Indian Unrest

by Sir Valentine Chirol

The Native States of India vary in size and importance from powerful principalities like the Nizam's State of Hyderabad, with an area of 82,000 miles—nearly equal to that of England and Wales and Scotland—- and a population of over 11 millions, down to diminutive chiefships, smaller than the holdings of a great English landlord. Distributed throughout the whole length and breadth of the peninsula, they display the same extraordinary variety of races and creeds and castes and languages and customs and traditions as the provinces under the immediate governance of the Viceroy, and their rulers themselves represent almost every phase and aspect of Indian history. The Princes of Rajputana, headed by the Maharana of Udaipur, with genealogies reaching back into the mythical ages, have handed down to the present day the traditions of Hindu chivalry. In the south of India, the rulers of Mysore and Cochin and Iravancore, who also claim Rajput blood, still personify the subjection of the older Dravidian races to the Aryan invaders from the north. Mahratta chiefs like Scindia and the Gaekwar date from the great uplifting of the Mahratta power in the eighteenth century, whilst the Maharajah of Kolhapur is a descendant of Shivaji, the first Mahratta chieftain to stem the tide of Mahomedan conquest more than a century earlier. The great majority of the ruling princes and chiefs are Hindus, but besides the Nizam, the most powerful of all, there are not a few Mahomedan rulers who have survived the downfall of Moslem supremacy, just as the Sikh chiefs of Patiala, Nabha, and Kapurthala, in the Punjab, still recall the great days of Ranjit Singh and the Sikh confederacy. In some of the Native States the ruling families are neither of the same race nor of the same creed as the majority of their subjects. The Nizam is a Sunni Mahomedan, but most of his subjects are Hindus, and of the Mahomedans some of the most influential are Shias. The Maharajah of Kashmir, a Hindu Rajput, rules over many Mongolian Buddhists, whilst there are but few Mahrattas in Gwalior or Indore, though both Holkar and Scindia are, Mahratta Princes.

In all the Native States the system of government is more or less of the old patriarchal or personal type which has always obtained in the East, but in its application it exhibits many variations which reflect sometimes the idiosyncrasies of the ruler and sometimes the dominant forces of inherited social traditions. In Cochin and Travancore, for instance, the ancient ascendency of the Northern Brahmans over the Dravidian subject races survives in some of its most archaic forms. Udaipur and Jaipur have perhaps preserved more than any other States of Rajputana the aristocratic conservatism of olden days, whilst some of the younger Rajput chiefs have moved more freely with the times and with their own Western education. The Gaekwar has gone further than any other ruling chief in introducing into his State of Baroda the outward forms of what we call Western progress, though his will is probably in all essentials as absolute as that of Scindia, another Mahratta chief, whose interest in every form of Western activity is displayed almost as much in his physical energy as in his intellectual alertness. Some no doubt abandon the conduct of public affairs almost entirely to their Ministers and prefer a life of easy self-indulgence. Others, on the contrary, are keen administrators, and insist upon doing everything themselves. As masterful a ruler as any in the whole of India is a lady, the Begum of Bhopal, a Mahomedan Princess of rare attainments and character. The Nizam, on the other hand, though an absolute ruler, has recently placed it on record that he attributes the peaceful content and law-abiding character of his subjections to the liberal traditions he has inherited from his ancestors. "They were singularly free from all religious and racial prejudices. Their wisdom and foresight induced them to employ Hindus and Mahomedans, Europeans, and Parsees alike, in carrying on the administration, and they reposed entire confidence in their officers whatever religion and race they belonged to." To those principles his Highness rightly claims to have himself adhered.

