India under Ripon: A Private Diary

by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

I have found the Indian peasantry poor, in some districts to starvation, deeply in debt, and without the means of improving their position; the wealth accumulated in a few great cities and in a few rich hands; the public revenue spent to a large extent abroad, and by an absentee Government. I have been unable to convince myself that the India of 1885 is not a poorer country, take it altogether, than it was a hundred years ago, when we first began to manage its finances. I believe, in common with all native economists, that its modern system of finance is unsound, that far too large a revenue is raised from the land, and that it is only maintained at its present high figure by drawing on what may be called the capital of the country, namely, the material welfare of the agricultural class—probably, too, the productive power of the soil. I find a large public debt, and foresee further financial difficulties.

Again, I find the ancient organization of society broken up, the interdependence of class and class disturbed, the simple customary law of the East replaced by a complicated jurisprudence imported from the West, increased powers given to the recovery of debt, and consequently increased facilities of litigation and usury. Also great centralization of power in the hands of officers daily more and more automatons and less and less interested in the special districts they administer. In a word, new machinery replacing, on many points disadvantageously, the old. I do not say that all these things are unprofitable, but they are not natural to the country, and are costly out of proportion to their effect of good. India has appeared to me at best in the light of a large estate which has been experimented on by a series of Scotch bailiffs, who have all gone away rich. Everything is very scientific, very trim, and very new, especially the bailiff’s own house; but the farms can only be worked now by skilled labourers and at enormous expense; while a huge capital has been sunk, and the accounts won’t bear looking into.

On the other side, I have found an end put to the internecine wars of former days, peace established, security for life given, and a settled order of things on which men can count. I have never heard a native of India underrate the advantage of this, nor of the corresponding enfranchisement of the mind from the bondage in which it used to lie. A certain atmosphere of political freedom is necessary for intellectual growth. Where men were liable to fine, imprisonment, and death for their opinions there could be no general advance of ideas, and the want of personal liberty had for centuries held India in mental chains. No one had dared to think more wisely than his fellows, or, doing so, had speedily been stopped by force from teaching it to others. But under English rule, with all its defects, thought has been free, and men who dared to think have kept their heads, so that a generation has sprung up to whom liberty of opinion has seemed natural, and with it has come courage. The Indians in the towns are now highly educated, write books, found newspapers, attend meetings, make tours of public lectures, think, speak, and argue fearlessly, and an immense revival of intellectual and moral energy has been the result. It is not a small thing, again, that the gross licence of the old princely courts has given place to a more healthy life—that crime in high places is no longer common; that sorcery, poisoning, domestic murder, and lives of senseless depravity are disappearing; that the burning of widows has been abolished, and child-marriage is now being agitated against. These things are distinct gains, which no candid Englishman, any more than do the candid natives, would dream of underrating. And, as I have said before, they supply that element of hope which contains in it a germ of redemption from all other evils. This is the “per contra” of gain to be set in the balance against India’s loss through England.

It would, therefore, be more than rash for Indian patriotism to condemn the English connection. Nor does it yet condemn it. There is hardly, I believe, an intelligent and single-minded man in the three Presidencies who would view with complacency the prospect of immediate separation for his country from the English Crown. To say nothing of dangers from without, there are dangers from within well recognized by all. The Indians are no single race; they profess no one creed, they speak no one language; highly civilized as portions of their society are, it contains within its borders portions wholly savage. There are tribes in all the hills still armed with spear and shield, and the bulk of the peaceful agricultural population is still in the rudest ignorance. The work of education is not yet complete, or the need of protection passed. All recognize this, and with it the necessity for India still of an armed Imperial rule. Were this withdrawn, it is certain at least that the present civilized political structure could not endure, and it is exceedingly doubtful whether any other could be found to take its place. I do not myself see in what way the issue of a rupture could be made profitable to the Indian nations, nor do I understand that the exchange from English to another foreign rule would improve their condition.

At the same time I recognize that it is impossible the present condition of things should remain unchanged for more than a very few years. For reasons which I have stated, the actual organization of Anglo-Indian government has become hateful to the natives of India, and however much their reason may be on the side of patience, there is a daily increasing danger of its being overpowered by a passionate sentiment evoked by some chance outbreak. Nor do I believe that it will be again possible for England to master a military revolt, which would this time have the sympathy of the whole people. Moreover, even if we should suppose this fear exaggerated and the evil day of revolt put off, there is yet the certainty of a Government by force becoming yearly more costly and more difficult to carry on. It is a mistake to suppose that India has ever yet been governed merely by the English sword. The consent of the people has always underlain the exercise of our power, and were this generally withdrawn it could not be maintained an hour. At present the Indian populations accept English rule as, on the whole, a thing good for them, and give it their support. But they do not like it, and were they once convinced that there was no intention on the part of the English people to do them better justice and give them greater liberty than they have now, they might without actual revolt make all government impossible. It cannot be too emphatically stated that our Indian administration exists on the goodwill of the native employés.

