In the course of this telegram, which acknowledged in the most generous terms the strong support of the Secretary of State in all dealings with sedition, the Viceroy made the following curious admission:--"The question of the control of Indian administration by the Secretary of State, mixed up as it is with the old difficulties of centralization, we may very possibly look at from different points of view." The curtain fell upon this restrained attempt to a.s.sert what Lord Minto evidently regarded eighteen months ago as his legitimate position, and to the public eye it has not been raised again since then. But in India certainly the fear is often expressed in responsible quarters that, notwithstanding the courageous support which Lord Morley has given to legislative measures for dealing with the worst forms of seditious agitation, their effect has been occasionally weakened by that interference from home in the details of Indian administration of which Lord Minto"s telegram contains the only admission known to the public.
It is difficult to believe that Lord Minto"s position would not have been stronger had he not allowed the Governor-General in Council to suffer such frequent eclipses. The Governor-General"s Council during Lord Minto"s tenure of office may have been exceptionally weak, and there will always be a serious element of weakness in it so long as membership of Council is not recognized to be the crowning stage of an Indian career. So long as it is, as at present too frequently happens, merely a stepping-stone to a Lieutenant-Governorship, it is idle to expect that the hope of advancement will not sometimes act as a restraint upon the independence and sense of individual responsibility which a seat in Council demands. In any case, the effacement of Council during the last few years behind the Viceroy has not been calculated to dispel the widespread impression that, both in Calcutta and in Whitehall, there has been a tendency to subst.i.tute for the const.i.tutional relations between the Governor-General in Council and the Secretary of State in Council more informal and personal relations between Lord Minto and Lord Morley, which, however excellent, are difficult to reconcile with the principles essential to the maintenance of a strong Government of India. Private letters and private telegrams are very useful helps to a mutual understanding, but they cannot safely supplant, or encroach upon, the more formal and regular methods of communication, officially recorded for future reference, in consultation and concert with the Councils on either side, as by statute established.
There is a twofold danger in any eclipse, even partial, of the Governor-General in Council. One of the remarks I have heard most frequently all over India, and from Indians as well as from Englishmen, is that "there is no longer any Government of India"; and it is a remark which, however exaggerated in form, contains a certain element of truth.
To whatever extent the Viceroy, in his relations with Whitehall, detaches himself from his Council, to that extent the centre of executive stability is displaced and the door is opened to that constant interference from home in the details of Indian administration which is all the more to be deprecated if there appear to be any suspicion of party pressure. Lord Morley has so often and so courageously stood up for sound principles of Indian government against the fierce attacks of the extreme wing of his party, and he has shown, on the whole, so much moderation and insight in his larger schemes of constructive statesmanship, whilst Lord Minto has won for himself so much personal regard during a very difficult period, that criticism may appear invidious. But the tone adopted, especially during the first years of Lord Morley"s administration, in official replies to insidious Parliamentary questions aimed at Indian administrators, the alacrity with which they were transmitted from the India Office to Calcutta, the acquiescence with which they were received there, and the capital made out of them by political agitators when they were spread broadcast over India contributed largely to undermine the principle of authority upon which, as Lord Morley has himself admitted, Indian government must rest.
For the impression was thus created in India that there was no detail of Indian administration upon which an appeal might not be successfully made through Parliament to the Secretary of State over the head of the Government of India. Now if, as Lord Morley has also admitted, Parliamentary government is inconceivable in India, it is equally inconceivable that Indian government can be carried on under a running fire of malevolent or ignorant criticism from a Parliament 6,000 miles away. That is certainly not the sort of Parliamentary control contemplated in the legislative enactments which guarantee the "ultimate responsibility" of the Secretary of State.
At the same time the effacement of the Viceroy"s Executive Council has weakened that collective authority of the Government of India without which its voice must fail to carry full weight in Whitehall. Every experienced Anglo-Indian administrator, for instance, had been quick to realize what were bound to be the consequences of the unbridled licence of the extremist Press and of an openly seditious propaganda. Yet the Government of India under Lord Minto lacked the cohesion necessary to secure the sanction of the Secretary of State to adequate legislative action, repugnant to party traditions at home, until we had already begun to reap the b.l.o.o.d.y harvest of an exaggerated tolerance, and with the Viceroy himself the views of the ruling chiefs seem to have carried greater weight in urging action on the Secretary of State than the opinions recorded at a much earlier date by men ent.i.tled to his confidence and entrusted under his orders with the administration of British India.
