But I think the cause of all this peril and terror really lies, not in the good that might be done to myself, but in a certain disintegration in the missionary nature, an over-maturity or staleness of virtue that rots the good before I get it. If it were possible for the missionary spirit to move on the same insecure plane of pitfalls with me, unconscious of any salutary purpose beyond its own difficult salvation, one might possibly escape its virus without running in the opposite direction.
That is why the frankly political side of the Society is so welcome. Politics, being less intimate to the soul, appear less dangerous for a teacher than social reform or philanthropy, in which some kind of moral or class superiority is nearly always assumed. Regarding the Society’s attitude towards the British Government, I had better quote from its own little book of rules:—
“Its members frankly accept the British connection, as ordained, in the inscrutable dispensation of Providence, for India’s good. Self-government on the lines of the English colonies is their goal. This goal, they recognize, cannot be attained without years of earnest and patient work and sacrifice worthy of the cause.”
Many have smiled over that “inscrutable dispensation of Providence.” Naturally, I took it for irony myself, though I felt that irony was out of tune with the Society’s regulations. But it is not irony. Mr. Gokhale’s nature is too direct, his purpose too simple in its intensity, for the ironic bypaths.
I was dining that night with such of the Servants of India as had not gone home for the family festival. Mr. Paranjbye was there too—Senior Wrangler of his year, Fellow of St. John’s, present Head of the Fergusson College close by, famous among European mathematicians, and almost tolerated in the Anglo-Indian society of Poona for his skill at lawn tennis. Mr. Kelkar had come as well—editor of the Mahratta, a leader in the Extremist camp, Mr. Tilak’s vigilant captain. And a few more Brahmans and others sat with us, not too sacrificial in purity to eat beside a carnivorous European. That “inscrutable dispensation” was discussed amid laughter, but Mr. Gokhale retained his accustomed serenity. He had written the words with entire seriousness. The dispensations of Providence were inscrutable, but still he believed the British connection was ordained for India’s good. It had secured various things which any one could count, but above all it had instilled into the Indian nature a love of freedom and a self-assertion against authority that Indians used to lack, but English people often possess in enviable abundance.
I remember quoting the common opinion that Anglo-Indians have lost sympathy with Indians because they no longer make India their home, but keep one eye on England and are always on the flit. But Mr. Gokhale disagreed. He thought it an advantage that fewer English people now settled in the country. The fairly permanent residents, like shopkeepers and planters, were as a rule the worst mannered and most domineering, and they took hardly any part in public life. The standard of manners in general, he thought, had gone down. It might be that, in old days, the Englishman found it easier to be sympathetic with natives whom he could treat as dear good things. But educated Indians had come to detest such sympathy as only fit for pet animals, and both races were beginning to notice the change. For his part, he thought that since Lord Ripon left India in 1884, the type of Englishman that came out had slowly been declining.
“It is unfortunate,” he said, “that our Congress movement should have coincided with the past twenty-two years of violent reaction and Imperialism in England. You can hardly imagine how intolerable our life became at the time of the Boer war. The insolence of Anglo-Indian papers, like the Englishman or the Civil and Military Gazette towards our people goes beyond all bounds. Yet the Civil and Military Gazette, which is the worst offender, has only received a mild remonstrance from the Lieut.-Governor of the Punjab, while the editors of Indian papers are in gaol.[9] Such treatment, however, is the inevitable penalty of a conquered race, and, I think, within the last year manners have mended a little. Lord Minto, at all events, is very much the gentleman himself.
“During the last three years of Lord Curzon’s time,” he continued, “we were kept in a state of perpetual irritation. Then came our high hopes from the Liberal Party, and our violent disappointment. The worst of all is that many people are beginning to lose faith in English integrity and sense of justice—the two main qualities that could be used for the maintenance of your power. It is a new thing, but our young men are beginning to ask what is the good of constitutional agitation if it only results in insult and the Partition of Bengal? That is how Extremists are created. There are two schools of them now, one here in Poona, the other in Bengal itself, and Anglo-Indians are always calling upon us to denounce them. But we are not likely to denounce a section of our own people in face of the bureaucracy. For, after all, they have in view the same great object as ourselves.”
For himself, I discovered many months afterwards that Mr. Gokhale hated the name of Moderate, as, I suppose, all beings of flesh and blood needs must. But, for brief, one has to call by some such name the party which continues in patience and hope to believe that appeals to justice and reason may still induce the English people to grant reform.
For the Simla scheme, recently put out by Mr. Morley for criticism,[10] no Indian whom I met had anything to say, except Mr. Gokhale alone, who thought he detected one or two minor points that might possibly be of advantage. He condemned the Imperial Advisory Council entirely, as sure to produce a body of half-educated ruling chiefs and territorial magnates, powerless to stand against any Government proposal, and unlikely to be summoned except to discuss a royal visit, a statue, a famine, or the plague. But from the Provincial Advisory Councils he thought something might possibly be gained, if at least half the members were elected on a high franchise and were bound to meet for the discussion of definite local subjects so many times a year.