CHAPTER XX.
THE QUESTION OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION.
There remains one vital aspect of the educational problem which was left untouched by the Educational Resolution of 1904, and has been left untouched ever since we entered three-quarters of a century ago on an educational experiment unparalleled in the world"s history--a more arduous experiment even than that of governing the 300 millions of India with a handful of Englishmen. Many nations have conquered remote dependencies inhabited by alien races, imposed their laws upon them, and held them in peaceful subjection, though even this has never been done on the same scale of magnitude as by the British rulers of India. We alone have attempted to educate them in our own literature and science and to make them by education the intellectual partners of the civilization that subdued them. Of the two tasks, that of government and that of education, the latter is not by any means the easier. For good government involves as little interference as possible with the beliefs and customs and traditions of the people, whereas good education means the subst.i.tution for them of the intellectual and moral conceptions of what we regard as our higher civilization. Good government represents to that extent a process of conservation; good education must be partially a destructive, almost a revolutionary, process. Yet upon the more difficult and delicate problems of education we have hitherto, it is to be feared, bestowed less thought and less vigilance than upon administrative problems in India. The purpose we have had in view is presumably that which Dr. Ashutosh Mookerjee admirably defined in his last address to the University of Calcutta as "the raising up of loyal and honourable citizens for the welfare of the State." But is it a purpose which those responsible for our Indian system of education have kept steadily before them? Is it a purpose that could possibly be achieved by the _laisser faire_ policy of the State in regard to the moral and religious side of education? If so, how is it that we have had of late such alarming evidence of our frequent failure to achieve it?
The divorce of education from religion is still on its trial in Western countries, which rely upon a highly-developed code of ethics and an inherited sense of social and civic duty to supply the place of religious sanctions. In India, as almost everywhere in the East, religion in some form or another, from the fetish worship of the primitive hill tribes to the Pantheistic philosophy of the most cultured Brahman or the stern Monotheism of the orthodox Moslem, is the dominant force in the life both of every individual and of every separate community to which the individual belongs. Religion is, in fact, the basic element of Indian life, and morality apart from religion is an almost impossible conception for all but an infinitesimal fraction of Western-educated Indians. Hence, even if the attempt had been or were in the future made to instil ethical notions into the minds of the Indian youth independently of all religious teaching, it could only result in failure. For the Hindu, perhaps more than for any other, religion governs life from the hour of his birth to that of his death. His birth and his death are in fact only links in a long chain of existences inexorably governed by religion. His religion may seem to us to consist chiefly of ritual and ceremonial observances which sterilize any higher spiritual life. But even if such an impression is not due mainly to our own want of understanding, the very fact that every common act of his daily life is a religious observance, just as the caste into which he is born has been determined by the degree in which he has fulfilled similar religious observances in a former cycle of lives, shows how completely his religion permeates his existence. The whole world in which he lives and moves and has his being, in so far as it is not a mere illusion of the senses, is for him an emanation of the omnipresent deity that he worships in a thousand different shapes, from the grotesque to the sublime.
Yet in a country where religion is the sovereign influence we have, from the beginning, absolutely ignored it in education. It is no doubt quite impossible for the State in a country like India with so many creeds and sects, whose tenets are often repugnant to all our own conceptions not only of religion but of morality, to take any direct part in providing the religious instruction which would be acceptable to Indian parents.
But was it necessary altogether to exclude such instruction from our schools and colleges? Has not its exclusion tended to create in the minds of many Indians the belief that our professions of religious neutrality are a pretence, and that, however rigorously the State may abstain from all attempts to use education as a medium for Christian propaganda, it nevertheless uses it to undermine the faith of the rising generations in their own ancestral creeds? Even if they acquit us of any deliberate purpose, are they not at any rate ent.i.tled to say that such have been too often the results? Did not the incipient revolt against all the traditions of Hinduism that followed the introduction of Western education help to engender the wholesale reaction against Western influences which, underlies the present unrest?