Even if one could always be certain of having men of transcendent ability at the India Office and at Government House in Calcutta, it is impossible that they should safely dispense with the permanent corrective to their personal judgment and temperament--not to speak of outside pressure--which their respective Councils have been created by law to supply. Let us take first of all the case of the Viceroy. His position as the head of the Government of India may be likened to that of the Prime Minister at home, and the position of the Viceroy"s Executive Council to that of the Ministers who, as heads of the princ.i.p.al executive Departments, form the Cabinet over which the Prime Minister presides. But no head of the Executive at home stands so much in need of capable and experienced advisers as the Viceroy, who generally goes out to India without any personal knowledge of the vast sub-continent and the 300 million people whom he is sent out to govern for five years with very far-reaching powers, and often without any administrative experience, though he has to take charge of the most complicated administrative machine in the world. Even when he has gone out to India, his opportunities of getting to know the country and its peoples are actually very scant. He spends more than six months of the year at Simla, an essentially European and ultra-official hill-station perched up in the clouds and entirely out of touch with Indian life, and another four months he spends in Calcutta, which, again, is only partially Indian, or, at any rate, presents but one aspect of the many-sided life of India. It takes a month for the great public departments to transport themselves and their archives from Calcutta to Simla at the beginning of the hot weather, and another month in the autumn for the pilgrimage back from the hills to Calcutta. It is only during these two months that the Viceroy can travel about freely and make himself acquainted with other parts of the vast Dependency committed to his care, and, though railways have shortened distances, rapid journeys in special trains with great ceremonial programmes at every halting point scarcely afford the same opportunities as the more leisurely progress of olden days, when the Governor-General"s camp, as it moved from place to place, was open to visitors from the whole surrounding country. Moreover, the machinery of administration grows every year more ponderous and complicated, and the Viceroy, unless he is endowed with an almost superhuman power and quickness of work, is apt to find himself entangled in the meshes of never-ending routine. It is in order to supply the knowledge and experience which a Viceroy in most cases lacks when he first goes out, and in some cases is never able to acquire during his whole tenure of office, that his Executive Council is so const.i.tuted, in theory and as far as possible in practice, that it combines with administrative experience in the several Departments over which members respectively preside such a knowledge collectively of the whole of India that the Viceroy can rely upon expert advice and a.s.sistance in the transaction of public business and, not least, in applying with due regard for Indian conditions the principles of policy laid down for his guidance by the Home Government. These were the grounds upon which Lord Morley justified the appointment to the Viceroy"s Executive Council of an Indian member who, besides being thoroughly qualified to take charge of the special portfolio entrusted to him, would bring into Council a special and intimate knowledge of native opinion and sentiment. These are the grounds upon which, by the way, Lord Morley cannot possibly justify the appointment of Mr. Clark as Member for Commerce and Industry, for a young subordinate official, however brilliant, of an English public Department cannot bring into the Viceroy"s Executive Council either special or general knowledge of Indian affairs. Such an appointment must to that extent weaken rather than strengthen the Government of India.
The same arguments which apply in India to the conjunction of the Governor-General with his Council apply, _mutatis mutandis_, with scarcely less force to the importance of the part a.s.signed to the Council of India as advisers of the Secretary of State at the India Office.
If we look at the Morley-Minto _regime_ from another point of view, it is pa.s.sing strange that the tendency to concentrate the direction of affairs in India in the hands of the Viceroy and to subject the Viceroy in turn to the closer and more immediate control of the Secretary of State, whilst simultaneously diminishing _pro tanto_ the influence of their respective Councils, should have manifested itself just at this time, when it is Lord Morley who presides over the India Office. For no statesman has ever proclaimed a more ardent belief in the virtues of decentralization than Lord Morley, and Lord Morley himself is largely responsible for legislative reforms which will not only strengthen the hands of the provincial Governments in their dealings with the Government of India, but will enable and, indeed, force the Government of India to a.s.sume on many vital questions an att.i.tude of increased independence towards the Imperial Government. The more we are determined to govern India in accordance with Indian ideas and with Indian interests, the more we must rely upon a strong, intelligent, and self-reliant Government of India. The peculiar conditions of India exclude the possibility of Indian self-government on colonial lines, but what we may, and probably must, look forward to at no distant date is that, with the larger share in legislation and administration secured to Indians by such measures as the Indian Councils Act, the Government of India will speak with growing authority as the exponent of the best Indian opinion within the limits compatible with the maintenance of British rule, and that its voice will therefore ultimately carry scarcely less weight at home in the determination of Indian policy than the voice of our self-governing Dominions already carries in all questions concerning their internal development.
The future of India lies in the greatest possible decentralization in India subject to the general, but unmeddlesome, control of the Governor-General in Council, and in the greatest possible freedom of the Government of India from all interference from home, except in regard to those broad principles of policy which it must always rest with the Imperial Government, represented by the Secretary of State in Council, to determine. It is only in that way that, to use one of Mr. Montagu"s phrases, we can hope successfully to "yoke" to our own "democratic"
system "a Government so complex and irresponsible to the peoples which it governs as the Government of India."
CHAPTER XXVII.
CONCLUSIONS.
