A Forgotten Ambassador in Cairo, page 34
The slightest question of racial superiority or inferiority was, in the opinion of the Supreme Court, far from its thought to suggest. It stated that it was merely suggesting a racial difference which, in the case of a Hindu, “is of such a character and extent that the great body of our people instinctively recognize it and reject the thought of assimilation.” Conclusive evidence, in the Court’s opinion, of the “Congressional attitude of opposition to Asiatic immigration generally” was constituted by the decision of Congress in the Act of February, 1917, to exclude from admission into this country all natives of Asia within designated limits of latitude and longitude, including the whole of India. This, the Court found, was “persuasive of a similar attitude toward Asiatic naturalization as well, since it is not likely that Congress would be willing to accept, as citizens, a class of persons whom it rejects as immigrants.”
The reason for the wide-spread interest in the Supreme Court ruling throughout the State of California is most clearly put in a dispatch in the San Francisco Chronicle, which considers the decision “as important as the recent ruling holding Japanese ineligible to citizenship”:
“While recent figures as to the acreage held by Hindus in California have not been compiled, the Japanese Exclusion League announced yesterday that the 1919 figures issued by the State Board of Control show 2,600 Hindus residing in California at that time, and 2,099 acres of land actually owned by them. In addition to that, Hindu farmers were operating under leaseholds and contracts upon 86,340 acres of the most fertile land in the State. Since 1919 the Hindu population has increased amazingly, and their ownership and farming of lands increased accordingly, the Exclusion League cited, although definite statistics are lacking.”
Says an editorial in the Sacramento Bee :
“The decision of the United States Supreme Court, that Hindus are not eligible to American citizenship, is most welcome to California.
“The decree in a test case brings Hindu holders of land in this State, and likewise all descendants of Hindus, within the mandatory provisions of the California anti-alien land law.
“There must be no more leasing or sale of land to such immigrants from India.”
From the news columns of this paper it appears that steps are being taken at once to escheat the recently purchased property of Hindus to the State, upon the contention that they are holding it unlawfully. Proceedings of this nature, we read, are being brought by the district attorneys of Sacramento, Sutter, Colusa and Glenn counties, and possibly several others. The decision, they say, will particularly affect Hindus who have been leasing rice land in the Sacramento and Imperial Valleys for many years. The Attorney General of California, Mr. U.S. Webb, stated in an interview in the San Francisco Chronicle that Hindus will be forbidden from farming these lands upon leaseholds or contracts. This will affect large tracts of land in the interior valleys, “where the menacing spread of Hindus holding our lands will cease.”
The San Francisco Chronicle sums up one block of sentiment thus:
“We have already in this country all the race problems we can handle. We want no more and will not have them…We want no immigrants which recognize caste. The low-caste Hindus are degraded and the high castes made this country a center of agitation for their domestic feuds. In their way they are as competent as we, but their ways, their traditions, their thought, are not ours.”
Appendix II
India and World Peace
THE FOLLOWING ADDRESS was delivered by Mr Syud Hossain at a dinner of the American Women’s Independence Committee, held at the Palace Hotel, San Francisco, California:
Toastmaster: Mr. John D. Barry (ofThe San Francisco Call and Post).
Mr. Barry: Friends: It is a great pleasure for me to preside at this dinner and to have the honor of introducing our guest and our speaker. The occasion has many happy associations for me. It makes me think of the Hindu friends I have had here for the past dozen years of my life. It makes me think of my friend, Har Dayal, who, for many years, lived here and was a great figure here. I occasionally get a letter from Har Dayal, now in Sweden, as you all know, where he has made a place for himself. Indeed, I am very proud to know a man like Har Dayal; I am proud to have the acquaintance of a man who can go through all the things through which he went, and can go into a strange country like Sweden, and, in a few months, master the language and make a place for himself in the life of that country, as he has done in Sweden, and go on and be the figure that he was intended to be, that is, a leader, which he will always be in any place where he may happen to be. And we think, of course, that he is even more than that—we think him one of the most inspiring figures in the world today. Those of us who know him and know his spirit and know what he stands for, have a memory that is surely one of the stimulating things in all our lives. So there is that association for me that I treasure.
Then, too, I am very proud of my association with a man like Mr. Syud Hossain, of my own profession. Mr. Syud Hossain is a newspaper man of practical experience; he is a newspaper man who made for himself in India a great position. He was one of the most important forces there, a leader in journalism with difficulties confronting him that were very great, difficulties that required a high courage and great tact. Since that time, he has been doing very distinguished work in English journalism and in our own publications. Most of you doubtless know what he has done here and what he has done elsewhere. You know about the lectures that he has delivered, in which he has tried to make people understand the principles and the forces behind the struggle in India.
