The new spirit in India

by Henry Woodd Nevinson

The belief that petitions for the redress of grievances, whether presented to the Indian Government or to the British people, are equally vain, is not so serious a matter for us as the distrust of our justice, but it contributed very strongly to the new spirit in its extreme form. Our disregard of all the public protests against the Partition of Bengal and all the persistent appeals for its withdrawal; our disregard of the reasonable pleading of such men as Mr. Gokhale and Dr. Rash Behari Ghose in the Viceroy’s Council, have perhaps done more than anything else to discredit the methods of the old Congress. I do not mean that the Congress has been useless. It served as a training ground for political knowledge. It afforded a centre for the growing unity of India, and without it the leaders of Indian reform could hardly have formulated their own programme. But in two avowed objects it has failed; it has had no influence upon the action of the Indian Government, and no influence upon English opinion at home. For twenty-two years it was a model of order and constitutional propriety. It passed excellent resolutions, it demanded the redress of acknowledged grievances, in trustful loyalty it arranged deputations to the representatives of the Crown. By the Anglo-Indians its constitutional propriety was called cowardice, its resolutions remained unnoticed, its grievances unredressed, and the representative of the Crown refused to receive its deputation. In England, outside the half-dozen who take some interest in India, no one knew where the Congress met, what language it spoke, what were its demands, or what its object; no one knew, and no one cared.

The new spirit perceived that it was useless addressing pious resolutions to the official waste-paper basket. The cry of “self-reliance, not mendicancy” spread through the country. One last effort to attract British attention to the grievance of India was made by the Swadeshi movement and the boycott on British goods. “Touch the pockets of our rulers, and they will listen”—that was the hope. And the hope was partly realized, for owing to Swadeshi and the local disturbances in Eastern Bengal, Calcutta, and the Punjab, England during 1907 and 1908 has probably paid more attention to India than at any time since the Mutiny.

But the principle of Swadeshi has now been developed by the new spirit for purposes far beyond the immediate object proposed. Swadeshi in manufacture and commerce is now followed for the great economic purpose of restoring the Indian industries, threatened or already ruined by England’s favoured competition. And even this economic Swadeshi is seen to be only a part of a much wider movement in self-reliance. On every side societies and orders are growing up for the promotion of Indian ideals and the development of Indian character, quite independently of our influence, and their members are sometimes inspired by an uncalculating devotion like that of the early Christians. Such are the Arya Samaj in the Punjab and United Provinces; the Servants of India in Poona; the Brahmo Samaj of highly educated Theists in Calcutta; the Order of Ramakrishna on the Ganges above Calcutta; the Hindu College in Benares, with which Mrs. Annie Besant’s name is so closely connected; the Order of the Gangrath Institute near Baroda; to say nothing of the whole Volunteer movement, the object of which is the renewal of organization, courage, and physical power among the youth. None of these movements is political in aim. Their work as societies lies in social and theological reform. But both in aim and method all are distinctly Swadeshi. They take little account of Government or of the Anglo-Indian community. In some of them there is even a tendency to react against reform, lest some taint of Western civilization should be introduced into Indian life. But religious and social as these movements are in origin and object, it is no longer possible to exclude their keener members from politics; for, among educated people, the events of the last few years have given to national politics the place once held by theology, and even social reform cannot now be entirely separated from political reform, since the result of educational and other advance is inevitably an increased demand for self-government.

The question immediately before India now is, which of two courses with regard to ourselves the new spirit as a whole will take. On the one hand, it may follow the line of most resistance. It may proclaim throughout the whole country: “It is useless to trouble about any reforms that these intruding foreigners will give us. Let them go on their way with their Advisory Councils, their Notables, their extended Legislative Councils, and other deceits. They have never paid the smallest attention to our real demands. In Mill’s words, they keep us as a warren or preserve for their own use, a place to make money in, a human farm to be worked for their own profit. It is for us to pursue our own course, disregarding their presence. Beyond paying their taxes, we need have little concern with them. If they imprison us, we will go to gaol silently; if they deport us without trial, we will endure without protest; if they execute us, we know that our souls will be at once re-incarnated to continue the struggle. But we will not notice their Government either by sharing in it or denouncing it. In religion, in education, in industries and common life, we will follow our own national lines just as though no foreigners were pretending to rule us. If enough of us combine, we shall embarrass their position; perhaps we shall make it untenable as well as ridiculous. But whether it is untenable or not, we do not greatly care, till a common Indian nationality has the strength to take freedom into its own hands.”

