Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, January 1921 · page 23 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #16 — page 23: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a polemical essay (not a cartoon) from *Captain Billy's Whiz Bang*, an American humor magazine. The text is a virulent attack on Hinduism and Indian society, presenting a colonial-era critique that conflates religious practice with social oppression. The author condemns specific practices: child marriage (girls wed at 10 to men of 30), the caste system, female subjugation, and temple practices involving "Nautch girls" (professional dancers, often associated with sex work). The writing treats these as inherent to Hinduism itself rather than contextual social problems. The rhetoric is extreme—describing Hinduism as "darkness and dirt" and "a disease"—reflecting early-20th-century missionary and imperialist discourse that portrayed Western intervention as civilizing. The author positions himself as enlightened while depicting Indian religion, gods, and people as uniformly corrupt and depraved. For modern readers, this represents a historical example of religious prejudice and colonial-era attitudes used to justify Western cultural superiority.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang 21 are promised before born if sexed right. The proverb reads, “Every girl at 14 must be either a wife or a widow.” Many men in India are slaves—all women are. Woman is not to be trusted, and is held the cause of man’s sin whether she be sage or fool. She is object and subject as a child to her father, as wife to her husband, and as widow to her son’s or husband’s relatives. To obey her hubby is supposed to be the only God she needs or wants. To obey and worship him is to worship the gods (though he be a devil). Caste injures them more than men, and she is old before 25 and looks it. Child-marriage is the style and prevails in places, though the British government made a law that a girl might be married yet not live with her husband till she was 12 years old. Imagine a 10 year old girl marrying a 30 year old man. Any negligent father, who does not find a husband before his daughter is 12, is held to be a public monster and criminal. Of course, boys and girls mature earlier in the tropics and have families when people North haven’t gone so far as to be even sweethearts. In the comparative study of other religions I could always find some sweetness and light, but Hinduism is darkness and dirt. Its votaries are vile, their gods are deified beasts, and their devotees are beastly depraved. Caste, child-marriage, obscene worship, Nautch girls, ignorance, superstition, poverty and plague prove Hinduism to be a hell on earth and a disease that dwarfs and damns man’s body, mind and soul.