During the electoral campaign Mr. Gandhi could still find large audiences, not all consisting of excitable students, to acclaim him or to listen open-mouthed to his ceaseless flow of eloquence. But the electors went to the polls and voted for the candidates against whom he and his followers had fulminated, and, in the rural districts especially, election meetings often refused to listen to any elaborate political dissertations, and wanted only to hear what the candidates were prepared to do for elementary education, sanitation, schools, roads, etc. So the Bengal elections too resulted in the return, often by relatively large bodies of voters, of members pledged and competent to co-operate with Government. The Khilafat agitation, accompanied in Bengal as everywhere else by aggressive religious intimidation, affected the polling in some of the Mahomedan constituencies. But during the Anti-Partition campaign Mahomedans and Hindus had been in opposite camps, whereas Mr. Gandhi was now making a strong and to some extent successful bid for Mahomedan support by endorsing the Mahomedan grievance. So the Mahomedan change of front merely emphasised "Non-co-operation's" defeat in Bengal.
Equally hopeful were the signs of a better understanding and of the revival of a spirit of friendly co-operation between Indians and Englishmen in Calcutta, hitherto regarded, not quite without reason, as a stronghold of reactionary European conservatism, especially amongst the non-official community. It can hardly be denied that, except where official relations brought them into contact—and not always there—Europeans and Indians have lived too much in separate water-tight compartments until each has ceased to see anything but the beam in the other's eye. In Calcutta they have been far more rarely drawn together in commercial and industrial co-operation, and they have rubbed up less frequently against each other in healthy competition than, for instance, in Bombay. It is one of the most promising features of the new reforms that the Europeans, who have hitherto taken very little interest in anything that was not directly connected with their own business or their own amusements, have been at last roused to play the part which it is their duty as well as their right to play in the political life of the country, and the men who have been returned to sit in the new Councils as the representatives of the European community seem to realise fully, the importance of the task that is before them in giving a practical example of what the helpful co-operation of Europeans with Indians can do to promote the healthy political life of the country.
In social service there is an equally large field of co-operation of which Calcutta has also provided an interesting illustration. In no other city in India are University students, of whom there are nearly as many—some 26,000—at the one university of Calcutta as in all the universities of Great Britain put together, thrown so much on their own resources without any guidance or control. The bulk of them may never come in contact even with European professors, let alone with the European community in general. What opportunities have they of forming any opinion for themselves of what our civilisation stands for, except possibly through the medium of cheap cinemas in which its worst and most vulgar features are thrust before them? Bengalee youths are extraordinarily quick to respond to the best European influence when it has once established contact with them. Some teachers do secure a strong personal hold upon them, most of all in the missionary and other hostels where they live under the same roof with them, take part in their games as well as in their studies, and encourage them to express their own opinions freely and fearlessly. There relations of mutual friendship and confidence grow up and endure. In this respect the Y.M.C.A., in which Indian Christians act in close co-operation with broad-minded Englishmen, has done admirable work, and none better and with more definite and immediate results than when Government turned to them for assistance last year in the difficult situation created by the royal amnesty which required the immediate liberation of nearly a thousand young Bengalees who, having been more or less concerned in conspiracies and dacoities during the troublous years before the war, had been interned after its outbreak under administrative orders. In many cases they had broken with their families, who were not inclined to take them back. Many had no means of earning a livelihood. To let them loose upon the world without any provision for them would have been to drive them to desperation. The Y.M.C.A. stepped into the breach. They were given the use of an internment camp which German war détenus had vacated, and with the help of Mr. B.C. Chatterjee, who was well known to that particular class of Indians for having constantly appeared as counsel for the defendants in the innumerable political prosecutions of the preceding decade, and had himself formed an Indian Committee for a similar purpose, they induced a large number of these young fellows to come to them. They were at first rather distrustful, but Mr. Chatterjee's political past and the warm-hearted sympathy of Mr. Rahu, an Indian Y.M.C.A. worker who was placed in charge of the hostel, soon disarmed their suspicions. They learnt to appraise at their real value the malicious rumours set afoot to prejudice them against their new friends, and began to respond cordially to a generous treatment, physical and moral, which was so unlike all that they had heard about Western methods. They were given food and lodging, newspapers, magazines, and books, and, when necessary, medical advice and care. They had opportunities of learning a trade and securing employment as well as facilities for indoor and outdoor recreation, and carefully planned social gatherings helped to restore their self-respect and confidence. To their credit be it said, their conduct was unexceptionable, and not a single complaint was received with regard to any of those who thus found a new start in life. One could well credit the assurance that they were all as much opposed to any reversion to "Non-co-operation" as Sir Surendranath Banerjee himself.
