THE INDIAN BOY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 385, 8 November 1946, Page 18

THE INDIAN BOY

(A Vath for the BBC by C. H. Barry, Principal of Aitchison College, Lahore)

ANY of you _ probably M think of India as a country of heat and dust and snakes and flies, which would be about as true as it would be to say that England is mainly famous for her fogs, suet puddings, and boiled cabbage. Indian crowds are not perpetually hitting one another over the heads with brickbats and. soda water bottles, however frequently riots and civil commotions may capture the headlines. Indeed, an Indian crowd, on the occasion of a great religious festival, can be just as cheerful and good-tempered, and just as easily pleased, as our own crowds here in England on Victory Day or Bank Holiday. In the same way, Indian university students are not in the habit of walking out of examination halls, or of staging a sit-down strike, merely because they do not happen to like a particular ques-tion-paper, or disapprove of a professor, although these things do happen. But it would be only too easy to get them out of proportion, and/I should like to try to focus your attention upon an aspect of Indian life in which I happen to be particularly interested. When you have watched Indian children, as I have, from the earliest stages of sitting in their patient rows in the village schools, and yelling their multiplication tables at the tops of their voices, or flying their paper kites from the roof-tops of a crowded city, and have been associated with them in their long progress to the universities, and into the life of the country, it would be unnatural not to have developed a very warm feeling of affection for them. 4 "Not Bitterly Divided" From a casual study of the Indian political situation it would be easy to form the impression that Indians are bitterly divided by religious differences, which cut across all economic and social divisions. But it has long been one of. my most fundamental convictions (and you will realise that I am speaking for no one but myself) that in this sense there is not really a communal, or religious, problem at all. When I am told that Muslims are a separate nation, and cannot live amicably with Hindus, I remember the thousands of Punjab villages in which they have long lived perfectly happily side by side, and I think of the boys at Aitchison College, Lahore, among whom there are no religious differences which cannot be by-passed or absorbed in the loyalties which arise from a healthy school community. If you were to walk round the college grounds with me, you would soon feel quite at home, for boys are very much | the same whether their skins are brown or white or black. It would not be long before you learned to tell a Muslim from a Hindu, by his dress and turban; and you would be very quick to recognise a Sikh, whose religion does not allow him to cut his hair, so that he.wears a straggly beard by the time he is sixteeri or seventeen, and is obliged to play hockey with a ridiculous little ‘bun’ on the top of his head. Indeed, if your visit were on a Sunday morning, you

