FOOTNOTES:
[71] For the development of Baroda, see the admirable series of annual Administration Reports prepared up to 1907 by Mr. Romesh C. Dutt, C.I.E., Revenue Minister of Baroda, and since then by his successor, Mr. Kersasp Rustamji.
CHAPTER XVIII
Summary and Conclusion
Let it be granted, as a matter of bare fact, quite apart from any wishes or opinions, that for many years to come we shall retain military and administrative command in India. Rightly or wrongly, we shall retain it, unless we are so overwhelmingly defeated at home that we almost cease to be not only an empire but a nation. Probably it is to our own advantage to retain it, because to withdraw before India is strong enough to stand alone would degrade our national life with a cowardly sense of failure. Personally I think it is to India’s advantage also, because her peoples are so unarmed, undrilled, and unorganized under our rule that if we withdrew our place would easily be taken within a year by Russia, Germany, or Japan; perhaps by all three in conflict. When the very worst that can be said against our rule has been said, the substitution of Russia’s rule for ours would be an incalculable disaster from which India might recover only after many generations, just as Poland, the Caucasus, and Persia may. Nor have Germany and Japan yet given proof of governing subject races with success, much less with humanity. Till India is sufficiently advanced in arms, unity, and knowledge to hold her own (which used to be the hope of our statesmen), it is probably to her advantage that we should retain the ultimate supremacy in government and war. We may not do it particularly well, but the chances are that others would do it incomparably worse. Let it be granted, anyhow, that nothing but overwhelming national defeat will deter us from doing it.
But whilst we shall continue, as far as politics can foresee, to superintend the administration of India and to protect her from external attack, the danger is that our bureaucracy, always the slowest form of government to realize change, should ignore the new spirit arising in the country, or should seek to stifle rather than guide it. It is the conviction of many that India is now standing on the verge of a national renaissance—a new birth in intellect, social life, and the affairs of state. There are unmistakable evidences of this, not only among educated Hindus, but among educated Mohammedans; not only among the educated classes, but throughout the masses of the people. Many things have combined to create a new spirit, and we have ourselves contributed much. The long peace that has made development possible, the easy communication by railways, the wide distribution of newspapers, the visits of highly educated Indians to England, the use of English as a common tongue among educated people of all races and religions, the increasing knowledge of our history and our hard-won liberties, the increasing study of our great Liberal thinkers—all these admirable advantages we have ourselves contributed to the new spirit, and it is useless for startled reactionaries to think of withdrawing them now. We must also take into account the example set to all Oriental nationalities by Japan, and the awakened stirring of Liberalism in England herself, and, no matter how feeble its efforts and how bitter its failure, in Russia, Egypt, Persia, and Turkey.
Most of these beneficent influences move slowly, with a deep and gradual force, and, whatever happens, they will continue to move, though to move slowly. But the outburst of the new spirit which we call the unrest in India was occasioned by a different order of things, for the most part, sudden, external, and pernicious. Such things were the contemptuous disregard of Indian feeling in the Partition of Bengal and Lord Curzon’s University speech upon Indian mendacity; the exclusion of fully qualified Indians from public positions, in contradiction to Queen Victoria’s Proclamation of 1858; several notorious cases of injustice in the law courts, where English criminals were involved; numerous instances of petty persecution for political opinions since 1905; the well-known measures for the suppression of personal liberty and freedom of speech in 1907 and 1908; the espionage of police and postal officials; and the increasing insolence of the vulgar among Anglo-Indians, as shown in ordinary behaviour and in the newspapers which represent their views.
All these obvious and external causes of complaint, crowded into the space of very few years, have been sapping India’s confidence in the justice of our rule and the benevolence of our people. Indians have, no doubt, exaggerated both the injustice and the malevolence. They have taken a few flagrant cases of injustice as typical of our Courts; they have mistaken for malevolence what is only our reckless indifference to far-off responsibilities. But we cannot wonder at their mistakes. Nearly every one generalizes about foreign nations from the one or two specimens he knows; and we, as foreigners in India, must not hope to escape generalizations rapidly founded on the behaviour of every man or woman who may represent us there unworthily. As to our national indifference, I wish we could say that this charge also was founded only on special and notorious instances. But it is not. Our indifference to the Indian peoples, from whom we are continually sucking so much of our wealth, is universal and invariable. Or it is varied only at long intervals after outbreaks of bloodshed and threatenings of revolt. No wonder that a growing party in India believes that only by such means can England’s attention be roused, and any permanent advantage for their country obtained.
