India To-day and To-morrow

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 432, 3 October 1947, Page 17

India To-day and To-morrow

BROTHER INDIA. By W. M. Ryburn. Presbyterian Bookroom. R. RYBURN is a New Zealander who has been a Presbyterian missionary in India for over 20 years. For almost the whole of that time he has been in charge of a large High School in the Punjab, and is one of the best-known figures in Indian education. His recent book Brother India was written primarily to give the members of his church an accurate picture of the state df affairs in India to-day. He insists that this knowledge is urgent as "with the emergence of a free and independent India our whole attitude toward her must be reconsidered." He argues that although India was united in the demand for independence it is strongly divided on many other issues and that in the new freedom these will emerge strongly. He traces the development of the clash between Hindu and Sikh and the Moslem. Acute as this is he shows that beneath the surface there is a still more fundamental division between capital and labour-and predicts that "in the years immediately ahead the Hindu-Moslem struggle which so fills the picture to-day will be replaced by a struggle of capitalists of all religions against socialists and communists of all religions." While the war had a ‘retarding effect on many developments it nevertheless gave a fillip to the idea of industrialisation. If this is to develop’normally, Mr. Ryburn thinks, it must go hand in hand with an agrarian revolution and with a general rise in the level of education. Any future government in India will make strenuous endeavours to industrialise, to improve agriculture, and to educate; but any movement in these directions will be difficult in face of ignorance and the high birthrate. Mr. Ryburn is critical of British rule and emphatic that freedom should have been given; but he is not blind to the faults of the peoples of India or of the immense difficulties with which they are now confronted, There are fearful dis-unities-the communal as ~between Hindu, Sikh, and Moslem; the caste system with its rigid walls between ‘the various castes and the problem of over 50 million outcasts whose conditions are no better than those of slaves; and the division between capitalist and working class. Democratic ways are not understood by any except the Sikhs.. The average Indian tends to evade reality in a spate of words. Ignorance among the masses is abysmal and poverty is beyond anything we can imagine. The first necessity, Mr. Ryburn says, is to try to restore Indian self-respect. Under British,rule "she developed a slave mentality and a disinclination to think and act for herself." Therefore all Europeans now should serve and not rule. He himself will practise what he preaches and will go back as a simple teacher in the school which he has controlled for 20 years. India will n mucb specialist help over the next .3C years, but only if specialists are willing to serve under Indians. So far as the Christian Church is concerned, Mr. Ryburn feels that now Christianity is no longer the religion of

the conquerors, great developments will be possible if the missionaries from overseas are willing to serve under Indian

control.

O.

B.