The son of an Irish mother and an Indian father, A u b r e y M e n e n is an English writer who makes his home
in Amalfi. While still an undergraduate at University College, London, lie was ’ discovered” by the late II. G.
W ells. Air. Alenen began by writing plays for the Experimental Theatre in London. During the tear he rose to
be the leading radio personality in India, and since 1947 he has devoted himself almost exclusively to his novels,
which have been published with steadily increasing interest in this country.
THE WAY THE NEW INDIA THINKS
by AUBREY MENEN
1
h e n an In d ian comes to the W estern world
W these days, he finds th at nobody has read
his newspapers, nobody has read his books,
and very few people know anything of his national
history. T his neither surprises nor dism ays him .
W hat he does find upsetting is that so m any people
are sure they know all about the way he thinks,
lie finds th at, broadly speaking, two opinions pre­
vail. No sooner has he finished with th e ordinary
courtesies on m eeting a E uropean or an American
th an cither 1) he will be told th a t he and all his
countrym en have great spiritual depths and will
save the world by the exercise of th eir psychic
powers — and here there is often a vague impression
conveyed of saints in white robes floating through
the air — or 2) he will be denounced as a fool who
is blindly preparing to hand In d ia over to the
Com m unists,
There are 400 million Indians. In th a t large n um ­
ber there will be found, of course, some saints and a
fair sprinkling of fools. Rut the norm al Indian
feels that he is far from being either. lie regards
himself as a typical m em ber of the civilized portion
of the hum an race; and since Indians m ake up one
fifth of th at com m unity, it m ust be adm itted th a t
there is much to be said for his point of view7.
He will have some difficulty in getting his point
of view adopted, I know. Rut 1 think it highly im­
portant th at he should. T here are two ways of
remaining in a state of dangerous ignorance about
another nation: the first is to have too high hopes
about it; the second is to have too low an opinion.
T he W e s I has adopted both concerning India, and it
is w orth taking some pains to correct m atters.
I once assisted at a merciless experim ent in brain­
washing. T h e object was to make a group of intelli­
gent young Indians say that a certain proposition
was absolutely t rue when they were denied all m eans
of knowing whether the statem en t was true or false;
42
m oreover, they had to sta te their belief w ith con­
vincing argum ents and genuine enthusiasm . T h e
brainw ashing was a com plete success.
1 should first explain th at the young m en were
all born an d bred in the clim ate of R om bay, where
it is hot and dry for nine m onths of the y ear and
where it rains torrentially for the rem aining three.
T here is no o th er change of season. T he boldness —
and the inhum anity — of the experim ent was th is:
after several m onths of daily indoctrination these
young men were supposed to declare, and to show
every sign of believing, th a t John K eats's “ T o
A u tu m n ” was a great and tru e poem. T h ey did.
I was shown their w ritten answers by one of th eir
chief inquisitors, a professor of English literatu re
at R om bay U niversity, and asked to adm ire his
handiw ork. Ilis ravages had been com plete; th eir
brains had not only been washed but scoured till
they shone with perfect reflection of his own ideas.
R u t I could not help protesting at the hum an
anguish th at lay behind the trium ph. W hat could
th e unfortunates have m ade of “ Seasons of m ists
and mellow fruitfulness” who had never seen a mist ?
Or of “ the soft dying d a y ” when th ey had seen
nothing but blood-red, ten-m inute sunsets? Or,
indeed, of “ re d b rea sts” ? W ith what agony m ust
these boys, sweltering in the heat of M ay, have
echoed the p o et’s cry, “ W here are the songs of
Spring? A y, where are th e y ? ” T hey were all, poor
devils, m ade Raehelors of A rt.