Of course, they are inconsiderate. In spite of the ill-manners of a certain type of Anglo-Indian, we are as a whole rather a polite and kind-hearted people, and the mere shadow of injustice makes us seethe with indignation, so long as it is not too far away. If they charge us with indifference, they ought to consider that we are faced with almost insoluble problems of our own; that we are a very busy people, and that our knowledge of what goes on in India is generally limited to one or two speeches which attract little attention, a few Parliamentary questions, and the reports of official or other journalists whose very existence depends on standing well with the Anglo-Indian community. Indians are too apt not to consider these mitigating circumstances. But it does not tend to make people considerate when men, women, and children are dying of a comparatively recent plague by hundreds of thousands every year; when for fifteen years in succession famines have been almost regularly recurrent; when increasing malaria is rotting the population away in body and mind, and when thousands, or probably millions, of people who used to have two meals a day can now afford only one. I do not say these disasters are the fault of the Indian Government or the British people. But it is obvious that they do not tend to make the sufferers under them considerate towards the difficulties of rulers who hardly suffer from them at all. They are likely to be the less considerate because they know that, out of a revenue over which they have no control, at least £20,000,000 a year is withdrawn from their country to be spent in England, partly in the shape of interest on serviceable loans, but largely in incomes, pensions, and other more questionable forms; while, even against the better judgment of the highest Anglo-Indian authorities themselves, the greatest Indian industry is kept depressed by the countervailing excise of 3½ per cent. imposed by the Cotton Duties Act of 1896 on cottons made and sold in India, simply for the benefit of our Lancashire mills.
Considerate or not, the new spirit—the section of it that has time and youth on its side—has begun to despair of further appeals and petitions for English justice or assistance. In spite of the splendid traditions of many noble Englishmen from Sir Thomas Munro down to Lord Ripon, I suppose few representatives of our rule have been popular among the Indian races. That was not usually the fault of our representatives; their position made genuine popularity very difficult, and it is impossible for one race to deny freedom to another and rule it to the true advantage of either. But I think that till lately the verdict of most Indians upon us would have been the same as the schoolboy’s who called Dr. Temple “a beast, but a just beast.” In their verdict to-day the compliment of that saving clause would generally be omitted, and that loss of our high reputation for justice, if it is to be permanent, is the worst loss we could ever suffer—worst for ourselves as patriots who honour our country for her justice, and worst for the Indians, whose position a sense of permanent injustice will render intolerable.
The belief that petitions for the redress of grievances, whether presented to the Indian Government or to the British people, are equally vain, is not so serious a matter for us as the distrust of our justice, but it contributed very strongly to the new spirit in its extreme form. Our disregard of all the public protests against the Partition of Bengal and all the persistent appeals for its withdrawal; our disregard of the reasonable pleading of such men as Mr. Gokhale and Dr. Rash Behari Ghose in the Viceroy’s Council, have perhaps done more than anything else to discredit the methods of the old Congress. I do not mean that the Congress has been useless. It served as a training ground for political knowledge. It afforded a centre for the growing unity of India, and without it the leaders of Indian reform could hardly have formulated their own programme. But in two avowed objects it has failed; it has had no influence upon the action of the Indian Government, and no influence upon English opinion at home. For twenty-two years it was a model of order and constitutional propriety. It passed excellent resolutions, it demanded the redress of acknowledged grievances, in trustful loyalty it arranged deputations to the representatives of the Crown. By the Anglo-Indians its constitutional propriety was called cowardice, its resolutions remained unnoticed, its grievances unredressed, and the representative of the Crown refused to receive its deputation. In England, outside the half-dozen who take some interest in India, no one knew where the Congress met, what language it spoke, what were its demands, or what its object; no one knew, and no one cared.
The new spirit perceived that it was useless addressing pious resolutions to the official waste-paper basket. The cry of “self-reliance, not mendicancy” spread through the country. One last effort to attract British attention to the grievance of India was made by the Swadeshi movement and the boycott on British goods. “Touch the pockets of our rulers, and they will listen”—that was the hope. And the hope was partly realized, for owing to Swadeshi and the local disturbances in Eastern Bengal, Calcutta, and the Punjab, England during 1907 and 1908 has probably paid more attention to India than at any time since the Mutiny.
