India's Problem, Krishna or Christ

by John P. Jones

Yet this educational work is one of the potent, leavening influences of the country, and is helping greatly in carrying quietly forward one of the mightiest revolutions that have been witnessed in any land. In its train follows closely the social elevation of the people. The relaxation of the terrible caste system, the elevation of woman and her redemption from some of the cruelties and injustice of the past, immediately attend that expanding knowledge which results from the schools of the land.

Protestant missions are preëminent in their work of educating the Christian communities gathered together by them.[3] Though these communities are largely drawn from the lowest outcasts, yet they compare favourably, in their educational equipment, with the highest classes. This is a significant indication of their present, and a bright promise for their future, position among the people of India.

6. The Political Situation.

India today is politically a subject country. Though in one sense England did not directly subjugate India, it is nevertheless true that its inhabitants, though treated with large consideration, are today a subject people—ruled by a foreign nation 7,000 miles away. Hence, it might be expected that political rights and privileges would not prevail there as among a self-governing, entirely independent, people. The existence of an army of about 75,000 Britons in that land today is significant of the situation and partly reveals one grip with which Great [pg 032] Britain holds India and makes it a part of her great empire. I do not wish to minimize the moral power with which also, and increasingly, Great Britain draws India by sweet compulsion to herself; of this I shall speak later.

It should also be remembered that the genius of the Orient is not for self-government; in the East, people have little taste for free institutions; they have always craved, and found their greatest happiness and chief welfare in, a strong paternal government. The ordinary Hindu seeks for himself nothing higher than a government which, while not asking for his opinion concerning its policy and acts, will at least dispense a fair modicum of justice to him and his.

Notwithstanding all this, the Indian government has bestowed upon the people a wonderfully large meed of power and privilege. Political progress in the land is one of the marvels of the past century. Before the British entered India that land had never enjoyed the first taste of representative institutions. Today the query which arises in the mind of disinterested persons who know and love India is, whether political rights and liberties have not, of late years, been conferred too rapidly upon them. It should not be expected that a people who, by instinct and unbroken heritage, are the children of the worst kind of autocratic and absolute government, should acquire, in one age or century, wisdom or aptitude to rule themselves. The mass of Hindus love to be led and they follow easily.

But there is a small and growing party of the soil who have aptly learned many of the lessons taught them by the rulers. The best acquired of all these [pg 033] lessons is that of the power of agitation and of the efficacy among the Anglo-Saxon race of the cry for human rights. The only difficulty is that one might suppose, from the language of some of these men that England has not yet conceded to worthy Indians any of those political privileges which every Anglo-Saxon citizen demands for himself. As a matter of fact, we see in the municipalities of that land a form of popular government such as even not all western countries enjoy. The power of the franchise, in the election of municipal commissioners, is vested in all those who are possessed of the least amount of property. Even women enjoy the franchise; and it is a curious fact that the natives of South India have recently protested in the newspapers against the granting of this power to women, because, they say, the power is exercised only by “dancing girls” and other public characters. To those who watch carefully the working of this right of municipal franchise and see how easily and speedily the natives have adopted all the vices and tricks of the system, it does not by any means seem an unmixed good. And the hardest critics of the system that I have met have been intelligent and loyal Indians who believe that this meed of self-government is fraught with evil. The District Boards also are composed almost entirely of native gentlemen, and they have large powers in the administration of the internal affairs of the land. Moreover these municipal and local bodies, together, elect members for provincial legislative bodies where they enjoy recently enlarged powers for interpellating the government—a power which, by excessive use or abuse, they may soon forfeit.

To all this must be added the freedom of the press, which also has recently been abused by the dissemination of disloyal and seditious sentiments, but which adds immensely to the powers of the people.

Then the “National Congress” is a peculiar institution which, while it gives scope to the political aspirations of many natives, adds, by its very existence, to the lustre of the British Raj in the land. Just imagine for a moment the existence of such a Congress under Russian rule! It is true that this Congress, which meets annually in some great city of the land, has no connection with government or legislative bodies and has only that power and influence which inhere in its deliberations and resolutions. It is also true that up to the present it has given itself largely to the criticism and abuse of government. By this it has alienated some of its best friends. Still, even as a public censor it has doubtless done good, and offers to the discontented a wholesome vent for pent up feelings. It is also a remarkable gathering in its numbers of cultured men and illustrates one of the wonders which Great Britain has accomplished in that land. To think, that out of the babel of Indian tongues there should gather together in one place annually some 5,000 native gentlemen to discuss questions of State, and to criticise one of the most modern of governments in the pure English accents of Addison or of Macaulay! What a wonderful object lesson of progress this!