On A ugust 15, 1947, these young m en and
thousands who had suffered before them were told
th at they were free men and the intellectual leaders
of one fifth of the hum an race. It is plain th at the
world faced disaster. No group of people as ignorant
or as badly educated had come to power since th e
R om ans found them selves m asters of Ita ly . R ut
th e R om ans were more fortunate: they knew how
to m ake war, and they had been accustom ed to
 THE WAY THE NEW INDIA THINKS
governing themselves. T he leaders of India had
been forbidden to do either. In stead of fighting,
th e y had paraphrased Sir \\a lte r S cott; instead of
politics, they had been told to read Shelley.
2 vocabulary, if not of his accent. John S tu art Mill,
T,e m an who was responsible for the extraordi­
n ary system of education th a t I have described was
T hom as B abington M acaulay. W hen India be­
came an Im perial possession, he was asked to go
o u t there to prescribe w hat th e new subjects of
th e Crown should be tau g h t. He took ship, and
sailed E a st w ith a cabinful of books. These were
translations of the m ajor works of H indu civiliza­
tion. B y th e tim e he had rounded the C ape of
Good H ope he had read the lot and decided th a t
th ey were all rubbish. On arrival in India he had
m ade up his m ind th a t the inhabitants should
henceforth be educated in a foreign language which
th ey should be taught by m eans of studying a
foreign literatu re; th at is to say, they were to be
ta u g h t English literature in the English language.
T h ey were to be taught nothing w hatever th a t was
Ind ian . H e explained this in a M inute on E duca­
tion, wdiich was adopted.
T his enorm ity was put straight in our own times
by a great m an. W ith the sim plicity th a t often
goes w ith greatness, this m an rem inded Indians of an
elem entary fact. He told them th at they had no
need to try to think like Englishm en; they could
perfectly well think like them selves. T hey had
been doing so for several centuries before the E ng­
lish had conquered them , and they could do it
again. H e was right. An Indian shot him dead
for his pains, but India is a t last beginning to follow
his advice.
T his m an was M ahatm a Gandhi. No Indian has
been so widely known in the West as he, and none
found m ore of a puzzle. Those who revered him
as a great In d ian were sorry th a t he often behaved
so like a W estern politician. Those who adm ired
him as a statesm an were irritated a t his O riental
ways. B u t to Indians he was no puzzle at all. H e
was th e final product, and the first destroyer, of
M acau lay ’s huge mistake.
I should like to explain this by tw o brief glimpses
of him, as I knew him.
In the first he sits wrapped in a shawl and a dhoti
next to a gas fire turned so high th at blue flames are
coming out of the asbestos heaters. B ut he is cold,
because this is London. T he room is owned by M r.
J. F . H orrabin, a Socialist M .P ., and it is filled with
people. W e stand, or squat a t G andhi’s feet. Be­
hind me is E rnest Bevin, a future Foreign Secre­
ta ry ; on th e floor or against the walls are future
cabinet m inisters, from chancellor of th e exchequer
downwards. In a few years these men will give
In d ia w hat G andhi is asking for — her freedom.
T h ey are now questioning him, respectfully bu t
43
searchingly. G andhi answers them one by one. H e
gives good answers, but they are lawyer’s answers.
H e speaks in a studied, clear, colloquial English.
H e smiles, but is not w itty. T here is no magic;
there is no m agnetism ; there is no personal elec­
tricity. M acaulay would have approved of his
M ilton, and B yron would have endorsed his senti­
m ents. I am prodded in the back by a trade union
leader and prom pted to ask the M ahatm a if he
really believes th a t India should have no factories.
He evades the point. H e says th a t factories are
Satanic. T he m eeting breaks up, and on the way
home I rem em ber th a t his answer had been merely
a quotation from William B lake’s “ Jerusalem .”
Now, this other picture: G andhi is without his
shawl. H e sits on a m ud floor and he is hot, be­
cause this is India. H e is sipping a glass of milk
and talking about love. T he love he speaks about
is not of the philosophical kind: it is fleshly, and
forbidden, love between a girl and a young man.
T he young m an squats in front of him, in tears.
H e has become enamored of a girl who is not of
his caste. He and she wish to m arry but both fam­
ilies have refused their consent, with horror. H e
w ants to strike a blow for sexual freedom (like
Shelley), to break the bonds of caste, and to elope.
