The Political Future of India

by Lala Lajpat Rai

“It is a mistake to assume that a land of villages necessarily means what is usually implied by the phrase, a people of villagers. In truth, India, for all its villages, has been also, at all known periods, and to-day still is, perhaps, to a greater extent than ever before, what Anglo-Saxon England, for instance was not or the South African Republic in the days before gold had been discovered, and what the Balkan peninsula even at the present time may perhaps not be, namely a land of flourishing cities, of a distinctly urban civilization, exhibiting not only splendid architecture, and the high development of the manufacturing arts made possible by the concentration of population and wealth, but likewise—what is much more important—a secretion of thought, an accumulation of knowledge, and a development of literature and philosophy which are not in the least like the characteristic products of villages as we know them in Europe or America. And to-day, although the teeming crowds who throng the narrow lanes of Calcutta or Benares, Bombay or Poona, Madras or Hyderabad, or even the millions who temporarily swarm at Hardwar or Allahabad or Puri may include only a small percentage of the whole population, yet the Indian social order does not seem to be, in the European understanding of the phrase, either on its good or on its bad side, essentially one of the villagers. The distinction may be of importance, because the Local Government developed by peoples of villages, as we know of them in Anglo-Saxon England, in the early days of the South African Republic, and in the Balkan States, is of a very different type from that which takes root and develops, even in the villages, in those nations which have also a City life, centers of religious activity, colleges and universities, and other ‘nodal points,’ from which emanate, through popular literature, pilgrimages, and the newspaper press, slow but far-spreading waves of thought and feeling, and aspirations which it is fatal to ignore.”[1]

We have also quoted, in the chapter on “Democracy in India,” the statement of Morse Stephens, about the condition of the people of Europe in the eighteenth century.

EDUCATIONAL BACKWARDNESS

“The Educational returns,” remark the authors of the Report, “tell us much the same story,” viz., the appalling dissimilarity of conditions in Europe and in India. While it is painfully true that the percentage of illiteracy in India is greater than in any of the countries of Europe, we cannot admit that that fact is a fatal bar to the beginnings of responsible government in India or to the granting of a democratic constitution to the country. Literacy is, no doubt, a convenient, but by no means a sure index of the intelligence of the people, even much less of their character. The political status of a country is determined more by intelligence and character than by literacy. In these the people of India are inferior to none. By that we do not mean that they are possessed of the same kind of political responsibility as the people of the United Kingdom or of France or of Germany or of the United States, but only that by intelligence and character they are quite fitted to start on the road to responsible government, at least to such kind as was conceded for the first time to Canada, Australia, Italy, the Balkan States, Austria, Hungary, etc. The illiteracy of the masses may be a good reason for not introducing universal suffrage, but it is hardly a valid reason for refusing a kind of constitution which may place India in the same position, in the matter of responsible Government, as Great Britain, France, Austria-Hungary, Italy and the United States were when those countries showed the same percentage of illiteracy. Literacy has nowhere been the test of political power. Burma had almost no illiteracy when the British took possession of it; its population was absolutely homogeneous and the solidarity of the nation ran no risk from “cleavages of religion, race and caste.” Even today Burma has the highest figures of literacy in the whole of British India. In that respect it occupies a higher position than Roumania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, many of the Russian States and perhaps even Italy and Hungary and possibly some of the South American Republics. In the matter of race and religion, too, its position is better than that of the countries mentioned, yet the authors of the Report do not propose to concede to it even such beginnings of responsible government as they are prepared to grant to the other provinces of India. The fact is that mere literacy does not play an important part in the awakening of political consciousness in a people. It is a useful ingredient of character required for the exercise of political power but by no means essential.

POVERTY

The argument based on poverty is of still less force. On the other hand, it is the best reason why the people of India should have the power to determine and carry out their fiscal policy. We hope the admissions made in Paragraph 135 of the Report which we bodily reproduce[2] will once for all dispose of the silly statement, so often repeated even by men who ought to know better, that materially India has been highly prosperous under British rule. If so, how is it that in the language of the Secretary of State for India and the Viceroy “enormous masses of the population have little to spare for more than the necessaries of life”? What about the prosperity of a province, one of the biggest in India (the United Provinces), in which the number of landlords (not tenants and farmers) whose income derived from their proprietary holdings exceeds £20 ($100 a year, which comes to 30 cents a day for the whole family), is about 126,000 out of a population of 48 millions!

Acceptance of the argument of poverty as sufficient to deprive people of political right is putting a premium on it which is hardly creditable to the political ethics of the twentieth century. It is the poorest and the most ignorant in the community who most egregiously suffer at the hands of autocracy. It is they who require protection from it. The wealthy and the educated know how to placate the bureaucrat and get what they want. It is the poor who pay the penalty of political helplessness, yet, curiously, it is for them and in their interest that the English Government in India proposes to withhold the power of the purse from the proposed Indian Councils and insists on denying the Indian people even the elements of responsible government. While we admit the general justice and accuracy of the observations made under the head of “extent of interest in political questions,” “political capacity of the rural population,” we fail to see anything in them which justifies the conclusion that the interests of the classes not politically minded will be safer in the hands of the British officer, and on the whole better protected by him than by his educated countrymen who are likely to get the power in case of responsible government being conceded now. In our judgment no greater argument for the immediate grant of a substantial step in the direction of complete responsible government throughout India and in all spheres of government, could be advanced than what is involved in the following observation of the authors of the joint Report:

“The rural classes have the greatest stake in the country because they contribute most to its revenues; but they are poorly equipped for politics and do not at present wish to take part in them. Among them are a few great landlords and a larger number of yeoman farmers. They are not ill-fitted to play a part in affairs, but with few exceptions they have not yet done so. But what is perhaps more important to appreciate than the mere content of political life in India is its rate of growth. No one who has observed Indian life during even the past five years can doubt that the growth is rapid and is real. It is beginning to affect the large landholders: here and there are signs of its beginning to affect even the villages. But recent events, and above all the war, have given it a new earnestness and a more practical character. Men are coming to realise more clearly that India’s political future is not to be won merely by fine phrases: and that it depends on the capacity of her people themselves to face difficulties and to dispose of them. Hence comes the demand for compulsory education, for industries, for tariffs, for social reform, for social, public and even military service.”

In the next paragraph, the authors approvingly give an extract from an official report in which it is frankly admitted that the rural population “may not be vocal, but they are certainly not voiceless.” The last meeting of the Indian Congress was attended by 700 farmer delegates. Thousands of farmers have joined the Home Rule Leagues. The statement that “hitherto they have regarded the official as their representative in the Councils of the Government” is entirely devoid of any truth. In their eyes the official is the Government itself. Some of them may think that the official represents the Government, but to say that they regard the official as “their representative in the Councils of the Government” is a mere travesty of truth. The paragraph on the “interests of the ryot” bristles with so many unwarranted assumptions that we must enter an emphatic protest against its misleading nature.

But it gives us pleasure to accord our whole-hearted support to the following statement with which the paragraph opens: