Gold, Sport, and Coffee Planting in Mysore / With chapters on coffee planting in Coorg, the Mysore representative assembly, the Indian congress, caste and the Indian silver question, being the 38 years' experiences of a Mysore planter

by Robert H. Elliot

When I was passing through Poona in the year 1879, I was called upon by seven leading members of the native community who knew of the interest I had taken in Indian affairs, and in the course of our conversation they made some remarks on the desire of the educated natives for some share of political power. I then explained to them that, as it was clear that India was entirely unfit for representative institutions, the only result would be that power would be transferred from a limited class of Englishmen to a very limited class of natives, which would be of no advantage to the country whatever. My remarks were followed by a dead silence which was broken by one of them saying, in a desponding tone, "you have educated us, and you have made us discontented accordingly," thus illustrating very forcibly what I suppose Solomon meant when he said, "He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow." But, however that may be, the utterance of the native in question explains the origin of the Indian Congress which was started in 1885 by a small number of the educated classes who began to climb the political tree with considerable vigour, illustrating as they did so the native proverb which tells us that "The higher the monkey climbs the more he shows his tail." And, in fact, the members of the Congress showed theirs so completely when they climbed to the top of their political tree at Madras in 1887, that their proceedings would be hardly worth noticing were it not that they might be the means of prejudicing the proper claims of the natives to consultative assemblies like the one we have in Mysore. With people less advanced as regards common sense than the natives of India, and also less suspicious of the educated classes, the Congress wallahs, as they are sometimes called, might have done some mischief, but the only harm they have really done, and I consider it no small harm, is to lower the educated natives in general in the ideas of those who have not had an opportunity of knowing the best of them, and so appreciating their admirable abilities and calm common sense. For when the public knows, as all those who have paid any attention to the subject do know, that the members of the Congress are now selling pamphlets which are intended to bring the Queen's Government into hatred and contempt, its opinion of the educated natives of India is not likely to be a high one. And in order to make quite sure that the Congress is still selling the pamphlets in question, I suggested to the secretary of the Athenæum in June, 1892, to purchase for the library of that club (and he accordingly did so), from the Indian Congress office in London, a copy of the Congress proceedings with which the pamphlets in question are bound up. And it may not be uninteresting to note here that Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji, M.P., as a leading member of the Congress, is therefore one of the sellers of the pamphlets. It is, however, only fair to add, as an excuse for Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji and his misguided associates, that they have, after all, only followed on the track of the Irish agitators, and no doubt consider that the preaching of sedition against the Government to whom they owe so much is the proper course to pursue when aiming at political power. And as an extenuation of their action it should also be considered that the members of the Congress, who at first were acting in a perfectly legitimate manner, eventually fell under the guidance of a retired member of the Indian Civil Service—a certain Mr. Hume—who seems to have lodged some of his own extravagant ideas in the heads of the raw and inexperienced members of the Congress, and who is supposed to be the author of the seditious pamphlets. And now let me give a brief account of the Congress, and its aims and views.

The first Congress, which met in Bombay in December, 1885, consisted of seventy-eight persons, who came from twenty-five places. They were neither elected nor delegated, and how they came together does not appear in the published proceedings of the Congress. The principal resolution passed on the occasion related to the reforms of the various Indian Councils.

The second Congress, which was composed of 440 persons, who were partly elected and partly delegated, and of persons who could produce no evidence of being one or the other, met in Calcutta in December, 1886, and (p. 10 of Report of 1887) "passed a series of resolutions of the highest importance," which is undoubtedly true, as the result of them would, if carried into effect, practically be to substitute the rule of the Congress for that of the Queen. This change was proposed to be effected by reconstituting the Provincial, Legislative, and Governor-General's Council, enlarging them, and giving "not less than one half" (p. 217 of Report of 1887) of the seats to members elected through the agency of the Congress. This proposed measure was justly considered by the delegates to be the key of the position, as we shall more fully see when we come to the consideration of the proceedings of the next Congress.

This, the third Congress, met at Madras in December, 1887, when 604 delegates (a large number of whom were lawyers and newspaper editors), who "were appointed either at open public meetings or by a political or trade association," assembled and passed no less than eleven resolutions. The second, fifth and eighth of these are worthy of notice, as also are the seditious political pamphlets previously alluded to, which, for convenient reference, are bound up with the report of the proceedings.

The second resolution (p. 82 of Report of 1887) reaffirms the resolutions of the two previous Congresses, which demand the expansion and reforms of the various Indian Councils. Here the first speaker (p. 83) was a Mr. Bannerjee, a newspaper editor, who in his introductory remarks in support of the resolution assured the delegates that "the dream of ages is about to be realized." We are not the legislators of the country, he further on remarks, "though we hope to be so some day when the Councils are reconstituted," and eloquent was the language of the speaker when he subsequently dwelt on the fact that the power of making the laws would at once give them every reform they could desire. Mr. Bannerjee was succeeded by other native speakers, who dwelt warmly upon the advantages of representative institutions, and these were followed by Mr. Norton, Coroner of Madras, who most highly extolled the resolution. "That," he said, "is the key of all your future triumph" (p. 90), and further on in his speech he urges them to persevere up to the day "when you shall place your hand upon the purse strings of the country and the government," for, he continued, "once you control the finances, you will taste the true meaning of power and freedom."