Few problems ill.u.s.trate more strikingly the tremendous difficulties that beset a Government such as ours in India. On the one hand, Indian religious conceptions are in many ways so diametrically opposed to all that British rule stands for that the State cannot actively lend itself to maintain or promote them. On the other hand, they provide the ties which hold the whole fabric of Indian society together, and which cannot be hastily loosened without serious injury and even danger to the State.
This has been made patent to the most careless observer by the events of the last few years that have revealed, as with a lurid flash of lightning, the extent to which the demoralization of our schools and colleges had proceeded. If any Englishman has doubts as to the connexion in this matter of cause and effect, let him ask respectable Indian parents who hold aloof from politics. They have long complained that the spirit of reverence and the respect for parental authority are being killed by an educational system which may train the intellect and impart useful worldly knowledge, but withdraws their youths from the actual supervision and control of the parents or of the _guru_, who for spiritual guidance stood _in loco parentis_ under the old Hindu system of education, and estranges them from all the ideas of their own Hindu world[20]. That parents often genuinely resent the banishment of all religious influence from our schools and colleges appears from the fact that many of them prefer to Government inst.i.tutions those conducted by missionaries in which, though no attempt is made to proselytize, a religious, albeit a Christian, atmosphere is to some extent maintained.
It is on similar grounds also that the promoters of the new movement in favour of "National Schools" advocate the maintenance of schools which purchase complete immunity from Government control by renouncing all the advantages of grants-in-aid and of University affiliation. They have been started mainly under the patronage of "advanced" politicians, and have too often turned out to be mere hot-beds of sedition, but their _raison d"etre_ is alleged to be the right of Hindu parents to bring up Hindu children in a Hindu atmosphere.
From the opposite pole in politics, most of the ruling chiefs in their replies to Lord Minto"s request for their opinions on the growth of disaffection call attention to this aspect of education, and the Hindu princes especially lay great stress on the neglect of religious and moral instruction. I will quote only the Maharajah of Jaipur, a Hindu ruler universally revered, for his high character and great experience:--
My next point has reference to the neglect there seems to be of religious education, a point to which I drew your Excellency"s attention at the State banquet at Jaipur on the 29th October, 1909. I must say I have great faith in a system of education, in which secular and religious instruction are harmoniously combined, as the formation of character entirely depends upon a basework of religion, and the n.o.ble ideals which our sacred books put before the younger generation will, I fervently hope, make them loyal and dutiful citizens of the Empire. Such ideals must inevitably have their effect on impressionable young men, and it is perhaps due to such ideals that sedition and anarchy have obtained so small a footing in the Native States as a whole. In the Chiefs" College Conference, held at the Mayo College in 1904, I impressed upon my colleagues the necessity of religious education for the sons of the chiefs and n.o.bles of Rajputana, and it should be one of the princ.i.p.al objects in all schools for the Pandits and the Moulvies to instil in the minds of their pupils correct notions as to the duty they owe to the community they belong to and to their Sovereign.
In this respect the ruling chiefs unquestionably reflect the views which prevail amongst the better-cla.s.s Indians in British India as well as in the Native States. The Government of India cannot afford to disregard them. The Resolution of 1904, it is true, laid it down again definitely that "in Government inst.i.tutions, the instruction is and must continue to be exclusively secular." But much has happened since 1904 to reveal the evils which our educational system has engendered and to lend weight to the representations made by responsible exponents of sober Indian opinion in favour of one of the remedies which it is clearly within our power to apply. Nor need we really depart from our time-honoured principle of neutrality in religious matters. All we have to do is to set apart, in the curriculum of our schools and colleges, certain hours during which they will be open, on specified conditions, for religious instruction in the creed in which the parents desire their children to be brought up. There is no call for compulsion. This is just one of the questions in which the greatest lat.i.tude should be left to local Governments, who are more closely in touch than the Central Government with the sentiment and wishes of the different communities. I am a.s.sured that there would be little difficulty in forming local committees to settle whether there was a sufficiently strong feeling amongst parents in favour of a course of religious instruction and to determine the lines upon which it should be given. Some supervision would have to be exercised by the State, but in the Educational Service there are, it is to be hoped, enough capable and enlightened representatives of the different creeds to exercise the necessary amount of supervision in a spirit both of sympathy for the spiritual needs of their people and of loyalty to the Government they serve. It may be objected that there are so many jarring sects, so many divisions of caste, that it would be impossible ever to secure an agreement as to the form to be imparted to religious instruction. Let us recognize but not overrate the difficulty. In each of the princ.i.p.al religions of India a substantial basis can be found to serve as a common denominator between different groups, as, for instance, in the Koran for all Mahomedans and in the Shastras for the great majority of high-caste Hindus. At any rate, if the effort is made and fails through no fault of ours, but through the inability of Indian parents to reconcile their religious differences, the responsibility to them will no longer lie with us.
