When the Indian National Congress was founded in 1885 and for nearly thirty years afterwards, the Indian Mahomedans kept severely aloof from it, partly because they had kept equally aloof from Western education which had originally brought the leaders of the new political movement together, and partly because most of those leaders were Hindus, and the ancient antagonism between Mahomedans and Hindus led the former to distrust profoundly anything that seemed likely to enhance the influence of the latter. One intellectual giant among the Mahomedans had indeed arisen after the Mutiny, during which his loyalty had never wavered, who laboured hard to convert his co-religionists to Western education. In spite of bitter opposition from a powerful party, rooted in the old fanatical orthodoxy of Islam, who resented his broad-mindedness which went to the length of trying to explain, and even to explain away much of, the Koran, Sir Seyyid Ahmed Khan succeeded in founding at Aligurh in 1880 a Mahomedan College which soon attracted students from the best Mahomedan families all over India. His idea was to create there a centre which should do for young Mahomedans what he himself had watched Oxford and Cambridge doing for young Englishmen. Education was not to be divorced as in most Indian colleges from religion, and he was convinced that a liberal interpretation of the Mahomedan doctrine was no more incompatible with the essence of Islam than with that of Western civilisation, with which British rule had come to bring India into providential contact. Loyalty to British rule was with him synonymous with loyalty to all the high ideals which he himself pursued and set before his students. For a whole generation success appeared to crown this work to which he brought all the fervour of missionary enterprise. He died full of years and honour in 1898, and one of his last efforts was an historical refutation of the Ottoman Sultan's claim to the Khalifate of Islam. He already realised the reactionary tendencies of the Pan-Islamic propaganda which Abdul Hamid was trying to spread into India. So great and enduring was the hold of Sir Seyyid Ahmed's teachings upon the progressive elements in Mahomedan India that the All-India Moslem League was founded in 1905, almost avowedly in opposition to the subversive activities which the Indian National Congress was beginning to develop. It was in this spirit, too, that the influential deputation headed by the Agha Khan, who, though himself the head of a dissenting and thoroughly unorthodox Mahomedan community claiming descent from the Old Man of the Mountain, was then the recognised political leader of the whole Indian Mahomedan community, waited on Lord Minto to press upon the Government of India the Mahomedan view of the political situation created by the Partition of Bengal, lest political concessions should be hastily made to the Hindus which would pave the way for the ascendancy of a Hindu majority equally dangerous to the stability of British rule and to the interests of the Mahomedan minority whose loyalty was beyond dispute. It was again in the same spirit, and fortified by the promise which Lord Minto had on that occasion given them, that they insisted, and insisted successfully, on the principle of community representation being applied for their benefit in the Indian Councils Act of 1909.
A new generation of young Mahomedans had nevertheless been growing up who knew not Seyyid Ahmed and regarded his teachings as obsolete. The lessons which they had learnt from their Western education were not his. They were much more nearly those that the more ardent spirits amongst the Hindus had imbibed, and they were ready to share with them the new creed of Indian Nationalism in its most extreme form. Other circumstances were tending to weaken the faith of the Mahomedan community in the goodwill, not only of the Government of India, but of the British Government. Even the most conservative Mahomedans were disappointed and irritated by the revision of the Partition of Bengal in 1911 when the predominantly Mahomedan Province of Eastern Bengal, created under Lord Curzon, was merged once more into a largely Hindu Bengal. The more advanced Mahomedans had been stirred by the revolutionary upheaval in Constantinople to seek contact with the Turkish Nationalist leaders who now ruled the one great Mahomedan power in the world, and they learnt from them to read into British foreign policy a purpose of deliberate hostility to Islam itself inspired by dread of the renewed vitality it might derive from the returning consciousness in many Mahomedan countries of their own independent nationhood. In that light they saw in the British occupation of Egypt, in the Anglo-French agreement with regard to Morocco and the Anglo-Russian agreement with regard to Persia, and last but not least, in the Italian invasion of Tripoli, the gradual development of a scheme in which all the powers of Christendom were involved for the extinction of the temporal power of Islam and, with it inevitably, according to orthodox doctrine, of its spiritual authority. The Ottoman Empire had been saved for a time by the protection extended to it for her own purposes by Germany who had alone stood between