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

by Lala Lajpat Rai

To be sure, at the time when England came, India was in a peculiarly disorganized and unsettled state; for it should be remembered that the Mogul Empire was just breaking up and new political adjustments were everywhere just being made,—a fact which accounts for England’s being able to gain political power in India at all. But everything indicates that if India had not been interfered with by European nations, she would soon have been under competent Governments of her own again.

A further answer to the assertion that India cannot govern herself—surely one that should be conclusive—is the fact that, in parts, she is governing herself now, and governing herself well. It is notorious that the very best Government in India to-day is not that carried on by the British, but that of several of the Native States, notably Baroda and Mysore. In these States, particularly Baroda, the people are more free, more prosperous, more contented, and are making more progress, than in any other part of India. Note the superiority of both these States in the important matter of popular education. Mysore is spending on education more than three times as much per capita as is British India, while Baroda has made her education free and compulsory. Both of these States, but especially Baroda, which has thus placed herself in line with the leading nations of Europe and America by making provisions for the education of all her children, may well be contrasted with British India, which provides education, even of the poorest kind, for only one boy in ten and one girl in one hundred and forty-four.

The only ground at all that exists for the claim that the Indian people are not able to govern themselves lies in the fact that the British Government during all its history in the land has deprived them, and still continues to deprive them, against their constant protest, of practical experience in Government management. They had such experience before the British came, but since that time they have been robbed of it to their great injury. Of course, under present conditions, if the British should leave India in a day, with no body of men trained to take their places, for a time there would be confusion, just as there would be confusion in England if everybody there accustomed to Government management should leave that country in a day.

But the Indian people do not ask England to leave India in a day, or to leave at all; what they ask is for England to associate with herself the competent men of India in the government of their own country, and thus give them the experience in self-rule which is their right and of which they never ought to have been deprived. With such opportunities for practical experience extended to them for twenty years, or even for ten years, they would be ready for the full responsibilities of home rule.

Among the tens of thousands of India’s educated men, and men of natural capacity for leadership, there is no lack of material to fill, and fill well as soon as they are given experience, every kind of official position. Many of the highest judgeships are now filled with great efficiency by Indians. In no department of the Government where Indians have been adequately tried have they been found wanting.

The truth is, not one single fact can be cited to show that India cannot govern herself well if given a chance. It would not be difficult to form an Indian Parliament today, composed of men as able and of as high character as those that constitute the fine Parliament of Japan. India has public men who, if they lived in England and belonged to the English race, would unhesitatingly be adjudged not only of Parliamentary but of Cabinet rank. For twenty years before his recent lamented death Mr. Gokhale was confessedly the equal in intellectual ability and in moral worth of any Englishman in India, not excepting the three Viceroys under whom he served. It is no exaggeration to declare that Mr. Justice Renade had qualifications fully fitting him for the position of Viceroy, or if he had lived in England, fitting him for the position of Premier.

This is only another way of saying that among the leaders of the various States and Provinces of India there is abundant material to form National and Provincial Governments little, if at all, inferior in ability and in moral character to the Governments of the Western world.

J. T. Sunderland.

New York, June, 1916.