One may possibly not agree with all the opinions expressed or with all the recommendations made in this correspondence, but their general uniformity cannot fail to carry weight. It certainly carried weight with both the Government of India and the Imperial Government. Not only did it admittedly contribute to the enactment of the Indian Press Bill of February last, but it has probably also contributed to bring about a more general recognition of the urgency of the Indian educational problem. The effect produced in India itself by the publication of the views held by the rulers of Native States, many of whom enjoy great prestige and influence far beyond the limits of their immediate dominions, was naturally considerable. The "extremists" were lashed to fury, and none of the seditious leaflets directed against the "alien" rulers and "sun-dried bureaucrats" was more violent than one issued in reply to these utterances of the rulers of their own race. One of the ruling Chiefs to whom it had been sent gave me a copy of it as "a characteristic document." It is headed: "Choose, O Indian Princes." It begins, it is true, by assuring them that there is not as yet any cut-and-dried scheme for dealing with them.
No one but the voice of the Mother herself will and can determine when once She comes to herself and stands free what constitution shall be adopted by Her for the guidance of Her life after the revolution is over. … Without going into details we may mention this much, that whether the head of the Imperial Government of the Indian Nation be a President or a King depends upon how the revolution develops itself … The Mother must be free, must be one and united, must make her will supreme. Then it may be that She gives out this Her will either wearing a kingly crown on Her head or a Republican mantle round Her sacred form.
But after being exhorted in impassioned accents either to sacrifice themselves in the great national struggle now at hand, or at the very least to stand back and keep the ring, they are warned as to the consequences of disregarding these admonitions:—
Forget not, O Princes! that a strict account will be asked of your doings and non-doings, and a people newly-born will not fail to pay you in the coin you paid. Every one who shall have actively betrayed the trust of the people, disowned his fathers, and debased his blood by arraying himself against the Mother—he shall be crushed to dust and ashes…. Do you doubt our grim earnestness! If so hear the name of Dhingra and be dumb. In the name of that martyr, O Indian Princes, we ask you to think solemnly and deeply upon these words. Choose as you will and you will reap what you sow. Choose whether you shall be the first of the nation's fathers or the last of the nation's tyrants.
In some less rabid quarters an attempt has been made to decry the views of the native rulers as emanating from petty Oriental despots, terrified by the onward march of the new Indian democracy. If so it is strange that whilst these "despots" make no secret of their attitude towards disaffection, they are equally outspoken on the necessity of a liberal and progressive policy. The Nizam himself states emphatically that he is "a great believer in conciliation and repression going hand in hand to cope with the present condition of India. While sedition should be localized and rooted out sternly, and even mercilessly, deep sympathy and unreserved reliance should manifest themselves in all dealings with loyal subjects without distinction of creed, caste, and colour." Unfortunately it requires at the present day more courage for an Indian to hold such language as that than to coquet, as many politicians do, with violence and crime. Indians in high position are peculiarly sensitive to printed attacks, perhaps because behind such attacks there often lurk forms of social pressure, rendered possible by their caste system, with which we, happily for ourselves, are totally unfamiliar. One of the most discouraging features of the present situation is that so few among the "moderate" politicians who are known to share and approve the views expressed by the Princes of India have had the moral courage to endorse them publicly.
The fearless response made by the ruling Chiefs to Lord Minto's appeal for advice and support in the repression of sedition conveys at the same time another lesson which we may well take to heart. The Government of India consulted them after the danger had arisen and become manifest. Is it not possible that, had we maintained closer touch with them in the past, had we appreciated more fully the value of their knowledge and experience, the danger might never have arisen or would never have attained such threatening proportions? At any rate, now that the consciousness of a common danger has drawn Princes and Government closer together, no time should be lost in establishing some machinery which would secure for the future a more sustained and intimate co-operation between them.
