The New World of Islam

by Lothrop Stoddard

This growing social friction was indubitably heightened by the lack of interest of Orientals in the sufferings of all persons not bound to them by family, caste, or customary ties. Throughout the East, "social service," in the Western sense, is practically unknown. This fact is noted by a few Orientals themselves. Says an Indian writer, speaking of Indian town life: "There is no common measure of social conduct.... Hitherto, social reform in India has taken account only of individual or family life. As applied to mankind in the mass, and especially to those soulless agglomerations of seething humanity which we call cities, it is a gospel yet to be preached."[289] As an American sociologist remarked of the growing slum evil throughout the industrialized Orient: "The greatest danger is due to the fact that Orientals do not have the high Western sense of the value of the life of the individual, and are, comparatively speaking, without any restraining influence similar to our own enlightened public opinion, which has been roused by the struggles of a century of industrial strife. Unless these elements can be supplied, there is danger of suffering and of abuses worse than any the West has known."[290]

All this diffused social unrest was centring about two recently emerged elements: the Western-educated intelligentsia and the industrial proletariat of the factory towns. The revolutionary tendencies of the intelligentsia, particularly of its half-educated failures, have been already noted, and these latter have undoubtedly played a leading part in all the revolutionary disturbances of the modern Orient, from North Africa to China.[291] Regarding the industrial proletariat, some writers think that there is little immediate likelihood of their becoming a major revolutionary factor, because of their traditionalism, ignorance, and apathy, and also because there is no real connection between them and the intelligentsia, the other centre of social discontent.

The French economist Métin states this view-point very well. Speaking primarily of India, he writes: "The Nationalist movement rises from the middle classes and manifests no systematic hostility toward the capitalists and great proprietors; in economic matters it is on their side."[292] As for the proletariat: "The coolies do not imagine that their lot can be bettered. Like the ryots and the agricultural labourers, they do not show the least sign of revolt. To whom should they turn? The ranks of traditional society are closed to them. People without caste, the coolies are despised even by the old-style artisan, proud of his caste-status, humble though that be. To fall to the job of a coolie is, for the Hindu, the worst declassment. The factory workers are not yet numerous enough to form a compact and powerful proletariat, able to exert pressure on the old society. Even if they do occasionally strike, they are as far from the modern Trade-Union as they are from the traditional working-caste. Neither can they look for leadership to the 'intellectual proletariat'; for the Nationalist movement has not emerged from the 'bourgeois' phase, and always leans on the capitalists....

"Thus Indian industry is still in its embryonic stages. In truth, the material evolution which translates itself by the construction of factories, and the social evolution which creates a proletariat, have only begun to emerge; while the intellectual evolution from which arise the programmes of social demands has not even begun."[293]

Other observers of Indian industrial conditions, however, do not share M. Métin's opinion. Says the British Labour leader, J. Ramsay Macdonald: "To imagine the backward Indian labourers becoming a conscious regiment in the class war, seems to be one of the vainest dreams in which a Western mind can indulge. But I sometimes wonder if it be so very vain after all. In the first place, the development of factory industry in India has created a landless and homeless proletariat unmatched by the same economic class in any other capitalist community; and to imagine that this class is to be kept out, or can be kept out, of Indian politics is far more vain than to dream of its developing a politics on Western lines. Further than that, the wage-earners have shown a willingness to respond to Trades-Union methods; they are forming industrial associations and have engaged in strikes; some of the social reform movements conducted by Indian intellectuals definitely try to establish Trades-Unions and preach ideas familiar to us in connection with Trades-Union propaganda. A capitalist fiscal policy will not only give this movement a great impetus as it did in Japan, but in India will not be able to suppress the movement, as was done in Japan, by legislation. As yet, the true proletarian wage-earner, uprooted from his native village and broken away from the organization of Indian society, is but insignificant. It is growing, however, and I believe that it will organize itself rapidly on the general lines of the proletarian classes of other capitalist countries. So soon as it becomes politically conscious, there are no other lines upon which it can organize itself."[294]

