Human
Values
By ‘K’
In Lin Yutang’s A Leaf in the Storm occurs
the following passage:
“On that day the newspapers reported that over a
hundred persons were killed and a hundred and sixty more were injured. But the
mere number of casualties had no meaning. Pin-pin was not even among the
casualties. The damage of war is not to be measured in terms of statistics of
the number of persons killed and the value of property destroyed. The death of
Pin-pin makes war indemnity ridiculous.”
Coming as it does at the end of a moving episode,
it leaves a deep impression on the reader’s mind, though the idea expressed may
sound simple and even common place.
Pin-pin is a young Chinese girl suffering from
tuberculosis, and is a refugee in Hankow. Her father, who has already suffered
bereavement, is anxious to do everything to save her. The refugee camp in
Hankow had become overcrowded, and this family was removed to a vacant
house–which was easily available as it was considered to be haunted. The family
was under the care of Lao Peng–a noble character whose life of dedicated
service and whose equanimity and wisdom provide a background to Lin Yutang’s
intensely human story. Tanni, the heroine in the novel, a girl ‘with a past’
who is assisting Lao Peng in his humanitarian work, is providing for the
comforts of the refugee family. Pin-pin is getting worse, and Tanni arranges
for an injection to be given to her costing twenty dollars. Pin-pin shows signs
of recovery. At this time there is an air raid on Hankow–a splinter strikes the
house where Pin-pin lives and, to avoid further danger, she is carried to a
safer quarter. But the shock proves too much for her. She vomits blood and, as
soon as she is moved back, she worsens and dies.
After describing the circumstances of Pin-pin’s
death, Lin Yutang makes the observation quoted above.
How moving and human the experiences of men and
women–how cold and callous the ‘official’ report of such events! People read
casualty lists, and accounts of losses so constantly in newspapers that their
significance in terms of human misery ceases to make its due appeal and
blunts the sensibility of most persons living in the midst of war. The human
value is borne in only on those who have the misfortune to lose their own near
and dear ones. So far as others are concerned, the news is passed over without
even the customary shrug of the shoulder–or the twitch of a muscle, either in
the face or about the heart. And, yet, the true import of every such record of
casualty is the misery that is caused to scores, possibly to hundreds and
thousands, of human beings like ourselves.
This is not a grievance against ‘official’ reports.
The exigencies of time and space and the impersonal character of official
authority make it necessary that such reports should be devoid of colour or
embellishment of any kind.
And other reports, too, even from non-official
agencies, take the cue from and partake of the same neutral character.
Otherwise they run the risk of becoming suspect. So custom has ordained in
modern time that while setting forth facts and figures objectively the
presentation should be as passionless as possible.
A taste for statistics is a trait of the modern
age. Departments of Government compile and publish them year after year–and
much of the work of ‘bureaucracy’ is calling for figures and more figures and
dressing them up for reports. And once in ten years there is that ‘variorum’
edition called the Census Report with its interminable tables. Students of
economics and conscientious publicists (following the illustrious examples of
the late Sir Dinshaw Wacha and Gokhale) revel in statistics in Councils and
Assemblies. And, yet, there lurks in the background the fear of the common man
who looks upon the conclusions of statistical experts with more than mere
suspicion, for has it not been said, “There are three kinds of lies: black
lies, white lies and statistics”?
In the early days of Gandhiji’s return to India
after his South African life, he was invited everywhere and patronised by all
and sundry. Gandhiji, of course, was modest to a fault, embarrassingly truthful
and disclaimed even passable acquaintance with learned matters. The Economic
Conference took it into its head to invite him. Blissfully ignorant of the
recondite speculations of the economists and indifferent to the controversies
regarding the average income of an Indian and numerous other matters, he
naively declared that irrespective of whatever economic investigators might
say, he was convinced of the enormous poverty of India. In his wide travels,
over practically every province in the country, he had not met one cheerful
face, or seen a bright pair of eyes among the middle and poorer classes of our
population. This personal observation and inference were conclusive so far as
Gandhiji was concerned, more convincing than any mass of figures collected by
investigators. By taking up this attitude Gandhiji was perhaps turning away
from the inductive method of arriving a truth, so dear to the scientist; but
then truth directly apprehended has a validity that cannot be shaken even by
the contrary conclusions which learned investigation of details might suggest.
Against human vision, much of this will be learned lumber.
The human approach to figures seems greatly needed
at the present time when figures are flaunted on every conceivable problem and
at every turn. They seem to be sometimes pursued for their own sake as though
they exercised a fascination of their own, and presented in cold setting with
every show of great work accomplished. But such figures are no more than
lifeless symbols, which conceal behind them moving facts in the shape of human
joy and misery; but it is these that are often passed over. The compiling of
figures can never be after all more than merely a means to an end. Was it not
in reference to such sophistry, into which mankind seems to be able to slide so
easily, that Jesus uttered the whole-some warning: “Sabbath is made for man and
not man for the sabbath”?