CHARACTER BUILDING IN KASHMIR 1900- 1908

C. E. Tyndale-Biscoe  penned down in his book the character building in Kashmir, his ideology was to about an institution where citizens are made.

The boy must be taught not only to think imperially, but to act imperially. He mentioned how, how Brahman priests and Muslims resisted while implementing his ideology about the character building.

About eighteen years ago I cannot remember the exact date, for so many struggles have taken place since that time that Kashmir was visited by a very severe epidemic of cholera, which carried off its thousands of citizens, as it always does in unsanitary and filthy cities. We were expecting a visitation of plague, we thought that the time had arrived for the school to aid the doctors and municipality by waking up the city to its danger.

To our appeal over three hundred teachers and boys responded at once.

Our line of attack was as follows : Firstly, to ascertain the numbers of householders who were willing to receive a visit from volunteer "engineers," who would drain their front or back 35- 36 yards, and fill with river sand their private lakes of liquid filth. This canvassing revealed to us that seventy householders were ready for this "spring cleaning."

Our next duty was to approach the municipal officer, to inform him of the wishes of the seventy householders, and ask his help. This officer promised us his blessing, and with it he offered us the use of all the implements needed for the task, which included spades, shovels, and picks, with baskets and cargo boats for conveying the sand from the sand banks in the river to the death traps in the city.

 We had arranged to start on Monday afternoon, teachers and boys wishing to commence operations as soon as possible. But when I arrived at the school that morning and was addressing the boys on the subject, I saw at once that something had gone wrong.

Brightness on the faces of the boys had disappeared, the  enthusiasm of the staff had given place to the hang-dog expression to use a very expressive Indian word, they were utterly "gabrowed." So I could not forbear asking them if they all thought they were about to be hanged, which remark usually cheers them up. I did not realize that I had really hit the mark, for they explained to me that all those householders who had expressed their willingness for a visit from our engineer corps had changed their minds absolutely, and further, that the Brahman priests had heard of our intentions and had strictly forbidden any Brahman, whether teacher or boy, from undertaking this most unholy and degrading work, and threatening instant   excommunication should they disobey. 

The whole school looked at me for an answer, if any, to this Pontifical Bull. I must confess that it all came upon me as a thunderclap, as I had not prepared for this non-possumus 

To show you how strong the Brahman priests are in their conservatism, one summer recently the municipality wished to clean up a most filthy alley and pave it with bricks. The priests, to prevent any such new-fangled innovation, lay down in this filthy fairway so that the reformers would have to remove their bodies, or pave the alley over them. 

The priests, of course, won the day, as no member of the municipality would dare touch the sacred Brahman bodies ; so this alley remains to this day, as it always has been, a " Nehushtan."

It is these people who spend many days in the year on pilgrimages to the gods and goddesses who are supposed to live in the springs and caves in the mountains. Would that pilgrimages to those glorious snowy heights, and the entrancing beauty of the forests and streams, made them appreciate cleanliness and purity ! But it is not so, for their eyes are still blinded and their hearts darkened back to hard facts, the struggle of years ago the Pontifical Bull.

I made answer to that Bull by telling my teachers to go and interview those holy men, and inform them that we were attacking filth and not religion, and therefore there was no need for their interference; but we would be glad of their co-operation in the matter of teaching the citizens how to save themselves from deadly visitations.

I am sorry to say that my words did not drive away the gloom, for they knew their priests better than I did. They went to their classes with sad countenances. I did not then fully realize how serious the matter was for them, and how tight a grip the priests had over their people.

School was over at 3.30, when the boat containing all the digging tools was at the school steps. With the help of two boatmen I brought up several spades and picks opposite the school entrance, so that the boys could choose their weapon when they came out of school. No one dared come forward. I stood there for some time looking at them, with my coat off and a spade across my shoulder. The boys in the meantime were crowding at the door and windows, and I wondered how long this comic opera would continue. At last one plucky fellow stepped out and shouldered a pick, and then a second brave.

We three stood in a row waiting for others to join us, but we were doomed to disappointment.

For, all of a sudden, the boys raised a great shout, and came out at the rush, many of them covering their heads with their blankets (it was early spring), so that I should not be able to recognize them, and fled out of the school compound, passing us as if we had been lepers.

I was justly proud of the two who stood by my side Brahmans, both of them. We proceeded to the boat which was to take us to our battlefield, which happened to be the compound belonging to the C.E.Z.M.S. dispensary.

As we passed under one of the seven cumbersome wooden bridges which span the river Jhelum the crowd who had assembled on it to watch us hooted, whistled, and yelled at us as a Kashmir crowd know how. We three stood up and returned them three cheers, and before long we were out of range of their noise. We sped down stream in silence, doing a good deal of thinking, as we expected a warm reception when have landed ; but contrary to our expectation we were unmolested, and walked through the streets with our tools to the dumping ground, which we intended to drain, clean, and turn into a garden. As our march had been so peaceful we expected trouble at the dispensary compound, but we were wrong once more, for as we opened the door cautiously we found the place full of teachers and boys who had come by by-ways and alleys, away from the public gaze; they had come to help and not hinder.

It is true that fear was written on their grinning countenances; nevertheless they had come determined to face the music, which soon began in earnest. We commenced at once to dig holes in which to bury the filth, sweepers being procured to put it into the holes so that the Brahmans should not defile themselves by shovelling it up. The whole neighbourhood was on the buzz, the houses around were soon like a theatre pit, galleries, and all the rest of it a fitting frame for the sanitary comic opera which was being enacted, in this land of comic operas. All seats were taken, in windows, on walls and roofs, and every other place of vantage.

The crowd in the dirty street outside the compound wall was packed tight with towns-folk who could not see anything; so they amused themselves by yelling and calling upon the volunteers to come away. But as these orders were unheeded, they threatened all the dire punishments that they could think of, some of which they really carried into effect later on.

Well, the boys stuck to their job until dark, and then melted to their homes in the same manner as they had come from the school.

The work continued day by day, nevertheless, until we had carried out our programme and made that desert place blossom as the rose, literally and not metaphorically, for we drained it, brought in turf, and planted flowers and rose trees. For some reason or other the neighbours ceased to defile the dispensary, which had been freely giving medical aid to their suffering mothers, wives, and children.

But there was one brave man in the city (there may have been more, but they kept out of our way in those days), the tehsildar, or chief magistrate of the city, and a Brahman to boot, an old greybeard, whose only son attended our school.

This man came in all this hubbub to encourage me. He said : " In order to show the city that I am on your side, and that the tehsildar is not ashamed to use a spade, will you please give orders that my son shall always carry a spade across his shoulder when he rides home from school." So every day the towns-folk saw the strange sight of the tehsildar's son mounted on his smart little pony, sitting on a red and gold embroidered saddle-cloth, with a spade across his shoulder.

Not content with this, the tehsildar borrowed tools from us, and he and his servants drained his own compound. Thus the holy city learned that their chief magistrate, who by caste was a Brahman, was not ashamed to dig.( by C. E. Tyndale-Biscoe)