Another objection will probably be raised by earnest Christians who would hold themselves bound in conscience to protest against any facilities being given by a Christian State for instruction in religious beliefs which they reprobate. Some of these austere religionists may even go so far as to contend that, rather than tolerate the teaching of "false doctrines," it is better to deprive Indian children of all religious teaching. To censure of this sort, however, the State already lays itself open in India. There are educational inst.i.tutions--and some of the best, like the Mahomedan College at Aligurh--maintained by denominational communities on purpose to secure religious education. Yet the State withdraws from them neither recognition nor a.s.sistance because pupils are taught to be good Mahomedans or good Hindus. Why should it be wrong to make religious instruction permissive in other Indian schools which are not wholly or mainly supported by private endeavour? Is not the "harmonious combination of secular and religious instruction" for which the Maharajah of Jaipur pleads better calculated than our present policy of _laisser faire_ to refine and purify Indian religious conceptions, and to bring about that approximation of Eastern to Western ideals, towards which the best Indian minds were tending before the present revolt against Western ascendency?
Here is surely a question bound up with all the main-springs of Indian life in which we may be rightly asked "to govern according to Indian ideas." Can we expect that the youth of India will grow up to be law-abiding citizens if we deprive them of what their parents hold to be "the keystone to the formation of character"? Can we close our eyes to what so many responsible Indians regard as one of the chief causes of the demoralization which has crept into our schools and colleges? The State can, doubtless, exact in many ways more loyal co-operation from Indian teachers in safeguarding their pupils from the virus of disaffection. It can, for instance, intimate that it will cease to recruit public servants from schools in which sedition is shown to be rife. It can hold them collectively responsible, as some Indians themselves recommend for crimes perpetrated by youths whom they have helped to pervert. But these are rigorous measures that we can hardly take with a good conscience so long as our educational system can be charged with neglecting or undermining, however unintentionally, the fabric upon which Indian conceptions of morality are based. So long as we take no steps to refute a charge which, in view of recent evidence, can no longer be dismissed as wholly unfounded, can we expect education to fulfil the purpose rightly a.s.signed to it by Dr. Mookerjee--"the raising up of loyal and honourable citizens for the welfare of the State?"
CHAPTER XXI.
PRIMARY EDUCATION.
It is too late in the day now to discuss whether it was wise to begin our educational policy as we did from the top and to devote so much of our energies and resources to secondary at the expense of primary education. The result has certainly been to widen the gulf which divides the different cla.s.ses of Indian society and to give to those who have acquired some veneer, however superficial, of Western education the only articulate voice, often quite out of proportion to their importance, as the interpreters of Indian interests and desires. One million is a liberal estimate of the number of Indians who have acquired and retained some knowledge of English; whilst at the last census, out of a total population of 294 millions, less than sixteen millions could read and write in any language--not fifteen millions out of the whole male population and not one million out of the whole female population--and this modest amount of literacy is mainly confined to a few privileged castes.