Much must always depend upon the example set by those in authority not only as administrators but as the natural leaders of both European and Indian society. Lord Ronaldshay, whose appointment as Governor of Bengal was not at first very well received by the politically minded Indians in Calcutta, has succeeded by patient effort in convincing them that they have a genuine as well as a candid friend in him, and even his social popularity is due not merely to the generosity of his hospitality but to the keen interest he takes, amongst other things, in the renascence of Indian art in which Bengal has taken the lead. There is amongst Europeans in India a good deal of Philistine contempt for all Indian forms of culture, and Indians are surprised and grateful when Governors like Lord Ronaldshay, and his predecessor, Lord Carmichael, frankly acknowledge that whilst Indian painting and Indian music are ruled by other canons than those of the West, they pursue none the less high ideals along different paths. What Indians look for too often in vain from Europeans is any hearty attempt either to understand them or to make them understand us. The influence which Lord Ronaldshay had acquired by such forms of co-operation with the Indian mind stood him and the Bengal Provincial Council in good stead when he had on one occasion to appeal to it to reconsider its hasty refusal of a grant in which it would have been impossible for Government to acquiesce, lest he should be driven to override it by the exercise of the statutory powers vested in him. He gave it to be understood that, if they became frequent, such conflicts of opinion between him and the Council would put an end to his usefulness either to the Government or to the Presidency, and he would feel justified in demanding his release from responsibilities he would no longer be able satisfactorily to discharge. The Council was wise enough to take the hint and not to risk losing a Governor who had done so much to earn the confidence of Bengal, and by correcting an error of judgment, due chiefly to inexperience, it confirmed the victory which had been won over "Non-co-operation" at the polls.
Even in the storm-tossed Punjab the new Provincial Council made a better start than might have been expected from the temper of Lahore and the other large centres still brooding over the bitter memories of 1919. In the Punjab and in the neighbouring North-West Frontier Province, formerly itself part of the Punjab—but excluded from the operation of the new Government of India Act and therefore lying outside this survey—the Khilafat agitation has gone deeper than probably in any other part of India amongst large and very backward Mahomedan populations. Yet upon the Punjab itself so cruel a lesson has not been lost as that taught to thousands of unfortunate Mahomedan peasants in the Frontier Province who were persuaded to give up their lands and trek into Afghanistan to seek the blessings of Mahomedan rule, and came back starved and plundered from their ill-starred exodus undertaken for the sake of Islam. In Lahore and in the other chief urban constituencies "Non-co-operation," with its usual methods of combined persuasion and intimidation, was so far successful that not 5 per cent of the electors went to the poll. In some of the Mahomedan rural constituencies the attendances at the polls were, on the other hand, fairly large, especially in those where the influence of old conservative families was still paramount. Altogether the Punjab Provincial Council is perhaps less representative of the whole electorate than in any other province in India. Some official ingenuity had been displayed in grouping remote towns together without any regard for geography, in order to prevent townsmen undesirably addicted to advanced political views from standing as candidates for the rural constituencies in which many of the smaller towns would otherwise have been naturally merged. This was a last effort based on the old belief that the population of the Punjab could be divided into goats and sheep, the goats being the "disloyal" townsmen and the sheep being the "loyal" peasantry. There may have been substance in that belief before 1919, but how little there is in it now has been shown by the large majority who, in an assembly in which it is just the rural constituencies that are most effectively represented, passed a Resolution for the remission of the fine imposed on Amritsar to punish the disorders in that city, already amply punished, they considered, at Jallianwala. The presence in the new Government of Mr. Harkishen Lal, himself condemned two years ago under martial law to transportation for life and treated for months as a common criminal, has done more than anything else perhaps to restore public confidence. He was elected to the Council, not by political firebrands, but by a sober constituency specially constituted to represent the Punjab Industries, and in courageously choosing him to be one of his new Ministers, the Governor, Sir Edward MacLagan, gave a striking demonstration, of which the effect has not been confined to the Punjab, of the profound change that has been wrought in the attitude of the official world towards the politically minded classes.