H e is a nobody, a governm ent employee of no great
rank. He does not know G andhi but he has come to
G andhi’s mud hut, told his story at the door, and
been adm itted. Outside, in the sunshine, waits a
foreign correspondent of the New York Times, be­
cause the world is at war, and India is boiling with
rebellion. T he correspondent is not interested in
love affairs, but G andhi is. T he correspondent
waits, therefore, in the sun, while Gandhi, sipping
his milk, gives th e young m an advice.
“ You must m arry her, but you m ust not elope.”
“ No, G andhiji. W hat shall 1 do, th en ?”
“ You m ust convince your m other th a t she is
wrong.”
“ But . . .”
“ And then you m ust convince the girl’s m other.”
“ B ut G andhiji . . .”
“ And then, m y son,” and here the old m an smiles
enchantingly, “ they will both give you their bless­
ings and you will live happily ever after.”
“ B ut it is impossible, Gandhiji! T hey are igno­
ra n t; they are prejudiced . . .”
“ M y son,” says the old m an, and now he does not
smile at all, “ you must not speak to me of your
mother in such words.”
G andhi says nothing more, and sorrowfully the
young m an goes away.
B ut the M ahatm a, disappointing as he was, was
also right. T he m others were, after titanic labors,
convinced, and the unorthodox m arriage did take
place. It is strange, now, to look back and see th a t
Gandhi, at that time, was the only man in India
who believed that Indians, including Indian women,
 44 THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY
like the rest of the civilized world, had their m easure
of good, plain, common sense, and th a t this would
suffice them to solve their own problem s in their
own way.
3 In d ia, we m ust rem ind ourselves — is head over
G a n d h i knew th a t it would take m any years for
the people of India to learn their lesson. After all,
he had taken half a lifetime to learn his. But now
they have learned it. T he first im portant book to
be w ritten since Indians began to think for them ­
selves shows this very well. Of its class, it is a
m asterpiece.
I t is over a q u arter of a million words in length,
and sells for th e reasonable price of $1.00. 4’he title
is The General Report of the Committee of Direction
o f the A ll-India Rural Credit Survey, published by
M ahdav D as for the R eserve B ank of India, Bom ­
bay. It is about agriculture, and very fittingly: four
out of every five Indians who earn their living do
so on the land. T he typical Indian, therefore, is a
peasant. T h at is w hy M ah atm a G andhi dressed like
one; he w ent half-naked not because, as Sir W inston
Churchill thought, he was a fakir, b u t because he
was a dem ocratic politician.
E verybody in the West has a m ental picture of
th e In d ian peasant. I t is generally a wrong one.
T he Indian peasant is, according to this picture, an
unfortunate being who is either starving, or living
on th a t picturesque addition to th e standard
weights and measures, “ a handful of rice.” A m o­
m en t’s thought will show th a t this picture is purely
literary: a starving m an cannot till fields with a
plow and a yoke of buffaloes, nor can he do a hard
d ay ’s work under a boiling sun on “ a handful of
rice.” Sometimes, it is true, he starves, when there
is a famine. B u t famines, like strikes and epidem­
ics in th e W est, are fortunately not, the norm al
state of affairs.
N aturally, therefore, the first tru ly Indian book
begins by m aking short work of this legend. Very
nearly one half of the whole population of India,
it tells us, are proprietors of their own land. India,
then, is not only a country of peasants: it is a coun­
try of landed proprietors. I th in k this a useful
fact to remem ber, especially for people living in
rented rooms in London, Paris, N ew York, and
Chicago. It is difficult to feel a gush of sentim ent
about landlowners, and the w riters of this report
are very unsentim ental.
T hey agree, however, th a t th e Indian peasant is
poor. B u t here again, we should be cautious. T he
poverty of the In d ian peasant is not the bread-line
hopelessness of the unemployed in a slum p; it is not
the degrading and endemic w ant of th e N eapolitan
slum-dweller. T he In d ian peasant m ay not eat
copiously, b u t he eats enough at m ost times, and
more th an enough when tim es are good. “ H e is
poor,” as this report says, “ but he is not ban k ru p t.”
H is trouble is th a t a peasant needs capital as
m uch as a shopkeeper or a businessm an. Like m ost
shopkeepers and businessm en (or householders, for
th a t m atler) anyw here in th e world, he borrows it.
Unlike m ost businessmen, he borrows it from
m oneylenders, and the result is th a t he — half of
heels in debt.
T he B ritish R aj knew this and took steps to p u t
things right. I t set up cooperatives. These, run
largely by the leading villagers, lent m oney at easy
rates of interest. I t was an excellent plan; foreign
experts congratulated th e R aj upon it, and th e
R aj, not relying on foreigners, cont inually congratu ­
lated itself. U nfortunately, th e result of this plan
was th a t th e peasants rem ained, w ith peasant ob­
stinacy, as m uch in debt to the m oneylenders as
ever. W hy?
T he R aj sent out team s of In d ian s to investigate.
These, tearing them selves aw ay from robin-red­
breasts and spring dawns, came back w ith th e con­
fusing inform ation th a t, according to th e villagers,
th e scheme was a great success w ith all concerned;
th e cooperatives were very popular and th e co-
operators were very grateful. In some instances,
villagers from miles around banded together and
waved flags to dem onstrate th eir contentm en t.
Som etim e later the R aj found th a t th e peasants
were no t only still in d ebt to th e m oneylenders, b u t
th ey owed m ore th a n e v e r: worse, th e cooperatives,
while flourishing in annual reports, were n o t lending
anybody any money.
T here the m a tte r rested, a m ystery — one of th e
m any such which were held up to young civil serv­
ants, fresh o u t from E ngland, as warnings of th e
difficulties in dealing w ith Indians. T hey never, it
was said, told the tru th .
B ut th e editors o f this report sent investigators,
properly trained according to m odern m ethods of
inquiry; asked for the tru th and finally got it.
T he Irouble, th ey found, was th a t by devious
m eans the m oneylenders had m ade themselves heads
o f the governm ent cooperatives, and then th ey had
quietly, but efficiently, wrecked them .
How had this chicanery escaped th e atten tio n of
th e R aj and its investigators? T he answer is sim ple:
it was a purely In d ian fraud and this th e English
adm inistrators, installed in th eir offices in rem ote
Delhi, could not foresee.
Now the authors of this' report had learned th e
lesson which G andhi had ta u g h t the young m an who
had a m arriage problem . G andhi had pointed o u t
th a t however elevated th e young m an ’s ideals
m ight be, he was an Indian living in an In d ian com ­
m unity, and therefore the first thing th a t he m ust
try was to solve his problem in the context of his
com m unity. T he authors of the report used, th a t
is to say, their common sense.
T h ey found th at the countryside was dom inated
by caste, and in particu lar by a group of th e upper
 THE W AY T I I E NEW
levels in the caste system. The moneylender and
the landlord, the head of the cooperative and its
officials, had all the same caste interest, even when
they were not all the same man, as they frequently
were. They hung together, not only against the
peasant, but against the government and against
its investigators; in short, they hung together to
defeat anybody and everybody but themselves.
They even extended their solidarity to the towns;
when the peasant wished to market his produce in a
wider field, the middlemen and the wholesalers
worked hand in glove with the same, village tyrants
that he suffered under at home.
The Indian caste system rouses, I find, much in­
dignation in liberal Western circles, and I think
that I should explain the peasant’s dilemma in terms
which may be received more calmly. I, for instance,
was born in England. I belong to the middle castes
—or middle class, as it is called in the West. My
subcaste is that of a writer. Now writers may eat
at the same table as other members of the middle
class, and go to the same religious edifices (or
churches) as they. But they are not considered (as
a subcaste) financially sound. Should 1 wish to
borrow money, 1 cannot do so from the normal
moneylenders to the middle classes, who are a sub­
caste known as bank managers. 1 may choose a
member of this subcaste who is personally friendly
toward me and has no contemptuous feelings to­
ward my caste division, but he will not lend me
any money, because it would be against the rules
of his own caste community. There will be com­
plete solidarity among all of his caste brethren.
