434 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
The scandal soon became open and notorious; and the President and Council at Surat wrote to the Deputy Governor and Council at Bombay, saying : “Whereas you give us notice that some of the women are grown scandalous to our native religion and Government, we require you in the Honourable Company’s name to give them all fair warning that they do apply themselves to a more sober and Christian conversation : otherwise the sentence is that they shall be deprived totally of their liberty to go abroad, and fed with bread and water, till they are embarked on board ship for England.” [1]
How bad were the morals and behaviour of the early Christians can be gathered from the three following instances which are taken from contemporary records.
Captain Williamson in his ‘Indian Vade Mecum’ published about the year 1809 says—
“I have known various instances of two ladies being conjointly domesticated, and one of an elderly military character who solaced himself with no less than sixteen of all sorts and sizes. Being interrogated by a friend as to what he did with such a member, “Oh”, replied he, ‘I give them little rice, and let them run about’. This same gentleman when paying his addresses to an elegant young woman lately arrived from Europe, but who was informed by the lady at whose house she was residing, of the state of affairs, the description closed with ‘Pray, my dear, how should you like to share a sixteenth of Major ?”
Such was the disorderliness and immorality among Englishmen in India. No wonder that the Indians marvelled whether the British acknowledged any God and believed in any system of morality. When asked what he thought of Christianity and Christians an Indian is reported to have said in his broken English—“Christian religion, devil religion; Christian much drunk; Christian much do wrong; much beat, much abuse others”—and who can say that this judgment was contrary to facts ?
It is true that England herself was not at the relevant time over burdened with morality. The English people at home were but little distinguished for the purity of their lives and there was a small chance of British virtue dwarfed and dwindled at home, expending on foreign soil. As observed by Mr. Kaye [2] “The courtly licentiousness of the Restoration had polluted the whole land. The stamp of Whitehall was upon the currency of our daily lives; and it went out upon our adventurers in the Company’s ships, and was not, we may be sure, to be easily effaced in a heathen land”. Whatever be the excuse for this immorality of Englishmen in the 17th and 18th Century the fact
1 Kaye, Christianity in India, p. 106. 2 Ibid., p. 44.