Young India / An interpretation and a history of the nationalist movement from within

by Lala Lajpat Rai

“Agriculture in India, as elsewhere, is the least paying of industries, and it is not at all strange that large numbers of sturdy Punjabees prefer to labour in other countries rather than rot on their farms in the Punjab. In the early years of British rule the educated and the trading classes flourished and became prosperous, but now they are thoroughly discontented. The native traders are no longer happy under British rule, (1) because the railways and foreign import and export offices dealing directly with the producer and the consumer have ruined their business, (2) because the facilities available to them in the early days of British rule have disappeared, (3) because the bureaucracy is always inciting the agricultural and military classes against them and heaping insults on their devoted heads both by word and deed. In almost every province, special legislation has been enacted professedly in the interests of the agricultural classes but really directed against the Indian trader or money lender. On the other hand, what has the Government done to open non-agricultural pursuits to them? Nothing. In the whole length and breadth of the country there is not a single technological institute. The private or aided technological institutes are called by that name only by courtesy. In these days of international trade there is no provision in any of the Indian universities for the teaching of modern languages. While Germans, Austrians, Italians, Americans and Japanese can learn Hindustanee and English in their own countries in order to further their trade with India, the Government of India has never given a thought to the necessity of making a provision for the teaching of German, French, Japanese, &c., to the Indians and of encouraging Indians to learn these languages. The best part of a boy’s student life is compulsorily spent in acquiring excellence in the use of the English language. Indians are not supposed to know other languages or to trade with other countries, because the English do it for them. It is not the concern of the British to encourage the native to have direct commercial transactions with foreign countries. There is not a single place in India where an Indian student can do research work in chemistry or other sciences. While the country is full of mines, there is no place to learn mining. Hundreds of steamers come and go from Indian ports, but there is no place in India where an Indian youth can qualify himself even for the merchant marine, not to speak of the navy. In the whole of India with its splendid resources, there is not a single place where ships can be built. The Indian Government has never given a thought to these questions because they do not concern them, because they are not interested in the development of the indigenous industries and in raising the status of the people. They have done a lot to encourage the produce of raw materials necessary for their industries or for their food (cotton, wheat, oil, seeds, etc.), but almost nothing to encourage manufacturing industries. Originally they wanted to preserve the Indian markets for themselves only, but their policy of free trade stood in the way, and latterly the Germans and now the Japanese are sharing that market with them. But to teach the Indian to manufacture for his own consumption has never entered the thought of those responsible for the administration of India. Perhaps it is not right to say that it never entered their thought. They are too intelligent and shrewd not to know that they had not done their duty to India in these matters, but the interest of their own people was paramount and that they could not set aside.

“The British Government in India can not go in for universal elementary education, as there is danger of even greater disaffection resulting therefrom; they can not give technical education of a high order, as that might interfere with British industries; they can not protect Indian industries for the same reason; they can not provide for real high class commercial education with a teaching of foreign languages and a knowledge of seafaring and navigation, as they do not want the Indians to directly engage in oversea trade and contract relations with other nations. They can not protect and subsidise Indian industries, as that is opposed to free trade and detrimental to British industries. Yet they want the Indians to believe that the British Government in India is primarily conducted in the interests of India.

“The people of India must remain ignorant, illiterate and industrially and commercially dependent because that benefits England and is for the advantage of her people.

“But that is not all. The Government of India can not even provide for high class education in sciences, in engineering, and in medicine, for the simple reason that the higher positions in these professions they want to reserve for their own people. Of late the number of Indians, educated and trained in these departments of knowledge in British and other foreign universities, has so increased as to become rather embarrassing to the Government of India. They can not utilise them without reducing the number of Britishers in these services. This they do not desire. The result is that there are numbers of trained Indians in India with high class British and European qualifications who have to be contented with subordinate positions under Britishers of lesser qualifications, and perhaps, at times, of no qualifications. The competitive examinations for higher services are held in England, which in itself is a great injustice; but this year on account of the war, there being fewer qualified Britishers to compete for these services, the Government has resolved to discontinue[20] some of the examinations, for fear lest a larger number of Indians than is desirable might get into them. Can they still say that the Government of India is as good as or perhaps better than a national government? The truth is that they do not want a larger number of Indians in the higher services because they can not trust them. For the same reason they distrust private educational institutions and insist upon the employment of Britishers as inspectors of schools and as professors in the educational service. They will allow a certain number of Indians in the higher offices but that number must not be so large as to make it even remotely possible for them to create trouble for the Government. The same fear underlies the administration of local bodies and the constitution and powers of the Councils. It is simply begging the question to argue that Indians are not yet ready or fit for representative institutions. The real question is the dread of power passing from the Britishers into Indian hands.[21] It is this dread that is the dominating influence in the policy of the British Government in India. India is a possession and a dependency and must be administered in the best interests of the master. Many credulous Indians talk of the liberty-loving traditions of the British democracy, but they forget that the application of these traditions to India would make such big holes in their safes, purses, and incomes, that they as men swayed by self-interest and love of power and glory, can never think of enforcing these principles in India. The British are good people. In all personal dealings they are honest, frank, and reliable. But when national interests are at stake and when the interests of the nation dictate a different line of policy, they can not help following the latter, however much injustice and hardship they may inflict upon others in doing so. The English political moralist and thinker believes and preaches that the state exists for the people, that state and people are really interchangeable words, and that the teachings of Treitschke, that the state is greater than the people and that the latter exists for the former, is immoral and vicious. In Great Britain and the Colonies the British act as they believe, but in India they follow the doctrines of the German professor. The state in India is an authority imposed from without and is therefore distinct from and independent of the people.[22] The state in India is the British people, and therefore the interests of the latter must override those of the Indian people. Everything in India is judged by that standard. The English may be good, benevolent, just, kind, and fair-minded, but all these virtues are dominated by the supreme test mentioned above. All the real troubles of India arise from this circumstance. Everything connected with India is looked at from this angle. Unless this angle changes there is no possibility of any such changes taking place in the system and the policy of the Government of India as are likely to satisfy the self-respect of the Indian or to remove the disadvantages from which the country suffers.”

