Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 705

IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT
665
or they might, in part at any rate, be left to the
headmen, whose judgements in either case would be
It could certainly not be
expeditious and without appeal.
expected that these subordinate courts would fulfil their
available
;
village
duties with very scrupulous integrity or strict impartiality
but the parties concerned would always have as compensa-
tion for the small injustices of which they might now and
then be the victims the immense advantage of not losing
their time or being put to an expense which more often than
not is out of all proportion to the value of the matter in
dispute.
Of the penalties sanctioned by the European courts of
justice, imprisonment for debt, amongst others, strikes the
Hindus as a ridiculous expedient, and it is one at which they
often laugh.
To be deprived of liberty without any addi-
tional coercion or torture appears to them no punishment
at all.
Any Hindu who has sufficient private means would
be quite contented never to leave his house night or day
he would be in a state of indolent repose, chewing betel,
smoking his pipe, eating, drinking, and sleeping, without
taking the least interest in what was going on in the world
outside.
There are two classes of persons who are imprisoned for
debt firstly, those who are fraudulent debtors, who can
pay but refuse to do so, and whom torture alone would bring
and, secondly, those who are absolutely
to their senses
insolvent.
The first of these two classes will go to prison
with the utmost indifference, while the second are positively
delighted to be sent there, because the aggrieved party is
obliged to feed them while they are in prison. And what can
be more pleasing to Hindus than to be maintained in idle-
ness
It must be borne in mind that most Hindus, when
they borrow money, do so with the lurking hope that circum-
stances will arise, or that they will think of some expedient,
by which they will be able to elude repayment. Thus
strong measures have to be resorted to as the only means by
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which payment can be exacted from such very unscrupulous
debtors. When the time for payment comes and the creditor
demands his money, the debtor declares he has none and
begs for further grace, swearing by all his gods that he will
pay everything, capital and interest, at the time stipulated.