With the growth of a school of Indian politicians bent upon undermining British rule, the almost inconceivable ignorance in which the ma.s.ses are still plunged has become a real danger to the State, for it has proved an all too receptive soil for the calumnies and lies of the political agitator, who, too well educated himself to believe what he retails to others, knows exactly the form of calumny and lie most likely to appeal to the credulity of his uninformed fellow-countrymen. I refer especially to such very widespread and widely believed stories as that Government disseminates plague by poisoning the wells and that it introduces into the plague inoculation serum drugs which destroy virility in order to keep down the birth-rate. No one has put this point more strongly than Lord Curzon:--
What is the greatest danger in India? What is the source of suspicion, superst.i.tion, outbreaks, crime---yes, and also of much of the agrarian discontent and suffering amongst the ma.s.ses? It is ignorance. And what is the only antidote to ignorance? Knowledge.
Curiously enough, it was one of Lord Curzon"s bitterest opponents who corroborated him on this point by relating in the course of a recent debate how, when the Chinsurah Bridge was built some years ago over the Hughli, "the people believed that hundreds and thousands of men were being sacrificed and their heads cut off and carried to the river to be put under the piers to give the bridge stability, so that the G.o.ddess might appreciate the gift and let the piers remain." And he added:--"I know that ignorant people were afraid to go out at nights, lest they might be seized and their heads cut off and thrown under the piers of the Hughli Bridge."
It was, however, on more general consideration, as is his wont, that Mr.
Gokhale moved his resolution in the first Session of the Imperial Council at Calcutta last winter for making elementary education free and compulsory, and for the early appointment of a committee to frame definite proposals.
Three movements [he claimed] have combined to give to ma.s.s education the place which it occupies at present amongst the duties of the State--the humanitarian movement which reformed prisons and liberated the slave, the democratic movement which admitted large ma.s.ses of men to a partic.i.p.ation in Government, and the industrial movement which brought home to nations the recognition that the general spread of education in a country, even when it did not proceed beyond the elementary stage, meant the increased efficiency of the worker.
The last of these three considerations is, perhaps, that which just now carries the most weight with moderate men in India, where the general demand for industrial and commercial development is growing loud and insistent, and Mr. Gokhale"s resolution met with very general support from his Mahomedan, as well as from his Hindu, colleagues. But, in the minds of disaffected politicians, another consideration is, it must be feared, also present, to which utterance is not openly given. It is the hope that the extension of primary schools may serve, as has that of secondary schools to promote the dissemination of seditious doctrines, especially amongst the "depressed castes" to which the political agitator has so far but rarely secured access.
Whatever danger may lie in that direction, it cannot be allowed to affect the policy of Government, who gave to Mr. Gokhale"s resolution a sufficiently sympathetic reception to induce him to withdraw it for the present. To the principle of extending primary education the Government of India have indeed long been committed, and increased efforts were recommended, both in the Educational Despatch of 1854 and by the Education Commission of 1883. Stress was equally laid upon it by the Resolution of 1904 under Lord Curzon, who already, in 1902, had caused additional grants, amounting to more than a quarter of a million sterling, to be given to provincial Governments for the purpose. Under Lord Minto"s administration Government seemed at one moment to have gone very much further and to have accepted at any rate the principle of free education, for in 1907 the Finance Member conveyed in Council an a.s.surance from the Secretary of State that "notwithstanding the absence of Budget provision, if a suitable scheme should be prepared and sanctioned by him, he will be ready to allow it to be carried into effect in the course of the year, provided that the financial position permits." It was rather unfortunate that hopes should be so prematurely raised, and it would surely have been wiser to consult the local Governments before than after such a p.r.o.nouncement. For when they were consulted their replies, especially as to the abolition of fees, were mostly unfavourable, and this year also Government, whilst expressing its good will, felt bound to defer any decision until the question had been more fully studied and the financial situation had improved.
