K.C.S.I., K.C.I.E.; Chief Commissioner, North-West Frontier Province,
India; Deputy Commissioner of various Frontier districts; Secretary to
Frontier Administration; Foreign Secretary, 1914-19; negotiated Peace
Treaty with Afghanistan, 1919.
Sir Hamilton Grant said:--I have been asked to address you on the
subject of India, that vast, heterogeneous continent, with its varied
races, its Babel of languages, its contending creeds. There are many
directions in which one might approach so immense a topic, presenting,
as it does, all manner of problems, historical, ethnological,
linguistic, scientific, political, economic, and strategic. I do not
propose, however, to attempt to give you any general survey of those
questions, or to offer you in tabloid form a resumé of the matters that
concern the government of India. I propose to confine my remarks to two
main questions which appear to be of paramount importance at the present
time, and which, I believe, will be of interest to those here present
to-day, namely, the problems of the North-West Frontier, and the
question of internal political unrest.
Let me deal first with the North-West Frontier. As very few schoolboys
know, we have here a dual boundary--an inner and an outer line. The
inner line is the boundary of the settled districts of the North-West
Frontier Province, the boundary, in fact, of British India proper, and
is known as the Administrative border. The outer line is the boundary
between the Indian Empire and Afghanistan, and is commonly known as the
Durand line, because it was settled by Sir Mortimer Durand and his
mission in 1895 with the old Amir Abdur Rahman. These two lines give us
three tracts to be dealt with--first, the tract inside the inner line,
the settled districts of the North-West Frontier Province, inhabited for
the most part by sturdy and somewhat turbulent Pathans; second, the
tract between the two lines, that welter of mountains where dwell the
hardy brigand hillmen: the tribes of the Black Mountain, of Swat and
Bajur, the Mohmands, the Afridis, the Orakzais, the Wazirs, the Mahsuds,
and a host of others, whose names from time to time become familiar
according as the outrageousness of their misconduct necessitates
military operations; third, the country beyond the outer line, "the
God-granted kingdom of Afghanistan and its dependencies."
Now each of these tracts presents its own peculiar problems, though all
are intimately inter-connected and react one on the other. In the
settled districts we are confronted with the task of maintaining law and
order among a backward but very virile people, prone to violence and
impregnated with strange but binding ideas of honour, for the most part
at variance with the dictates of the Indian Penal Code. For this reason
there exists a special law called the Frontier Crimes Regulation, a most
valuable enactment enabling us to deal with cases through local
Councils of Elders, with the task of providing them with education,
medical relief etc., in accordance with their peculiar needs, and above
all with the task of affording them protection from the raids and forays
of their neighbours from the tribal hills. In the tribal area we are
faced with the task of controlling the wild tribesmen. This control
varies from practically direct administration as in the Lower Swat and
Kurram valleys to the most shadowy political influence, as in the remote
highlands of Upper Swat and the Dir Kohistan, where the foot of white
man has seldom trod. Our general policy, however, with the tribes is to
leave them independent in their internal affairs, so long as they
respect British territory and certain sacrosanct tracts beyond the
border, such as the Khyber road, the Kurram, and the Tochi. The problem
is difficult, because when hardy and well-armed hereditary robbers live
in inaccessible mountains which cannot support the inhabitants,
overlooking fat plains, the temptation to raid is obviously
considerable: and when this inclination to raid is reinforced by
fanatical religion, there must be an ever-present likelihood of trouble.