CHAPTER I
INDIAN UNREST
We do not hear so much of the discontent in India now as we did three or four years ago. There are no reports of seditious meetings, incendiary propaganda, or disloyal tendencies. The attempt upon the Viceroy is declared to be an isolated act, springing from no general cause; a sporadic outbreak of crime which has no importance. No special measures have to be taken, nor special legislation passed, though the old repressive legislation is not repealed. In the English daily papers there is little said of India, and no news is said to be good news. Therefore in public estimation India has fallen back from her temporary fever into the immemorial apathy of the East. She is content, and no one need trouble himself about her. The sedition was but a froth upon the surface, it had no deep-lying causes; it was temporary, local, unimportant. We need trouble ourselves no more about it.
There could be no greater nor more fatal mistake.
There may have been outbursts of irritation like that over the Bengal partition which have passed because the cause was removed; we may be now in the trough and not upon the crest of a wave, but that is all that can be said. The discontent has not passed, nor will it, nor can it pass. It is deep-rooted in the very nature of things as they are now. It is not local, nor is it confined to one or two strata of society, nor is it directed against one or two acts of Government. It is universal, in all provinces, in all classes, directed not against this act or that act, but against the Government as a whole. This is very evident to those upon the spot, has been evident for many years. The reason more has not been said about it is the absurd notion that talking of the discontent will tend to increase it, as if real discontent ever arose from words, or as if it could be understood unless it were talked about. It should also be evident to those not upon the spot who reflect on causes and effects. For instance, could the partition of Bengal have raised such a sudden flame had there been peace before? People in neither the East nor the West are roused into such sudden and fierce anger by an administrative change even if the change is not to their tastes. For there was no real change of government, nor substantive hardship. The hardship was sentimental hardship at the worst, not the less a real hardship for that.
No. There was discontent before, and the partition only fanned it into flame.
And that discontent is not sudden. It has grown slowly for many years. It is not local; in one province it may be more apparent than in another, but it is universal. It is not temporary, but increases. So much is admitted by those who know. Yet no one thinks of diagnosing it. They shut their eyes, they sit upon the safety-valve, they give measures which they hope will cause relief but which cannot do so; they merely accentuate the difficulty and emphasise the ignorance that is behind it on both sides. How can you cure a fever unless you diagnose the cause or causes? To administer a drug at random is not likely to succeed, yet what are the Councils but a random drug? How can they act? No one knows what the patient suffers from; she herself least of all, I think. No one can truly diagnose his own illness nor prescribe his remedy. India feels uncomfortable, and clamours for anything she can get. The Indian Government gives her what it can, offering profusest condolence, which is sincere; and for the rest sitting upon her chest.
But that will avail nothing—how can it? The fever is deep-seated, it is remittent, it affects the whole system. It is becoming dangerous both to the patient and her physician. For their lots are bound together. India cannot yet do without us. She has not got the organism to govern herself yet. She has no structure, but is an inchoate mass of people. Did we part, India could not protect herself against her neighbours by sea or land. She would be a prey to any enterprising Power. Internally she would dissolve into anarchy. No one, I think, doubts this. Some claim to doubt it—do they?
And as to England, what would we be were India reft from us?
Further, there is this: you cannot hold India by force alone. Force has its place, but it cannot stand alone. We conquered and have governed India by the consent of the people. In fact, she conquered herself and gave herself to us. We never had to fight peoples, except in Upper Burma, but only Governments—effete, discredited and weak. The peoples accepted us: if not with gladness, yet they did accept. Without that acquiescence we could have done nothing. This must be thoroughly realised, for it is an essential truth. Anyone can see it for himself. Given any superiority you like to assume of Englishman over Indian, could a handful of English officials and seventy thousand or less British troops conquer and rule three hundred-and-fifty millions of people, living in a climate suitable to them but deadly to us, against their will? It is impossible, incredible, absurd. There has been always a tacit and generally an active consent. Now that consent is disappearing. Why? And what is to be done? It must be discovered. Therefore what I propose to do in this book is: First, to show what our rule was at first and why it was so successful.
To explain how these factors of success gradually disappeared, while at the same time the people progressed.