Turning to the Near East—more than a decade ago a French Socialist writer, observing the hard living conditions of the Egyptian masses, noted signs of social unrest and predicted grave disturbances. "A genuine proletariat," he wrote, "has been created by the multiplication of industries and the sudden, almost abrupt, progress which has followed. The cost of living has risen to a scale hitherto unknown in Egypt, while wages have risen but slightly. Poverty and want abound. Some day suffering will provoke the people to complaints, perhaps to angry outbursts, throughout this apparently prosperous Delta. It is true that the influx of foreigners and of money may put off the hour when the city or country labourer of Egyptian race comes clearly to perceive the wrongs that are being done to him. He may miss the educational influence of Socialism. Yet such an awakening may come sooner than people expect. It is not only among the successful and prosperous Egyptians that intelligence is to be found. Those whose wages are growing gradually smaller and smaller have intelligence of equal keenness, and it has become a real question as to the hour when for the first time in the land of Islam the flame of Mohammedan Socialism shall burst forth."[295] In Algeria, likewise, a Belgian traveller noted the dawning of a proletarian consciousness among the town working-men just before the Great War. Speaking of the rapid spread of Western ideas, he wrote: "Islam tears asunder like rotten cloth on the quays of Algiers: the dockers, coal-passers, and engine-tenders, to whatever race they belong, leave their Islam and acquire a genuine proletarian morality, that of the proletarians of Europe, and they make common cause with their European colleagues on the basis of a strictly economic struggle. If there were many big factories in Algeria, orthodox Islam would soon disappear there, as old-fashioned Catholicism has disappeared with us under the shock of great industry."[296]

Whatever may be the prospects as to the rapid emergence of organized labour movements in the Orient, one thing seems certain: the unrest which afflicted so many parts of the East in the years preceding the Great War, though mainly political, had also its social side. Toward the end of 1913, a leading Anglo-Indian journal remarked pessimistically: "We have already gone so far on the downward path that leads to destruction that there are districts in what were once regarded as the most settled parts of India which are being abandoned by the rich because their property is not safe. So great is the contempt for the law that it is employed by the unscrupulous as a means of offence against the innocent. Frontier Pathans commit outrages almost unbelievable in their daring. Mass-meetings are held and agitation spreads in regard to topics quite outside the business of orderly people. There is no matter of domestic or foreign politics in which crowds of irresponsible people do not want to have their passionate way. Great grievances are made of little, far-off things. What ought to be the ordered, spacious life of the District Officer is intruded upon and disturbed by a hundred distracting influences due to the want of discipline of the people. In the subordinate ranks of the great services themselves, trades-unions have been formed. Military and police officers have to regret that the new class of recruits is less subordinate than the old, harder to discipline, more full of complaints."[297]

The Great War of course enormously aggravated Oriental unrest. In many parts of the Near East, especially, acute suffering, balked ambitions, and furious hates combined to reduce society to the verge of chaos. Into this ominous turmoil there now came the sinister influence of Russian Bolshevism, marshalling all this diffused unrest by systematic methods for definite ends. Bolshevism was frankly out for a world-revolution and the destruction of Western civilization. To attain this objective the Bolshevist leaders not only launched direct assaults on the West, but also planned flank attacks in Asia and Africa. They believed that if the East could be set on fire, not only would Russian Bolshevism gain vast additional strength but also the economic repercussion on the West, already shaken by the war, would be so terrific that industrial collapse would ensue, thereby throwing Europe open to revolution.

Bolshevism's propagandist efforts were nothing short of universal, both in area and in scope. No part of the world was free from the plottings of its agents; no possible source of discontent was overlooked. Strictly "Red" doctrines like the dictatorship of the proletariat were very far from being the only weapons in Bolshevism's armoury. Since what was first wanted was the overthrow of the existing world-order, any kind of opposition to that order, no matter how remote doctrinally from Bolshevism, was grist to the Bolshevist mill. Accordingly, in every quarter of the globe, in Asia, Africa, Australia, and the Americas, as in Europe, Bolshevik agitators whispered in the ears of the discontented their gospel of hatred and revenge. Every nationalist aspiration, every political grievance, every social injustice, every racial discrimination, was fuel for Bolshevism's incitement to violence and war.[298]

Particularly promising fields for Bolshevist activity were the Near and Middle East. Besides being a prey to profound disturbances of every description, those regions as traditional objectives of the old Czarist imperialism, had long been carefully studied by Russian agents who had evolved a technique of "pacific penetration" that might be easily adjusted to Bolshevist ends. To stir up political, religious, and racial passions in Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan, and India, especially against England, required no original planning by Trotzky or Lenin. Czarism had already done these things for generations, and full information lay both in the Petrograd archives and in the brains of surviving Czarist agents ready to turn their hands as easily to the new work as the old.