The present situation is certainly unsatisfactory. In 1882 there were 85,000 primary schools in India recognized by the Educational Department which gave elementary education to about 2,000,000 pupils. In 1907, according to the last quinquennial report, the total attendance had increased to 3,631,000; but though the increase appears very considerable, the Director-General of Education had to admit that, a.s.suming progress to be maintained at the present rate, "several generations would still elapse before all the boys of school age were in school." And Mr. Gokhale"s resolution applies, at least ultimately, to girls as well as to boys! Now in British India--i.e., without counting the Native States--the total number of boys of school-going age on the basis of the four years" course proposed for India would be nearly 12 millions, and there must be about an equal number of girls. The total cost to the State according to the estimates of local Governments would be no less than 15,000,000 per annum, whilst non-recurring expenditure would amount to 18,000,000. The fees at present paid by parents for primary education, which is already free in some parts of India and in certain circ.u.mstances, make up only about 210,000 per annum. The whole of the enormous difference would, therefore, be thrown upon the Indian taxpayers, who now have to find for primary education less than 650,000 per annum. Even Mr. Gokhale does not, of course, propose that this educational and financial revolution should be effected by a stroke of the pen, and one of his Hindu colleagues held that, it would be contrary to all Hindu traditions for parents to avail themselves of free education if they could afford to pay a reasonable sum for it.
But even if the state of Indian finances were likely within any appreciable time to warrant an approximate approach to such vast expenditure, or if Government could entertain the suggestions made by Mr. Gokhale for meeting it, partly by raising the import duties from 5 to 7-1/2 per cent, and imposing other taxes, and partly by wholesale retrenchment in other departments, the financial difficulty is not the only one to be overcome. Model schoolhouses could no doubt be built all over India, if the money were forthcoming, instead of the wretched accommodation which exists now, and is so inadequate that in the Bombay Presidency alone there are said to be 100,000 boys for whom parents want, but cannot obtain, primary education. But what of the teachers?
These cannot be improvised, however many millions Government may be prepared to spend. There is an even greater deficiency of good teachers than of good schoolhouses, and, in some respects, the value of primary education still more than that of secondary education depends upon good teachers--teachers who are capable of explaining what they teach and not merely of reeling off by rote, and imperfectly, to their pupils lessons which they themselves imperfectly understand. The total number of teachers engaged in primary education exceeds 100,000, but their salaries barely average Rs.8 (10s. 8d.) a month. So miserable a pittance abundantly explains their inefficiency. But there it is, and a new army of teachers--nearly half a million altogether--would have to be trained before primary education, whether free and compulsory, as Mr. Gokhale would have it, or optional and for payment, as others propose, could be usefully placed within the reach of the millions of Indian children of a school-going age.
In this as in all other matters, the Government of India cannot afford to stand still, and will have to take Indian opinion more and more into account. But whilst there is a very general consensus that more should be done by the State for primary education, there is no unanimity as to its being made free and compulsory. Various Indian members of Council have expressed themselves against it on different grounds. Some contend that many parents cannot afford, as bread-winners, to be deprived of the help of their children. According to others, there is already much complaint amongst parents that school-going boys do not make good agriculturists and affect to consider work in the fields as beneath their dignity. Others, again, ask, and with some reason, who is going to care for boys of that age who may have to leave their homes and be removed from parental control in order to attend school. There is, doubtless, something in all these objections. a.s.suming that Government can do more than it has. .h.i.therto done to further primary education, the wisest course would be to improve the quality rather than the quant.i.ty, and, most of all, the quality of the teachers. Here, again, uniformity should be avoided rather than ensued. No primary curriculum can be evolved which will meet the needs alike of the rural population and of the townsfolk, or of the different parts of India with their varying conditions of climate and temperament. Even more than with regard to secondary schools, the needs of parents must be consulted, and the greatest lat.i.tude given to provincial Governments to vary the system in a practical spirit and in accordance with local requirements. Nor can the opinion, strongly held by many parents, be overlooked that religious instruction cannot be safely excluded from the training of such young children. Some of the objects to be kept specially in view have been well stated by Mr. Orange, the Director-General of Public Education:--
We desire to see, if not in every village, within reach of every village, a school, not an exotic, but a village school, in which the village itself can take pride, and of which the first purpose will be to train up good men and women and good citizens; and the second; to impart useful knowledge, not forgetting while doing so to train the eye and the hand so that the children when they leave school, whether for the field or the workshop, will have begun to learn the value of accurate observation and to feel the joy of intelligent and exact manual work.