No Viceroy has for fifty years gone out to India at so critical a moment as that at which Lord Hardinge of Penshurst is about to take up the reins of government. In one respect only is he more favoured than most of his predecessors. The Anglo-Russian agreement, of which he himself helped to lay the foundations when he was Amba.s.sador at St. Petersburg, has removed the greatest of all the dangers that threatened the external security of India and the peace of Central Asia during the greater part of the nineteenth century. It does not, however, follow that the Government of India can look forward with absolute confidence to continued immunity from all external troubles. Save for the Tibetan expedition and one or two small punitive expeditions against Pathan tribes, there have been no military operations on the Indian frontier since the Terai campaign was brought to a close in 1898. But signs are, unfortunately, not wanting of a serious recrudescence of restlessness on the North-West Frontier, where the very necessary measures taken to cut off supplies of arms from the Persian Gulf have contributed to stimulate the chronic turbulence of the unruly tribesmen. There is no definite evidence at present that they are receiving direct encouragement from Cabul, but it is at least doubtful whether the somewhat exaggerated deference shown to the Ameer on the occasion of his visit three years ago to India has permanently improved our relations with him, and though he is no longer able to play off Russia and England against each other, he has not yet brought himself to signify his adhesion to the Convention which defined our understanding with Russia in regard to Afghan affairs.
The condition of Persia, and especially of the southern provinces, has created a situation which cannot be indefinitely tolerated, whilst the provocative temper displayed by the Turkish authorities under the new _regime_ at various points on the Persian Gulf is only too well calculated to produce unpleasant complications, however anxious we must be to avoid them, if only in view of the feeling which any estrangement between Mahomedan Powers and Great Britain inevitably produces amongst Indian Moslems. The high-handed action of China in Tibet, and, indeed, all along the north-eastern borderland of our Indian Empire, has introduced a fresh element of potential trouble which the Government of India cannot safely disregard, for we are bound not only to protect our own frontiers, but also to safeguard the interests of Nepal and Bhutan, where, as well as in Sikkim, the fate of Tibet and the flight of the Dalai Lama have caused no slight perturbation. In Nepal especially, which is one of the most valuable recruiting grounds of the Indian Army, Chinese ascendency cannot be allowed to overshadow British influence.
Lord Hardinge is by profession a peacemaker, and how efficient a peacemaker he proved himself to be at St. Petersburg during the Russo-j.a.panese war will only be fully known when the historian has access to the secret records of that critical period of Anglo-Russian relations. But it must not be forgotten that the maintenance of peace along such a vast and still largely unsettled borderland as that of India may at any moment be frustrated by disturbing forces over which the most peacefully disposed Viceroy has little or no control.
Peace and sound finance, which is inseparable from peace, have certainly never been more essential to India than at the present juncture. For without them the difficulty of solving the most absorbing and urgent of the internal problems of India will be immeasurably enhanced. There is a lull in the storm of unrest, but after the repeated disappointments to which official optimism has been subjected within the last few years, he would be a sanguine prophet who would venture to a.s.sert that this lull presages a permanent return to more normal conditions. Has the creation of a new political machinery which gives a vastly enlarged scope to the activities of Indian const.i.tutional reformers, definitely rallied the waverers and restored courage and confidence to the representatives of sober and law-abiding opinion, or will they continue to follow the lead of impatient visionaries clamouring, as Lord Morley once put it, for the moon which we cannot give them? Have the forces of aggressive disaffection been actually disarmed by the so-called measures of "repression," or have they merely been compelled for the time being to cover their tracks and modify their tactics, until the relaxation of official vigilance or the play of party politics in England or some great international crisis opens up a fresh opportunity for militant sedition? To these momentous questions the next five years will doubtless go far to furnish a conclusive answer, and it will be determined in no small measure by the statesmanship, patience, and firmness which Lord Hardinge will bring to the discharge of the const.i.tutional functions a.s.signed to him as Viceroy--i.e., as the personal representative of the King Emperor, and as Governor-General in Council--i.e., as the head of the Government of India.
I have attempted, however imperfectly, to trace to their sources some of the chief currents and cross-currents of the great confused movement which is stirring the stagnant waters of Indian life--the steady impact of alien ideas on an ancient and obsolescent civilization; the more or less imperfect a.s.similation of those ideas by the few; the dread and resentment of them by those whose traditional ascendency they threaten; the disintegration of old beliefs, and then again their aggressive revival; the careless diffusion of an artificial system of education, based none too firmly on mere intellectualism, and bereft of all moral or religious sanction; the application of Western theories of administration and of jurisprudence to a social formation stratified on lines of singular rigidity; the play of modern economic forces upon primitive conditions of industry and trade; the constant and unconscious but inevitable friction between subject races and their alien rulers; the reverberation of distant wars and distant racial conflicts; the exaltation of an Oriental people in the Far East; the abas.e.m.e.nt of Asiatics in South Africa--all these and many other conflicting influences culminating in the inchoate revolt of a small but very active minority which, on the one hand, frequently disguises under an appeal to the example and sympathy of Western democracy a reversion to the old tyranny of caste and to the worst superst.i.tions of Hinduism, and, on the other hand, arms, with the murderous methods of Western Anarchism, the fervour of Eastern mysticism compounded in varying proportions of philosophic transcendentalism and degenerate sensuousness.