But the principle of Swadeshi has now been developed by the new spirit for purposes far beyond the immediate object proposed. Swadeshi in manufacture and commerce is now followed for the great economic purpose of restoring the Indian industries, threatened or already ruined by England’s favoured competition. And even this economic Swadeshi is seen to be only a part of a much wider movement in self-reliance. On every side societies and orders are growing up for the promotion of Indian ideals and the development of Indian character, quite independently of our influence, and their members are sometimes inspired by an uncalculating devotion like that of the early Christians. Such are the Arya Samaj in the Punjab and United Provinces; the Servants of India in Poona; the Brahmo Samaj of highly educated Theists in Calcutta; the Order of Ramakrishna on the Ganges above Calcutta; the Hindu College in Benares, with which Mrs. Annie Besant’s name is so closely connected; the Order of the Gangrath Institute near Baroda; to say nothing of the whole Volunteer movement, the object of which is the renewal of organization, courage, and physical power among the youth. None of these movements is political in aim. Their work as societies lies in social and theological reform. But both in aim and method all are distinctly Swadeshi. They take little account of Government or of the Anglo-Indian community. In some of them there is even a tendency to react against reform, lest some taint of Western civilization should be introduced into Indian life. But religious and social as these movements are in origin and object, it is no longer possible to exclude their keener members from politics; for, among educated people, the events of the last few years have given to national politics the place once held by theology, and even social reform cannot now be entirely separated from political reform, since the result of educational and other advance is inevitably an increased demand for self-government.
The question immediately before India now is, which of two courses with regard to ourselves the new spirit as a whole will take. On the one hand, it may follow the line of most resistance. It may proclaim throughout the whole country: “It is useless to trouble about any reforms that these intruding foreigners will give us. Let them go on their way with their Advisory Councils, their Notables, their extended Legislative Councils, and other deceits. They have never paid the smallest attention to our real demands. In Mill’s words, they keep us as a warren or preserve for their own use, a place to make money in, a human farm to be worked for their own profit. It is for us to pursue our own course, disregarding their presence. Beyond paying their taxes, we need have little concern with them. If they imprison us, we will go to gaol silently; if they deport us without trial, we will endure without protest; if they execute us, we know that our souls will be at once re-incarnated to continue the struggle. But we will not notice their Government either by sharing in it or denouncing it. In religion, in education, in industries and common life, we will follow our own national lines just as though no foreigners were pretending to rule us. If enough of us combine, we shall embarrass their position; perhaps we shall make it untenable as well as ridiculous. But whether it is untenable or not, we do not greatly care, till a common Indian nationality has the strength to take freedom into its own hands.”
That is the line of most resistance, always a tempting line to take, and many Indians are taking it now. The temptation must be almost irresistible in a vast population like India’s, where a handful of people from a distant country maintain a predominance unmitigated by social intercourse, marriage, or permanent residence. All the more because this predominance rests on so narrow a basis that for its own maintenance it is inclined to deter the subject race from all initiative, enterprise, or leadership, and so to reduce it to what Dadabhai Naoroji has described as “moral poverty.” Any movement to check this national deterioration must be welcomed on behalf of the Indian peoples, except by those who openly desire those races to remain as flocks of sheep, dependent on the good nature or interested bounty of their appointed shepherds. But that is not the ideal that the best of our statesmen in India have set before themselves, nor is it an ideal that can any longer be maintained. The new spirit has already overthrown it.[72]
But besides this tempting line of most resistance there is another way, and, considering the external dangers that threaten India and her own existing difficulties of race, religion, and inexperience, this other way is probably the way of wisdom. The new spirit may still endeavour to act in harmony with us for the common good, acquiescing in our presence as on the whole tending to justice and advancement, acknowledging the material advantages we have brought, but at the same time persistently pressing for extensions of liberty, taking every opportunity that offers, and never hesitating to grasp at any chance of progress because it falls short of the perfect ideal. I admit that to follow this course requires a sweet reasonableness and a strength of character which few men in any nation possess. But after the defeats of many years, Mr. Gokhale still retains his hope; and after the outrage upon his own freedom and the very basis of our liberties, Lajpat Rai still classes himself with the Moderates. It depends almost entirely on ourselves whether those who, in spite of recent disappointments, still believe in an English feeling for justice and freedom shall be able to make their voices heard. If only the more reasonable and hopeful party had something to point to—some generous and ungrudging act of justice on England’s part—they might still silence the counsels of despair. It is not yet too late. Only, it is no good juggling with sham reforms and half-hearted concessions. Our measures, as Burke said, must be remedial.
