The unofficials threatened if Chetty were proposed to overwhelm him with black-balls, and so his name had to be withdrawn. I may say I do not think his nominal admission as a member would have made much difference. Merely allowing a man to enter a club does not admit him to the intimacy of the Club, and that alone counts. However, Chetty was refused admittance at all.
There were, of course, other troubles. An Indian who has entered the Civil Service is really in an impossible position. Socially he belongs to no world. He has left his own and cannot enter the other. And you cannot divorce social life from official life. They are not two things, but one. In the end Chetty shot himself. It was a sad end for a man gifted and likeable.
And although such an end was unusual, the causes which led to it are universal. I have known several civilians who were Indians, and, as I said before, I think they were all unhappy. They felt that fate had put them in an impossible position. If they married their fellow-country-women they by this act divorced themselves still further from European society; if they married an Englishwoman they did no better; the other Englishwomen would not receive her, and inherent differences of civilisation rendered married life difficult. I think that if individuals realised what their ambition would lead to they would choose any other walk in life than to enter an alien service. Their ideals are wrong. It is no true ideal for an Indian or Burmese to wish to be an Englishman. Fate has allotted to him a different field of usefulness quite as great in its way. An Indian gentleman may be quite as true a gentleman as an English gentleman and be not in the least like him. By blind imitation they attempt to attain virtues not inherent in them, and they ignore other virtues which are inherent and necessary to the world. They seek after impossibilities and so negative the achievement of possibilities. They deny their own natures.
It may be that this desire of Indians to enter the Civil Service has arisen from the desire to begin local self-government—a proper ambition. But the end cannot be attained in this way. Like all other edifices, local self-government is built up from below. It is built on its own foundation. You cannot begin replacing an edifice by removing the top or middle stones and replacing them with others. Self-government is not to be attained by gradually altering the roof.
Therefore the claim that they would influence Government is untenable. Government must do its work in its own way, and that is the English way. No Indian can tell what this is.
The further claim that it would satisfy the people is equally untenable. To put a native of one part of India over natives of another part of India would not please them; it would exasperate them. And even to put an official over his own people would not please those under him, though it might please his class. This is a well-known fact; and if you look below the surface it is not difficult to see the reasons. The Government is English; a native official is not English. The people have no confidence in him for that reason. They know that he is not in intimate touch with Government. In the innumerable acts of official life which are not bound by rigid rules he is very likely to be wrong. When an English official says a thing they know he speaks with authority because his mind is one with that of Government; not so with a native official. They know it and he knows it, and he knows they know it. That makes matters difficult to begin with. Moreover, they are jealous of him. When all high officials are English, natives are all together; put a native in as an official, and to the general native mind he is rather like a traitor. They have lost him and gained nothing. They are not proud of him but angry with him. He is as they are—why then should he have this power over them? It is not a power delegated by themselves but by an alien Government. This is quite a simple fact in psychology and shows itself everywhere. Does a "ranker," unless under exceptional circumstances and an exceptional personality, hold the same authority over his former equals as a class officer does? And there the difference is slight. I am sure that no greater cause for discontent among the people could be found than by having Indians as civilians.
And last but not the least, there is the domiciled European population to be considered. What effect would it have on them if a large number of Indians were admitted to the administration? The answer is quite simple and was effectually given during the agitation over the Ilbert Bill in 1885—they would not stand it.
They are not too pleased with the present state of affairs, with the great power that lies in one man's hand, that of the head of the district. They chafe at it and are continually feeling and resenting its imperfections and limitations. They only submit to it because they see no way out of it and because he is English. Were he to be often an Indian they would resent it and make their resentment felt. They would lose the feeling of security they now have and they would not submit to this; they would make government impossible. To those who doubt their power to do this I would recommend a study of the agitation against the Ilbert Bill, more especially in its latest stages. It is no longer secret history that a disaster unequalled in Indian history was only saved at the last minute by the surrender of Government.
And the feelings which caused this are as vital now as then. It may be taken as an axiom that whatever Government might decree, the great British mercantile and other interests in India would refuse to allow any appreciable transfer of authority to the hands of Indians, and in face of their opposition it could not be done. That an Indian should rule Indians they would not mind perhaps, but that an Indian should rule Europeans, and that it should be to an Indian they looked for the maintenance of peace and order and for the administration of justice, criminal and civil, is unthinkable. The stability of the administration is due to its being English, and any threat to that stability would not be borne.
Besides, to what would it lead? Suppose, by a wild stretch of the imagination, all the Civil Service in India could be composed of Indians, what then? That is not self-government. The orders would still come from Downing Street, the responsibility rest with Parliament and the English people. The Government would not and could not so be Indianised; all that would have happened would be that a few hundred Indian gentlemen had been imperfectly Anglicised. Is that an ideal? Where would the three hundred and fifty million come in? No more than they do now. But in any self-government worth the name these people must come in; they must be the base on which the self-government is erected.