In Southern India, where Buddhist influence never secured any firm footing, Hinduism had its golden age during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, whilst the tide of Mahomedan invasion was pouring in successive waves into Northern and Central India. The last and greatest of the Hindu kingdoms of Southern India did not succumb to the sword of Islam till 1565, and the splendid ruins of Vijianagar bear out, if we make allowance for oriental hyperbole, the contemporary testimony of a Persian Ambassador that "the pupil of the eye has never seen a place like it and the ear of intelligence has never been informed that there existed anything to equal it in the whole world." The Moslem conquerors laid Vijianagar low. But, by the curious irony of fortune, it was from a descendant of its royal house, some remnants of which escaped destruction, that the British, by whom Mahomedan domination was to be in turn overthrown, received their first grant of land on the Carnatic coast close to where Madras now stands.

Mahomedan domination came so late to Southern India and lasted for such a brief period that it never disturbed, even to the small extent that it did in Northern India, the social stratifications of Hinduism, which have equally withstood there more than anywhere else the subtler pressure of Western civilisation under British rule. Take, for instance, a small town like Tirupati, only a few miles from Chatnagiri, where the Rajahs, whose forebears made that momentous grant to Francis Day a little less than three centuries ago, still live in modest state. Were Tirupati still ruled by the Vijianagar kings in all their splendour, it could hardly present a better-preserved picture of ancient Hindu life. At the foot of a steep range of hills crowned with venerable temples whose sanctity has from times immemorial attracted a constant stream of pilgrims, and possessing some famous temples of its own, it is essentially a Brahman town, and lives almost entirely by ministering, at more or less extortionate rates, to the material and spiritual needs of pilgrims, averaging about a thousand a day in ordinary times and scores of thousands at the special festival seasons, on their way to and from the sacred hill-top. There are whole streets of lodgings for their use, consisting chiefly of small bare cubicles, and rows of shops at which they can purchase their simple vegetarian food and innumerable religious trifles as mementoes of their pilgrimage. When I approached Tirupati, early in the morning, a few groups of pilgrims were already on their way to the hill-sanctuaries and peasants were starting work on the temple lands outside the town. Sacred monkeys gambolled about the trees and still more sacred cows had begun to exercise their daily privilege of browsing for food wherever their fancy leads them, even amongst the vegetables exposed for sale in the public market-places. The Brahmans themselves were still engaged in performing their elaborate morning devotions and ablutions, but the members of their household had already swept the approach to their low, one-storied, flat-roofed houses and stencilled on the threshold with white liquid chalk the geomantic patterns, finished off with scattered marigolds, which keep away the evil spirits. The Brahman quarters surround the temples, of which of course only the outer courtyards are accessible to other than high-caste Hindus. The low-caste "untouchables," who do the menial work of the town, live strictly segregated in their own quarter, which consists only of mud huts and even flimsier shelters of platted palm-leaves and bamboos. The whole town wore an air of leisured superiority as if conscious that there can be no need for special effort when the gods bring pilgrims to provide for the wants of its "twice-born" inhabitants.

There are scores of other Tirupatis in which the Brahman still reigns supreme by virtue of his quasi-sacerdotal caste. But in the public life of Southern India, as British rule has moulded it, he has owed a pre-eminence only recently disputed to a monopoly of Western education in modern times almost as complete as the monopoly which he enjoyed of Hindu learning and culture before the advent of the British. As soon as he saw that the British Raj threatened no curtailment of his hereditary supremacy in the religious and social world of Hinduism, he was quick to profit by all the material advantages which the country as a whole derived from a new era of public security and peace. He realised at once that Western education might open up for him opportunities of making himself almost as indispensable, if on a somewhat humbler scale, to the alien rulers of India as he had formerly made himself to the indigenous rulers in the land. Thus the Brahmans acquired from the first a virtual monopoly of all the subordinate public services in the Madras Presidency and, as time went on, of all the higher posts gradually thrown open to Indians. They crowded also into all the new liberal professions fostered by Western education, and, above all, into the legal profession for which they showed, as most Indians do, a very special aptitude. But, like all monopolists, they were tempted to abuse their monopoly, the more so as they regarded it merely as a legitimate adaptation to the new conditions imported by British rule of the ancient privileges always vested in their caste. They resented any attempt on the part of Hindus belonging to inferior castes to follow in their footsteps along the new paths of Western learning and to qualify for a share of employment in the public services, for which under the British dispensation all Indians are entitled to compete on equal terms irrespective of all caste discriminations. The non-Brahmans were slow to start, and when they did start, they had to contend with the jealous opposition of the Brahmans, who combined, as Hindu castes know how to combine, against unwelcome intruders into a profitable field of which they had secured early possession. When the Public Services Commission was in Madras eight years ago, we heard many bitter complaints from non-Brahmans that, whenever one of them did succeed in getting an appointment under Government, the Brahmans with whom or under whom he had to work would at once unite to drive him out, either by making his life intolerable or by turning against him the European superior to whose ear they had easy access. For it is one of the weaknesses of an alien bureaucracy that, in regard to routine work at least, its weaker members are apt to be far too much in the hands of their native assistants. The Brahmans later on formed the bulk of the new Western-educated and "politically-minded" class, and the Madrasee Brahmans played a considerable part in the Indian National Congress before it broke away from its constitutional moorings.