In so far as this movement is directed to the immediate subversion of British rule, we need not exaggerate its importance, unless the British Empire were involved in serious complications elsewhere which might encourage the seditious elements in India to break out into open rebellion. We are too often, in fact, inclined to underrate the strength of the foundations upon which our rule rests. For it alone lends--and can within any measurable time lend--substantial reality to the mere geographical expression which India is. A few Indians may dream of a united India under Indian rule, but the dream is as wild to-day as that of the few European Socialists who dream of the United States of Europe.
India has never approached to political unity any more than Europe has, except under the compulsion of a conqueror. For India and Europe are thus far alike that they are both geographically self-contained continents, but inhabited by a great variety of nations whose different racial and religious affinities, whose different customs and traditions, tend to divide them far more than any interests they may have in common tend to unite them. We have got too much into the habit of talking about India and the Indians as if they were one country and one people, and we too often forget that there are far more absolutely distinct languages spoken in India than in Europe; that there are far more profound racial differences between the Mahratta and the Bengalee than between the German and the Portuguese, or between the Punjabee and the Tamil than between the Russian and the Italian; that, not to speak of other creeds, the religious antagonism between Hindu and Mahomedan is often more active than any that exists to-day between Protestants and Roman Catholics, even, let us say, in Ulster; and that caste has driven into Indian society lines of far deeper cleavage than any cla.s.s distinctions that have survived in Europe.
We do not rule India, as is sometimes alleged, by playing off one race or one creed against another and by accentuating and fostering these ancient divisions, but we are able to rule because our rule alone prevents these ancient divisions from breaking out once more into open and sanguinary strife. British rule is the form of government that divides Indians the least. The majority of intelligent and sober-minded Indians who have a stake in the country welcome it and support it because they feel it to be the only safeguard against the clash of rival races and creeds, which would ultimately lead to the oppressive ascendency of some one race or creed; and the great ma.s.s of the population yield to it an inarticulate and instinctive acquiescence because it gives them a greater measure of security, justice, and tranquillity than their forbears ever enjoyed.
There are only two forces that aspire to subst.i.tute themselves for British rule, or at least to make the continuance of British rule subservient to their own ascendency. One is the ancient and reactionary force of Brahmanism, which, having its roots in the social and religious system we call Hinduism, operates upon a very large section--but still only a section--of the population who are Hindus. The other is a modern and, in its essence, progressive force generated by Western education, which operates to some extent over the whole area of India, but only upon an infinitesimal fraction of the population recruited among a few privileged castes. Its only real _nexus_ is a knowledge, often very superficial, of the English language and of English political inst.i.tutions. Though both these forces have developed of late years a spirit of revolt against British rule, neither of them has in itself sufficient substance to be dangerous. The one is too old, the other too young. But the most rebellious elements in both have effected a temporary and unnatural alliance on the basis of an illusory "Nationalism" which appeals to nothing in Indian history, but is calculated and meant to appeal with dangerous force to Western sentiment and ignorance.
It rests with us to break up that unnatural alliance. We may not reconcile aggressive Brahmanism to Western civilization, but we can combat the evil influences for which it stands and which many enlightened Brahmans have long since recognized; and we can combat them most effectively by rallying to our side the better and more progressive elements which, in spite of its many imperfections, Western education and the contact with Western civilization have already produced. To that end we must shrink from no sacrifices to improve our methods of education. The evils for which we have to find remedies have been of slow growth, and they can only be slowly cured. But they can be cured by patient and sustained effort, and by carrying courageously into practice the principle, which none of us will challenge in theory, that the formation of character on a sound moral basis, inseparable in India from a sound religious basis, is at least as important a part of the educational process as the development of the intellect.
That, however, is not all. If we are to save and to foster the better elements, we must stamp out the worse. Do not let us be frightened by mere words. To talk, as some do, of the Indian Press being "gagged" by the new Press Act is absurd. It is as free to-day as it has always been to criticize Government as fully and fearlessly, and, one may add, often as unjustly, as party newspapers in this country are wont to criticize the Government of the day. It is no longer free to preach revolution and murder with the cynical audacity shown in some of the quotations I have given various Nationalist organs. "Repression" in India, whether of the seditious press, or of secret societies, or of unlawful meetings, means nothing more cruel or oppressive than the application of surgery to diseased growths which threaten to infect the whole organism--and especially so immature and sensitive an organism as the semi-Westernized, semi-educated section of Indian society to-day represents. This surgical treatment will probably also have to be patient and sustained, for here too we have to deal with evils of no sudden growth, though some of their worst outward manifestations have come suddenly upon us. Even if the improvement be more rapid than we have any right to expect, do not let us throw away our surgical instruments, but rather preserve them against any possible relapse. We have to remember not only what we owe to ourselves, but what we owe equally to the many well-meaning but timid Indians who look to us for protection against the insidious forms of terrorism to which the disaffected minority can subject them[24]. The number of our active enemies may be few, but great is the number of our friends who are of opinion that we are more anxious to conciliate the one sinner who may or may not repent than to encourage the 99 just who persevere.
