By Sir Hamilton Grant
K.C.S.I., K.C.I.E.; Chief Commissioner, North-West Frontier Province, India; Deputy Commissioner of various Frontier districts; Secretary to Frontier Administration; Foreign Secretary, 1914-19; negotiated Peace Treaty with Afghanistan, 1919.
Sir Hamilton Grant said:—I have been asked to address you on the subject of India, that vast, heterogeneous continent, with its varied races, its Babel of languages, its contending creeds. There are many directions in which one might approach so immense a topic, presenting, as it does, all manner of problems, historical, ethnological, linguistic, scientific, political, economic, and strategic. I do not propose, however, to attempt to give you any general survey of those questions, or to offer you in tabloid form a resumé of the matters that concern the government of India. I propose to confine my remarks to two main questions which appear to be of paramount importance at the present time, and which, I believe, will be of interest to those here present to-day, namely, the problems of the North-West Frontier, and the question of internal political unrest.
Let me deal first with the North-West Frontier. As very few schoolboys know, we have here a dual boundary—an inner and an outer line. The inner line is the boundary of the settled districts of the North-West Frontier Province, the boundary, in fact, of British India proper, and is known as the Administrative border. The outer line is the boundary between the Indian Empire and Afghanistan, and is commonly known as the Durand line, because it was settled by Sir Mortimer Durand and his mission in 1895 with the old Amir Abdur Rahman. These two lines give us three tracts to be dealt with—first, the tract inside the inner line, the settled districts of the North-West Frontier Province, inhabited for the most part by sturdy and somewhat turbulent Pathans; second, the tract between the two lines, that welter of mountains where dwell the hardy brigand hillmen: the tribes of the Black Mountain, of Swat and Bajur, the Mohmands, the Afridis, the Orakzais, the Wazirs, the Mahsuds, and a host of others, whose names from time to time become familiar according as the outrageousness of their misconduct necessitates military operations; third, the country beyond the outer line, “the God-granted kingdom of Afghanistan and its dependencies.”
Now each of these tracts presents its own peculiar problems, though all are intimately inter-connected and react one on the other. In the settled districts we are confronted with the task of maintaining law and order among a backward but very virile people, prone to violence and impregnated with strange but binding ideas of honour, for the most part at variance with the dictates of the Indian Penal Code. For this reason there exists a special law called the Frontier Crimes Regulation, a most valuable enactment enabling us to deal with cases through local Councils of Elders, with the task of providing them with education, medical relief etc., in accordance with their peculiar needs, and above all with the task of affording them protection from the raids and forays of their neighbours from the tribal hills. In the tribal area we are faced with the task of controlling the wild tribesmen. This control varies from practically direct administration as in the Lower Swat and Kurram valleys to the most shadowy political influence, as in the remote highlands of Upper Swat and the Dir Kohistan, where the foot of white man has seldom trod. Our general policy, however, with the tribes is to leave them independent in their internal affairs, so long as they respect British territory and certain sacrosanct tracts beyond the border, such as the Khyber road, the Kurram, and the Tochi. The problem is difficult, because when hardy and well-armed hereditary robbers live in inaccessible mountains which cannot support the inhabitants, overlooking fat plains, the temptation to raid is obviously considerable: and when this inclination to raid is reinforced by fanatical religion, there must be an ever-present likelihood of trouble.
Frontier Raids
Few people here in England reading of raids on the North-West Frontier in India realise the full horror of these outrages. What generally happens is that in the small hours of the morning, a wretched village is suddenly assailed by a gang of perhaps 50, perhaps 200, well-armed raiders, who put out sentries, picket the approaches, and conduct the operation on the most skilful lines. The houses of the wealthiest men are attacked and looted; probably several villagers are brutally murdered—and probably one or two unhappy youths or women are carried off to be held up to ransom. Sometimes the raid is on a larger scale, sometimes it is little more than an armed dacoity. But there is nearly always a tale of death and damage. Not infrequently, however, our troops, our militia, our frontier constabulary, our armed police, or the village chigha or hue-and-cry party are successful in repelling and destroying the raiders. Our officers are untiring in their vigilance, and not infrequently the district officers and the officers of their civil forces are out three or four nights a week after raiding gangs. Statistics in such matters are often misleading and generally dull, but it may be of interest to state that from the 1st April, 1920, to the 31st March, 1921, when the tribal ebullition consequent on the third Afghan war had begun to die down, there were in the settled districts of the North-West Frontier Province 391 raids in which 153 British subjects were killed and 157 wounded, in which 310 British subjects were kidnapped and some £20,000 of property looted. These raids are often led by outlaws from British territory; but each tribe is responsible for what emanates from or passes through its limits—and when the bill against a tribe has mounted up beyond the possibility of settlement, there is nothing for it but punitive military operations. Hence the large number of military expeditions that have taken place on this border within the last half century.
Now this brings us to the question so often asked by the advocates of what is called the Forward policy: “If the tribes give so much trouble, why not go in and conquer them once and for all and occupy the country up to the Durand line?” It sounds an attractive solution, and it has frequently been urged on paper by expert soldiers. But the truth is that to advance our frontier only means advancing the seat of trouble, and that the occupation of tribal territory by force is a much more formidable undertaking than it sounds. We have at this moment before us a striking proof of the immense difficulty and expense of attempting to tame and occupy even a comparatively small tract of tribal territory in the Waziristan operations. Those operations have been going on for two and a half years. At the start there were ample troops, ample equipment, and no financial stringency. The operations were conducted, if a layman may say so, with skill and determination, and our troops fought gallantly. But what is the upshot? We managed to advance into the heart of the Mahsud country on a single line, subjected and still subject to incessant attacks by the enemy; but we are very little nearer effective occupation than when we started; and now financial stringency has necessitated a material alteration in the whole programme, and we are reverting more or less to the methods whereby we have always controlled the tribes, namely, tribal levies or khassadars belonging to the tribe itself, frontier militia or other armed civil force, backed by troops behind.
Frontier Policy
And for my own part I believe this is the best solution. We must not expect a millennium on the North-West Frontier. The tribal lion will not lie down beside the district lamb in our time, and we must deal with the problem as best we can in accordance with our means, and to this end my views are briefly as follows:—