Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out"
Booth-Tucker, Commissioner, 1853-1929
English
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Below is a summary of Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out"
[Transcriber's note: The spelling irregularities of the original have
been preserved in this etext.]
DARKEST INDIA
BY COMMISSIONER BOOTH-TUCKER
A SUPPLEMENT TO GENERAL BOOTH'S
"IN DARKEST ENGLAND, AND THE WAY OUT."
1891
PREFACE.
The remarkable reception accorded to General Booth's "In Darkest England
and the Way Out," makes it hardly necessary for me to apologise for the
publication of the following pages, which are intended solely as an
introduction to that fascinating book, and in order to point out to
Indian readers that if a "cabhorse charter" is both desirable and
practicable for England (see page 19, Darkest England) a "bullock
charter" is no less urgently needed for India.
In doing this it is true that certain modifications and adaptations in
detail will require to be made. But the more carefully I consider the
matter, the more convinced do I become, that these will be of an
unimportant character and that the gospel of social salvation, which has
so electrified all classes in England, can be adopted in this country
almost as it stands.
After all, this is no new gospel, but simply a resurrection, or
resuscitation, of a too much neglected aspect of the original message
of "peace on earth, good will towards men," proclaimed at Bethlehem. It
has been the glory of Christianity, that it has in all ages and climes
acknowledged the universal brotherhood of man, and sought to relieve the
temporal as well as the spiritual needs of the masses. Of late years
that glory has in some degree departed, or at least been tarnished, not
because the efforts put forth are less than those in any previous
generation, but because the need is so far greater, that what would have
been amply sufficient a few centuries ago, is altogether inadequate when
compared to the present great necessity.
The very magnitude of the problem has struck despair into the hearts of
would-be reformers, many of whom have leapt to the conclusion, that
nothing but an entire reconstruction of society could cope with so vast
an evil, whilst others have been satisfied with simply putting off the
reckoning day and suppressing the simmering volcano on the edge of
which, they dwelt with paper edicts which its first fierce eruption is
destined to consume.
Surely the present plan if at all feasible, is God-inspired, and if
God-inspired, it will be certainly feasible. And surely of all countries
under the face of the sun there is none which more urgently needs the
proclamation of some such Gospel of Hope than does India. That it is
both needed and feasible I trust that in the following pages I shall be
able to abundantly prove.
General Booth has uttered a trumpet-call, the echoes of which will be
reverberated through the entire world. The destitute masses, whom he has
in his book so vividly pourtrayed, are everywhere to be found. And I
believe I speak truly when I say that in no country is their existence
more palpable, their number more numerous, their misery more aggravated,
their situation more critical, desperate and devoid of any gleam of hope
to relieve their darkness of despair, than in India.
And yet perhaps in no country is there so promising a sphere for the
inauguration of General Booth's plan of campaign. Religious by instinct,
obedient to discipline, skilled in handicrafts, inured to hardship, and
accustomed to support life on the scantiest conceivable pittance, we
cannot imagine a more fitting object for our pity, nor a more
encouraging one for our effort, than the members of India's "submerged
tenth."
Leaving to the care of existing agencies those whose bodies are
diseased, General Booth's scheme seeks to fling the mantle of
brotherhood around the morally sick, the destitute and the despairing.
It seeks to throw the bridge of love and hope across the growing
bottomless abyss in which are struggling twenty-six millions of our
fellow men, whose sin is their misfortune and whose poverty is their
crime, who are graphically said to have been "damned into the world,
rather than born into it."
The question is a national one. This is no time therefore for party or
sectarian feeling to be allowed to influence our minds. True for
ourselves we still believe as fully as ever that the salvation of Jesus
Christ is the one great panacea for all the sins and miseries of
mankind. True we are still convinced that to merely improve a man's
circumstances without changing the man himself will be largely labor
spent in vain. True we believe in a hell and in a Heaven, and that it is
our ultimate object to save each individual whom we can influence out of
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