Clip of the Day 9/2/2021

A comic published in the Evening Star in 1934, part of a series titled “Highlights of History” by J. Carroll Mansfield:

"From the first the British found that the administration of government in India along European lines was a difficult and delicate undertaking. "The peculiar religious beliefs of the Hindus and many oriental customs unfathomable to the 'western' mind made it hard for Europeans to govern the country without gravely offending the natives"

"The Hindus cremated their dead, and one of their most inhuman customs was that of requiring a widow to die in the funeral pyre of her dead husband. This practice was called Suttee"

"In 1818 the British authorities forbade Suttee and tried to break up the practice, but it was carried on secretly for many years afterward. Other revolting customs were abolished"

"At the annual festival of Vishnu at Puri in Orissa fanatical devotees formerly deemed it an act of extreme piety to throw themselves beneath the wheels of the great car of Juggernaut"

"One of the greatest services the British rendered India was the stamping out of the thugs, a murderous cult, devotees of Siva, and the Hindu Goddess of Destruction"

"The rigid and complex system of castes, which makes the proud parsee or brahmin carefully avoid brushing against the untouchable, lest he become defiled, has been the chief stumbling block to India's progress"

"India shackled with superstition, still remains a thousand years behind the times. 'Holy' fakirs still win prestige by publicly torturing themselves, and sacred cattle roam at will and impede traffic in the streets of the largest cities"