The nature of such measures is well known. They should include a modification of the Partition of Bengal, by which the central province would be united under one Governor, having the same status as the Governors of Bombay and Madras, while the contiguous western districts were collected into a new province, and Assam remained isolated as it is by nature and race, under a Chief Commissioner responsible either to the Viceroy or to the Governor of Bengal.[73] They should include the appointment of at least one Indian on each of the Executive Councils (a concession which in the case of the Viceroy’s Council seems likely to be fulfilled), and an enlargement of the Viceroy’s and other Legislative Councils by genuinely elected members up to the number of half the Council. This would leave to the officials a steady but narrow majority, the right of absolute veto remaining with the Viceroy, Governor, or Lieutenant-Governor. It might then be laid down that if a large proportion of the elected members—say, two-thirds—were opposed to a certain measure, it should be suspended for further consideration. Some similar control should be granted over the expenditure of money, for at present the representative members have no voice in the revenue that is scraped off their people year by year, and the papers of protest or suggestion, which they read as they sit round the Viceroy’s council-table, might almost as well remain unread for any effect they have upon the official policy.
These reforms could be followed by a gradual extension of primary education, which might in the end cost us £5,000,000 a year, but would be well worth the price, even if we had to save something off the £20,000,000 now spent on the Army, and something off the other public services. Owing to our present parsimony in education, the census of 1901 reported that there were 104,500,000 males in India who could not read, 826 boys out of every 1000 of school age who had no school to go to, and only 1 in 10 males literate, and 7 in 1000 females. Further, we could be loyal to the late Queen’s Proclamation and admit Indians without prejudice to the positions they had fitted themselves for. We could make the position of the police such that they would be no longer compelled to help out their livelihood by corruption and false evidence. We could resolutely extinguish the system of Begar or forced labour for the benefit of Civilians and other Europeans. And we could make it illegal for any representative of our Government to condescend to the baseness of opening other people’s letters, even on the off-chance of spying upon sedition.
A Deserted City.
[Face p. 334.
Such measures as these would be remedial. They would serve as an earnest of our country’s goodwill, and of our determination to maintain the principles of freedom and justice in our government. They would cut the ground under the feet of those who, by proclaiming perpetual distrust of our intentions, are fostering a fanatical hatred against us. But I am aware that measures by themselves are insufficient. What is wanted is the difficult thing that our fathers called a “change of heart,” and no legislation can effect that. We need a change that would transform our people’s arrogance towards “natives”; a change that would prevent the ladies and gentlemen whom we send out from degenerating into “bounders” where Indians are concerned, and would make it impossible for an Englishman to display towards Indians the outrageous manners that would exclude him from decent society at home. Such a change must be extremely difficult among ourselves of the upper and middle classes, for we are not born very imaginative or sympathetic, we are educated on a plane of patronizing superiority, and outside our class and nation any claim to equality staggers us like a sudden blow. But there are one or two quite simple points on which we might begin to practise for the change. Except among the baser sort of Anglo-Indians, the word “nigger” has died out, and I would suggest that the word “native” might follow it. If the phrase “rulers and ruled” died too, and if our social philosophers would cease to drone out their weary ineptitude that “East is East, and West is West,” the situation would be much eased. I have sometimes thought also that our reputation would stand higher if English people who insist, quite rightly, on the importance of our prestige, were to abstain now and then, for the sake of our prestige, from games that develop neither courage nor strength, and are regarded by Indians with contemptuous astonishment, and from a mode of dancing which is regarded by Indians as an indescribable abomination.
But the present crisis is too acute to allow of waiting for a change of heart. Upon our immediate action will depend the terms under which we must maintain our position in India: whether we are to hold the new spirit fairly on our side, and to cooperate with it for the progress of the country in enlightenment and self-government; or whether we are to have our rule confronted by impenetrable resentment, and our best efforts thwarted by indifference or suspicion. In any case, India has a long and bitter road to travel. The gulf between her educated and uneducated classes is wider even than in our own country. She has many divisions of thought, and caste, and race to overcome. But, as to the growth of her new spirit, we need have no fear. It is one of the most hopeful signs of our hopeful time. Every act of injustice on our part, and every attempt at political suppression, have only promoted India’s sense of unity and hastened her progress in self-reliance. If injustice and suppression continue, their effect will be the same. Whatever course our action may now take, the new spirit has already breathed a fresh life into large classes of the Indian peoples, and it will continue to afford a high motive for self-devotion, and for the moral courage and love of freedom in which the Indian character has hitherto been lacking. For India herself the present unrest holds out a promise of the highest possibilities, no matter how much she may suffer in realizing them.
But for us the brief interval left for decision is momentous. On our decision it will depend whether, in contempt of the freedom we have with such obstinate labour secured for ourselves, we shall sink, step by step, from suppression into persecution, and from persecution into atrocities that now we should shudder at; or whether we shall display strength enough to welcome the spirit of freedom and nationality which we have done so much to create, and strength enough to advance with it hand-in-hand for the furtherance of India’s welfare as a self-respecting country, and so to redeem our reputation for the love of a freedom which others may enjoy, as we enjoy it.