- Joined
- Apr 12, 2021
Albert Einstein's views on Indians:
Source is his diary:
28th. Yesterday evening we approached Colombo with considerable delay. Before the coast came into view we got caught in a severe tropical storm with a cloudburst, forcing the ship to stop. When it brightened up around 9 o’clock, it turned out that we were near the harbor. A pilot drew near in a rowboat, and we soon docked next to another Japanese steamship. We saw here for the first time an elderly Indian, fine, distinguished face with gray beard, who brought us two telegrams and—begged for a tip. We saw other Indians as well, brown to black sinewy figures with expressive faces and bodies and humble demeanor. They look like nobles transformed into beggars. Much unspeakable pride and downtroddenness are united there.
This morning at 7 a.m. we went on land and, together with the Du Plâtres, viewed the Hindu quarter of Colombo and a Buddhist temple. We drove in individual little carts that were drawn on the double by Herculean and yet so refined people. I was very much ashamed of myself for being complicit in such despicable treatment of human beings but couldn’t change anything. Because these beggars in the form of kings descend in droves on any foreigner until he has surrendered to them. They know how to implore and to beg until one’s heart is shaken up. On the streets of the indigenous quarter one can see how these fine people spend their primitive lives. For all their fineness, they give the impression that the climate prevents them from thinking backward or forward by more than a quarter of an hour. They live in great filth and considerable stench down on the ground, do little, and need little. Simple economic cycle of life. Far too penned up to allow any distinct existence for the individual. Half-naked, they reveal their fine and yet powerful bodies and their fine, patient faces. Nowhere shouting like the Levantines in Port Said. No brutality, no market crying existence, but quiet, acquiescent drifting along, albeit not lacking in a certain lightheartedness. Once you take a proper look at these people, you can hardly take pleasure in the Europeans anymore, because they are more effete and more brutal and look so much cruder and greedier—and therein unfortunately lies their practical superiority, their ability to take on grand things and carry them out. Wouldn’t we too, in this climate, become like the Indians?
In the harbor, lively bustle. Herculean laborers with shiny black bodies take care of the cargo. Divers perform their neck-breaking skills. Always that smile and self-effacement for filthy money and self-satisfied people who are mean enough to gloat about it. At 12:30 we set out into the rainy desert of water. Ceylon is a paradise of vegetation and yet a scene of woeful human existence.
Source is his diary: