One would have thought that under the pressure of the war, your Government in India would make an honest and earnest effort to reduce expenditure on public services, at least under heads mainly ornamental or which only afford luxuries to your agents in India; but on the other hand, what is the actual situation? A perusal of the proceedings of the Imperial Legislative Council and also of the Provincial Councils shows that all efforts made by the non-official members to obtain additional money for education and sanitation by the reduction of expenditure on luxuries, were opposed by your Government, and were consequently defeated. All efforts to reduce expenditure on comforts were of course resisted by those who enjoyed them, and it is they whose votes count in the Indian Councils. For example, it was proposed that the huge expenditure incurred by the different Government Departments, Imperial and Provincial, in moving to the Hills for seven months of the year, should be reduced, at least partially. Many persons competent to express an opinion on the subject, among them Lord Carmichael, the retiring Governor of Bengal, have placed it on record that this "exodus to the hills" was not necessary, and was in fact prejudicial to the interests of good government; yet the Government opposed the motion of the non-official member and he was forced to withdraw it. A similar motion to curtail the expenditure on the ornamentation of the residence of the Lieutenant Governor of the United Provinces was also opposed and met a similar fate. The huge allowances made to the heads of the different governments in India for kitchen expenses, for dispensing hospitality, and for traveling in royal style have not been reduced by a penny. The Punjab Government has provided in its current budget a large amount of money for providing palatial residences for its officers in summer resorts, and has sanctioned large pensions, from father to son, for a few of their Indian supporters. These men are mostly wealthy men. They did nothing more than help you in your suppressive and exploiting policy. Your Government naturally rewards them. Is it not bribery. If an expert financier were to examine into these items, which can only pass unchallenged in a country wherein the people have no voice in the raising of the taxes and in spending them, it would be found that great savings could be effected and the money thus made available used for other urgent needs of the people. The fact is that the Indian ryot who pays for all these extravagances has no voice to check the vagaries of those who spend his money for their own comforts. I have not mentioned the lavish scale on which special traveling allowances are granted to high officials in India. It is a matter of common knowledge that these officials do not spend as much as they draw under this head. Yet it is actually proposed that the salaries and the allowances for the European members of the Indian services be substantially raised. Verily, taxation without representation is a crime of the worst possible kind.
DEMOCRACY
Mr. Lloyd George, you and your colleagues in the Government of Great Britain, say that in fighting the Germans you are fighting the battle of Democracy, to make the world safe from autocracy and militarism, that you are fighting for rights of small nations, and for the domination of right over might. The United States has joined the war for the same reason. I have seen numerous recruiting posters exhibited in New York City exhorting young Americans to enlist in the army "to make the world safe" for Democracy. I have not the slightest doubt of the sincerity of the American professions because their international record is so far clean. Vide their record in Cuba and the Philippines. Can we say the same for Great Britain? I am afraid not, so long at least, as you continue to deny self-government to India, the second of the two biggest democracies of the world. Here is a nation of 315 million human beings (or say several nations, if you wish, as your publicists are so fond of repeating ad nauseam that India is not a nation) whom you are governing by the force of might, without their consent, and on absolutely despotic lines; whom you deny freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom of education; whom you tax without their consent and then spend those taxes outside of their country, and in providing luxuries to your representatives in India or in bribing such Indians as uphold you in your possessions. I have no doubt that you are sincere in your denunciation of German militarism. For myself I have no use for Czars and Kaisers, Emperors and Sultans, and I dare say that you, too, have none. Thus I am in full sympathy with your efforts to exterminate the race of Kaisers. So far you are right. But an Indian cannot help smiling rather cynically when he hears you saying that you are waging the war to make the world safe for democracy. Your conduct in India and in Egypt, and in Persia belies your protestations.
AS TO SMALL NATIONS
In defending your conduct you urge that India is not a nation. Very well, sir, divide India into small nations and give them self-government separately. You will admit that there are parts of India which are homogenous, entitled to be called small nations in the sense in which Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, and Holland are. The bulk of the population follow the same religion, speak the same language and belong to the same race. Remember, please, that I do not admit that India is not a nation or that the sameness of language, religion and race is necessary for a political national existence. Switzerland, Canada, the United States, South Africa, Russia, and Austria-Hungary have demolished that theory.
The apologists of the present system of Government in India say that the Indian people are not sufficiently educated in the principles and practice of politics and that their ignorance and illiteracy make it necessary for the British to continue to rule them from without, until they are fit to establish and maintain a democratic form of government. I have already made some remarks about illiteracy and shown that the responsibility for it rests on your shoulders. If you, sir, are to be the sole judge of the educational requirements of the Indian people, their progress is bound to hang on your convenience. No one in possession is anxious to be dispossessed and if the time and method of his dispossession is to be determined by himself, then woe to the dispossessed! But, sir, you forget that literacy is not education. The Indian masses have a background of centuries of culture which places them in the matter of intelligence and character, in a better position than even the literate millions of European and American countries. And after all, it is intelligence and culture that count most in the fixing of final values.
As for their training in political life, how are they to get it, if you make it a penal offence for their leaders to tell them that the present system of Government is unnatural, harmful, and a hindrance to progress? The masses cannot grasp principles unless one illustrates these principles by their application to the affairs of every day life. Your Government and your courts say that an agitation for home rule is legal and permissible, but any criticism that is likely to create dissatisfaction is illegal and deserves to be suppressed high-handedly. You know from experience, sir, that the masses require to be led. No government is willing to make changes unless compelled from below. That is as true of democratic America as of monarchical England. Much more must it be so in the case of countries under foreign yoke. To carry the people with them, the leaders must expose the existing evils and stress the necessity and urgency of sweeping changes in political conditions. The moment they proceed to do so with any degree of effectiveness, they are charged with an attempt to create disaffection and convicted of sedition. Do you honestly believe that any people on the face of the earth can make any progress in political education when they are ruled by a Press Act which stops criticism and discussion in the following terms:
SECTION OF THE INDIAN PRESS ACT OF 1910
Whenever it appears to the Local Government that any printing press in respect of which any security has been deposited as required by Section 3 is used for the purpose of printing or publishing any newspaper, book, or other document containing any words, signs or visible representations which are likely to have a tendency directly, or indirectly, whether by inference, suggestion, allusion, metaphor, implication or otherwise:
(a) To incite to murder or to any offense under the Explosives Substances Act of 1908, or to any act of violence or
(b) To seduce any officer, soldier, or sailor in the Army or Navy of His Majesty from his allegiance or his duty or
(c) To bring into hatred or contempt His Majesty or the Government established by the law in British India, or the Administration of Justice in British India or any native Prince or Chief under the suzeranity of His Majesty or any class or section of His Majesty's subjects in British India or to excite disaffection towards His Majesty or the said Government or any such Prince or Chief or
(d) To put any person in fear or to cause any annoyance to him and thereby induce him to deliver to any person any property or valuable security, or to do any act which he is not legally bound to do or to omit any act which he is legally entitled to do or
(e) To encourage or incite any person to interfere with the administration of the law or with the maintenance of law and order or
(f) To convey any threat of injury to a public servant, or to any person in whom the public servant is believed to be interested, with a view to inducing that person to do any act or to forbear to do any act connected with the exercise of his public functions the Local Government may, by notice in writing to the keeper of such printing press, stating or describing the words, signs or visible representations which in its opinion are of the nature described above, declare the security deposited in respect of such Press and all copies of such newspaper, book, or other document wherever found to be forfeited to His Majesty.
Explanation I: In clause c the expression disaffection includes disloyalty and all feelings of enmity.
Explanation II: Comments expressing the disapproval of the measures of the Government of any such native Prince or Chief as aforesaid with a view to obtain their alteration by lawful means or of the administration or other action of the Government or any such native Prince or Chief or of the administration of Justice in British India without exciting or attempting to excite hatred, contempt, or disaffection, do not come under the scope of clause c.
Can any people make headway in the art of self-government who are governed by a foreign bureaucracy aided by an army of Indian Czars regulating the very minutest details of their life? You know that this over government of India is a direct result of your rule. Before you came the Indian village was a self-governed unit. (See statements of Monroe, Elphinstone, Metcalfe, and Lawrence.) Even now the people in the Native States are in this respect better off than the people of British India. The Education Minister of your Cabinet, Mr. H. A. L. Fisher has, after a visit to India, placed it on record that "the inhabitants of a well governed Native State are, on the whole, happier and more contented than the inhabitants of British India. They are more lightly taxed; the pace of the administration is less urgent and exacting. They feel that they do things for themselves instead of having everything done by a cold and alien benevolence." Yet if an Indian leader were to point this out and ask the Indian masses to improve their lot by demanding and winning for themselves the right to manage their own affairs, and by driving out those influences that stand in their way, he would be persecuted and imprisoned or transported.
The first axiom for political progress is that the people should throw away their attitude of submission to oppression, tyranny, high-handedness, and conditions of slavery whether imposed by a national or a foreign Government. They have a right to revolt if they have the means to do so successfully. But in any case, they have a right to discuss, agitate and organize for changes. This they cannot do unless they have a free press, a free platform, and the right of free association. In India the first is denied by the Press Act, the second by the comprehensive sections of the Penal Code, and the third by the so-called "Seditious Meetings Act." What little was left has been done away with under the extensive powers taken and exercised by the Executive under the plea of war exigency by the "Defense of India Act." While every other part of the Empire, including the "Mother Country" is discussing political and economic changes of an extremely radical character, such as the establishment of a more effective Imperial Parliament and Preferential Tariffs after the war, not to speak of constructive programmes for education, and industrial rejuvenation, the Indian leaders are "officially" advised to be mum, and any effort to rouse the country to a consciousness of its rights and duties is characterized as perverted, ill-timed, and inconsistent with loyalty.