NATIONALISM IN INDIA
India is a land of paradox. Possessing a fundamental geographical unity, India has never known real political union save that recently imposed externally by the British "Raj." Full of warlike stocks, India has never been able to repel invaders. Occupied by many races, these races have never really fused, but have remained distinct and mutually hostile, sundered by barriers of blood, speech, culture, and creed. Thus India, large and populous as Europe or China, has neither, like China, evolved a generalized national unity; nor, like Europe, has developed a specialized national diversity; but has remained an amorphous, unstable indeterminate, with tendencies in both directions which were never carried to their logical conclusion.
India's history has been influenced mainly by three great invasions: the Aryan invasion, commencing about 1500 b.c.; the Mohammedan invasion, extending roughly from a.d. 1000 to 1700, and the English invasion, beginning about a.d. 1750 and culminating a century later in a complete conquest which has lasted to the present day.
The Aryans were a fair-skinned people, unquestionably of the same general stock as ourselves. Pressing down from Central Asia through those north-western passes where alone land-access is possible to India, elsewhere impregnably guarded by the mountain wall of the Himalayas, the Aryans subdued the dark-skinned Dravidian aborigines, and settled down as masters. This conquest was, however, superficial and partial. The bulk of the Aryans remained in the north-west, the more adventurous spirits scattering thinly over the rest of the vast peninsula. Even in the north large areas of hill-country and jungle remained in the exclusive possession of the aborigines, while very few Aryans ever penetrated the south. Over most of India, therefore, the Aryans were merely a small ruling class superimposed upon a much more numerous subject population. Fearing to be swallowed up in the Dravidian ocean, the Aryans attempted to preserve their political ascendancy and racial purity by the institution of "caste," which has ever since remained the basis of Indian social life. Caste was originally a "colour line." But it was enforced not so much by civil law as by religion. Society was divided into three castes: Brahmins, or priests; Kshatriyas, or warriors; and Sudras, or workers. The Aryans monopolized the two upper castes, the Sudras being the Dravidian subject population. These castes were kept apart by a rigorous series of religious taboos. Intermarriage, partaking of food and drink, even physical propinquity, entailed ceremonial defilement sometimes inexpiable. Disobedience to these taboos was punished with the terrible penalty of "outcasting," whereby the offender did not merely fall to a lower rank in the caste hierarchy but sank even below the Sudra and became a "Pariah," or man of no-caste, condemned to the most menial and revolting occupations, and with no rights which even the Sudra was bound to respect. Thus Indian society was governed, not by civil, but by ceremonially religious law; while, conversely, the nascent Indian religion ("Brahminism") became not ethical but social in character.
These things produced the most momentous consequences. As a "colour line," caste worked very imperfectly. Despite its prohibitions, even the Brahmins became more or less impregnated with Dravidian blood.[192] But as a social system caste continued to function in ways peculiar to itself. The three original castes gradually subdivided into hundreds and even thousands of sub-castes. These sub-castes had little or nothing of the original racial significance. But they were all just as exclusive as the primal trio, and the outcome was a shattering of Indian society into a chaos of rigid social atoms, between which co-operation or even understanding was impossible. The results upon Indian history are obvious. Says a British authority: "The effect of this permanent maintenance of human types is that the population is heterogeneous to the last degree. It is no question of rich and poor, of town and country, of employer and employed: the differences lie far deeper. The population of a district or a town is a collection of different nationalities—almost different species—of mankind that will not eat or drink or intermarry with one another, and that are governed in the more important affairs of life by committees of their own. It is hardly too much to say that by the caste system the inhabitants of India are differentiated into over two thousand species, which, in the intimate physical relations of life, have as little in common as the inmates of a zoological garden."[193]
Obviously, a land socially atomized and politically split into many principalities was destined to fall before the first strong invader. This invader was Islam. The Mohammedans attacked India soon after their conquest of Persia, but these early attacks were mere border raids without lasting significance. The first real Mohammedan invasion was that of Mahmud of Ghazni, an Afghan prince, in a.d. 1001. Following the road taken by the Aryans ages before, Mahmud conquered north-western India, the region known as the Punjab. Islam had thus obtained a firm foothold in India, and subsequent Moslem leaders spread gradually eastward until most of northern India was under Moslem rule. The invaders had two notable advantages: they were fanatically united against the despised "Idolaters," and they drew many converts from the native population. The very antithesis of Brahminism, Islam, with its doctrine that all Believers are brothers, could not fail to attract multitudes of low-castes and out-castes, who by conversion might rise to the status of the conquerors. This is the main reason why the Mohammedans in India to-day number more than 70,000,000—over one-fifth of the total population. These Indian Moslems are descended, not merely from Afghan, Turkish, Arab, and Persian invaders, but even more from the millions of Hindu converts who embraced Islam.
For many generations the Moslem hold on India was confined to the north. Then, early in the sixteenth century, the great Turko-Mongol leader Baber entered India and founded the "Mogul" Empire. Baber and his successors overran even the south, and united India politically as it had never been united before. But even this conquest was superficial. The Brahmins, threatened with destruction, preached a Hindu revival; the Mogul dynasty petered out; and at the beginning of the eighteenth century the Mogul Empire collapsed, leaving India a welter of warring principalities, Mohammedan and Hindu, fighting each other for religion, for politics, or for sheer lust of plunder.
Out of this anarchy the British rose to power. The British were at first merely one of several other European elements—Portuguese, Dutch, and French—who established small settlements along the Indian coasts. The Europeans never dreamed of conquering India while the Mogul power endured. In fact, the British connection with India began as a purely trading venture—the East India Company. But when India collapsed into anarchy the Europeans were first obliged to acquire local authority to protect their "factories," and later were lured into more ambitious schemes by the impotence of petty rulers. Gradually the British ousted their European rivals and established a solid political foothold in India. The one stable element in a seething chaos, the British inevitably extended their authority. At first they did so reluctantly. The East India Company long remained primarily a trading venture, aiming at dividends rather than dominion. However, it later evolved into a real government with an ambitious policy of annexation. This in turn awakened the fears of many Indians and brought on the "Mutiny" of 1857. The mutiny was quelled, the East India Company abolished, and India came directly under the British Crown, Queen Victoria being later proclaimed Empress of India. These events in turn resulted not only in a strengthening of British political authority but also in an increased penetration of Western influences of every description. Roads, railways, and canals opened up and unified India as never before; the piercing of the Isthmus of Suez facilitated communication with Europe; while education on European lines spread Western ideas.
Over this rapidly changing India stood the British "Raj"—a system of government unique in the world's history. It was the government of a few hundred highly skilled administrative experts backed by a small professional army, ruling a vast agglomeration of subject peoples. It was frankly an absolute paternalism, governing as it saw fit, with no more responsibility to the governed than the native despots whom it had displaced. But it governed well. In efficiency, honesty, and sense of duty, the government of India is probably the best example of benevolent absolutism that the world has ever seen. It gave India profound peace. It played no favourites, holding the scales even between rival races, creeds, and castes. Lastly, it made India a real political entity—something which India had never been before. For the first time in its history, India was firmly united under one rule—the rule of the Pax Britannica.
Yet the very virtues of British rule sowed the seeds of future trouble. Generations grew up, peacefully united in unprecedented acquaintanceship, forgetful of past ills, seeing only European shortcomings, and, above all, familiar with Western ideas of self-government, liberty, and nationality. In India, as elsewhere in the East, there was bound to arise a growing movement of discontent against Western rule—a discontent varying from moderate demands for increasing autonomy to radical demands for immediate independence.