One of the weapons of "Non-co-operation" which Mr. Gandhi has lately sharpened up is the boycott of British imported goods, now reiterated and clearly defined in relation first of all to British textiles. Not only must the Indian wear nothing but home-spun cotton cloth, but the Indian importer must cease to do any business with British firms, and Indian mills must forgo their profits in order to help the boycott. Mr. Gandhi has inaugurated the boycott by presiding over huge sacrificial bonfires of imported cloth on the seashore at Bombay, amidst the acclamations of vast crowds all wearing the little "Gandhi" white cap which is the badge of "Non-co-operation." This is the same mad form of Swadeshi that Mr. Tilak preached over twenty years ago in the Deccan, and the Anti-Partition agitators over fifteen years ago in Bengal. It failed in both cases. Is it less likely to fail to-day when post-war economic conditions both in England and in India militate still more strongly against its success, however much it may for a time appeal to Indian sentiment and to the disgust of Indian traders with Government's currency and exchange policy? Mr. Gandhi admitted it was impracticable unless carried out in the spirit of religious self-sacrifice for the Motherland, which impelled him even to veto the suggestion made by some of his own followers that the existing stocks of imported cloth, instead of being burnt, should be given away in charity to the poor. He may himself really dream of an India from whose face the busy cities built up by European enterprise, and the railways, the telegraphs, and every other symbol of a Satanic civilisation shall have disappeared, and Indians shall all be content to lead in their own primitive villages the simplest of simple lives clad only in the produce of their handlooms, fed only on the fruits of their own fields, and governed only by their own panchayats in accordance with Vedic precepts and under the protection of their favourite gods. But how many Extremists who shelter behind his name are not already speculating on the failure of the Swadeshi movement to which their dupes are committed, in order that when disillusionment comes it shall add to the area of popular discontent in which racial hatred is most easily sown? Non-payment of taxes is another of the weapons which "Non-co-operation" has threatened to use, and it includes non-payment of the land-tax which would directly incite the whole agricultural population to lawlessness, and an attack upon excise revenue which in the shape of a temperance movement, in itself perfectly commendable, has already led to many cases of indefensible violence, chiefly in the urban industrial centres. He has not yet committed himself openly to "civil disobedience" on the scale for which many Extremists are already clamouring, but he has started on an inclined plane along which he may not have the power, or even the will, to arrest his descent. Much will depend on this year's monsoon. If the rains are good and the harvests abundant, the peasants, relieved for the time from the pressure of the economic struggle, will be less inclined to take—even at his behest—the risk of refusing payment of taxes. Should there unfortunately be another bad season following on last year's partial failure,[5] the temptation may prove irresistible if reinforced by the religious exaltation which Mr. Gandhi knows so well how to call forth. Deep down, too, there is always the latent antagonism of all the irreconcilable elements in an ancient civilisation of which British rule no more than Mahomedan domination, and in still earlier times the spiritual revolt of Buddhism, has shaken the hold upon the Hindu masses.
By a strange fatality the confidence of the inarticulate millions upon which we have hitherto prided ourselves has been turned into bitterness and hatred hitherto unknown amongst large sections of them at the very moment when we have for the first time regained in a large measure the confidence of the intelligentsia, and we have to reckon with the possibility of popular disturbances which may call for strong action just when on broad grounds of policy any resort to force must be specially undesirable. One of the retributions which always overtake such mistakes in the manner of employing force as were made two years ago in the Punjab is that the actual employment of force, however legitimate, becomes discredited. The Government of India realises—and no one probably more fully than Lord Reading after his visit to Amritsar—that with the Punjab fresh in their memories, even Indian Moderates must require very strong evidence before they give any willing support to the employment of force, even if circumstances arise to make it inevitable for the mere maintenance of public order which no government can allow to be wantonly imperilled. Such evidence is accumulating only too fast. When the time comes for action, the existence of a responsible body of Indian opinion, constitutionally organised, and constitutionally represented in the new Legislatures, will give Government the moral backing and the moral courage which failed it with disastrous results in 1919.
It is sad to see a man of Mr. Gandhi's immense power for good drifting into such deep waters. Mr. Gokhale, who had given him his enthusiastic support in South Africa, warned him on his return to India that methods of agitation and passive resistance which were permissible there under great provocation, and had been used by him with considerable success, would be quite unwarranted in India where they would only lead to disaster. Mr. Gokhale died soon afterwards and Mr. Gandhi has disregarded his advice. At times he has given signs of profound discouragement and talked of retiring to the Himalayas to spend the rest of his days in meditation, as pious Hindus not infrequently do. At times in a more worldly mood he seems to be playing for a crown of martyrdom, and he was perhaps bidding for it when soon after a series of interviews with the Viceroy, conducted on both sides with perfect courtesy, he replied to the official announcement of the impending visit of the Prince of Wales to India by proclaiming it to be the duty of Indians to boycott the heir to the Throne in the same way in which he had exhorted them last winter to boycott the Duke of Connaught. He must certainly have been bidding for it when in the course of a raging and tearing temperance campaign in Bombay he declared, it seems, that liquor shops must be closed even if it cost rivers of blood. Government has so far wisely shrunk from adding to his halo as a saint that of a "confessor and martyr." But he may yet force Government's hands.[6] For there must be limits to the impunity granted even to a Mahatma who professes and preaches the doctrine of Ahimsa, but whose footsteps are dogged by violence which is the negation of Ahimsa.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Later reports promise a far better monsoon than was at first indicated.
[6] Whilst these pages are going through the press, reports are coming in of a Moplah rising on the Malabar coast, far more ominous than any of the disturbances already referred to in this chapter. The Moplahs are an extremely backward and unruly race, with an infusion of Arab blood, always notorious for their fierce Mahomedan fanaticism, wrought up to a white heat by a recent visit from the two Mahomedan firebrands of "Non-co-operation." The murder of Europeans, the burning and looting of Government buildings, the tearing up of railways and telegraphs, recall the worst excesses committed by Indian mobs two years ago in the Punjab. But on this occasion there has been no Mahomedan-Hindu fraternisation. The Moplahs have vented their Khilafat fury equally upon the helpless Hindu populations of the whole district, who have been slaughtered and plundered or forcibly converted to Islam as in the earliest days of Mahomedan domination. Hindu members of the Legislative Assembly, realising that their co-religionists owe their safety only to the military forces which are being rushed up by a Satanic Government to arrest a campaign of sheer murder and rapine, may well ask, as Mr. Jamnadas Dwarkadas has just done, how long such men as Mahomed and Shaukat Ali are to be allowed to go on preaching the doctrines which the Moplahs have so effectively carried into practice. However local this outbreak may remain, it is only another and a more sinister symptom of the widespread upheaval against all constituted authority into which "Non-co-operation" has degenerated under the leadership of Mr. Gandhi and his Mahomedan allies.
CHAPTER XVI
THE INDIAN PROBLEM A WORLD PROBLEM
A great constitutional experiment, of which the expressed purpose is to bring a self-governing India into full and equal partnership with all other parts of the British Empire, has been courageously launched in deep waters still only partially explored, and it has resisted the first onslaught of a singular combination of malignant forces. It is too early yet to speak with absolute assurance of its enduring success. For success must depend upon many factors outside India as well as within. All that can be said with confidence is that it has made a far more promising start than might have been looked for even in less unfavourable circumstances, and many Englishmen, and Indians also, who disliked and distrusted the reforms and would have preferred to stand in the old ways, are coming round to the belief that in their success lies the best and possibly the one real hope for the future. Faith is naturally strongest in those who see in the experiment the natural and logical corollary of that even bolder experiment initiated nearly a hundred years ago when we introduced Western education in India. That was the great turning-point in the history of British rule. We had gone to India with no purpose of seeking dominion, but circumstances had forced dominion upon us. With dominion had come the recognition of the great responsibilities which it involved, and having imposed upon India our own rule of law we imposed it also upon the agencies through which we then exercised dominion—a self-denying ordinance for ourselves, for Indians a pledge of justice. Dominion pure and simple made room for dominion regarded as a great trust. But when we introduced Western education, we placed upon our trusteeship a new and wider construction. We invited Indians to enter into intellectual partnership with our own civilisation, and for the purpose, admitted at the time but afterwards sometimes forgotten, of training them to a share in the responsibilities of Indian government and administration. Many Englishmen from that moment contemplated intellectual partnership as the means to political partnership as the end. That was indeed—nearly a century before Mr. Asquith coined the phrase—"the new angle of vision." The Mutiny distorted it, and it remained obscured when the great experiment was found to result, like all human experiments, in the production of some evil as well as of much good. If the tares may have been sometimes more conspicuous than the wheat, we should ask ourselves whether our own lack of vigilance and forethought did not contribute to the luxuriant growth of tares in a soil naturally congenial to them. After many hesitations, and some tentative and half-hearted steps, we at length recognised that intellectual partnership however imperfect must lead towards a closer political partnership. It became, indeed, impossible for us to refuse to do so without being untrue to the principles that had governed not only our own national evolution long before the war, but all our declared war aims and all our appeals, which never went unheeded, to Indian loyalty and co-operation during the war.