it and the disintegrating machinations of the "European Concert" in Constantinople, bent on undermining the ascendancy of the ruling Mahomedan race by its menacing insistence on reforms for the benefit of the subject Christian races which could result only in the further aggrandisement of the independent Christian states already carved out of the Sultans' former dominions in Europe and in the introduction of similar processes even into their Asiatic dominions. The Balkan wars of 1912-1913 appeared to bear out the theory of a great European conspiracy directed against Turkey as "the sword of Islam," and whilst the sympathies of Indian Mahomedans of all classes and schools of thought were naturally enlisted in favour of their Turkish co-religionists, the leaders of the advanced Mahomedan party themselves went to Constantinople in charge of the Red Crescent funds collected in India and got into close personal touch with the Turkish Nationalists who ruled in the name of the Sultan but derived their authority from the "Committee of Union and Progress." The same party had in the meantime gone a long way towards capturing the All-India Moslem League and bringing it into line with the advanced wing of the Indian National Congress. The fusion between the League and the Congress, which was still very repugnant both to the politically conservative and to the religious orthodox majority of the Indian Mahomedan community, was not completed, nor was the reunion of the Moderate and Extremist parties within the Congress itself, when India was caught up with Great Britain and most of the nations of the world into the whirlpool of the Great War on August 4, 1914.
CHAPTER VIII
THROUGH THE GREAT WAR TO THE GREAT INDIAN REFORM BILL
The genuine outburst of enthusiasm with which India, whether under direct British administration or under the autonomous rule of indigenous dynasties, responded to the call of the Empire at the beginning of the war came almost as a revelation to the British public generally who knew little about India, and the impression deepened when during the critical winter of 1914-1915 Indian troops stood shoulder to shoulder with British troops in the trenches to fill the gap which could not then have been filled from any other quarter. The loyalty displayed by the Indian princes and the great land-owning gentry and the old fighting races who had stood by the British for many generations was no surprise to Englishmen who knew India; but less expected was the immediate rally to the British cause of the new Western-educated classes who, baulked of the political liberties which they regarded as their due, had seemed to be drifting hopelessly into bitter antagonism to British rule—a rally which at first included even those who, like Mr. Tilak, just released from his long detention at Mandalay, had taught hatred and contempt of the British rulers of India with a violence which implied, even when it was not definitely expressed, a fierce desire to sever the British connection altogether. In some cases the homage paid to the righteousness of the British cause may not have been altogether genuine, but with the great majority it sprang from one thought, well expressed by Sir Satyendra Sinha, one of the most gifted and patriotic of India's sons, in his presidential address to the Indian National Congress in 1915, that, at that critical hour in the world's history, it was for India "to prove to the great British nation her gratitude for peace and the blessings of civilisation secured to her under its aegis for the last hundred and fifty years and more." The tales of German frightfulness and the guns of the Emden bombarding Madras, which were an ominous reminder that a far worse fate than British rule might conceivably overtake India, helped to confirm Indians in the conviction that the British Empire and India's connection with it were well worth fighting for. This was one of Germany's many miscalculations, and the loyalty of the Indian people quite as much as the watchfulness of Government defeated the few serious efforts made by the disaffected emissaries and agents in whom she had put her trust to raise the standard of rebellion in India. All they could do was to feed the "Indian Section" of the Berlin Foreign Office with cock-and-bull stories of successful Indian mutinies and risings, which the German public, however gullible, ceased at last to swallow. Amongst the Indian Mahomedans there was a small pro-Turkish group, chiefly of an Extremist complexion, whose appeals to the religious solidarity of Islam might have proved troublesome when Turkey herself came into the war, had not Government deemed it advisable to put a stop to the mischievous activities of the two chief firebrands, the brothers Mahomed Ali and Shaukat Ali, by interning them under the discretionary powers conferred upon it by the Defence of India Act. Indian Mahomedan troops fought with the same gallantry and determination against their Turkish co-religionists in Mesopotamia and Palestine as against the German enemy in France and in Africa, and the Mahomedan Punjab answered even more abundantly than any other province of India every successive call for fresh recruits to replenish and strengthen the forces of the Empire.
