“that the processes at work in British India cannot leave the States untouched and must in time affect even those whose ideas and institutions are of the most conservative and feudal character.”
It is the path of wisdom and sagacity to recognise the world forces that are at work. No amount of ancient prestige can prevent the people from coming into their own. The age of despotism is gone and the autocrats of today must sooner or later hand over their powers to the people. The more they conciliate them the longer perhaps they may be able to lead them. They may continue as leaders for a long time, but as autocratic dispensers of favours and fortunes they cannot remain, perhaps not even for their life time.
In our judgment this part of the Montagu-Chelmsford Report is no less important for the future of Indian democracy than the others that directly deal with British India, and we hope that whatever might be the policy as regards the existing States the new law will make it impossible for the Government of India and the Secretary of State to create any new States in the future. It is monstrous to transfer millions of human beings from one kind of political rule to another like so many cattle, as was done in 1911. The present rule of any Indian Maharaja may be as good or as bad as that of a British Governor or Lieutenant Governor, but the latter has in it greater democratic potentialities than the former, for the mere fact, if for no other, that, while the British are more or less amenable to world opinion, the rulers of Native States are not. It is inhuman, and not in accord with modern ideas of right and wrong to reward somebody’s loyalty by giving him power of life and death over numerous fellow beings, otherwise than in due course of law. Even the mighty British Government is not the owner of the bodies and souls of its subjects in India. How, then, can it assume the right of abandoning them to the absolute rule of a single individual, however worthy or loyal he may be? We hope this stupid way of rewarding loyal services may be ended by an express provision to that effect in the statute which will be passed relating to the reorganization of the Government of India.
In this connection the following observations made in a leading editorial of the Servant of India, Poona (February 16, 1919), are worthy of attention:
“A hundred years ago, it was decidedly in the interests of British rule, and probably also in the interests of the people of India generally, that the small, ill-governed, and eternally fighting states of India should come under the suzerainty of a single powerful power. It may be regarded as a historical misfortune that this power happened then to be foreign, though many regard this contact with a virile civilization as the making of India. This suzerainty could then be established duly by entering into treaties with these states and guaranteeing them certain rights and privileges. But these treaties have now assumed in the eyes of the descendants of the original princes an air of inspiration; they have become a kind of perpetuity. They always come in the way of any improvement. When any new policy is proposed to them, they are always prepared to say, ‘This is not in the bond.’ One may be allowed to speculate as to how many of these Highnesses would have survived to this day to put forward this claim in the absence of the suzerain power. Thrones in ancient days were as unstable as they are becoming now in Europe. It is hardly possible that the present popular wave in Europe would not have touched our Native States. The subjects of the states would have clamoured for a recognition of their rights, and they would have had their way. But now the princes feel quite secure. Have they not got their treaties? As a result there is no political life at all in the Native States. The most ardent advocate of Home Rule would be most violently against migration to a Native State. The real problem of the Native States is how to get over the treaties when they conflict with the interests of their subjects. The questions discussed at the Chiefs’ Conference leave us comparatively cold, as they entirely neglect the people most concerned. The questions of the rights of the chiefs and their salutes or precedence are in our opinion of a very secondary importance. A renowned statesman in Europe gave at the utmost a life of a dozen years to the most solemn treaty between two countries, for in that period circumstances alter and the solid foundation for the treaty cracks. Is it not high time that the treaties with the chiefs should be revised after over a hundred years? It would indeed redound to their credit if the chiefs themselves come forward to submit to such readjustment. Perhaps their autocratic and irresponsible power may have to suffer some diminution. But if they consent to that diminution so as to give it to their subjects in the modern democratic spirit, the real power and influence of the Native States will increase incalculably. It is in this direction we wish to see a solution of the problem of the Native States which are nowadays working as a brake on our national progress.”
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The Indian Year Book for 1918, p. 81.