I do not think I need say more. I have tried to set out the facts as clearly and dispassionately as I can. I have omitted much that I might have said. I have tried here, as throughout, to understate difficulties rather than exaggerate them, because exaggeration defeats its own ends. But I think if the reader will try to realise to himself the state of affairs where no village has a say even in its simplest affairs, and where everything is under the eye of a Government official, where all initiative is forbidden and where the best men stand aloof from all interest in village affairs, he will have some idea that unrest is not unreasonable.
The village organism was the one vital institution left to India; it was the one germ of corporate life that could have been encouraged into a larger growth. It has been killed. It will have to be resuscitated before India can cease to be India Irredenta.
CHAPTER IX
OPIUM AND EXCISE
I will begin what I have to say about this by telling a little story about what happened to me when I was a Subordinate Magistrate—some sixteen years ago now.
A Burman was brought up before me charged with possessing opium. A Sergeant of Police had met him at a rest-house in the jungle the day before, and had entered into conversation. The man was sickly and told the Sergeant that he was on his way down from the Shan States, where he had gone to trade. But he had caught the prevalent fever, had then lain ill and lost his money. So he was going home again to his village about fifty miles away, where he hoped to recover his health. Meanwhile he took a little opium for the fever, for in the Shan States opium is not contraband.
"Oh, you have opium?" asked the Sergeant.
"I brought some down with me," the man said, producing it. Then the Sergeant, as in duty bound, arrested him and brought him into Court.
The case was quite clear. The man admitted the opium, urged that he was ill, also that he did not know—neither of which is a defence in law—and I passed the smallest sentence that I thought the High Court would allow to pass without a reprimand. I fined him ten rupees or in default ten days' imprisonment. Then I went on to other cases and forgot about it. At four o'clock I left the bench and went to my private room to sign papers before leaving Court. There was a pile of them. I signed, the peon pulled away; I signed again, he pulled; and so on till I looked up. There in the doorway stood the Sergeant. He seemed embarrassed. He smiled an awkward smile, saluted, and then stood doubtfully on one foot and the other.
"Well?" I asked, surprised. "What is the matter?"