Beggars - to give or not to give?

One of the first things that visitors to Bombay assume is that you will be permanently accosted by hordes of beggars.
Actually, this simply isn’t true. It’s a very old-fashioned view of India. I have come across few beggars in Bombay, and they are all, so far, harmless, and by and large will leave you alone once you have given, whether the amount is small or not, or when they know you are definitely not going to give.
But beggars do exist – and what is a rich foreigner to do about the distressing poverty they live in? Believe it or not, the foreigners that I know do worry about this question quite a lot.
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The few beggars that I come across seem to fall into three categories.
The first kind are to be found near The Gateway, or Not Just Jazz By The Bay (café bar) on Marine Drive, or places where tourists hang out.
These beggars are raggedly-dressed small boys and small girls, whose wretched state (not to mention their sometimes astonishing beauty) will tug at the tourists’ heart-strings. They can be quite amazingly dogged (one six year old must have accompanied me once for a quarter of a mile, talking to me the whole time). Working the same patch as the kids and equally dogged, (surprisingly, considering their state), are the maimed – youths without legs or arms.
I’m told that these kids are often the children of migrants to the city, who are going through the first phase of migrating to Bombay – a poverty-stricken one when they are sleeping on the pavements. Or, they could be runaways. I found it at first stunning to think that these tiny children could be self-sufficient, but it turns out to be true in some cases. There are hostels for some of the ‘railway children’, but often they must find their food for themselves.

The second type of beggars I have observed are the young women (sometimes with babies) who hang around intersections waiting for the lights to turn red, when they will weave among the stopped cars, tapping on windows, asking for money.
Incidentally, the hijras (men who dress in women’s clothes, and who often have had themselves castrated) also do the tapping on the window stuff. I don’t know why, but they seem to be a little more uptight about it all than the women; I guess because they are more often than not also touting for work as prostitutes… at least round Mahalaxmi that seems the case.

And lastly, there are the traditional beggars – usually old men or women who can be found sitting at street corners, often in the blazing sun, just hoping patiently and sadly for alms.
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So – what’s the issue you ask? Why not give two rupees or five rupees (three US cents), which is as much as is expected, and move on?
In fact, this is easy enough. In the old days, if you gave to one, you would be surrounded by many. Now, with the beggars so few in number, that is not a problem in Bombay.

But now comes in the crazy logic of Charitable Giving. And, over very expensive dinners, foreigners discuss what to do. In the way that people do when they dicuss humanity at large and/or economics, it is brutally cold.
First issue at the table (usually voiced by Americans, whose very fibre philosophically opposes untested social welfare systems) is: surely we are just perpetuating the culture of begging? If nobody gives, they say, then the poor would go off and find other work (and by implication, “other work” is better for society than begging… - though I often wonder whether that includes prostitution and gangsterism. Surely… not?).
Second issue is the Europeans’ concern. Guilty over their colonial past, they do not wish to appear as the sahibs any more, and they think that to give would be only to perpetuate another issue – that the White Face means Patronage. Terrified of being accused of being patronising, they would (bizarrely) prefer not to give to the poor beggar.

And then all the other theories and objections pour on…: some say that the maimed and the children are often controlled and exploited by cruel adults, so they never see the money they earn anyway; that it’s disgusting that very young babies (who should be asleep) are touted round as pity-rousers by the heartless young women – these definitely (say the mothers at the table) should NOT be encouraged!; and meanwhile others claim that the old beggars, unable to contribute to a family income, are often forced out on street corners by their unpleasant relatives – which, again, they say, is a practice not to be encouraged.

(What I call the ‘Londoner objection’ – that beggars are all somehow making a fortune anyway – and the Not Our Problem objection – which usually boils down to ”the locals don’t give so why should we?” – are both so patently incorrect in this city, that happily they are never raised).

So – says one voice at the table – then we should Do Nothing? This obviously is not an answer either. Foreigners in India can afford to help, and most are, believe it or not, genuinely compassionate when they see the real poor of India.

How about the tithe idea? says the American Christian Socialist at this little gathering (the 'tithe' is where one automatically gives ten per cent of one’s income to caring institutions). This suggestion usually ends up in a rather unpleasantly circular conversation about how inefficiently, corruptly or badly a lot of charitable institutions in the city are run, and about how it’s pointless giving to them.
(I personally would be interested in what anyone reading this article would recommend as an efficient and worthy charity in Bombay. If you have ideas, perhaps you’d make a mention in the Comments?).

