The Political Future of India

by Lala Lajpat Rai

“The Indians are a chivalrous people; they will not disturb England as long as she is engaged with Germany. The struggle after the war might, however, be even more bitter and sustained.”

The events that have happened since have amply justified the above conclusion. India not only refrained from disturbing England while she was engaged in war with Germany, but actively helped in defeating Germany and winning the war. She raised an army of over a million combatants and supplied a large number of war workers, and made huge contributions in money and materials. She denied herself the necessities of life in order to feed and equip the armies in the field though within the last months of the war, when scarcity and epidemic overtook her, she lost six millions of her sons and daughters from one disease alone—influenza. This was more than chivalry. This was self-effacement in the interests of an Empire which, in the past, had treated her children as helots. How much of this effort was voluntary and how much of it was forced it is difficult to appraise. Great Britain, however, has unequivocally accepted it as voluntary and has attributed it to India’s satisfaction with her rule. That India was not satisfied with her rule she has spared no pains to impress upon the British people as well as the rest of the world. Reading between the lines of the report of the Secretary of State for India and the Viceroy has established the fact of that dissatisfaction beyond the possibility of doubt, but if any doubt still remained it has been dispelled by the writings and utterances of her representative spokesman in India, in Great Britain and abroad. The prince and the peasant, the landlord and the ryot, the professor and the student, the politician and the layman—all have spoken. They differ in their estimates of the “blessings” of British rule, they differ in the manner of their profession of loyalty to the British Empire, they sometimes differ in shaping their schemes for the future Government of India but they are all agreed:

(1) That the present constitution of the Government of India is viciously autocratic, bureaucratic, antiquated and unsatisfying.

(2) That India has, in the past, been governed more in the interests of, and by the British merchant and the British aristocrat than in the interests of her own peoples.

(3) That the neglect of India’s education and industries has been culpably tragic and

(4) That the only real and effectual remedy is to introduce an element of responsibility in the Government of India.

In the report of the Secretary of State and the Viceroy, so often quoted and referred to in these pages, the truth of (1), (3), and (4) is substantially admitted and point (2) indirectly conceded. In the following pages an attempt is made to prove this by extracts from the report itself. Ever since the report was published in July, 1918, India has been in a state of ferment,—a ferment of enthusiasm and criticism, of hope and disappointment. While the country has freely acknowledged the unique value of the report, the politicians have differed in their estimates of the value of the scheme embodied therein. Yet there is a complete unanimity on one point, that nothing less than what is planned in the report will be accepted, even as the first step towards eventual complete responsible Government. This is the minimum. Even the ultra-moderates have expressed themselves quite strongly on that point. Speaking at the Conference of the Moderates held at Bombay on November 1, 1918, the President, Mr. Surendranath Banerjea, is reported to have said: “our creed is co-operation with the Government wherever practicable, and opposition to its policy and measures when the supreme interests of the mother-land require it.... I have a word to say ... to the British Government. I have a warning note to sound.... If the enactment of the Reform proposals is unduly postponed, if they are whittled down in any way ... there will be grave public discontent and agitation.” A little further in the same speech he asked if “by the unwisdom of our rulers” India was “to be converted into a greater Ireland.” In less than six months from the date of this pronouncement, the rulers of India gave ample proof of their “unwisdom” by actually converting India into a “greater Ireland” and in establishing the absolute correctness of the prognostication made by the present writer in the concluding sentence of his book Young India. The manifesto of the Moderate Party issued over the signatures of the Moderate leaders all over the country contained the following warning: “We must equally protest against every attempt, by whomever made and in whatever manner, at any mutilation of the Montagu-Chelmsford proposals. We are constrained to utter a grave warning against the inevitable disastrous effects of such a grievous mistake on the future relations of the British Government and the Indian people which will result in discontent and agitation followed by repression on the one side and suffering on the other side.” Little did they know when they uttered the warning that repression would come even before the Reform Scheme was discussed in Parliament and “mutilated” there. British rule in Ireland has been for the last twenty years a wearisome record of mixed concessions and coercions. Every time a concession was made it was either preceded or accompanied by strong doses of coercion. One would have thought that British statesmen were wiser by their experience of Ireland, but it seems that they have learnt nothing and that they have no intention of doing in India anything different from what they have been doing in Ireland. The history of British statesmanship in relation to Irish affairs is repeating itself almost item by item in India.

Lord Morley’s reforms were both preceded and followed by strong measures of repression and suppression. As if to prove that British statesmanship can never in this respect set aside precedent even for once, Mr. Montagu’s proposals have been followed by a measure of coercion unique even for India. Mr. Montagu’s proposals for the reconstruction of Government in India are yet in the air. They are being criticised and examined minutely by numerous British agencies both in India and in England as to how and in what respects they can be made innocuous. Certain other reforms promised by the report, such as the scheme for Local Self Government and the policy in relation to the Arms Act, have already been disposed of in the usual masterly way of giving with one hand and taking back with the other. Similarly the “great” scheme of opening the commissioned ranks of the Army to the native Indians has practically (for the present at least) ended in fiasco. But the policy underlying the Rowlatt laws has surpassed all. In the chapters of this book dealing with the Revolutionary movement the reader will find a genesis of the Rowlatt laws of coercion.

On the sixteenth of January in the Gazette of India was published a draft of two bills that were proposed to be brought before the Legislative Council of India (which has a standing majority of Government officials). These bills were to give effect to the recommendations of the committee presided over by Mr. Justice Rowlatt of the High Court of England, for the prevention, detection and punishment of sedition in India. Their introduction into the Legislative Council was at once protested against by all classes of Indians with a unanimity never before witnessed in the history of India. All sections of the great Indian population from the Prince to the peasant, including all races, religions, sects, castes, creeds and professions joined in the protest. Hindus, Mohammedans, Indian Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Parsees—all stood up, to a man, to oppose the measure. All the political parties, Conservatives, Liberals, Moderates and Extremists expressed themselves against it. The measure was opposed by all the non-official Indian members of the Legislative Council. All methods of agitation were resorted to in order to make the opinion of the country known to the Government and to warn the latter against the danger of defying the united will of the people. The press, the pulpit and the platform all joined in denouncing the measures, meetings of protest were held in all parts of the country and resolutions wired to the Government. A few days before the final meeting at which these bills were to be passed into law a number of prominent citizens, male and female, pledged themselves to passive resistance in case the measures were enacted. The passive resistance movement was inaugurated and led by Mr. M. K. Gandhi, a man of saintly character, universally respected and revered in India, the same who stood for the Government during the war and rendered material help in recruiting soldiers, raising loans and procuring other help for its prosecution. The following is the text of the pledge that was signed by hundreds and thousands of Indians belonging to all races and religions and hailing from all parts of the continent:

“Being conscientiously of opinion that the bills known as the Indian Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill No. 1 of 1919 and No. 2 of 1919 are unjust, subversive of the principle of liberty and justice and destructive of the elementary rights of individuals on which the safety of the community as a whole and the State itself is based, we solemnly affirm that, in the event of these bills becoming law, we shall refuse civilly to obey these laws and such other laws as a committee to be hereafter appointed may think fit and we further affirm that in this struggle we will faithfully follow truth and refrain from violence of life, person or property.”