‘Why ask for powers of self-government,’ they retorted, ‘when you are unable to agree upon what form it shall take? You are happier and better as you are for you know not how to govern yourselves; you are our children; we have educated you, and brought you up, as it were; why desire to leave the parental control when it is only exercised for your good?’
But the oppressed ones did not see it: they felt that they were only step-children, who were kept out of the benefits accorded the offspring of their rulers; for all posts of honour and handsome remuneration had long been taken up by the overflowings of aristocratic Germanic and English families.
Even when in positions where natives were permitted the privilege of filling alongside the Englishman, as far back as the nineteenth century and upwards, natives were not remunerated with anything approaching the same rate of income as their more favoured colleagues; although performing identical duties in the hospitals.
A reliable historian of the nineteenth century in treating this subject says:—‘One serious obstacle in the way of increasing the supply of medical men, (natives) seems to me the unfair and invidious difference made in the remuneration of native as compared with English professional men employed in our service, and the same it may be added, applies to legal, and other departments of the State. Take Delhi, for example, where the civil surgeon, a military man, is paid 1,150 rupees per month, whilst his two native assistants receive only 150 each. In Lahore the English civil surgeon gets 1,050 rupees, the native assistants 150 each. Indeed, throughout India the proportion is everywhere as seven or eight for the English, to one for the native official.’
Is it to be wondered at that the dissatisfaction felt at the ‘plums’ being everywhere reserved for the British should begin to find utterance in the native Press, and in the National Congress?
So far as the medical department is concerned it cannot possibly be urged, as it is in the legal administration, that the moral qualities which are requisite demand a greatly increased scale of remuneration for the Englishman. If the services of an English civil surgeon be worth 1,380l. per annum, surely those of his chief assistants, if they be of any value whatever, must be rated low at 180l., no matter to what nationality they belong.
This does not apply, however, to the medical colleges and schools. For example, at the Campbell Medical School and Hospital, Calcutta, the superintendent, and English surgeon-major receive 550 rupees per month; and there are eight professors and demonstrators, all natives, most of whom get from 300 to 350 rupees, and a number of native assistants who receive 100 to 150 rupees.
‘Can anything prove more conclusively that it is not the incapacity of the natives, but favouritism of the dominant race which awards disproportionately high salaries to the English officials?’
‘Similar inequalities existed in most of the departments of the State, which were of vital importance to the political relations of the governors and the governed.’
Such were the outspoken sentiments of an Englishman whose high attainments and wide experience of Indian administration made his utterances worthy of the deepest consideration.