We want the Western-educated Indian. We have made him, and we cannot unmake him if we would. But we must see that he is a genuine product of the best that Western education can give, and not merely an Indian who can speak English and adapt his speech to English ears in order to lend plausibility to the revival in new forms of ancient religious or social tyrannies. We must remember also that even the best type of Western-educated Indian only speaks at present for a minute section of the population of India, and that, when he does not speak, as he often naturally does, merely in the interests of the small cla.s.s which he represents, he has not yet by any means proved his t.i.tle to speak for the scores of millions of his fellow-countrymen who are still living in the undisturbed atmosphere of the Indian Middle Ages. One of the dangers we have to guard against is that, because the Western-educated Indian is to the stay-at-home Englishman, and even to the Englishman whose superficial knowledge of India is confined to brief visits to the chief cities of India, the most, and indeed the only, articulate Indian, we should regard him as the only or the most authoritative mouthpiece of the needs and wishes of other cla.s.ses or of the great ma.s.s of his fellow-countrymen with whom he is often in many ways in less close touch than the Englishman who lives in their midst.
The weak point of the recent political reforms is that they were intended to benefit, not wholly, but mainly, that particular cla.s.s. In so far as they may help to satisfy the legitimate aspirations of the moderate Indian politician they deserve praise; and in that respect, as far as one can judge at this very early stage, they are not without promise. In effect they have also helped to give other important interests opportunities of organization and expression. Apart from the great Mahomedan community, whose political aspirations are largely different from, and opposed to, those of Hinduism, there are agricultural interests, always of supreme importance in such a country as India, and industrial and commercial interests of growing importance which cannot be adequately represented by the average Indian politician who is chiefly recruited from the towns and from, professions that have little or no knowledge of or sympathy with them. The politician, for instance, is too often a lawyer, and he has thriven upon a system of jurisprudence and legal procedure which we have imported into India with the best intentions, but with results that have sometimes been simply disastrous to a thriftless and litigious people. Hence the suspicion and dislike entertained by large numbers of quiet, respectable Indians for any political inst.i.tutions that tend to increase the influence of the Indian _vakeel_ and of the cla.s.s he represents. Our object, therefore, both in the education and in the political training of Indians, should be to divert the activities of the new Western-educated cla.s.ses into economic channels which would broaden their own horizon, and to give greater encouragement and recognition to the interests of the very large and influential cla.s.ses that hold entirely aloof from politics but look to us for guidance and help in the development of the material resources of the country. We have their support at present, but to retain it we must carefully avoid creating the impression that political agitation is the only lever that acts effectively upon Government, and that in the relations of India and Great Britain--and especially in their fiscal and financial relations--the exigencies of party politics at home and the material interests of the predominant partner must invariably prevail.
Whilst, subject to the maintenance of effective executive control, we have extended and must continue steadily to extend the area of civil employment for Indians in the service of the State, there would certainly seem to be room also for affording them increased opportunities of military employment. It is a strange anomaly that, at a time when we have no hesitation in introducing Indians into our Executive Councils, those who serve the King-Emperor in the Indian Army can only rise to quite subordinate rank. A good deal has no doubt been done to improve the quality of the native officer from the point of view of military education, but, under present conditions, the Indian Army does not offer a career that can attract Indians of good position, though it is just among the landed aristocracy and gentry of India that military traditions are combined with the strongest traditions of loyalty. By the creation of an Imperial Cadet Corps Lord Curzon took a step in the right direction which was warmly welcomed at the time, but has received very little encouragement since his departure from India.
Something more than that seems to be wanted to-day. Some of the best military opinion in India favours, I believe, an experimental scheme for the gradual promotion of native officers, carefully selected and trained, to field rank in a certain number of regiments which would ultimately be entirely officered by Indians--just in the same way as a certain number of regiments in the Egyptian Army have always been wholly officered by Egyptians. Indeed, we need not go outside India to find even now, in the Native States, Indian forces exclusively officered by Indians. The effect upon the whole Native Army of some such measure as I have indicated would be excellent; and though we could never hope to retain India merely by the sword against the combined hostility of its various peoples, the Native Army must always be a factor of first-rate importance, both for the prevention and the repression of any spasmodic outbreak of revolt. It is no secret that reiterated attempts have been made to shake its loyalty, and in some isolated cases not altogether without success. But the most competent authorities, whilst admitting the need for vigilance, deprecate any serious alarm, and it is all to the good that British officers no longer indulge in the blind optimism which prevailed among those of the old Sepoy regiments before the Mutiny.