CHAPTER XVI
CROSS CURRENTS
The political aspects of Indian unrest have compelled me to dwell chiefly upon the evil forces which it has generated. But contact with the West has acted as a powerful ferment for good as well as for evil upon every class of Indian society that has come more or less directly under its influence. Were it otherwise we should indeed have to admit the moral bankruptcy of our civilization. The forces of unrest are made up of many heterogeneous and often conflicting elements, and even in their most mischievous manifestations there are sometimes germs of good which it should be our business to preserve and to develop. Largely as the classes touched, however superficially, by Western education have of late years been invaded by a spirit of reaction and of revolt against all for which that education stands, they have not yet by any means been wholly conquered by it. It is the breath of the West that has stirred the spiritual and intellectual activity of which Hindu revivalism and political disaffection, glorified under the name of Nationalism, are unfortunately the most prominent and the most recent but not the only outcome. Another and much healthier outcome is the sense of social duty and social service which has grown up amongst many educated Indians of all races and creeds, and amongst none more markedly than amongst the Hindus. Traditions of mutual helpfulness are indeed deep-rooted in India as in all Oriental communities. Mutual helpfulness is the best feature of the caste system, of the Hindu family system, of the old Indian village system, and it explains the absence in a country where there is so much poverty of those abject forms of pauperism with which we are compelled at home to deal through the painful medium of our Poor Laws. But until the leaven of Western ideas had been imported into India mutual helpfulness was generally confined within the narrow limits of distinct and separate social units. It is now slowly expanding out of watertight compartments into a more spacious conception of the social inter-dependence of the different classes of the community. This expansion of the Indian's social horizon began with the social reform movement which had kindled the enthusiasm, of an older generation in the '70's and '80's of the last century. Far from being, as some contend, a by-product of the more recent Nationalism, which had never been heard of at that period, its progress, as I have already shown, has been hampered not only by the reactionary tendencies of this Nationalism in religious and social matters, but by the diversion of some of the best energies of the country into the relatively barren field of political agitation.
Though social reform has been checked, it has not been altogether arrested, nor can it be arrested so long as British rule, by the mere fact of its existence, maintains the ascendency of Western ideals. Happily there are still plenty of educated Indians who realize that the liberation of Indian society from the trammels which are of its own making is much more urgent than its enfranchisement from an alien yoke. Even amongst politicians of almost every complexion the necessity of removing from the Indian social system the reproach of degrading anachronisms is finding at least theoretical recognition. Alongside of more conspicuous political organizations devoted mainly to political propaganda, other organizations have been quietly developing all over India whose chief purpose it is to grapple with social, religious, and economic problems which are not, or need not necessarily be, in any way connected with politics. Their voices are too often drowned by the louder clamour of the politicians pure and simple, and they attract little attention outside India. But no one who has spent any time in India can fail to be struck with the many-sided activities revealed in all the non-political conventions and conferences and congresses held annually all over the country. Within the last 12 months there have been philanthropic and religious conferences like the All India Temperance Conference, the Christian Endeavour Convention, the Theosophical Convention, social conferences like the Indian National Social Conference, the Moslem Educational Congress, and the Sikh Educational Conference, economic conferences like the Industrial Conference held at Lahore in connexion with the Punjab Industrial and Agricultural Exhibition, not to speak of many others, such as the Rajput Conference, the Hindu Punjab Conference, the Kshatrya Conference, the Parsee Conference, &c., which dealt with the narrower interests of particular castes or communities, but nevertheless gathered together representatives of those interests from all parts of India, or any rate from a whole province. Some of these meetings may be made to subserve political purposes. Others, like the Parsee Conference, betray reactionary tendencies in the most unexpected places, for the Parsee community, which has thriven more than any other on Western education and has prided itself upon being the most progressive and enlightened of all Indian communities, is the last one in which one would have looked for the triumph, however temporary, of a strangely benighted orthodoxy. But the majority of these gatherings represent an honest and earnest attempt to apply, as far as possible, the teachings of Western experience to the solution of Indian problems, and to subject Indian customs and beliefs to the test of modern criticism. They apply themselves, moreover, chiefly to questions in which no alien Government like that of India can take the initiative without serious risk of being altogether ahead of native opinion and arousing dangerous antagonism. As Mr. Lala Dev Raj, the chairman of the last Social Conference at Lahore, for instance, put it:—