OK, says another speaker. Then the Muslim way is best – you give alms simply because it is your duty to be open-handed and caring to the less privileged, and you should not think too hard about what the end result might be. But the Westernised people here, at this table, raised on a business model of welfare, reject this completely.

Incidentally, one lady – whom I find charming, in that she has thought this through so carefully – has solved the problem in her own way by giving out biscuit-bars. The beggar kids often complain of being hungry, so she thinks the biscuits are the best solution. She even scoured the shops looking for HEALTHY biscuits as she did not want to engender a sugar habit in them! However, she was brought up sharply by her driver, who told her that the kids would be forced to sell them (as they are still in their wrappers) and the money would still have to be handed over to their ‘guardians’. So - and I tell you no lie - she now carefully unwraps the biscuits each time she gives them out, which makes them unsellable, which ensures the kids get to eat them…
(However, another foreigner whom I know still frowns even on this – as she says it still perpetuates the dependence cycle, even though it is not money).

And thus the dinner table usually breaks up (after expensive coffee liqueurs) - with the problem unresolved !
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So… what do I do?
Well, it’s an incomplete answer and doesn’t satisfy all the objections above – but here is my response. I give to the Railway Children (a charity for India, based in England – its credentials appear to be all one could ask for).
I never give to anyone who asks. This might seem weird – but that means I make it a point of honour to give on all occasions to the old people and the maimed (or whoever) crouching on the street undemandingly waiting for alms. All those who ask, i.e. the kids, hijras, young women with babies and even the maimed, get nothing… well, except biscuits(!), when I have them.
It isn’t very satisfactory as a solution of course. And because it is so very unsatisfactory, I reserve the right to change my mind at any moment – and just give to whom I like, and do whatever I feel!

Anyone else do anything else? I’d honestly be interested to know. Stick a comment on…
(PS - you don't need to leave your email, or sign in when you comment... commenting is Open on this blog)

Links
Railway Children Charity

When men whip themselves with knives

The contrasts that central Bombay can throw up are almost too many and too obvious to mention, but one of the biggest is the huge disparity between the modern & inspirational streets of the west side of the city and the traditional & ignored districts that are mostly on the east side of the city.

No more than a mile or so from the sleek, glass, 21st century Stock Exchange is Dongri.

Dongri is a devout and emotional Muslim district. It is poor and ignored by tourists – not another European face did I see there. During the Islamic month of Muharram, I came to be walking Dongri’s hot hot streets (and this is January!), looking for the traditional scaled-down representations of the tomb of Imam Hussain that usually line the streets of Shia areas across the world on Muharram’s tenth day, Ashura (which is an official holiday in India). Hussain was the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed and the third Imam of Islam.
But, in a whirl of events, I came to be where I never thought modern Bombay would ever lead me.

The tombs, made of plywood and then covered in gorgeous cloth, line the sides of the streets. Men and women sit (separately of course) at side-street cafes.
But, judging by the shouts and drums from a distance away, the big event seemed to be elsewhere.
When the drummers drum in Bombay, it is such a compelling sound that it just draws you. When such passion is in the air, as they beat incessantly at the huge barrel-skins, who would not want to find its source?
Following the sound, I came to high walls that seemed to hold beyond them a communal hall. So many people, mostly dressed in black – both men and women – were trying to get in and out the entrances, it was a crush to get through them to the spectacle inside. Though some men were wary of me, yet there were some pushing me forward in the forceful but kind way that Indian people do to curious strangers.

I have no idea what it was I was then seeing… In that first space hundreds of men were crammed into a covered hall no bigger than a tennis court. Above the melee you could see some thirty or so furled banners held high and representations of the Imam’s tomb, travelling in a waving, shaking procession in furious continuous circles.

Someone explained above the din that Ashura remembers the day that the Imam and his followers were surrounded and slaughtered at Karbala, which was about as much as I could understand of what he said (my knowledge of the history of Islam is poor, sadly), so I think what I was seeing was the battle flags being readied and the re-enacted frenzy of the warriors of that great struggle of almost fourteen centuries ago.

Shoved back into the street, where there were now perhaps thousands of spectators looking down on the scene from balconies, scaffolding, the tops of walls, as well as at ground level where they lined the passage-ways, I was pushed into other doorway (a man rushed up to me: “be careful of your belongings!”, and rushed away again) where it seemed that most of them were women (again, top to toe in sweating black).. Was I in a women’s section?
Sensing my confusion, a woman seized me (she did not use half-measures) and jabbed me forward and more forward into the pressed clumps of women watching the main event. Eventually, now almost at the front of this group, jammed in a soft hot mass of female flesh (I could only wonder that, as a foreigner, perhaps I was regarded as sexless, because no one seemed to object), I could see clearly was happening.