To me one of the saddest things that has happened during the past year is the extinction of publications like the “Freeman,”—which give spirits like Mr. Hossain an opportunity to express them- selves and to reach other spirits throughout the country who are trying to keep alive that principle for which the United States has stood, a clear, courageous, humanitarian thinking—keeping alive the old ideals. For a few years past it has looked as if those old ideals of ours might perish, as if they might become so unfashionable that people would forget that they were once something to be looked up to. Yet we know, from the Fact of a man like Mr. Hossain coming to us to explain the situation, that they will not perish, for he will tell us, I know, that no matter what the appearance may be, there are people far away in India, indeed, that there are people all over the world, who feel the old veneration and the old love for those principles.
We are in this country in a very unique, and I think a very terrible situation. New fashions are fastening themselves on us. You of course know how easy it is to be controlled by fashions. It used to be the fashion for us to stand for the principles of equality and free speech. It used to be the fashion to say that nothing was definitely closed in the realm of ideas, that nothing could be closed—we must have a clear field all the time. Whatever else happens, we said, the field must be kept clear; because we know that life is not a static thing, and that thought is not a static thing, that we cannot capture those forces and say, “You stay here. You are here for all time, and you stay put.” We know there is nothing so terrible as that. No one wants an idea, if that idea is clamped down, if one is to say, “these are the ideas that must stand, and must stand forever.” We know how false that is, and we know how dangerous it is, and we know that the merest intimation that there is existent any right to suppress freedom of spirit, freedom of thinking, is something that we will look upon as the most dangerous of all things.
And when we have an apostle, like Mr. Hossain, we welcome him in our midst, and we are glad to have him here, to arouse us to the feeling of the great importance of our heritage. We have stood as the one great country, representing freedom of thinking. Now we are in danger of becoming the country that most conspicuously restrains the freedom of thinking and the country that is taking a most ungenerous attitude toward thinking. So that at this time, of all times, we want to marshal all our forces, to strike for the greatest kind of freedom, the kind of freedom that transcends even freedom of action, and that is the freedom of the mind. Mr. Hossain is going to tell us about India, and he is not going to confine himself merely to India—he is going to show that those forces that are behind the struggle of the people that we know and the people who are so ably represented in men like Har Dayal and who are so finely represented in the Hindu types that we have in our midst, are great forces, and that therein lies the hope of a world peace. And he is going to show us that those types represent forces that are not merely national, but are universal.
So it is with very great pleasure and great pride that I introduce to you Mr. Syud Hossain.
(Applause)
Address by Mr. Syud Hossain
Mr. Barry, Ladies and Gentlemen: I should like to begin by making my acknowledgments to the American Women’s Independence Committee for this great honor and privilege that they have accorded me, of allowing me to partake of their hospitality on this occasion. If anything could have added to my sense of gratification in a personal way tonight, it is the fact that we have presiding over this function a man who is known to all as a friend of India and a friend of India only because he is a friend of humanity and of the principle of humanity.
And, side by side with Mr. Barry, it does me good to realize that there are a number of other American men and women who belong to that category—what one would fain wish to believe the category of the typical American. That species, ladies and gentlemen, is, fortunately, not extinct yet, pessimists to the contrary notwithstanding. (Laughter)
I feel more particularly gratified and honored, also, at finding sitting at this table Mrs. Frederick Colburn, who assumed the fearful responsibility of sponsoring my first appearance in San Francisco last year. As I was telling her earlier in the evening, I am grateful and relieved to find she has survived the ordeal. (Laughter) But then, she is the sort of person who thrives on ordeals. They apparently agree with her. (Laughter)
And then, one has the inspiration derived from being among friends. I can assure you that that sensation is one to be prized and treasured.
I have been traveling rather extensively in these United States. Up to now, I have only managed to cover twenty-two of the states of the Union. As you may imagine, my experiences have been varied and exciting, as well as most instructive. Some day I hope to write my American impressions. But it will not be until I am safely on the other side of the three-mile limit. (Laughter) Meanwhile, one learns as one goes along. And I can assure you that it is not every day that one experiences the exhilaration of being surrounded by a company such as has met together here this evening.
Talking about India is not altogether a simple task, even though one happens to come from that country. One has to adjust oneself to one’s audience. It is not merely that one is confronted with the fact that a great many people do not know enough about India—that is only the lesser evil. An infinitely greater evil is that so many people seem to know so much about India that does not happen to be so. (Laughter)
In the course of my wanderings, one thing that has come constantly into my mind is this: Admittedly this country today represents, as the phrase goes, the best educated democracy in the world, You have more education in this country, more facilities for education, more of the mechanical means and resources of education, than any other country in the world. Side by side with that admitted fact, we have, however, the further fact that the state of knowledge respecting other nations and countries that obtains among the masses of the people of this country is not commensurate with the facilities for education that undoubtedly exist. That is a paradoxical condition to which one is called upon to adjust oneself in traveling through the United States. We may be sure that that is a situation which will not and cannot last. With every day that passes the world is being knit closer together than at any other period known to history or to the memory of man. Only the other day we were reading that a speech delivered in New York had been heard in London. And in this morning’s paper, I see that a concert given in California was heard over the radio in Australia. The world, then, ts shrinking, is being brought nearer and nearer together in its different parts, so far as the physical plane of things is concerned.
But it does not seem as if intellectually, and, what is more important, spiritually, the world is achieving a unity of outlook or an identity of sentiment in anything like the same proportion or the same ratio in which physical distance is being obliterated. Certainly, in this country, one cannot escape the impression to which I have referred, viz., that the means and the facilities for education that are available to the masses of this country do not seem yet to have produced results commensurate with that investment or that opportunity. The heart of America is still insular. The East, more particularly, is a sealed book to the masses.
Now, to take the category of people to whom I referred as illustrating the lesser evil, that is to say, people who do not know enough about the outside world, especially the Eastern world. In my own experience, the classic example is that of the lady who asked me if there were any mountains in India. I modestly admitted that we had the Himalayas, which, I believe, compare favorably with any other mountains. (Laughter) But, leaving that class, there is the other which knows a whole catalogue of things about India, of whose existence I was not able to be aware while in India. (Laughter) I have had to come out of India to learn about those things. So that, as you may see, one has to make one’s way rather carefully and warily through the topic of “India”. And of course, one realizes that the situation is not singular or unique as regards India. But I may say that very few know enough about India, although we are not the only people, the only nation, that labors under that handicap. I think it would be a nice point to determine how far the popular impressions that obtain in this country in regard to the other nations are any more accurate, any more intelligent, or any more flattering than the impressions that obtain respecting India. Would you not agree with me, for instance, if I said that nine people out of ten in America, if they think of China at all, think of China as a land, mainly, if not exclusively, populated by “laundrymen”? (Laughter)
That is the popular conception of China, generally speaking—not merely that it is a land of laundrymen, but that the nation apparently manages to subsist mainly by taking in each other’s washing. (Laughter) In the same way, in popular imagination, India is a land overrun by snake charmers, by fortune-tellers, and other picturesque people of that kind. And I have also found that a most attractive aspect of India to many minds is the exciting illusion that India is a land about evenly populated by elephants and cobras. (Laughter)
That, without exaggeration, is the state of public impression in regard to India in many quarters, and one has to adjust oneself to those peculiarities and to the expectations that those peculiarities induce in the popular mind, when one stands up to speak on the subject of India. However, these examples and illustrations have only an academic interest on this occasion. I haven’t the least doubt, and I say it in all sincerity, that there are men and women present at this gathering, scholars and specialists, who could teach me many things about India. This, too, is America. (Applause)
I want to speak about India today, not as an isolated country or as an isolated phenomenon. I want, at least this evening, not to appear in the role of a special pleader for India. What I would prefer to do is to try and visualize that problem of which India is a part. I want you to think not only of India, but to think of that larger whole of which India is a part. And then, when we have succeeded in visualizing this whole, we have further to relate it to far and away the most vital, the most outstanding problem that confronts all men and women today in this country or anywhere else in the world, and that is the problem of world peace.
You have a great deal of discussion going on in this country on the subject of world peace. I think it is a very hopeful thing that there should be that discussion. At the same time it is perfectly clear that one of the outstanding aspirations of the masses of the people of this country is for world peace. But you have only to analyze the current discussions on world peace to realize that many people who talk of world peace are really not thinking of the problem of world peace at all. They address themselves, in the vast majority of cases, to only some conventional aspect of this vast problem of world peace, and they try to discuss it in terms that inevitably frustrate anything like a satisfactory approach to the question of world peace, let alone any solution of it.
World peace, ladies and gentlemen, is not a problem that is concentrated in the future of Franco-German relations. Neither is world peace a problem of the Pacific,—of Japan, or of California, or of the Philippines, as some preoccupied publicists would suggest. If I may say so, the problem of world peace is not exhausted even by a consideration of the situation in Europe. If you want to think about world peace, and if you want to talk about world peace, and if you want to help forward the solution of the problem of world peace, in the very first instance, you will have to visualize that problem in its entirety.
How many people are doing it or wish to do it in this country? It is idle to talk of world peace when solid chunks of the habitable area of the globe are completely shut out from one’s vision of the world. How many people visualize the world as a whole? How many people visualize or attempt to visualize even the East as a whole? Nine people out of ten, when they think of the East, are probably thinking of Japan, or China, or the Philippines. Those, countries are undoubtedly an integral part of the East. But also they represent but the fringe of the East. The East, in your American phrase, is a very much bigger proposition. There is not only Japan and China, but beyond China is India, and beyond India is Persia, and beyond Persia are the Biblical lands, Syria and Palestine and Mesopotamia, and beyond those is Arabia, and beyond Arabia are Turkey and Asia Minor and Egypt, and beyond Egypt are Tripoli and Tunis and Algeria, and so right on to Morocco, lapped by the Atlantic. So that the East extends right from the Pacific to the Atlantic. And in any consideration of the problem of world peace, it is idle to try to discuss it rationally or fruitfully, unless one is prepared to focus one’s vision upon the problem as a whole. It is most important that this should be done.