Again, though the relationship of the Supreme Government to all these rulers is one of suzerainty, it is governed in each particular case by special and different treaties which vary the extent and nature of the control exercised over them. In some of its aspects, the principles of our policy towards them were admirably set forth in a speech delivered in November, 1909, by Lord Minto at Udaipur. "In guaranteeing their internal independence and in undertaking their protection against external aggression, it naturally follows that the Imperial Government has assumed a certain degree of responsibility for the general soundness of their administration, and would not consent to incur the reproach of being an indirect instrument of misrule. There are also certain matters in which it is necessary for the Government of India to safeguard the interests of the community as a whole, as well as those of the Paramount Power, such as railways, telegraphs, and other services of an Imperial character." At the same time the Viceroy wisely laid great stress on the fact that, in pursuance of the pledges given by the British Crown to the rulers of the Native States, "our policy is with rare exceptions one of non-interference in their internal affairs," and he pointed out that, as owing to the varying conditions of different States "any attempt at complete uniformity and subservience to precedent" must be dangerous, he had endeavoured "to deal with questions as they arose with reference to existing treaties, the merits of each case, local conditions, antecedent circumstances, and the particular stage of development, feudal and constitutional, of individual principalities." It is obviously impossible to enforce a more rigid control over the feudatory States at the same time as we are delegating larger powers to the natives of India under direct British administration. This is a point which Lord Minto might indeed have emphasized with advantage. For there seems to be a growing tendency, probably at home rather than in India, to ignore our responsibilities towards the ruling chiefs, and to regard them as more or less negligible quantities in the constitutional experiments we are making in our Indian Empire. When an emergency arises such as a frontier war or a military expedition in the Sudan or in China, we appeal unhesitatingly to the loyalty of the Princes of India, and so far they have cheerfully borne their share in these Imperial enterprises though they were never drawn into consultation beforehand, and their own material interests were not directly involved. On the other hand, questions which do involve their material interests, questions which necessarily affect the well-being of their States quite as much as that of British India, questions of tariff and of currency that react upon the economic prosperity of the whole of India are settled between Whitehall and Government House at Calcutta without their opinion being even invited. Sometimes even decisions are taken without their knowledge on matters that directly affect their own exchequers, as in the matter of the opium trade with China. Some of the native States are the largest producers of the Indian poppy, and in order to satisfy the susceptibilities, very meritorious in themselves, of our national conscience, we lightheartedly impose upon them, without consultation or prospect of compensation, the sacrifice, which costs us nothing, of one of the most valuable products of their soil and chief sources of revenue. Can they do otherwise than draw unfavourable comparisons between the harsh measure meted out to them in this matter and the generous treatment of the West Indies by the Mother Country when £20,000,000 were voted out of the Imperial Exchequer towards compensation for the material losses arising out of the abolition of slavery?

How important it is to associate the Princes of India with the purposes of our Indian policy has seldom been more clearly shown than during these last troublous years when the forces of disaffection have revealed themselves as a serious public danger. The principle of authority cannot be attacked in British India without suffering diminution in the Native States. They are not shut up in watertight compartments and sedition cannot be preached on one side of a border, which in most cases is merely an administrative boundary line, without finding an echo on the other side. The prestige of an Indian Prince in his own land is great. It is rooted in most cases in ancient traditions to which no alien rulers can appeal. Nevertheless some of the most experienced and enlightened of the ruling chiefs showed a much earlier and livelier appreciation of the subversive tendencies of Indian unrest than those responsible for the governance of British India. Some of them, like the Maharajahs of Kolhapur and of Patiala, have been brought face to face with the same violent, and even with the same criminal, methods of agitation as the Government of India has had to deal with in provinces under British administration. The Maharajah of Jaipur and Maharajah Scindia felt themselves constrained just about a year ago to enact vigorous measures on their own account against sedition and against the importation into their States of seditious literature which was still allowed to circulate with impunity in British India, whilst the State of Bikanir was the first to introduce an Explosive Substances Act immediately after the epidemic of bomb-throwing had broken out in Bengal. Other States have also taken strong preventive measures, but many have fortunately been spared so far any serious trouble within their own borders, and their rulers have been able to study the problem merely as interested observers and from the point of view of the general welfare of the country.

On August 65 1909, the Viceroy took the unusual step of communicating direct with all the principal ruling Princes and Chiefs of India on the subject of the Active unrest prevalent in many parts of the country, and invited an exchange of opinions "with a view to mutual co-operation against a common danger." Some doubts were then expressed as to the wisdom of such a course, on the ground that it might create in the protected States an impression of exaggerated alarm. 'But the tone and substance of the replies which his Excellency's communication elicited showed that there was no reason for any such apprehensions. The Ruling Chiefs, on the contrary, appreciated and reciprocated the confidence reposed in them, and their replies, indeed, constitute an exceptionally interesting and instructive set of documents; for the very diversity of origin and traditions and influence gives peculiar weight to the position assumed by the rulers of the Native States towards the forces of active unrest in India. Had those forces merely been engaged in a legitimate struggle for the enlargement of Indian rights and liberties, it is scarcely conceivable that the Ruling Princes and Chiefs should have passed judgment against them with such overwhelming unanimity.