And here, after all the talk about the value of representative institutions, and just as the Congress seemed to be on the verge of recommending parliamentary institutions such as we have, the members suddenly wheeled about and practically declared that India was unfit for them by deciding (p. 91) that, as the rural districts might not elect suitable members, the so-called representatives of the people were to be nominated by an electoral college, which was to be composed of members sent up from the various district and municipal boards, chambers of commerce, and universities. The power of election was thus to be conferred, to use Mr. Norton's words, on "a body of men who would practically represent the flower of the educated inhabitants." These views were much applauded by the delegates, who thus ratified the system of nominating the so-called representatives, and which system, I may add, is carefully laid down in Clause 2 of Resolution IV. of 1886 (p. 217). Having thus most practically declared that India is quite unfit for representative institutions in the ordinary sense of the word, Mr. Norton proceeded to point out that, as the desired power for reconstituting the government is not likely to be obtained in India, they must work on the people of England, who at present believe, he says (p. 92), that the Indian Government is "being beneficiently carried on." "You must disturb that belief," he continued. In other words, he might have said, you must do what the Parnellites did, or attempted to do, in England. And accordingly the Congress wirepullers have set up an agency in London, and have posted placards purporting to be an appeal from 200 millions of India to the people of England.

But after all, the desired majority in the Indian Councils, which the delegates rightly declared to be the key of the whole position, would be insufficiently supported without an army and an armed population at the back of it, and all in sympathy with the native soldiers in the English service. These wants, however, are carefully attended to in Resolutions 5 and 8, which we will now briefly glance at.

Read by itself, the Fifth Resolution seems to be harmless, and even laudable, for it expresses a desire (p. 123) for "A system of volunteering for the Indian inhabitants of the country such as may qualify them to support the Government in a crisis." But the writer of the introductory article to the Report (p. 48) shows the great value the force would be in bringing pressure to bear on the Government, and points out that, with 250,000 native volunteers, with many times that number trained in previous years, and backed by the whole country, and with all the native troops (p. 49) more in sympathy with their fellow-countrymen than with the English, the present system of government would be impossible. And it is further pointed out in the introductory article that "This means a revolution—a noiseless bloodless revolution—but none the less a complete revolution." Then the writer reckons that these volunteers "will be backed by the whole country," and this naturally leads to the consideration of the Eighth Resolution, for the backing would obviously be of much greater value were the whole population armed.

This Resolution (p. 147) demands the repeal of the Arms Act on account of the "hardship it causes, and the unmerited slur which it casts on the people of this country." Now as any respectable person can obtain a license to carry firearms for under 4s., and as cultivators are granted licenses gratis in order that they may, free of all charge, defend themselves and their crops from wild animals, and as we know further from the great number of licenses granted that there can be no difficulty in obtaining them, it is evident that there can be no hardship in connection with this Act—a conclusion which is further confirmed by the fact that, in consequence of the number of guns in the hands of natives, wild animals are becoming rarer, and, as I can personally testify, have in many cases been almost completely exterminated. And if we consider further that the necessity for taking out a license in India can inflict no greater slur than is cast on the English in England by their having to take out gun licenses, it is evident that the vehemently expressed desire for the repeal of this Act is only explicable when read along with the previously quoted remarks with reference to the native volunteering and the armed population in sympathy with them at their back, and with the detonating matter which appears in those seditious pamphlets to which I shall now briefly refer.

These pamphlets, or rather translations of them, are printed at the close of the Report of 1887, and complete our view of the situation, which may be shortly described by saying that, while the delegates in the van deliver speeches for English consumption full of expressions of loyalty and praises of our rule, the wirepullers in the rear are distributing pamphlets amongst the people in which all expressions of loyalty are absent, while all the evils the people suffer from are attributed to our Government, and the Queen's English officials are held up to execration as types of everything that is at once brutal and tyrannical. The second pamphlet gives us a dialogue between a native barrister, and a farmer called Rambaksh, and between them as much evil is said of us and our rule as can well be packed into so short a space. As an instance of the way in which the English officials ill-treat the natives, Rambaksh declares that because on one occasion he had not furnished enough grass for the horses of the collector—Mr. Zabardust (literally a brutal and overbearing tyrant), he had been struck by the Sahib over the face and mouth, and that by his orders he (Rambaksh) had been "dragged away and flogged till he became insensible. It was months before he could walk" (p. 209 of Report). Then the India of the present is contrasted with what India would be if it were under the rule of the Congress, and an allegorical comparison is made between the village of Kambaktpur (the abode of misery) and that of Shamshpur (the abode of joy). The moral is that British rule, which is typified by the former, is making the people poorer and poorer, that through it land is going out of cultivation, that oxen for the plough are becoming scarce, that the villages are going to ruin, and that nothing nourishes except the liquor shops in which the Government encourages drinking, while the very irrigation works we are providing as a protection against famine are described as an evil, and a mere pretext for extorting more money from the people. The village of Shamshpur (the abode of joy), on the other hand, is described in glowing colours, and we need hardly say is the home of the institutions to be introduced by the Congress. The only conclusion to be drawn from all this by the masses of India is, that the sooner they rebel against the existing rule, and substitute for it the rule of the Congress, the sooner will they leave the abode of misery, and enter the abode of joy, where all the delights to be provided by the Congress will be theirs. The imaginary dialogue concludes (p. 214) with a demand for money to carry on the work, and the barrister suggests to the farmer various injurious means for the collection, which Rambaksh promises to carry out. He then tenders payment of some fees previously owing to the barrister, who indeed receives the money, but magnanimously declares his intention of enrolling Rambaksh as a member of the association, and paying in the fees as a contribution from Rambaksh. "Blessed are the earnings of the virtuous which go to the service of God," said the barrister, and with this pious utterance the dialogue closes.