One point which Englishmen are apt to forget, and which has been rather lost sight of In the recent political reforms, is that more than a fifth of the population of our Indian Empire--about one third of its total area--is under the direct administration not of the Government of India, but of the Ruling Chiefs. They represent great traditions and great interests, which duty and statesmanship equally forbid us to ignore. The creation of an Imperial Council, in which they would have sat with representatives of the Indian aristocracy of British India, was an important feature of the original scheme of reforms proposed by the Government of India. It was abandoned for reasons of which I am not concerned to dispute the validity. But the idea underlying it was unquestionably sound, and Lord Minto acted upon it when he drew the Ruling Chiefs into consultation as to the prevention of sedition. Some means will have to be found to embody it in a more regular and permanent shape. If we were to attempt to introduce what are called democratic methods into the government of British India without seeking the adhesion and support of the feudatory Princes, we should run a grave risk of estranging one of the most loyal and conservative forces in the Indian Empire. The administrative autonomy of the native States is sometimes put forward as an argument in favour of the self-government which Indian politicians demand. It Is an argument based on complete ignorance. With one or two exceptions, far more apparent than real, the Native States are governed by patriarchal methods, which may be thoroughly suited to the traditions and needs of their subjects, but are much further removed than the methods of government in British India from the professed aspirations of the Indian National Congress. Just as the Ruling Chiefs rightly complained of the effect upon their own people of the seditious literature imported into their States from British India before we were at last induced to check the output of the "extremist" Press, so they would be justified in resenting any grave political changes in British India which would react dangerously upon their own position and their relations with their own subjects. When we talk of governing India in accordance with Indian ideas, we cannot exclude the ideas of the very representative and influential cla.s.s of Indians to which none are better qualified to give expression than the Ruling Chiefs. One further suggestion. The policy of annexation has long since been abandoned, and the question to-day is whether we might not go further and give ruling powers to a few great chiefs of approved loyalty and high character, who possess in British India estates more populous and important than those of many whom we have always recognized as Ruling Chiefs. The objections to so novel a departure are, I know, serious, and may be overwhelming--foremost among them being the reluctance hitherto shown by the people themselves whenever, for purposes of administrative convenience, any slight readjustment of boundaries has been proposed that involved the transfer to a native State of even a few villages until then under British Administration.
The political reforms with which Lord Minto"s Viceroyalty will remain identified are only just on their trial. All that can safely be said at present is that they are full of promise, and it would be rash to predict whether and when it may be safe to proceed further in the direction to which, they point. It is difficult even to say yet awhile what share they have had, independently of the "repressive" measures that accompanied them, in stemming at least temporarily the tide of active sedition. Time is required to mature their fruits whether for good or for evil. One may hope that, though they address themselves only to the political elements of the present unrest, they will tend to facilitate the treatment of the economic and social factors of the Indian problem. It is these that now chiefly and most urgently claim the attention of the British rulers of India. To rescue education from its present unhealthy surroundings and to raise it on to a higher plane whilst making it more practical, to promote the industrial and commercial expansion of India so as to open up new fields for the intellectual activity of educated Indians, to strengthen the old ties and to create new ones that shall bind the ancient conservative as well as the modern progressive forces of Indian society to the British _Raj_ by an enlightened sense of self-interest are slower and more arduous tasks and demand more patient and sustained statesmanship than any adventures in const.i.tutional changes. But it is only by the successful achievement of such tasks that we can expect to retain the loyal acquiescence of the Princes and peoples of India in the maintenance of British rule.
The sentiment of reverence for the Crown is widespread and deep-rooted among all races and creeds in India[25]. It is perhaps the one tradition common to all. It went out spontaneously to Queen Victoria, whose length of years and widowed isolation appealed with a peculiar sense of lofty and pathetic dignity to the imagination of her Indian peoples. It has been materially reinforced by the pride of personal acquaintance, since India has been twice honoured with the presence of the immediate successor to the Throne. The late King"s visit to India has not yet faded from the memory of the older generation, and that of the present King-Emperor and his gracious Consort is, of course, still fresh in the recollection of all. How powerful is the hold which the majesty of the Crown exercises upon Princes and peoples in India was very strikingly shown by the calming effect, however temporary, which the presence of the Prince and Princess of Wales had in Bengal four years ago, at the very moment when political agitation in that province was developing into almost open sedition; and it was shown once more this year by the hush of subdued grief that pa.s.sed over the whole of India at the sudden news of King Edward"s death. Only such rabid papers as Tilak"s old organ, the _Kesari_, ventured an attempt to counteract the deep impression produced by that lamentable event, and it could only attempt to do so, very ineffectively, by a spiteful and ignorant depreciation of the position and personality of the Sovereign, and of the part played by him in a Western democracy.
