"أيام ثيم ولَّت" [و‎‎١‎٣] (٢٤٨/٢٥)

13
It fell to my lot not many weeks later to conduct the Christmas
Day Church Parade, when I had to march a squad of twenty or so
troops fully armed (because of an incident a few years before
when an un-armed church Parade had been attacked) to the garrison
church. I was puzzled, in my innocence, by the fusillade of
hiccoughs from the ranks behind me and only later realised that
all the men were more or less drunk, although it was still quite
early in the morning. However I returned them all to barracks
and gave them the order to fall out, when Gunner Malone, from
Ireland, asked to speak to me. "I have a complaint. Sir," he
said, "It's the Padre, I distinctly saw him cross himself." I
suppose it was his way of making it clear to me that he was of
the Protestant persuasion, and therefore on the same side.
Later, the officers had to visit the married sergeants in their
quarters, being plied at each call with a lethal dose of
miscellaneous mixtures of alcohol, and finish up at the soldiers
Christmas dinner, where we were expected to prove our manhood by
consuming vast quantities of even more virulent mixtures.
Altogether an ordeal by alcohol.
When we had recovered from this horrible orgy, we proceeded with
our winter training, culminating in manoeuvres near Delhi. My
chief recollections are of a spectacular ball at the Viceroy's
house, where amongst the hundreds of guests there were a large
number of Indian Princes in their State attire loaded with
jewels; and an occasion when I rode out alone exercising a young
horse before our first parade, which was at 6:30 a.m. In the dim
light of dawn I rode up to a circle of men robed in white and
squatting round a hole in the ground on the outskirts of a
village. From the way they looked up I suspected that they were
involved in something that they would rather was not observed by
an outsider and I rode on. Then I remembered that one of them
had been holding a small bundle wrapped in white cloth and
realised what I had happened to see. Female children are
unwanted in the lower castes of Hindu society. A female cannot
be found a husband when she grows up unless her father can
provide her with a dowry and meet the vast expense of a wedding
ceremony; so the easiest solution is to smear opium on the
mother's nipple and - when the baby has ingested it - to quietly
bury the anaesthetised infant. It was, I suppose, my duty to
report it to the nearest police station, but then I could not
identify the men, nor, exactly, the place; and, in the last
resort, what right had I or the British authorities to interfere
with the age-old practices of the inhabitants?
I rode on, reflecting on the fact that this was their way of
restricting the growth of their population beyond the available
food supply. I have no doubt that the practice continues today,
and have urged on drug companies the desirability and commercial
advantages of producing a pill to inhibit the birth of female