This is undoubtedly the goal towards which primary education should be directed, but it can only be reached by steady and continuous effort spread over a long term of years. Otherwise we shall discover, again too late, that, as in the case of secondary education, most haste is worst speed.
I shall not attempt to deal with the question of female education, either primary or secondary, for it is so intimately bound up with the peculiarities of Indian, and especially Hindu, society, that it would be difficult for the State to take any vigorous initiative without running a great risk of alarming and alienating native opinion[21]. Owing to Indian social customs and to the practice of early marriage or at least of early seclusion, for girls, their education presents immense practical difficulties which do not exist in the case of boys. Hence the slow progress it has made. At the last census only eight per thousand women could read and write; and in the whole of India only about half a million girls, or four out of every 100 of a school-going age,--even on the basis of a four years" course, are receiving any kind of education.
Of such as do go to school nine out of ten only go to primary schools.
Mr. Gokhale himself has abandoned the idea of making primary education compulsory for girls as well as for boys. Female education is just one of the questions upon which Indian opinion must be left to ripen, Government giving, in proportion as it ripens, such a.s.sistance as can be legitimately expected. It has long engaged the attention of enlightened Indians, and in some communities, especially amongst the Aryas of the Punjab, some headway is being made. The Pa.r.s.ees, of course, as in all educational and philanthropic developments, have always been in the van. With the growth of Western education the Indian woman of the higher cla.s.ses cannot indefinitely lag behind, and, if only to make their daughters more eligible for marriage, the most conservative Indian parents will be compelled to educate them, as some have already done, so that they shall not be separated from their male partners by an unfathomable gulf of intellectual inferiority. In Calcutta, in Bombay, in Madras, and indeed in all the princ.i.p.al cities of India, one may already meet native ladies, both Hindu and Mahomedan, of education and refinement, who, however few their numbers, are shining examples of what Indian womanhood can rise to when once it is emanc.i.p.ated from the trammels of antiquated custom.
CHAPTER XXII.
SWADESHI AND ECONOMIC PROGRESS.
Was it not Talleyrand who said that speech had been given to man in order to enable him to disguise his thoughts? Indian politicians are no Talleyrands, but they sometimes seem to have framed their vocabulary on purpose to disguise political conceptions which most of them for various reasons shrink from defining at present with decision. We have already seen how elastic is the word _Swaraj_, self-government, or rather self-rule. In the mouth of the "moderates" of the Indian National Congress it means, we are a.s.sured, only a pious aspiration towards the same position which our self-governing Colonies enjoy within the Empire.
For the "advanced" politician _Swaraj_ means a transition stage which he hopes and believes must infallibly lead to a complete severance of the ties that unite India to the Empire. For the "extremists" it means the immediate and violent emanc.i.p.ation of India from British rule, and absolute independence. So it is with the term _Swadeshi_, which means anything from the perfectly legitimate and commendable encouragement of Indian trade and industry to the complete exclusion of foreign, and especially of British, goods by a "national" and often forcible "boycott" as part of a political campaign against British rule.
Political _Swadeshi_ bases itself upon a Nationalist legend that a "golden age" prevailed in India before we appeared on the scene, and that British rule has deliberately drained India of her wealth. Even if we have to, admit that Indian home industries have suffered heavily from the old commercial policy of the East India Company and from the formidable compet.i.tion of the organized and scientific processes of British industry, this legend hardly deserves to be treated seriously.