VII

The most significant development of Nationalism, however, that has taken place in the last year, is the unity between the Hindus and the Mohammedans on the question of self-government. It is remarkable how the war has united the Hindus and the Mohammedans, not only in their expressions of loyalty to the Government, but also in their demand for Home Rule and in their dissatisfaction with the prevailing political conditions in India. For the first time in the history of Indian Nationalism, the Indian National Congress and the All-India Muslim League have met in the same city. This was opposed with the whole of their might by the Ultra-Loyalists among the Mohammedans under the inspiration of their Anglo-Indian masters. The younger generation of the Mohammedans, however, is so thoroughly filled with the idea of Nationalism that they carried the day and succeeded in holding a very successful session of their league at Bombay in the same week in which the Indian National Congress was holding its session in that city. The result was that the members of both organisations met, compared notes, exchanged civilities, and found out that there was practical unity among them on all the important questions bearing upon their relations with the Government. The Muslim League President made pronouncements demanding self-government, free compulsory education, governmental help in industrial development, removal of restrictions against the progress of Indian industries, in almost the same terms and with the same emphasis, if not even greater, than the Indian National Congress did. Both the organisations appointed a joint committee to draw up a scheme of Home Rule which would meet the needs and the approval of both the great religious communities inhabiting that great country.

During the last year a scheme has been floated by Mrs. Annie Besant, the president of the Theosophical Society, a woman of great ability and of world-wide fame, who has adopted India as her home, but who at the same time is a patriotic Englishwoman, to organise a Home Rule League for India, separate from and independent of both the Indian National Congress and the All-India Muslim League. This proposal has met with the approval of the advanced members of both the Hindu and Mohammedan communities. Some leaders of the Indian National Congress, however, see a danger to their Congress in the growth and development of the Home Rule League. But it is wonderful how the idea has caught hold of the public mind. Practically the whole of the Nationalist press and the Nationalist platform, with a few minor exceptions, have declared in favour of the proposal. The supporters of the Home Rule League met at Bombay to formally decide the question of giving practical effect to the idea which has received the joint support of both the Hindus and the Mohammedans. Mrs. Besant, however, herself, has shrunk from organising it just now, out of deference to the opinions of some of the leaders of the Indian National Congress, pending the report of the joint committee formed to formulate a scheme of Home Rule suited to India. Indian Nationalism has thus advanced very much during the last year. We have the two movements—one representing force, the other peaceful agitation—side by side, as has been the case in the history of similar movements in other countries. One movement represents the more virile section of the population who believe in force, violence and terrorism; the other, those who depend upon appeal to reason, justice and conscience. The combined force of both, however, produces a momentum which is sure to become irresistible in the course of time. What is extremely hopeful is the entirely changed attitude of the Mohammedan community. The British wished for and tried to create an Ulster among the Mohammedans of India. They had well nigh succeeded, but the last three or four years have brought about a complete change. The Mohammedan masses had really never joined the educated Mohammedan Separatists, but even the latter have now found out that the policy of separation from the Hindus which was in their minds for some time, can not eventually bring any lasting good to their community. With their Hindu countrymen they feel that India must occupy the first place in their affections and thoughts, and that it was not inconsistent for them to be Mohammedans in religion and Indians in politics. Similarly, the Hindu sentiment, that was growing somewhat anti-Mohammedan on account of the Mohammedan sentiment of separation, has been greatly softened. The Mohammedans have begun to feel that they can share in the ancient glory of India without an outrage to their Mohammedanism. The Hindus have come to realise that after all the Mohammedan rule in India was not so bad or tyrannical and oppressive as they were told it was by interested historians. The Mohammedans feel that they can be as proud of the Hindu heroes, Rama and Krishna, of the Hindu Epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharta, of Hindu science and Hindu philosophy, as the Hindus themselves are, without being false to their religion or to their community. Similarly the Hindus feel that they can be as proud of a Sher Shah and an Akbar and a Shah Jahan, of Alberuni, of Ibn Batuta, of Abul Fazal, Faizi and Gálib, as the Mohammedans can be. Nay, they can go a step further and say that even Aurangzeb was not, after all, so bad as they had supposed him to be. The Hindus and Mohammedans have discovered that they can take part in their respective festivals and take pride in their respective past, without in any way being traitors to their respective religions and communities.

VIII

That the above statements are not mere creations of my own brain, but are based on fact, will be easily seen from the following extracts which I make from the speech of the President of the last session of the All-India Muslim League held at Bombay in December, 1915.

First, about the representative character of the assembly, Mr. Mazhar-ul-Haq remarked: