Criminals and Babies
WIDELY though these two books differ, they yet have pointi enough in common to justify a joint review. In each of them a whimsical title gives little indication of their message. Each of them, in its different way, has a quiet charm of style. And both of them flood with the light of first-hand knowledge some aspects of Indian life which are utterly unknown to most of us and find no place in political controversy. " In our city," says Miss Wilson, " we don't talk about the relation of dominions to the Empire, about legislative reform, or policies of primary education. For these and the kindred silly- subjects which occupy men, we care nothing. Our topic is Babies, just Babies. And marriage, of course, as the ways and means thereof."
But let " Al Carthill " bring his contribution first. He has been chafing, it seems, under the unjust suspicion of being a pessimist, and in The Company of Cain he sets out to demonstrate the optimism which he disguised, not unsuccess- fully, in The Lost Dominion. His way of doing it is to narrate the stories of some dozen macabre crimes which came under his notice as a judge in India. Round them in each case he weaves a study, sympathetic rather than condemnatory, of the psychology of the criminals ; and the whole is imbedded in a discursive, and often learned, series of reflections upon our weak human nature and its origins. The crimes them- selves are of types which old Indian officials will readily recognize. , Some of them are not exclusively oriental : Shylock, for example, always runs the risk of reprisals, though they are not always so appalling as the death which befel Chattarbhuj. Others, like the murder of little Lakshmi by two young brides as a sacrifice to ensure them against sterility, have their roots in primeval superstitions which are still widespread and powerful.
On our success in dealing with the detection and punish- ment of Cain's comfianions, " Al C.arthill ", writes with authority. He has pungent things to say about the attitude of the Indian public to crime. The jury system, like most of us who have seen it in operation, he regards as " wholly out of place in India and noxious." Of legal reform he despairs : " the various reforms introduced into the penal law in the last few years have all -been in the direction of rendering trials more lengthy, more inconclusive, and more profitable to the legal profession." No newborn optimism here !
Miss Wilson's book, she tells us, is " simply a story about a few women and .myself." per readers will give, it higher rank ; for it is the second fascinating study which she _has • " " •
published of Indian womanhood. The topic is one that has been recently thrust into angry and unhappy prominence : but with Miss Wilson's pictures no one, could be angry, they are drawn from life with understanding and sympathy. Had she cared to point a moral, she would probably have agreed with " Al Carthill "
" The loss of man-power to a nation in war is a grievous loss, but what about the loss of woman-power by misuse ? . India might perhaps do great things if woman was there the prize and not the burden, 'the deity and not the sacrifice."
There is no moralizing, however, with Miss Wilson. She takes us straight ,through forbidden doors into the women's quarters in .an orthodox Moslem household in the Punjab. ; she shoWs us the daily life of the occupants; and she leaVes us to our ()Wit conclusions. Of all her clOistered heroines the most vivid is young Binds, with her transparent veil of purple and gold, her cherry-red silk trousers, her grey eyes, and her soft and shapely face. Brought in as junior to a barren wife, she did her duty only too well, dying at the
birth of her fifth child before she was eighteen.
It is not all pathos in Trousers of Taffeta. There is humour and an almost photographic power of observation and description. It makes us shrink again under the insufferable heat and shattering glare, smell again the " olfactory Babel ''
of the bazaars, hear again the shrill chatter of idle women.
But behind it all is the infinite tenderness of a woman who has worked among her Indian sisters, to allay their pains and ease the burden of vicious traditions. It will be a long time before India can afford to do without Margaret Wilson
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