril and thy pain, The night that hath no morrow was brooding o’er the main.”
Strange background for any little child: the peril and the pain, and the night that has no morrow.
“But lo! a light is breaking of hope for thee again “:
the foreground fills with the light; and the joy you find in it is intensified by every throb of consciousness of what the background meant. The next few chapters are intended only for lovers of little children. They will be foreground. This chapter, by way of background, comes first.
One of our Temple-children workers was with me when, after several years absence from the place, I spent a few days near the village which used to be our home, and visited the house from which the Elf, our first Temple child, escaped.
It is a palm-leaf thatched cottage in a secluded street near the Temple. The woman I so well remembered, whose eyes seemed hypnotic in influence, met us outside the courtyard, and, to our surprise, half welcomed us. There were five children there. The two eldest, girls of about eleven and twelve, had come to the bungalow to coax the Elf to leave us; they remembered me, and ran up in friendly fashion, full of questions. “Is she not married? We were married two years ago! “And they pulled at their little garments and showed me the Temple marriage symbol fastened to their necklets.” Do you say she is not married yet? Has she nice “To THE GOD, YOU UNDERSTAND?” 243
jewels and silks? No jewels? no silks? Oh! Aiyo! Aiyo! Why does she not come back?”
A sweet shy child of six drew close to us, and laid a light little hand in mine. She reminded me of the Elf as she was when she came to us first, only the Elf was never shy. The others pointed to her as she stood in the grace of her childish beauty. “She is to be married next month, or the month after, to the god, you understand? Great Perumal! She will have better jewels then than these she is wearing now. Beautiful jewels like ours.”
At this point the woman interfered, and whispered something to the children about our having come to catch them by magic, as we had caught the Elf. This frightened them, and thereafter they peeped at us from behind the Temple woman, to whom we talked for a while. But the dear little younger one would not be frightened, she came quietly close again. “Ghee!” said the Temple woman, and swept them all into the house.
We feared nothing could be done to save that little girl, whose grace and sweetness had won upon us so; but to make sure, we wrote to a friend in the Civil Service who would do anything in his power to save these children. We put the facts before him. His answer, written after consideration and inquiry, came to this:
As things are, you can do nothing. Not that there is no law bearing upon such a case, but that its provisions are inadequate and need considerable amendment, if prosecution is to issue in the salvation of the child.
It is two months since that day. The little girl of six years old is married to Perumal now. “One more devil’s triumph, and sorrow for angels. One more wrong to man. One more insult to God.”
In another house, belonging to another temple in the same village, we found a secular marriage in progress. The bride was the Temple woman’s sister. Fate, as they would put it, chose out one of the family to belong to the god, the others live the usual life. The one chosen has adopted several little children, all of whom have now become family property. They will, as they grow up, call their adopted mother, “Mother,” her relations will be aunts, uncles, cousins. Thus the entanglement becomes complete, and it is impossible to extricate such a child, as all claim it equally, and it believes it belongs to all. We saw four babies in that house. “My child,” or “My sister’s child,” meaning her Temple-sister’s, said the woman we knew, when we asked her about them. “My niece,” said the little bride, as, tired of marriage solemnities, she relaxed and played with a babe.
We looked longingly at the little things, with their innocent eyes and soft fat hands that closed round one’s finger as baby hands will. If only we could have drawn them out, just as they were, without letting go! It was impossible.
These babes grown up are everywhere still more impossible to save. They are too deeply involved in the life to which, apart from all choice of their own, they have been delivered by hands too strong to resist. We saw one such a week ago. We were led to her by a child of seven, who explained in detail who she was.
“WlLL SHE BELIEVE IT?” 245
She lives alone in a handsome house, two storied, tileroofed. Near was another Temple house, full to the doors with mother, daughters, and their children. That mother had told me wonderful stories about a Government rule which all obeyed: “No child may be married now before twelve: so when she is twelve we take her and say, ‘Will you be married to god or man? ’ and as she says, so we do.” Then aside to the listening daughters, “Will she believe it, do you think?”
But it was the girl in the house alone whose face and ways will not be forgotten. She was beautiful, and very gentle. Her voice was low and she spoke with refinement, using choice expressions culled from books. She had been reading poetry before we came. The book was on her knee. The poetry was bad, but there was no hint of the debased in the quiet face and manner. If only we could have had her as a little child!