We were looking into a high and open courtyard with just a thin piece of roof to hold off the sun. If it had been a car-park, it would have held no more than twenty cars. Again, there was not a square inch of space in it to be had.
The arena was a swirling sea of men in black, with some figures and objects making laboured swaying circular processions through the scrum of people. Two “characters” were on horseback (incredibly placid horses when you think about it) – one looked like a Roman centurion in red, his face painted in black, and one was a shaven-headed man with a sword aloft. A costumed group of three were crowded on a tiny board (though who or what was carrying this platform I could not see) and were also taking part in the endless round. Curiously, three or four babies, costumed in green silk, were being held aloft and jiggled for the crowds. Not surprisingly, one of these babies was screaming at terror at the noise and confusion of it all, not to mention the drop beneath it, but no one paid it much mind.What it all signified, I am sorry to say I do not know…

The steaming heat of my squashed position was getting too much… so I hassled and squeezed-by and retreated, when a lady at the back took me aside. It was impossible to hear all she had to say against the drums and noise, but she explained about the line of Imams (and the lineage of prophets, including Jesus) and that the man in red was the enemy at Karbala – “a terrorist.” The babies, she added, were to remind us of the women and children that were massacred in the attack, including Hussain’s own baby son. And, knowing exactly the political implications, she stopped and held my wrist tight and made the point clear: “we are not friends to terrorist….”
I suppose that moment was true Bombay - a city that will come up with a modern debate against the background of an ancient pageant.
In a cooler corner by one of the back walls, I managed to hide. The stares were fewer now, because another development unfolded and took attention away from me… Teenage boys, chests bare, smeared in blood, drifted past. By me was a small stall on which was stocked a large number of medical dressings, from which the boys would take one or two and wrap them round their wounds, while a man with a water-tank dispenser periodically squirted liquid over them. Of course, I couldn’t see or guess at why they had blood on them – I wondered if it was just youthful over-enthusiasm while taking part in ‘the battle’?

But now it became clear. A space opened up in the press and some of the twenty-something young men, also bare-chested, formed a rough circle. They were holding short chains, at the end of which was a clump of three curved attack-knives. Cautiously they swung them to and fro (the drums hammering, and watching men striking the tops of their heads with each beat) and then they would fling the knives full circle over their shoulders to thud against their backs – whereupon the flesh is immediately clean cut, and blood squirts off the skin in tiny droplets. They were flagellating themselves with knives. Again and again. And the floor gradually became as soupy as that in a butcher's shop.
Curiously, in my first walkings, I’d seen the knife-grinders in the streets, all busy sharpening these dagger objects. Naively I had thought they were ceremonial weapons only.

As you would guess I would, I thought – it’s got to be a trick… surely they are making it so that only the flat sides of the knives are striking? One further look told me that that was not true. What’s more, the flagellators were joined by other young men, who, with a single knife in their hands, rocked back and forth, before with a final flick, cruelly running the knife’s sharpened blade along their own scalps in a line to their foreheads – from where blood would run down and daub their faces, and leave their hair stickily bloody.
The spectators watched with admiration at this devotion and courage. Many had their cameras at the ready (the contrasts of Bombay!) to take photos of these young heroes.
And when the older men felt they had had enough, and stopped them from continuing, still these young men often crept back into the ring, bypassing their elders, to continue the self-torture.

I suppose one can be sensible about it all, and say that the knives only seem to cut the surface of the flesh, they do not break through to the muscle, and they do not go low enough to harm the kidneys. From what I saw, no permanent damage is done, though some boys showed the evidence of the previous year – old weals, looking like small twigs trapped beneath the skin. And the older men were there and watchful to see no ‘excesses’.
Of course I can only say what I saw. Some tell me I saw just a mild manifestation of Muharram. But I know one young man was weeping with the shock as he continued to bleed.I’m a foreigner – I leave it to anyone who has the knowledge, and cares to post, to do the explanation of what happening.

Oh Bombay!
You know, it’s a heck of a shock to be in a shiny air-conditioned international coffee-shop at breakfast surrounded by stock-brokers (wondering in a dull way what French pastry to buy) and an hour later to see a whole community gather to remember its ancient past and history and traditions and beliefs – and all with overwhelming commitment to what is before them. And then, let’s not forget, to see men’s faces warping with the pain of what they are doing to themselves.

Is it good for me to be so confused by this city?