None of them will lend me any money.
This drives me to appeal to a lower division of
my own caste, the sub-subcaste of publishers. These,
having me at their mercy, will lend me money
(called an advance) on condition that I sign a bond
giving them four fifths of the usufruct of my prop­
erty. Worse, thej7 will distrain upon that small
part of my property that remains to me without
any application to the courts whatsoever, until
my loan is fully repaid. The reader may well feel
that this is a scandalous state of affairs; but, on the
other hand, he will also notice that it is taken very
calmly by everyone concerned. The reason for this
is that, in its way, it works.
It is just so with the Indian caste system in the
villages. It is scandalous; yet in its way it works,
and that is why it is taken so calmly.
But the Indian peasant, like most Western au­
thors, remains poor and chronically in debt. It is
vital that he be freed from this tyranny of money­
lenders and caste solidarity. How can this be done?
By abolishing the caste system? That is a noble­
sounding answer. Fortunately, it is not the way
that the new India thinks.
Applying the lesson that Gandhi had taught the
young man, the authors of this report do not pro­
pose a head-on assault upon a national institution.
IN D IA THINKS 45
Instead, they propose to go round it. To do this,
they call in the state. The state, they say, can set
up an organization which can by-pass the caste
solidarity of the villages, and thus by-pass the
moneylender. It can open banks for agricultural
credit, to which the peasant can go, openly and
without fear, and borrow the money he wants.
And here there is a surprise in store for those who
are quite certain they know how Indians think and
that Indians think like the Communists. Their
state machine will not take over the land, or dragoon
the moneylenders, or collectivize the peasants, or
redistribute income. It will act as a battleship once
acted when Britain ruled the waves. Its very pres­
ence will keep order. The state bank will have large
resources but no compulsory pow'ers whatsoever.
It will be there to lend money. It does not propose
to interfere in the lives of the people at all. Few
committees in the West recommending government
assistance to the needy have been so modest in their
estimate of the powers that they need.
They add one further proposal. It is something
of a paradox and wholly Indian. To counteract the
machinations of the caste system, they propose to
set up what is virt ually a caste of their own. Cadres
of young men are to be specially trained in an ex­
traordinary and, I think, very imaginative course.
They will first be sent to the villages, where they
will learn to be good farmers, then to schools where
they will learn to be sound bankers. These banker-
farmers will then be dispersed to rural centers, full
of a caste mystique of their own, to administer the
new scheme, on very moderate salaries. As I have
shown, they will not have the power to become
tyrants; and it is unlikely, on the other hand, that
many moneylenders will enroll themselves in such
an austere and devoted band.
On the 11th of May of this year the necessary
legislation was passed and the scheme is under way.
A. D. Gorwala, 1). II. Gadgil, B. Venkatappiah,
N. S. R. Sastry, and Mahdav Das are the men who
have provided us with this excellent sample of the
new7, realistic, and pragmatical Indian mind. They
are all economists. For those in the West who are
sure that Indians have exotic spiritual gifts to offer
the world, this fact wall come as something of a
disappointment. But such disappointments will be­
come, I am afraid, more frequent as the new India
reveals itself. Indians have another burden besides
that laid on them by Macaulay. All countries have
their religious absurdities, but India has had more
than most — so many, in fact, that she has con­
sistently exported them in theshapeof swamis. The
West is not to be blamed if it has formed its opinion
of India from men such as these. But it is my
pleasure and my privilege to draw your attention,
instead, to Messrs. Gorwala, Gadgil, Venkatappiah,
Sastry, and Das. I have not met the first four per­
sons, but the last is my cousin, and I am happy to
assure you that he has no spiritual gifts at all.
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