The non-Brahmans, nevertheless, under the leadership of such resolute men as the late Dr. Nair, fought their way steadily to the front, and, being of course in a large majority, they had only to organise in order to make full use of the opportunity which a relatively democratic franchise afforded them for the first time at the recent elections. They can hardly themselves have foreseen how great their opportunity was, for they regarded the reforms at first with deep suspicion as calculated merely to transfer substantive power from a British to a Brahman bureaucracy, and so deep was their dread of Brahman ascendancy even in the new Councils that they clamoured to the very end for a much larger number of seats than the sixteen that were ultimately reserved as "communal" seats for non-Brahman electorates. They never needed such a reservation, for they actually carried the day in so many of the "general" constituencies that out of ninety-eight elected members of the new Provincial Council only fourteen are Brahmans, and it is the Brahmans now who complain, not without reason, that their representation falls short of their legitimate influence in the State, and are already demanding a reservation of "communal" seats for their own caste in future. Lord Willingdon, as a constitutional Governor, chose from the non-Brahman majority in the Council all the three Indian Ministers who form part of the new Provincial Government and preside over the "transferred" departments. This is the most startling transformation scene which any of the Provincial elections has produced. The non-Brahmans have got the chance which they have long claimed. If they rise to the occasion, deal with the Brahmans more fairly than the latter dealt with them, and, remembering the struggle they have had for their own emancipation, help the "untouchables" to rise in their turn out of the state of degradation to which centuries of Brahman domination have condemned them, the reforms may prove to have been perhaps as important a landmark in the moral regeneration of Hindu society as in the development of the Indian body politic. For, though it would be unfair to forget that the rigidity of the great caste system probably alone saved Hindu society from complete disintegration during centuries of internal anarchy and foreign invasions, its survival would be fatal now to the advancement of India on new lines of democratic progress. In any case the triumph of the non-Brahmans is an unmistakable blow to "Non-co-operation." Their one grievance against British rule has hitherto been that it tolerated Brahman ascendancy and refused to co-operate with them in their passionate struggle against it. But now there is nothing to damp their zeal or deter them from co-operating with Government in securing the permanent success of the reforms to which, as they have to admit in spite of their former suspicions, they owe a measure of political advancement that far exceeds all their anticipations.

In Southern as well as in Northern India the failure of the Non-co-operationists' frontal attack on the reforms was beyond dispute. They were resolved to kill them in the womb by laying an interdict upon the elections to the new popular assemblies. No candidate, Mr. Gandhi had pronounced, was to enter for election, no elector was to record his vote. At a moment when the elections were already in progress and should have at least tempered his optimism, he himself assured me that the results as a whole would yet afford a most splendid demonstration of the stern temper of the people that would never trust and would never accept the mockery of reforms proceeding from a "Satanic" Government. He was deaf to my suggestion that, even if the temper of the Indian people was such as he believed it to be, it would have been demonstrated in a manner far more intelligible to the political mind of the West had his followers taken part in the elections, and, after sweeping the board in accordance with his anticipations, had then placed their demands, whatever they might be, on record before the world, declaring at the same time that, unless they were fully granted, they would walk out of every Council Chamber in India and bring down the whole edifice of reforms, which would then indeed have been hopelessly shattered. Things, on the contrary, went quite differently. In defiance of Mr. Gandhi, candidates came forward in almost every constituency, elections were held everywhere, and except for a few insignificant disturbances created by his followers they were held in peaceful and orderly fashion. There were indeed numerous and in some places very large abstentions. That many of those who kept away from the polls were convinced "Non-co-operationists" cannot be denied, but no more can it be denied that many kept away from fear, not altogether unjustified by the event, of actual violence or of the more insidious forms of intimidation which social and religious pressure assumes with particularly deadly effect in India. Reputable members, including a large proportion of the leaders who had fought for years past the battle of India's political advancement, took their seats in the Provincial Councils and in the All-India Legislature at Delhi. They represented, not unfairly on the whole, all classes and creeds and communities, and even all schools of political thought, except, of course, the Extremists, who by their own default remained unrepresented. That the Extremists, whose influence cannot be ignored, should have remained unrepresented is not a matter entirely for congratulation, for the complete exclusion, even when self-inflicted, of any important political party must tend to weaken the authority of a popular Assembly. At the same time, it may be doubted whether the abstention of "Non-co-operationists" has deprived the Indian Councils of more than a very few individuals whose ability and character, apart from their political opinions, would have given them any great weight. The splendid demonstration which Mr. Gandhi had contemplated fell completely flat because an overwhelming proportion of those to whom he directed his appeal refused to endorse his view that the great constitutional changes of which the creation of popular Assemblies was the corner-stone were merely a snare and a delusion, and to his cry of "Non-co-operation" they opposed an emphatic affirmation of their belief that the salvation of India lay in co-operation.