might think you had strayed into a girls’ school by mistake, for you would find groups of Sikh boys, of all ages and sizes, drying their long hair. in the sun, after the weekly wash, some of them with eyelashes which would create a sensation..in Hollywood. Of course, I do not want you to run away with the idea that there are not great differences of religious practice and belief between Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims. It would be merely stupid of me to suggest that, but what I do believe is that these differences need not affect the life of the people, outside their places of worship, and that they are merely used by politicians as a substitute for any genuine economic or political convictions. Many of the older boys, themselves, would be quick to resent any suggestion that they are Muslims, or Hindus, or Sikhs, before they are Indians, and would assure you that the communalism of which you hear so much, need not be such an unhealthy influence as it has become in recent years. Students Too Often Blamed Equally they would deny the accusation that Indian boys are unhealthily interested in politics. They would argue that you cannot give a boy a modern education, interest him in world events, and encourage him to think for himself, and then expect him to be satisfied with all the outworn conventions, and customs of Indian society, or to be unconcerned with the welfare and fortunes of his own country. ‘ But the exaggeration of this outlook and interest, and its direction into unprofitable channels, is the responsibility, not of the students, but rather of the press. and politicians. When a riot occurs in which students have taken part, it has become a habit for political leaders to raise hands of pious horror, and to shed crocodile tears, conveniently forgetting that it is they themselves who are really to blame. Not long ago a distinguished Indian friend said to me: ‘Struggling to learn the lessons of western civilisation, without destroying her own culture, Indian society has so far failed to achieve any working synthesis of both,’ and it is to fill the moral and ‘social gap created by this situation that the group of schools with which I am associated is particularly concerned. At present there are not more than 10 or 12 of these schools, and their output is, therefore, comparatively small. For want of a better name, they are called Indian Public Schools, although we stoutly maintain that they have managed to adapt many of the virtues, without copying all the faults, of Public Schools in England. Although there are not nearly enough of these schools, they have already made a contribution to Indian life which is out of all proportion to their number. For instance, until the recent elections, one of the members of the Viceroy’s Executive Council, and three members of the Punjab Cabinet were old boys of Aitchison College; many of the ruling Princes of northern India, including the well-known Maharaja of Patiala, are Aitchisonians, and the Nawab of Pataudi, who is Captain: (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) of the Indian Cricket XI now in England, learned his cricket on our lovely ground. ° So why not try to form a first-hand impression of an Indian Public School by coming with me on a brief imaginary visit' to Lahore? It will be pretty warm, but we can watch the boys at work in one of the most modern buildings east (or even west) of Suez, in which it is still possible to wrestle with mathematics or geography, even when the thermometer is sizzling in a temperature of 115 degrees or so. You have had quite enough of me already, so I will leave you in the hands of one of my senior prefects, who has just passed his Higher Certificate, and is hoping to take a course of chemical engineering in the United States. If you are particularly interested in history, or science, or art, he will take you into the laboratory, or into the rooms specially set aside for these subjects; he will probably tell you, with pride, that when the college admitted a good many English boys, during the war, it was some long time before an English boy was top of his class, even in his own language. If you give them half a chance the boys will certainly want to question you about your own country, and particularly about your universities; and they will want to tell you all about India, and their own ambitions. This young fellow, who must be a Sikh (because his beard is just beginning to appear) is going to be an engineer, but at 14 he is already a most promising athlete, and he is equally at home with a hockey stick and a sitar, which is one of India’s rather complicated musical instruments. Next door to him is a boy who hopes to become an artist, and is studying industrial design, although he is just as much of an artist with his leg-breaks on the cricket field, and is quite a considerable scholar of Urdu and Persian. Here is another, whose great ambition is to become an enlightened landlord, introducing all the lessons of scientific agriculture to his father’s estate; and you will probably find him amusing himself in his spare time in the biology lab., with a friend who will one day become ruling prince of an important State, and who knows that he is faced with one of the toughest jobs that a man can inherit. * I must warn you that you will probably be bombarded with invitations (for Indian boys aré not at all shy) either for a game of hockey or tennis, or for ;

a swim, and you will certainly be asked not to miss the next meeting of the college parliament, when the government will have to answer some pretty tricky questions. I expect you would like to find out what a good Indian curry really tastes like, by joining the boys at lunch or dinner. Yes, they all mess togetherHindus, Muslims; and Sikhs. ’ Potential Leaders Let me prop open the door of memory, and introduce to you one or two of those who come most readily to mind. I shall not tell you. their names, for the long Indian names would only confuse the picture, but I think immediately of a tall thin Squadron Leader in the Royal Indian Air Force, tragically killed at the beginning of last year, on the eve of leading his squadron into action against the Japs in Burma. A Sikhand like so many Sikhs, a magnificent athlete-he richly demonstrated, in his short but brilliant career, many of the lessons of leadership: and responsibility and service, which he had learned at school, where he and I had become such close friends that his death was a very great shock to me. Or I think of an even younger boy, who came to us as a failure and a disappointment and left us a few years later, burning with a determination to be of service to his country. He is now Assistant-Editor of one of India’s leading newspapers; and if I were asked to select, from my 20 years’ experience, the Indian boy in whose career I have the greatest confidence, it would be his name which would. come to my lips, for I know that he is of the salt of the earth, and that he is destined to serve his country as she deserves. "A Human Problem" These are only just a few of my many memories of the Indian boy. But in what was, perhaps, your first visit to Lahore, I hope that I may have helped you to remember that, when you read or hear of Indian political changes, and party squabbles, ultimately it is a human, and not a constitutional, problem. And if I have managed to focus your thoughts, then you will agree with me that India’s future will depend, not only, or even mainly, upon the success with which a new constitution can be designed-al-though that is tremendously importantbut upon the boys and girls who are now at school and college, for it is upon their shoulders that will ultimately fall the responsibility of which we ourselves are now so anxious to be relieved.