EAST AND WEST

Hokitika Guardian, 12 March 1931, Page 8

EAST AND WEST

SUPERSTITIONS AND PREJUDICES.

LONDON, January 2!). A correspondent writing to the "Daily Telegraph,” asks whether the Asiatic’s “bitter sense of Injustice and wounded pride” because lip is “treated as an inferior and debarred from social intercourse with us,” is not an ancient lailacy t

"As an Englishman; an unofficial civilian, who lias spent nearly eight years in different pnrfi-i of the A 1 idel 1 0 and Far East” lie writes, “it, has been my experience that the better type ol Asiatic rarely if ever, hankers after ;ny such intercourse, and this for reasons similar to tlio.se which make flic Briton hesitate before extending it. A strict Moslem in the home of a Briton might well he excused the embarrassment of being asked to sit at meat with a woman—and an unveiled woman at that. The English rim 11 eating at llie table of a high cafite Hindu might well be forgiven a certain amount of humiliation at the realisation ufat every piece of plate that his hands and lips have touched will be broken when he leaves the house, and that his host will spend the. night undergoing ‘purification' ceremonies at the temple to dense himself of his guest’s corruption. “In countries where even barristers-at-law believe firmly in the existence and power of the Evil Eye, there are all kinds of social ‘breaks’ that an Englishman can make. If he compliments the child of the house upon its looks, he will have done his host the grave disservice of attracting the envious attention of the gods. If evil befalls the child afterwards, the blame will be laid at the innocent door of the English guest. These are not the belieljs of a few fanatics. Those are beliefs held by the great majority, though not all will confess them to the sceptical European. “Mixed marriages, too, are equally frowned upon by Asiatic and European. The person who believes that the Englishman confers any honour upon an Asiatic family by marrying into it is under a grave delusion. The better the. family, the greater the disgrace conceived, and as often as not the woman is disowned altogether. This is the reverse side of the shield of the social •intercourse' question. Some of our sentimentalists might find it worthv of a little study.''