In spite of the traditional prestige attaching to the Crown, we cannot, however, reasonably look for loyalty from India in the sense in which we look for it from our own people or from our kinsmen beyond the seas.
There can never be between Englishmen and Indians the same community of historical traditions, of racial affinity, of social inst.i.tutions, of customs and beliefs that exists between people of our own stock throughout the British Empire. The absence of these sentimental bonds, which cannot be artificially forged, makes it impossible that we should ever concede to India the rights of self-government which we have willingly conceded to the great British communities of our own race. And there is another and scarcely less cogent reason. The justification of our presence in India is that it gives peace and security to all the various races and creeds which make up one-fifth of the population of this globe. To introduce self-government into India would necessarily be to hand it over to the ascendency of the strongest. That we are debarred from doing by the very terms on which we hold India, and that is what Lord Morley must have had in his mind, when, in supporting the Indian Councils Act last year, he specifically excluded all possibility of such a.s.semblies ever leading to the establishment of Parliamentary government in India. The sooner that is made perfectly clear the better. But just because executive self-government is inconceivable in India so long as British rule is maintained, we must recognize the special responsibility that consequently devolves upon us not only to do many things for India which we do not attempt to do for our self-governing Dominions, but, above all, not to force upon India things which we should not dream of forcing upon them, and especially in matters in which British material interests may appear to be closely concerned. We must continue to govern India as the greatest of the dependencies of the British Crown, but we must do our utmost to satisfy Indians of all cla.s.ses and castes and beliefs that we govern them as none of their race could govern them, with an equal and absolutely impartial regard for all law-abiding communities, with an intelligent appreciation of their peculiar interests, and with genuine consideration for all their ideas, so long as those ideas are compatible with the maintenance and security of British rule.
The retirement of Lord Morley has been announced just as these last pages are going to press. The announcement has been received with genuine and widespread regret at home, where criticism of certain details and aspects of his administration has never detracted from a genuine recognition of the lofty sense of duty and broad and courageous statesmanship which he has displayed throughout a very critical period in the history of our Indian Empire. It will a.s.suredly be received with the same feeling in India by all those who have at heart the destinies of the British _Raj_ and the interests of the countless peoples committed to our charge. Lord Morley"s tenure of office will remain for all times memorable in Anglo-Indian annals. He has set for the Indian ship of State a new course upon which she will be kept with increasing confidence in the future if we keep steadily before us the wise words which, with his own singular felicity of speech, he addressed two years ago to the Indian Civil Service:--"We have a clouded moment before us now. We shall get through it--but only with self-command and without any quackery or cant, whether it be the quackery of blind violence disguised as love of order, or the cant of unsound and misapplied sentiment, divorced from knowledge and untouched by any cool consideration of facts."
NOTES
NOTE 1.
THE NATIVE PRESS.
Not a single Indian member of the Imperial Council made any serious attempt to controvert the following description given by Sir Herbert Risley of the demoralization of the native Press when he introduced the new Press Bill on February 4, 1910:--We see the most influential and widely-read portion of the Indian Press incessantly occupied in rendering the Government by law established odious in the sight of the Indian people. The Government is foreign, and therefore selfish and tyrannical. It drains the country of its wealth; it has impoverished the people, and brought about famine on a scale and with a frequency unknown before; its public works, roads, railways, and ca.n.a.ls have generated malaria; it has introduced plague, by poisoning wells, in order to reduce the population that has to be held in subjection it has deprived the Indian peasant of his land; the Indian artisan of his industry, and the Indian merchant of his trade; it has destroyed religion by its G.o.dless system of education; it seeks to destroy caste by polluting maliciously and of set purpose, the salt and sugar that men eat and the cloth that they wear; it allows Indians to be ill-treated in British Colonies; it levies heavy taxes and spends them on the army; it pays high salaries to Englishmen, and employs Indians only in the worst paid posts--in short, it has enslaved a whole people, who are now struggling to be free.
My enumeration may not be exhaustive but these are some of the statements that are now being implanted as axioms in the minds of rising generation of educated youths, the source from which we recruit the great body of civil officials who administer India. If nothing more were said, if the Press were content to--
"let the lie Have time on its own wings to fly" things would be bad enough. But very much more is said. Every day the Press proclaims, openly or by suggestion or allusion, that the only cure for the ills of India is independence from foreign rule, independence to be won by heroic deeds, self-sacrifice, martyrdom on the part of the young, in any case by some form of violence. Hindu mythology, ancient and modern history, and more especially the European literature of revolution, are ransacked to furnish examples that justify revolt and proclaim its inevitable success. The methods of guerilla warfare as practised in Circa.s.sia, Spain, and South Africa; Mazzini"s gospel of political a.s.sa.s.sination; Kossuth"s most violent doctrines; the doings of Russian Nihilists; the murder of the Marquis Ito; the dialogue between Arjuna and Krishna in the "Gita," a book that is to Hindus what the "Imitation of Christ" is to emotional Christians--all these are pressed into the service of inflaming impressionable minds. The last instance is perhaps the worst. I can imagine no more wicked desecration than that the sacrilegious hand of the Anarchist should be laid upon the Indian song of songs, and that a masterpiece of transcendental philosophy and religious ecstasy should be perverted to the base uses of preaching political murder.
