I came
across these paragraphs from US army in Kolkata during 1945, as some kind of
instruction to American soldiers…interesting (source: “The Calcutta Key”
Services of Supply Base Section Two Division, Information and education Branch,
United States Army Forces in India - Burma, 1945: at: http://cbi-theater-12.home.comcast.net/~cbi-theater-12/calcuttakey/calcutta_key.html)
The Indian Looks At You
For a long time India looked across the seas toward that shining example, America. And now, right here in their own country, Indians are looking at Americans, they are looking at you. And what do they see? Fine strong men wearing clothes of a general excellence, possessing am abundance of material things, equipped with countless mechanical devices - men who have everything and yet are without the normal affections of the non-Indian dealing with the Indian. Your naturalness is noticed and admired. You offer a cigarette to a rickshaw wallah, and the Indian is astonished. You bewilder him in many ways. But out of the first mist of bewilderment there comes to the Hindu the realization that the American is endowed with feelings that are very much human. You are a possible friend to him - a hope for the future. You startle him from his torpor of pessimism. You provide him with a contrast. Your kind, frank, honest behavior open up for the Hindu a new vista of optimism; and on the whole he is more than prepared to accept you as a shining example, as a true friend. That poses a problem for YOU. Are you going to tear yourself and your country down in the Indian's eyes, or are you going to conduct yourself so that the Indian can keep his shining example, his hope for the future?
GETTING ALONG WITH THE PEOPLE
If you are good-natured and patient in your dealings with
Indians you won't have any trouble with them even if you find some of their
ways hard to understand and even annoying at times. For instance, they feel it
is only polite to tell you what you want to hear. Very often that politeness of
theirs will get you much misinformation. If you ask: "Is this the right
road to ----?", the Indian probably will say "Yes", even if it
isn't. To be on the safe side ask: "Which road goes to our camp,
etc?"
Almost anywhere you go in India, you will find people who
speak at least some English. Although many languages are spoken, the most
widespread is Hindustani. It will pay you to learn some common words and
phrases of Hindustani, which you will find at the end of this book.
Time and punctuality
Most Indians have a different idea about time and punctuality from ours. If a man says he will come at 5 o'clock he doesn't necessarily mean 5 o'clock sharp but within and hour or two of five. If you instruct a workman to finish a job by Tuesday, he may take it to mean merely sometime soon. If you want work done on time, you must keep a close check on the progress of it. All work stops on holidays, which sometimes last for several days.
“You not sweep today – you not work tomorrow.”
Time and punctuality
Most Indians have a different idea about time and punctuality from ours. If a man says he will come at 5 o'clock he doesn't necessarily mean 5 o'clock sharp but within and hour or two of five. If you instruct a workman to finish a job by Tuesday, he may take it to mean merely sometime soon. If you want work done on time, you must keep a close check on the progress of it. All work stops on holidays, which sometimes last for several days.
“You not sweep today – you not work tomorrow.”
In the
mills the Indian traditions were likewise facing a shake-up. The sergeant in
charge of the workshop, seeing the workers departing at the end of the day,
stopped them to inquire “What about sweping the floor?” “Sahib,” came the
answer, “we not sweepers –we no sweep.” The reaction was simple. “You not sweep
today – you not work tomorrow.” They swept.
Americans and the real India
On my
way to Arakan in February 1943 I stopped briefly in Calcutta, through which I
was to pass many times in the next two years. Calcutta, like Delhi, was crowded
with American GIs and officers, and this was my first exposure to Americans en
masse. Although far more informal and friendly than the British, they were more
difficult to adjust to and it took time to accustom oneself to their speech and
their manner of life. Later, staying in American military centres and camps,
often sharing tents and bashas and
roughing it together in the war areas, we came to know one another better : I
count many Americans among my friends today. At the me, a good many of them
struck me as more lonely and homesick than their British counterparts; more
lost and bewildered. The British being the rulers were in a way at home in
India. But the Americans, accustomed to see India through Hollywood's cameras
as a fabulous land peopled by maharajas and elephants, were appalled and
sickened by the stink and poverty of the place.
Their
disillusion was heightened by the backlash of the terrible Bengal famine, then
raging in the rural and outlying districts around Calcutta, and reaching its
peak in the last quarter of 1943, to claim a total of nearly three and a half
million lives. Outside the luxury hotels, the bars and crowded restaurants
strung along Chowinghee, Calcutta's main thoroughfare, one often saw human
skeletons in filthy rags gazing hungrily with avid eyes at the eatables, cakes
and cookies piled behind the glass windows. They were refugees from the
affected areas. 'If I were they,' an American GI growled, 'I'd smash those
glass windows and help myself to all that's there.' I thought of what I had
once heard Sarojini Naidu exclaim: 'Oh, the patience of India! How I hate her
patience!'
