Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 3-4.djvu/80

 334 ■ OWEN BERKELEY-HILL

whether it be in Asia, Africa or Europe, he is" to the inhabitants of that country a veritable Dr. Fell. We must tlierefore assume that, this obscure but nevertheless very real dislike which is shared by all races of mankind for the Hindu, must, from its very nature, have its roots in some deeply-buried source of feeling. Books on India teem with' references to this singular 'otherness', if I may use the term, of the Hindu as compared, for instance, with the Muslim or Christian Indian, and a variety of reasons' are cited to account for it. It is obviously absurd to appeal to the question of 'colour', for the colour of Hindus is tlie same as that of the Muslims and Christians of India. Moreover, many people who make this appeal, appear to overlook the fact that the black man of Africa feels quite as antipathetic to the Hindu as does the white man of Europe or America, or the yellow man of Burma, China or Japan. Another fact that is frequently ;forgotten by persons in discussing what is usually termed 'colour prejudice' in regard to the relations of Hindus to Europeans is that Hindus have always been very much more concerned with the question ot colour than have Europeans. It was the early Hindus themselves who deliberately grounded all social distinctions upon Varna. colour, and dismissed all the dark-skinned aboriginal races ot Southern India as Rakshasas or demons. Every Hindu admires a fair skin and longs for a fair-skinned wife to bring him fair children. Other persons have sought a solution to the question by assuming that the non-Hindu, whether he be European, African or Asiatic, dislikes the Hindu because of the jealousy he feels for the Hindu's intellectual gifts. Needless to say, this view of the question is held for the most part only by Hindus and that even they have some difficulty in holding such a belief finds ample evidence in the perfervid adulation of their own attainments in which they seem compelled to indulge from time to time. For mstance, we find in a recent text-book published for the use of the Central Hindu College at Benares, such desperate expressions of an attempt to compensate a powerful 'insufficiency complex ' as the following : 'No other religion has produced so many great men, great teachers, great writers, great sages, great saints, great kings, great warriors, great statesmen, great benefactors, great patriots, etc'

From what is now known of the influence exerted on the form- ation of character and temperament by the two fundamental phases of anal erotism, that is to say, the impulse to 'keep back'

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