She told us the beginning of her story. Her mother had been the servant of a famous north-country god. She never remembered any other life. She was “married” at five — to the god. “There is pleasure, a kind of pleasure: there is that also which is not pleasure,” she said gravely, but with no wish awakened for a different life. Pleasure; for no orthodox ceremony of importance is complete without the consecrating presence of a Servant of the gods; nor would any orthodox Hindu feel other than blessed should he meet such a one at the beginning of a new undertaking; the omen is auspicious. Not pleasure; for the truer feeling of the people shows in many little ways. The Service of the gods, though so honoured, is dishonoured, and the sensitive girl-heart, hardly knowing how she knows it, still feels it. Such is India, inconsistent with her higher self, creating a system, calling it sacred, at her best ashamed of it, yet perpetuating it. The father is sick. The mother vows as her choicest gift her eldest little daughter, should her husband recover. The father agrees. He recovers. Together they take the little child and offer her to the god. The priests receive her. The god accepts. No one protests. The thing is religious, meritorious. Yet afterwards no father who had not done this thing would like his little daughter to be mistaken for that dedicated child. Could extreme of contradiction find more direct expression? “What has been done is good, right — the best that could be done. Its result, a thing despised, and yet a thing most cherished. In certain cases such a child is cruelly handled from the first, but not invariably. Oftener she is feted, jewelled, petted, led in her wondering innocence through ways we may not trace, formed and fashioned day by day till all the child in her withers and dies. Then she is meet for the use of the Hindu ideal of God.
Such facts gather force as you sit by the side of a girl whose life they have crossed. We had to leave her as we found her, like a bird with its wings clipped, thrown on the ground. Only, unbird-like, she did not flutter; she had grown accustomed to the dust.
When first we began our search for Temple children, with the definite intention of trying to save them, we wrote to the only two missionaries known to us to be conversant with the facts concerning them. We found their experience tallied. The salvation of a bond fide
Temple child, or a child in danger of being appropriated by Temple people, is something more difficult of accomplishment than those who have not this special experience would readily believe. As a matter of fact we had to buy our own experience. No one could advise us how to set about saving the children. But we have had all possible sympathy from fellow-missionaries, and nothing they could do to help us has been left undone. A few extracts from letters recently received may be of interest here. They illustrate the search.
“J. (an Indian worker) is after a little girl of about seven years old, who is to be married to the god on the 27th. He is very keen to save her, but there are many difficulties in the way.” Shortly afterwards we heard that the child was married. Wedding cards were issued as for an ordinary marriage. We did not hear of this in time to secure a card, which if obtained would have been excellent proof of the fact of illegal action. Ceaseless efforts have been made for over a year to save this child, but in vain.
“Last Friday I heard of four little girls. They all belong to the Temple. Two are married to thr god; two not. The married children’s people get a grant of sixty-two quarts of rice a mouth from the Temple. There are ten children in this Temple. One of the married children is just six years old (by ’ married ’ is meant ceremonial marriage to the stone who represents the god). All these ten have been separately sought, but their guardians refuse to give them up. We consulted a lawyer, but were not encouraged to do anything. The required proof, as usual, is unobtainable; and we should have against us not only the children’s own parents, but the police bribed by the priests, and in fact the whole population.”
“The family is very rich. The mother is in the profession. S. is such a dear, pretty little thing. There seems no hope of saving her.”
“I saw the judge about the baby (going to be devoted to the god). He said nothing could be done. It would be impossible to get sufficient proof of the mother’s future intentions.”
“The girl is in the Temple, and lost. Her brother did not want her to go. We thought we might get her and send her to you, particularly as she herself did not want to go. But her parents were too strong for us. She was spirited off at night, and is now in the Temple. She was thirteen years of age, and well-nigh a Christian.” Later, about the same child: “She is quite changed. Nothing can be done.”
“P. is a pretty, fair girl of about nine, a pupil in our mission school. She is the daughter and granddaughter of Temple women, and is being brought up to the same life. G. is about ten years of age. Her mother told us she had married all her daughters as they grew up except G., who was to go to the Temple. It was the custom of their family that one girl should be so devoted, and they must do as their elders had done.” Earnest efforts have been made to save these children, but in vain.
“The little child we wrote to you about was taken to the Temple last week. We went and inquired, but the people in the street said they knew nothing of her; and “BARE IN DREADFULNESS” 249
beyond tracing her to the Temple we have been able to do nothing. We have not seen her since she was taken away; and we cannot find out whether she is still in the house or whether she has been sent elsewhere. The people in the street are ready to swear to anything the woman who has adopted the child tells them to say.”
“Little A. was sent to the Temple. We have just heard of her death. B. ran from the room with his hands over his ears to shut out the sound of her cries.” “So did his cruelty burn life about, and lay the ruin bare in dreadfulness.” Let these words for one moment name out that story. Then let it drop back into the night.
“He (the Secretary of the Society for the Protection of Children in India, with headquarters in Calcutta) is right in what he says about future legislation being needed. But I don’t think it will be yet. We have not the men to enforce it if it were passed, at present.”
These extracts are chiefly from missionaries of different Societies working in British India and the Southern Native States. The last quotation is from an Indian Civil Servant. Other members of the Service have written to us from time to time with a strength of sympathy for which we, who have to grapple with these facts, are very grateful. We have friends in the Service upon whom we can count for any help within their power. Sometimes we feel the time must be near when something more will be done. In the meantime the children of this generation are passing in through those great gates that open inwards and then shut.