1884: Simla to Sussex
I enclose within this packet a letter I have just received from Dr. Aziz at Chandrapore—a man of refinement and feeling, whom perhaps you have heard me mention before. A physician of rare sensitivity and a poet by temperament, he is much admired by those amongst us who know him beyond the customary formalities that divide English society from Indian life. Yet this admirable man’s fortunes are now in utter disarray, for he has been falsely accused by a naïve Englishwoman of an act of violence he neither conceived nor committed.
His letter, which I send to you in trust and confidence, is one of dignity and despair—a plea not merely for himself but for justice within a structure that has long forgotten the meaning of the word. The matter has revealed, with dreadful lucidity, the racial tensions that simmer beneath our supposed civility. I have known Dr. Aziz for years; in our many conversations he has shown himself every inch the gentleman—attentive, courteous, possessed of a refined wit and education. His poetry, which he reads aloud with grave delight, speaks of deep affection and moral grace. He loved his late wife tenderly and his devotion to his children is among the purest things I have witnessed in this hard country.
Yet now, one heedless accusation undoes him utterly. What astonishes me most is the swiftness with which our newly arrived English family—who know nothing of India beyond the boundaries of their club—took offence and sided blindly against him. So brittle is their sense of superiority that it breaks at the first touch of imagination. They dwell among people they neither understand nor wish to and live in constant fear that civility may be mistaken for equality.
There is, too, a darker truth we women must face: many of these young Englishwomen, repressed from childhood and taught to mistrust their own bodies, find in Indian men a mirror both forbidden and fascinating. Their imaginations, starved of experience, distort courtesy into threat and kindness into presumption. To claim pursuit where none has occurred is, to them, less a falsehood than a twisted vindication of their own desirability. It is vain, cruel and tragically predictable. The same society that forbids them freedom teaches them to find power in victimhood.
I confess the whole episode leaves me heartsick. This country humbles arrogance with every sunrise, yet arrogance persists undiminished. Dr. Aziz remains, in his dignity, proof that grace may dwell in hearts not English and that refinement is no monopoly of race or Empire. I shall write to the proper authorities on his behalf, for justice must not remain a privilege of complexion.
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