The _reductio ad absurdum_ of the argument has certainly been reached when Mr. Keir Hardie alleges that Indian loans raised in England const.i.tute "a regular soaking drain upon India because the interest is paid to bondholders in this country [England], and is not therefore benefiting the people from whom it is taken." I can only commend this sapient contention to our self-governing Colonies, who have all had recourse in turn to British capital for the development of their resources, and paid interest on their loans to British bondholders without being apparently conscious of any "soaking drain." The supposed "drain" is estimated in various ways, but a common method adopted is to lay stress upon the excess of exports over imports[22]. Lord Curzon has rightly pointed out that economically this test is quite fallacious; and that in the richest country in the world, America, the value of the exports exceeds the imports by over 100,000,000 per annum. Home charges represent three-fourths of the "drain," and these may be calculated at about 18,000,000 annually. Of this sum, 6,750,000 is paid in interest on railway capital; but the railways are a source of profit, and the payment comes from the railway pa.s.senger. Moreover, in course of time, the Indian railways will become, and are becoming, a property of enormous value to the State. The interest on India"s public debt is 3,000,000, but it has to be remembered how much India has benefited by expenditure which has proved reproductive. Sir Bampfylde Fuller has stated that the lowest estimate of the increase in produce obtained through irrigation works alone is estimated at 30,000,000 annually. In the last 50 years the total volume of Indian trade, imports and exports, has increased from 40,000,000 to 200,000,000. The remaining items are roughly, home military charges, 2,000,000; India Office, &c., 250,000; leave allowances, 750,000; pensions, 4,000,000. A considerable part of these pensions represent merely deferred pay. Moreover, unlike some other countries, e.g., the United States, where 32,000,000 are spent on pensions, mostly unearned, India has had good value, br.i.m.m.i.n.g over, for her pensions. The private remittances to England, which must be added to these sums, are not treated in any other country as an economic loss. No American economist would so regard the enormous annual sums remitted by immigrants to Ireland, Italy, and other European countries, or the vast annual expenditure of American tourists in Europe. Indian immigrants remit 400,000 annually to India from the Straits Settlements and Malay States alone, and considerable sums must be sent from East and South Africa and Ceylon, as well as smaller sums from Mauritius and the West Indies. Yet these colonies do not apparently complain about a "drain" to India.
What India is ent.i.tled to ask is whether Indian loans have been expended for the benefit of the Indian people, and the answer is conclusive.
India possesses to-day a.s.sets in the shape of railways, irrigation ca.n.a.ls, and other public works which, as marketable properties, represent more than her total indebtedness, without even taking into account the enormous value of the "unearned increment" they have produced for the benefit of the people of India. If, therefore, we look at the Government of India for a moment as merely a board of directors conducting a great development business on behalf of the Indian people, they can certainly show an excellent balance-sheet. Let us admit that some of the "home charges" may be open to discussion, and I shall have a word or two or say about them later on. But taken altogether they may fairly be regarded as the not unreasonable cost of administering a concern which, if we wished to liquidate it and to retire from business to-morrow, would leave a handsome surplus to India after paying off the whole debt contracted in her name. The case was stated very fairly by the late Mr. Ranade, whose teachings all but the most "advanced"
politicians still profess to reverence, when he delivered the inaugural address at the first Industrial Conference held just 20 years ago at Poona:--
There are some people who think that as long as we have a heavy tribute to pay to England which takes away nearly 20 crores of our surplus exports, we are doomed, and can do nothing to help ourselves. This is, however, hardly a fair or manly position to take up. A portion of the burden represents interest on moneys advanced to, or invested in, our country, and so far from complaining, we have reason to be thankful that we have a creditor who supplies our needs at such a low rate of interest. Another portion represents the value of stores supplied to us, the like of which we cannot produce here. The remainder is alleged to be more or less necessary for the purpose of administration, defence, and payment of pensions, and, though there is good cause for complaint that it is not all necessary, we should not forget the fact that we are enabled by reason of this British connexion to levy an equivalent tribute from China by our opium monopoly.
If India must now forgo this tribute from China, it is not at any rate the fault of the Government of India that the whole cost of the awakening of the national conscience in England to the iniquity of the opium traffic is being thrown upon India.
The question is not whether we have done well, but whether we might not have done better, and whether the economic development of India, industrial, commercial, and agricultural, has kept pace with that of the rest of the world. If the answer in this case is more doubtful, we have to bear in mind the idiosyncrasies of the Indian people and especially of the educated cla.s.ses. Indians have been as a rule disinclined to invest their money in commerce or industry or in scientific forms of agriculture. It is estimated that the h.o.a.rded wealth of India amounts, at a conservative calculation, to 300,000,000, and this probably represents gold alone. The annual absorption of gold by India is very great. Lord Rothschild remarked to the Currency Commission that none of the smooth gold bars sent to India ever came back. There is, in addition, an enormous sum h.o.a.rded in silver rupees and silver ornaments.