It may be argued that in replying to a Viceregal Kharita, the Ruling Chiefs could hardly do less than recognize the existence of the "common danger" to which Lord Minto had drawn their attention. But the careful analysis of the influences behind the agitation and the practical suggestions for dealing with it which the majority of the replies contain, prove that their opinions are certainly not framed "to order." They represent the convictions and experience of a group of responsible Indians better situated in some respects to obtain accurate information about the doings and feelings of their fellow-countrymen than any Anglo-Indian administrators can be. The language of the Nizam is singularly apt and direct, "Once the forces of lawlessness and disorder are let loose there is no knowing where they will stop. It is true that, compared with the enormous population of India, the disaffected people are a very insignificant minority, but, given time and opportunity, there exists the danger of this small minority spreading its tentacles all over the country and inoculating with its poisonous doctrines the classes and masses hitherto untouched by this seditious movement." The Maharana of Udaipur, speaking with the authority of his unique position amongst Hindus as the premier Prince of Rajputana, not only condemns an agitation "which is detrimental to all good government and social administration," but declares it to be "a great disgrace to their name as also to their religious beliefs that, in spite of the great prosperity India has enjoyed under the British régime, people are acting in such an ungrateful way." No less emphatic is the Mahratta ruler of Gwalior:—"The question is undoubtedly a grave one, affecting as it does the future well-being of India," and "it particularly behoves those who preside over the destinies of the people and have large personal stakes to do all in their power to grapple with it vigorously." The Maharajah of Jaipur, one of the wisest of the older generation of Hindu rulers, agrees that "only a small fraction of the population has been contaminated by the seditious germ," but he adds significantly that "that fraction has, it seems, been carefully organized by able, rich, and unscrupulous men," and he does not hesitate to declare that "an organized and concerted campaign, offensive and defensive, against the common enemy is what is wanted."

According to the Rajah of Dewas, one of the most enlightened of the younger Hindu chiefs, "it is a well known fact that the endeavours of the seditious party are directed not only against the Paramount Power, but against all constituted forms of government in India, through an absolutely misunderstood sense of 'patriotism,' and through an attachment to the popular idea of 'government by the people,' when every level-headed Indian must admit that India generally has not in any way shown its fitness for a popular government." He goes so far even as to state his personal conviction that history and all "sound-minded" people agree that India cannot really attain to the standard of popular government as understood by the West.

It is another Hindu ruler, the Rajah of Ratlam, who points out the close connexion, upon which I have had to lay repeated stress, between religious revivalism and sedition. He recognizes that "Hindus, and for the matter of that all Oriental peoples, are swayed more by religion than by anything else." Government have hitherto adopted, and rightly adopted, the policy of allowing perfect freedom in the matter of religious beliefs, but as the seditionists are seeking to connect their anarchical movement with religion, and the political Sadhu is abroad, it is high time to change the policy of non-interference in so-called religious affairs. The new religion which is now being preached, "with its worship of heroes like Shivaji and the doctrine of India for India alone," deserves, this Hindu Prince boldly declares, to be treated as Thuggism and Suttee were treated, which both claimed the sanction of religion. "It pains me," he adds, "to write as above, but already religion has played a prominent part in this matter, and religious books were found in almost every search made for weapons and bombs. The rôle of the priest or the Sadhu is most convenient, and rulers have bowed, and do bow, to religious preachers. These people generally distort the real import of religious precepts, and thereby vitiate the public mind. The founders are sly enough to flatter the Government by an occasional address breathing loyalty and friendship, but it is essential to check this religious propaganda."

The rulers of the Native States are not content merely to profess loyalty and reprobate disaffection. With the exception of the Gaekwar, whose reply, without striking any note of substantial dissent, is, marked, by a certain coolness that has won for him the applause of the Nationalist Press, they respond heartily to the Viceroy's request for suggestions as to the most effective measures to cope with the evil. Most of them put in the very forefront of their recommendations the necessity of checking the licence of the Indian Press, to which they attribute the main responsibility for the widening of the gulf between the rulers and the ruled. And it should be remembered that these opinions were expressed some months before the Imperial Government and the Government of India decided to introduce the new Press Act. The Nizam holds that newspapers publishing false allegations or exaggerated reports should be officially called upon "to print formal contradiction or correction as directed." For, in his Highness's opinion, "it is no longer safe or desirable to treat with silent contempt any perverse statement which is publicly made, because the spread of education on the one hand has created a general interest in the news of the country, and a section of the Press, on the other hand, deliberately disseminates news calculated to promote enmity between Europeans and Indians, or to excite hatred of Government and its officers in the ignorant and credulous minds." Several Chiefs recommend more summary proceedings and less publicity in the case of political offences, as, though such measures may appear arbitrary at first sight, "they are quite suited to the country." Several agree that a closer watch should be kept on "religious mendicants" who go about in the guise of Sadhus preaching sedition, and that a more intimate exchange of secret intelligence should take place with regard to the seditious propaganda between the different States and the Government of India. Others believe in the creation of counter-organizations to inform and encourage the loyal elements.

But it is perhaps on the question of education that some of the Ruling Chiefs speak with the greatest weight and authority, and there is nothing they more deeply deplore than the divorce of secular instruction from religious and moral training, which they hold responsible for much of the present mischief. "Strange as it may sound," says the Rajah of Dewas, "it is a well-known fact that the germs of the present unrest in India were laid by that benefactor of the human race, education." Another Chief is of opinion that, as the formation of character is the highest object of education, all public schools should be graded by the results they achieve in this direction rather than by high percentages in examinations; whilst others strongly recommend the extension of the residential college system and greater care in the selection of good teachers.