The British Government and people responded generously to these splendid demonstrations of India's fundamental loyalty to the British cause and the British connection. The Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, declared with special emphasis that in future Indian questions must be approached from "a new angle of vision," and Indians, not least the Western-educated classes, construed his utterance into a pledge of the deepest significance. For two years India presented on everything that related to the war a front unbroken by any dissensions. The Imperial Legislative Council passed, almost without a murmur even at its most drastic provisions, repugnant as they were to the more advanced Indian members, a Defence of India Act on the lines of the Defence of the Realm Act at home, when Lord Hardinge gave an assurance that it was essential to the proper performance of her part in the war, and it voted spontaneously and unanimously a contribution of one hundred million pounds by the Indian Exchequer to the war expenditure of the Empire. India had thrilled with pride when, at Lord Hardinge's instance, her troops were first sent, not to act as merely subsidiary forces in subsidiary war-areas, but to share with British troops the very forefront of the battle in France, and she thrilled again when an Indian prince, the Maharajah of Bikanir, and Sir Satyendra Sinha, who was once more playing a conspicuous part in the political arena, and had been one of the oldest and ablest members of the moderate Congress party, were sent to represent India at the first Imperial War Conference in London, and took their seats side by side with British Ministers and with the Ministers of the self-governing Dominions.
There was, however, another side to the picture. If India had displayed in the best sense of the word an Imperial spirit and made sacrifices that entitled her to be treated as a partner in, rather than a mere dependency of, the British Empire, was she still to be denied a large instalment at least of the political liberties which had been long ago conferred on the self-governing Dominions? Were her people to be refused in the self-governing Dominions themselves the equality of treatment which her representatives were allowed to enjoy in the council-chamber of the Empire? Whilst the Morley-Minto reforms had disappointed the political expectations of the Western-educated classes, the measures adopted in several of the self-governing Dominions to exclude Indian immigration, and, especially in South Africa, to place severe social and municipal disabilities on Indians already settled in some of the provinces of the Union, had caused still more widespread resentment, and nothing did more to strengthen Lord Hardinge's hold upon Indian affection than his frank espousal of these Indian grievances, even at the risk of placing himself in apparent opposition to the Imperial Government, who had to reckon with the sentiment of the Dominions as well as with that of India. The war suddenly brought to the front in a new shape the question of the constitutional relationship not only between Great Britain and India but between India and the other component parts of the Empire. It was known in India that, before Lord Hardinge reached the end of his term of office, extended for six months till April 1916, he had been engaged in drafting a scheme of reform to meet Indian political aspirations more fully than Lord Morley had done, and it was known also in India that schemes of Imperial reconstruction after the war were already being discussed throughout the Empire. The Indian politician not unnaturally argued that if, as was generally conceded, the constitutional relations of the Government of India to the Imperial Government were to be substantially modified and India to be advanced to a position approximately similar to that of the self-governing Dominions whose governments were responsible to their own peoples, this could be done only by opening up to her too the road to self-government. The Extremist at once pressed the argument to its utmost consequences. The India for which he spoke was at that time, he declared, still willing to accept the British connection on the same terms as the Dominions, but she must be given Dominion Home Rule at once—not merely as a goal to be slowly reached by carefully graduated stages, but as an immediate concession to Indian sentiment, already more than due to her for her share in the defence of the Empire during the war.