It is no uncommon sight, in the cities of Upper India, to see a child wearing only one ragged, dirty garment, but loaded with ma.s.sive silver ornaments. Indians who have money and do not merely h.o.a.rd it prefer to lend it out, often at usurious rates of interest, to their needy or thriftless fellow-countrymen. Until quite recently the educated cla.s.ses have held almost entirely aloof from any but the liberal professions.
Science in any form has been rarely taken up by University students, and for every B.Sc. the honours lists have shown probably a hundred B.A."s.
The Indian National Congress itself, as it represented mainly those cla.s.ses, naturally displayed the same tendencies, and for a long time it devoted its energies to so-called political problems rather than to practical economic questions. Hence the almost complete failure of the Western-educated Indian to achieve any marked success in commercial and industrial undertakings, and nowhere has that failure been more complete than in Bengal, where it would be difficult to quote more than one really brilliant exception. Hence also no doubt some of the political bitterness which those cla.s.ses display. Within the last few years, however, the politician has realized that, whilst commercial and industrial development was steadily expanding and the demand for it was increasing on all sides, he was left standing on a barren sh.o.r.e. He has done his best, or rather his worst, to convert _Swadeshi_ into a political weapon. His efforts have only been temporarily and partially successful. But we may rest a.s.sured that long after this spurious political _Swadeshi_ has disappeared, the legitimate form of _Swadeshi_ will endure--the _Swadeshi_ that does not boycott imported goods merely because they come from England, but is bent on stimulating the production in India of articles of the same or of better quality which can be sold cheaper, and can, therefore, beat the imported goods in the Indian markets.
To this form of _Swadeshi_ it is undoubtedly the duty and the interest of the Government of India to respond. We are bound as trustees for the people of India to promote Indian trade and industry by all the means in our power, and we are equally bound to help to open up new fields of activity for the young Indians whom our educational system has diverted from the old paths, and who no longer find for their rapidly increasing numbers any sufficient outlet in the public services and liberal professions which originally absorbed them. No reforms in our educational system can be permanently effective unless we check the growth of the intellectual proletariat, which plays so large a part in Indian unrest, by diverting the energies of young India into new and healthier channels. At the same time there can be no better material antidote to the spread of disaffection than the prosperity which would attend the expansion of trade and industry and give to increasing numbers amongst the Western-educated cla.s.ses a direct interest in the maintenance of law and order. There are amongst those cla.s.ses too many who, having little or nothing to lose, are naturally p.r.o.ne to fish in the troubled waters of sedition.
In regard to agriculture, which is, and is bound to remain, the greatest of all Indian industries, for it supports 70, and perhaps 80, per cent, of the whole population, the Government of India have no reason to be ashamed of their record. Famines can never be banished from a country where vast tracts are entirely dependent upon an extremely uncertain rainfall, and the population is equally dependent upon the fruits of the soil. But besides the scientific organization of famine relief, the public works policy of Government has been steadily and chiefly directed to the reduction of famine areas. Not only has the construction of a great system of railways facilitated the introduction of foodstuffs into remote famine-stricken districts, but irrigation works, devised on a scale and with a skill which have made India the premier school of irrigation for the rest of the world, have added enormously both to the area of cultivation and to that where cultivation is secured against failure of the rainfall. The arid valley of the Indus has been converted into a perennial granary, and in the Punjab alone irrigation ca.n.a.ls have already added 8,000,000 acres of unusual fertility to the land under tillage, and have given to 5,000,000 acres more the protection against drought in years of deficient rainfall which they formerly lacked.
Plantations of tea, coffee, cinchona, &c., and the cultivation of jute have added within the last 25 years some 30,000,000 a year to the value of Indian exports. Jute alone covers the whole of the so-called "drain."