What then, in effect, should that reform be, and towards what ultimate goal should reformers look in shaping their desires and leading the newly awakened thought of India towards a practical end? While I was at Calcutta I attended a series of meetings at which this question was put in all its branches, and at which delegates from all parts of India discussed it fully; and in what I am now going to say I can therefore give, with more or less accuracy, the native Indian view of Indian needs. Many matters of social importance were debated there, many suggestions made of improvements in this and that department of the administration, and the financial and economic difficulties found their separate exponents; but it was easy to remark that, while all looked forward to the realization of their special hopes, none seemed to consider it possible that any real change would be effected as long as what may be called the constitution of the Indian Government remained what it now is. The burden of every argument was, “No reform is possible for us until the Indian Government is itself reformed. It is too conservative, too selfish, too alien to the thoughts and needs of India, to effect anything as at present constituted; and just as in England reformers at the beginning of this century looked first to a reform of Parliament, so must Indian reformers now look first to a reform of the governing body of the country.” Constitutional changes are needed as an initial step towards improvement; and it is the strong opinion of all that nothing short of this will either satisfy Indian hopes or ward off Indian troubles.

The Indian Government as at present constituted is a legacy from days when the advantage of the natives of India was not even in name the first object with its rulers. Its direct ancestor, the East India Company, was a foreign trade corporation which had got possession of the land, and treated it as a property to be managed for the exclusive advantage of its members, either in the form of interest on the Company’s capital, or of lucrative employment for relatives and friends of the shareholders. The advantage of the natives was not considered, except in so far as their prosperity affected that of the Company; and in early days there was no pretence even of this. India was a rich country, and for many years was held to be an inexhaustible mine of wealth, and was treated without scruple as such. Nor was it till the trial of Warren Hastings that any great scandal arose or any serious check was put to the greediness of all concerned. The directors in London, and their servants in the three Presidencies, had a common object of making money, and the only differences between them were as to the division of profits, while all alike grew rich.

The government of the country was then vested in a Board of Directors sitting at the India House, and delegating their executive powers to a civil service of which they themselves had in most instances been originally members, and whose traditions and instincts they preserved. It was a bureaucracy pure and simple, the most absolute, the closest, and the freest of control that the world has ever seen; for, unlike the bureaucracies of Europe, it was subject neither to the will of a sovereign nor to public opinion in any form. Its selfishness was checked only by the individual good feeling of its members, and any good effected by it to others than these was due to a certain traditional largeness of idea as to the true interests of the Company. It was only on the occasion of the renewal of the Company’s charter that any interference could be looked for from the English Parliament and public; and so it continued until the Mutiny.

In 1858, however, the Company as a Company came to an end. The Board of Directors was abolished, dividends ceased to be paid to owners of Indian stock, and the Government of India was transferred nominally to the English Crown. At that time there was a great talk of reforming the system of administration, and it was publicly announced that India should for the future be governed in no other interest than its own. A royal proclamation gave the natives of British India their full status as British subjects; they were no longer to be disqualified for any function of public trust, and no favour was to be shown to English rather than to native interests in the Imperial policy. The programme was an excellent one, and was received in India with enthusiasm, and caused a real outburst of loyalty to the English Crown which has hardly yet subsided. Its only fault, indeed, has been that it has never been carried out, and that while the Indians have waited patiently the plan has been defeated in detail by vested interests too strong for the vacillating intentions either of the Government which designed the change, or of any that have succeeded it. In spite of all official announcements and statements of policy, and royal proclamations, the principle of Indian government remains what it has always been—that is to say, government in the interests of English trade and English adventure. The more liberal design has faded out of sight.

The explanation of so great a failure I believe is this. When the sovereign power was transferred from the Company to the Crown, it was considered convenient to preserve as far as possible the existing machinery of administration. The East India Company had formed a civil service composed of its own English nominees, whose interests had gradually become part and parcel of the general interest of the concern; and they had obtained rights under covenant which secured them in employment, each for his term of years, and afterwards in pension. These rights the English Government now recognized, and the same covenant was entered into with them as had formerly been granted by the Company, and thus a vested interest in administration was perpetuated which has ever since impeded the course of liberal development.