In the Legislative Councils there had been a political truce by common consent after the Government had undertaken to introduce no controversial measures whilst the war was going on. But the war dragged on much longer than had been generally anticipated. India, to whom it brought after the first few months an immense accession of material prosperity by creating a great demand for all her produce at rapidly enhanced prices, was so sheltered from its real horrors, and the number of Indians who had any personal ties with those actually fighting in far off-lands was after all so small in proportion to the vast population, that the keen edge of interest in its progress was gradually blunted, and political speculations as to the position of India after the war were unwittingly encouraged by the failure of Government to keep Indian opinion concentrated on the magnitude of the struggle which still threatened the very existence of the Empire. Circumstances, for which the British lack of imagination as well as the ponderous machinery of Indian administration was in some measure responsible, favoured, it must be admitted, the revival of political agitation. Some three years elapsed after India was promised a "new angle of vision" before there was evidence to the Indian eye that anything was being done to redeem that promise. Lord Hardinge had taken home with him one scheme of reforms, and his successor, Lord Chelmsford, had set to work with his Council on another one as soon as he reached Simla. But time passed and all this travail bore no visible fruits. Outside events also gave rise to suspicion. The rejection by the House of Lords of the proposed creation of an Executive Council for the United Provinces caused widespread irritation amongst even moderate Indians, and the rumours of a scheme to hasten on Imperial federation and to give the self-governing Dominions some share in the control of Indian affairs aroused a very bitter feeling, as Indian opinion still smarted under the treatment of Indians in other parts of the Empire and remained distrustful of the temporary compromise only recently arrived at. The Viceroy was very reserved and reticent, and his reserve and reticence were made the pretext for assuming that, as he had been appointed under the first Coalition Government at home when Mr. Chamberlain succeeded Lord Crewe at the India Office, he was the reactionary nominee of a reactionary Secretary of State. No assumption could have been more unjust. Lord Chelmsford's scheme was completed and sent home towards the end of 1916. But nothing transpired as to its contents, nor as to any action being taken upon it. Indians inferred that it was indefinitely pigeon-holed in Whitehall. The very reasonable plea that the Imperial Government, whose energies had to be devoted to the life-and-death struggle in which the whole Empire was involved, had little time to devote to a serious study of such problems as the introduction of grave constitutional changes in India, was countered by the argument that the same Imperial Government seemed to find no difficulty in sparing time for such measures as Irish Home Rule, votes for women, and a large extension of the franchise in the United Kingdom.
The long delay, whatever its causes, perplexed and alarmed even moderate Indian opinion, which had lost the most popular of the leaders capable of guiding it, and waited in vain for any comforting assurances from responsible official quarters. Moreover, it allowed the Extreme wing to set up a standard of political demands which it became more and more difficult for any Indian to decline altogether to endorse without exposing himself to the reproach that he was unpatriotic and a creature of Government. As soon as it became known that Lord Chelmsford was engaged in elaborating a scheme of post-war reforms, nineteen Indian members of the Imperial Legislative Council hurriedly put forward a counter scheme of their own, professedly for the better guidance of British Ministers. Besides pressing for various more or less practical reforms, such as the granting of commissions to Indians, the Nineteen demanded full control for the Provincial Councils over the Executive subject to a limited veto of the Governor of the Province; direct election to those Councils—although nothing definite was said about the franchise; and, in the Imperial Legislative Council, an unofficial majority and control over the Central Government except in certain reserved matters. The scheme was hazy, bore evident marks of haste, and aggravated immensely the dangers with which experience had already shown the Morley-Minto reforms to be fraught. It was an attempt to make the Central and Provincial Governments in India dependent upon the caprice of legislatures, with no mandate from any representative electorate and no training in responsible government, but completely immune to the consequences of their own mistakes. It must have led to a hopeless deadlock and the complete paralysis of Government, but even so it did not satisfy the more fiery members of the Indian National Congress, where, in complete unison with the All-India Moslem League, finally captured by some slight concessions to Mahomedan sentiment, resolutions were passed more crude and unworkable than the scheme of the Nineteen, and virtually amounting to Home Rule in its most impracticable shape.