So the ape has his fling.  And the tiger is lurking not far behind.  In each of those fires it is the proper thing to roast a cock, throwing him in alive.  If the fire is a great one, a general village fire, then it is still greater fun to throw in a live goat.  But the worst of these ceremonies are happily going out of fashion.  For the English law is stern, and the sahibs have strange and quixotic notions about cruelty to animals, and although they are far away on tour at this season and no native officer would voluntarily interfere with an immemorial custom, still the tiger walks in fear in these days and the Koli is often content to roast a coconut as proxy for a cock or a goat.

XVIII

INDIAN POVERTY

THE STANDARD OF LIVING

When Mr. Keir Hardie was in India he satisfied himself that the standard of living among the working classes in India has been deteriorating.  This is interesting psychologically, and one would like to know by what means Mr. Keir Hardie attained to satisfaction on such a great and important question.  Doubtless he had the ungrudging assistance of Mr. Chowdry.

The poverty of India has for a good many years been a handy weapon, like the sailor’s belaying pin, for everyone who wanted to “have at” our administration of that country; and if “a lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies,” then this one must be as black as Tartarus, for it is indubitably more than half a truth.  The common field-labourer in India is about as poor as man can be.  He is very nearly as poor as a sparrow.  His hut, built by himself, is scarcely more substantial or permanent than the sparrow’s nest, and his clothing compares very unfavourably with the sparrow’s feathers.  The residue of his worldly goods consists of a few cooking pots and, it must be admitted, a few ornaments on his wife.

But a sparrow is usually well fed and quite happy.  It has no property simply because it wants none.  If it stored honey like the busy bee, or nuts like the thrifty squirrel, it would be a prey to constant anxiety and stand in hourly danger of being plundered of its possessions, and perhaps killed for the sake of them.  Therefore to speak of a Hindu’s poverty as if it certainly implied want and unhappiness is mere misrepresentation born of ignorance.  In all ages there have been men so enamoured of the possessionless life that they have abandoned their worldly goods and formed brotherhoods pledged to lifelong poverty.  The majority of religious beggars in India belong to brotherhoods of this kind, and are the sturdiest and best-fed men to be seen in the country, especially in time of famine.