CHAPTER XII

THE BIRTH OF AN INDIAN PARLIAMENT

Only twelve years ago Lord Morley, with all his advanced liberalism and his broad sympathy for Indian aspirations, could not conceive the possibility of introducing Parliamentary institutions into India in his time or for generations to come. He would assuredly have had to revise his opinion could he have attended the first session of the Indian Legislative Assembly. In form its proceedings were not unworthy of a great Parliamentary Assembly. The speeches sometimes rose to a high level of eloquence all the more noteworthy in that English was not the mother tongue of those who delivered them. They were, as a rule, sober and dignified, and if all members did not at once abandon a habit much favoured in the old Councils of putting long strings of questions and moving impracticable resolutions in sonorous harangues, often prepared for them by outside hacks, their own colleagues soon taught them that such methods were no longer likely to pay even for purposes of advertisement. The majority quickly acquired a knack of suppressing wind-bags and bores quietly and effectively. The Act of 1919 reserved to Government the appointment of the President of the Assembly for the first four years, after which he will be chosen by the Assembly itself. Not even the House of Commons could treat the Chair with more unfailing deference than the Assembly showed to Mr. A.F. Whyte, who brought with him the prestige of Westminster traditions and experience to which he from time to time appealed aptly and successfully, and the Assembly appreciated the tact as well as the firmness with which he discharged his novel duties. A gentle reminder of what was the usual practice in the House of Commons was never lost on Indian members whose inexperience occasionally failed to realise the Parliamentary implications of the procedure adopted by them, but was always ready to accept guidance that derived its authority from the wisdom of the Mother of Parliaments.

But the qualities shown by the Assembly transcended mere matters of form. Mr. Whyte bore testimony at the close of the session to debates "well worthy to stand by the side of the best debates in the Imperial Parliament." It was no empty compliment, for they revealed the makings of real statesmanship, and the circumstances in which the Indian Legislature met for the first time to give collective expression to the feelings of the people of India, called for statesmanship. The King-Emperor's message impressed them with a sense of the great responsibilities and great opportunities arising for them out of the far-reaching rights conferred upon them. The personal appeal with which the Duke of Connaught accompanied the delivery of the Royal message went far to dispel "the shadow of Amritsar," which had, in his own apt phrase, "lengthened over the face of India" and threatened even to darken their own path. For on no subject had Indian feeling been more unanimous during the elections all over the country than in regard to the Punjab tragedy. None had been more persistently exploited by the "Non-co-operationists" to point their jibes at the "slave-mentality" of candidates and electors who were merely the willing dupes of a "Satanic" Government. On no subject did the Assembly feel itself under a greater obligation to give expression to the unanimous sentiments of the people it represented—all the greater indeed in that opportunity of expression had been denied to the old Legislative Council. It was the acid test to which the sincerity and the whole value of the reforms were put. The atmosphere of the Assembly was never again so tense as when the crucial debate was opened by one of the ablest of the younger members of the Moderate party, Mr. Jamnadas Dwarkadas, from Bombay, on the administration of martial law in the Punjab in 1919. He asked the Government (1) to declare its adhesion to the principle of equal partnership for Indian and European in the British Empire; (2) to express regret that martial law in the Punjab violated this fundamental principle; (3) to administer deterrent punishment to officers guilty of an improper exercise of their powers including the withdrawal of their pensions; (4) to assure itself that adequate compensation is awarded to those who lost their relatives at the Jallianwala Bagh and elsewhere. The speaker moved his Resolution with great firmness and power but also with great self-restraint. Most of the Indian speeches in support of it were conceived in much the same spirit, though now and again one got a glimpse of angrier passions just beneath the surface. Happily the Government of India responded for the first time with the frankness and generosity which, had it displayed them in a much earlier stage in its handling of the Punjab troubles, would have averted many of the worst consequences. By reprobating, either implicitly or explicitly, the worst abuses of martial law the Home member, Sir William Vincent, the Commander-in-chief, Lord Rawlinson, and Sir Godfrey Fell on behalf of the army administration, succeeded in persuading the Assembly that not only were methods of humiliation and terrorism absolutely repugnant to all traditions of British rule, but that the censure and punishment already inflicted upon officers and officials were in reality far more serious and effective than the Indian mind had been wont to believe. Indian members were asked to realise that for a British officer a broken career is virtually the end of life, and Sir Godfrey Fell had no need to mention General Dyer's name when he said, "As it was put to me the other day by a very distinguished general officer, to leave the army in these circumstances would be to many officers a disgrace worse than death." Government finally accepted the Resolution as it had been moved with the exception of the third clause asking for further punishment—a question which it was not prepared nor in a position to reopen. With the eager approval of a great many of his Indian colleagues the mover withdrew that clause and the rest of the Resolution was passed unanimously and, be it noted, with the support of every European member of the Assembly.