The consequences of this ever-flowing stream of slander and incitement to outrage are now upon us. What was dimly foreseen a few years ago has actually come to pa.s.s. We are at the present moment confronted with a murderous conspiracy, whose aim it is to subvert the Government of the country and to make British rule impossible by establishing general terrorism. Their organization is effective and far-reaching; their numbers are believed to be considerable; the leaders work in secret and are blindly obeyed by their youthful followers. The method they favour at present is political a.s.sa.s.sination; the method of Mazzini in his worst moods. Already they have a long score of murders or attempted murders to their account. There were two attempts to blow up Sir Andrew Fraser"s train and one, of the type with which we are now unhappily familiar, to shoot him on a public occasion. Two attempts were made to murder Mr. Kingsford, one of which caused the death of two English ladies. Inspector Nanda Lal Banerji, Babu Ashutosh Biswas, the Public Prosecutor at Alipore, Sir William Curzon-Wyllie, Mr. Jackson, and only the other day Deputy Supdt. Shams-ul-Alum have been shot in the most deliberate and cold-blooded fashion. Of three informers two have been killed, and on the third vengeance has been taken by the murder of his brother in the sight of his mother and sisters. Mr. Allen, the magistrate of Dacca, was shot through the lungs and narrowly escaped with his life. Two picric acid bombs were thrown at His Excellency the Viceroy at Ahmedabad, and only failed to explode by reason of their faulty construction. Not long afterwards an attempt was made with a bomb on the Deputy Commissioner of Umballa.
These things are the natural and necessary consequence of the teachings of certain journals. They have prepared the soil in which anarchy flourishes; they have sown the seed and they are answerable for the crop. This is no mere general statement; the chain of causation is clear. Not only does the campaign of violence date from the change in the tone of the Press, but specific outbursts of incitement have been followed by specific outrages.
And now, Sir, I appeal to the Council in the name of all objects that patriotic Indians have at heart to give their cordial approval to this Bill. It is called for in the interests of the State, of our officers both Indian and European, and most of all of the rising generation of young men. In this matter, indeed, the interests of the State and the interests of the people are one and the same. If it is good for India that British rule should continue, it is equally essential that the relations between Government and the educated community should be cordial and intimate, and that cannot long be the case if the organs of that community lay themselves out to embitter those relations in every sort of way and to create a permanent atmosphere of latent and often open hostility. In the long run people will believe what they are told, if they are told it often enough, and if they hear nothing on the other side. There is plenty of work in India waiting to be done, but it will be done, if the energies of the educated cla.s.ses are wasted in incessant abuse and suspicion of Government. As regards the officers of Government the case is clear. At all costs they must be protected from intimidation and worse. And it is our Indian officials who stand in most need of protection, for they are most exposed to the danger. The detailed work of investigation and detection necessarily falls upon them, and they are specially vulnerable through their families. They have done most admirable work during the troubles of the last few years, and have displayed under most trying conditions courage and loyalty that are beyond all praise. We are bound in honour to protect them from threats of murder and outrage which sooner or later bring about their own fulfilment.
To my mind, Sir, the worst feature of the present situation is the terrible influence that the Press exercises upon the student cla.s.s. I was talking about this about a month ago with a distinguished Indian who is in close touch with schools and colleges in Bengal. He took a most gloomy view of the present state of things and the prospects of the immediate future. According to him the younger generation had got entirely out of hand, and many of them had become criminal fanatics uncontrollable by their parents or their masters.
I believe. Sir, that this Bill will prove to be a wholesome and beneficial measure of national education, that it will in course of time prevent a number of young men from drifting into evil courses and ruining their prospects in life, and that in pa.s.sing it this Council will earn the lasting grat.i.tude of many thousands of Indian parents.
NOTE 2
THE SUPERIORITY OF HINDU CIVILIZATION. In an "Open Letter to his Countrymen," published at the Sri Narayan Press in Calcutta, Mr.
Arabindo Ghose has in so many words proclaimed the superiority of Hindu to Western civilization. "We reject," he writes, "the claim of aliens to force upon us a civilization inferior to our own or to keep us out of our inheritance on the untenable ground of a superior fitness."
NOTE 3
SEDITIOUS PLAYS.