That is the line of most resistance, always a tempting line to take, and many Indians are taking it now. The temptation must be almost irresistible in a vast population like India’s, where a handful of people from a distant country maintain a predominance unmitigated by social intercourse, marriage, or permanent residence. All the more because this predominance rests on so narrow a basis that for its own maintenance it is inclined to deter the subject race from all initiative, enterprise, or leadership, and so to reduce it to what Dadabhai Naoroji has described as “moral poverty.” Any movement to check this national deterioration must be welcomed on behalf of the Indian peoples, except by those who openly desire those races to remain as flocks of sheep, dependent on the good nature or interested bounty of their appointed shepherds. But that is not the ideal that the best of our statesmen in India have set before themselves, nor is it an ideal that can any longer be maintained. The new spirit has already overthrown it.[72]

But besides this tempting line of most resistance there is another way, and, considering the external dangers that threaten India and her own existing difficulties of race, religion, and inexperience, this other way is probably the way of wisdom. The new spirit may still endeavour to act in harmony with us for the common good, acquiescing in our presence as on the whole tending to justice and advancement, acknowledging the material advantages we have brought, but at the same time persistently pressing for extensions of liberty, taking every opportunity that offers, and never hesitating to grasp at any chance of progress because it falls short of the perfect ideal. I admit that to follow this course requires a sweet reasonableness and a strength of character which few men in any nation possess. But after the defeats of many years, Mr. Gokhale still retains his hope; and after the outrage upon his own freedom and the very basis of our liberties, Lajpat Rai still classes himself with the Moderates. It depends almost entirely on ourselves whether those who, in spite of recent disappointments, still believe in an English feeling for justice and freedom shall be able to make their voices heard. If only the more reasonable and hopeful party had something to point to—some generous and ungrudging act of justice on England’s part—they might still silence the counsels of despair. It is not yet too late. Only, it is no good juggling with sham reforms and half-hearted concessions. Our measures, as Burke said, must be remedial.

The nature of such measures is well known. They should include a modification of the Partition of Bengal, by which the central province would be united under one Governor, having the same status as the Governors of Bombay and Madras, while the contiguous western districts were collected into a new province, and Assam remained isolated as it is by nature and race, under a Chief Commissioner responsible either to the Viceroy or to the Governor of Bengal.[73] They should include the appointment of at least one Indian on each of the Executive Councils (a concession which in the case of the Viceroy’s Council seems likely to be fulfilled), and an enlargement of the Viceroy’s and other Legislative Councils by genuinely elected members up to the number of half the Council. This would leave to the officials a steady but narrow majority, the right of absolute veto remaining with the Viceroy, Governor, or Lieutenant-Governor. It might then be laid down that if a large proportion of the elected members—say, two-thirds—were opposed to a certain measure, it should be suspended for further consideration. Some similar control should be granted over the expenditure of money, for at present the representative members have no voice in the revenue that is scraped off their people year by year, and the papers of protest or suggestion, which they read as they sit round the Viceroy’s council-table, might almost as well remain unread for any effect they have upon the official policy.

These reforms could be followed by a gradual extension of primary education, which might in the end cost us £5,000,000 a year, but would be well worth the price, even if we had to save something off the £20,000,000 now spent on the Army, and something off the other public services. Owing to our present parsimony in education, the census of 1901 reported that there were 104,500,000 males in India who could not read, 826 boys out of every 1000 of school age who had no school to go to, and only 1 in 10 males literate, and 7 in 1000 females. Further, we could be loyal to the late Queen’s Proclamation and admit Indians without prejudice to the positions they had fitted themselves for. We could make the position of the police such that they would be no longer compelled to help out their livelihood by corruption and false evidence. We could resolutely extinguish the system of Begar or forced labour for the benefit of Civilians and other Europeans. And we could make it illegal for any representative of our Government to condescend to the baseness of opening other people’s letters, even on the off-chance of spying upon sedition.