An appalling incident last spring showed how quick the fierce races of Northern India are to burst into violent feuds amongst themselves for which no responsibility can be imputed to their alien rulers. The Sikhs, though less numerous than the Hindus and the Mahomedans, form an extremely influential community in the Punjab, which was the cradle and always has been the stronghold of their religion, and was only a century ago the seat of their political and military power. Not many years ago, however, Sikhism, which began in Moghul times as a revolt against the social and religious trammels of Hinduism as well as against Mahomedan domination, seemed to be tending steadily towards resorption into the Hindu system. Its temples, most of them richly endowed, had passed out of the control of the community, to whom they in theory belonged, into the possession of lukewarm Mahunts, or incumbents, many of them half Hinduised and most of them more concerned with the temporal advantages than with the religious duties of their office. Even in the days of the militant Sikh Confederacy under Ranjit Singh, upon whom religion sat rather lightly, there was a growing trend towards laxity of belief and practice, which continued to spread after the British annexation of the Punjab had broken the political power of the Sikhs. Strange to say, the old customs of pure Sikhism survived nowhere so immune from decay as in the Sikh regiments of our Indian Army. But with the growth of Indian Nationalism, which often manifested itself at first in a revival of local and racial patriotism, there arose amongst the Sikhs a vigorous reform movement which aimed at rebuilding their nationhood on the solid foundations of the faith originally preached by their ten Gurus, or religious teachers, and the strict observance of the peculiar customs that were the badge of their faith. The first important step was the opening of the Khalsa College for Sikhs at Amritsar in 1892, which did not, however, fulfil its real purpose until it was gradually emancipated from Government control. A religious Diwan, or assembly, was constituted at Lahore, to which local bodies were affiliated, with the object of preaching purity of religion and promoting the abolition of caste distinctions and other Hindu influences that had crept back into Sikhism.
In its essence a puritan movement, there was unquestionably a nationalist side to it which tended to render it suspect in the eyes of many Punjab officials, and these suspicions were heightened by the Gadr conspiracy fomented in the second year of the war by a number of Sikhs, who returned from Canada bitterly estranged from British rule by the anti-Asiatic policy of the Dominion and still more by the fiery eloquence of Indian revolutionaries in German pay. But against the disloyalty of a small section must be weighed the loyal war services of the vast majority of Sikhs, and the Punjab Government proudly boasted at the time that there were 80,000 Sikhs serving in the army, a proportion far higher than in the case of any other community. It was doubtless partly in recognition of such war services that in the reforms scheme they were given the benefit of "community" representation in the new Councils on the same lines as the Mahomedans. But with a tenacious memory of the language used years ago by Lord Minto in reply to Mahomedan representations, they still complain that the historical importance and actual influence of their community have not received nearly as full a measure of consideration. Unfortunately, bitterness was revived by the large number of Sikhs amongst General Dyer's victims at Jallianwala, most of them, according to the Sikh version, innocent country-folk, who had come into Amritsar on that day because it happened to be a Sikh religious holiday, and had merely strayed into the Bagh out of harmless and ignorant curiosity.
The puritan movement struck a dangerous course when it addressed itself to the recovery of the Sikh shrines which it held to have passed into the possession of unorthodox and corrupt Mahunts, faithless both to their religious and temporal trust. Considerable success was achieved by the exercise, it was affirmed, of mere moral pressure, though not perhaps always without a display or threat of material pressure behind it in the event of moral pressure proving inadequate. Amongst others, the incumbent of the Golden Temple at Amritsar, the most sacred of all Sikh shrines, was constrained to make a public confession of his wrongdoings and resign his office into the hands of a Reformers' Committee. Next to Amritsar in wealth and sanctity came Nankhanda Saheb with a Mahunt to whom the Reformers imputed all kinds of enormities. A great popular demonstration against him had been organised for March 5, and some 150 Sikhs had gone out to make arrangements for sheltering and feeding several thousands in the immediate vicinity of the shrine. The Mahunt had already scented danger and he clearly believed in taking the offensive. He collected some fifty Pathan cut-throats as a Praetorian guard for the temple, and also, for a purpose which was soon to transpire, a very large store of petrol. When the advance party of reformers entered the shrine to perform their morning devotions the gates were closed upon them and over 100 were butchered, and their corpses so effectively soaked in oil and burned that when the District Commissioner and a detachment of troops arrived post-haste on the scene, the victims could scarcely be counted except by the number of charred skulls.
There was a universal thrill of horror and fury, and passions rose so high that Government found itself suddenly confronted with a situation which at once put to a severe test the capacity of the new regime to deal with emergencies endangering law and order. That Indian Ministers now shared in the responsibility of government, and that there was a popular assembly to undertake legislation for composing the differences between the conflicting sections of the Sikh community, helped at least as much to avert still graver troubles as the object-lesson which the Nankhanda Saheb tragedy afforded to thoughtful Punjabees of all creeds. The massacre carried out by a mere handful of Pathans was a grim reminder of the dangers to which the Punjab would be the first to be exposed if the hasty severance of the British connection for which Mr. Gandhi is clamouring were to leave it defenceless against the flood of lawless savagery that would at once pour down, as so often before in Indian history, from the wild fastnesses of the North-West Frontier.