Let me now turn to our second question: internal political unrest. In
clubs and other places where wise men in arm-chairs lay down the law
about affairs of state, one constantly hears expressions of surprise and
indignation that there should be any unrest in India at all. "We have,"
say the die-hard wiseacres, "governed India jolly well and jolly
honestly, and the Indians ought to be jolly grateful instead of kicking
up all this fuss. If that meddlesome Montagu had not put these wicked
democratic ideas into their heads, and stirred up all this mud, we
should have gone on quite comfortable as before." But if we face the
facts squarely, we shall see that the wonder is not that there has been
so much, but that there has been so comparatively little unrest, and
that India should, on the whole, have waited so patiently for a definite
advance towards self-government.
What are the facts? They are these. Partly by commercial enterprise,
partly by adroit diplomacy, partly by accident, largely by the valour of
our arms, we have obtained dominion over the great continent of India.
We have ruled it for more than a century through the agency of a handful
of Englishmen, alien in creed, colour, and custom from the people whom
they rule--men who do not even make their permanent homes in the land
they administer. Now, however efficient, however honest, however
impartial, however disinterested such a rule may be, it cannot obviously
be really agreeable to the peoples ruled. This is the fundamental
weakness of our position. That our rule on these lines has lasted so
long and has been so successful is due not to the fact alone that it has
been backed by British bayonets, but rather to the fact that it has been
remarkably efficient, honest, just, and disinterested--and, above all,
that we have in the past given and secured goodwill.
Superimposed on this underlying irritant, there have been of late years
a number of other more direct causes of unrest. Education, which we gave
to India and were bound to give, had inevitably bred political
aspiration, and an _intelligensia_ had grown up hungry for political
rights and powers. Simultaneously the voracious demands of a centralised
bureaucracy for reports and returns had left the district officer little
leisure for that close touch with the people which in the past meant
confidence and goodwill. Political restlessness had already for some
years begun to manifest itself in anarchical conspiracies and crimes of
violence, when the Great War began. In India, as elsewhere, the reflex
action of the war was a disturbing element. High prices, stifled trade,
high taxation, nationalist longings and ideas of self-determination and
self-government served to reinforce subterranean agitation.
But throughout the war India not only remained calm and restrained, but
her actual contribution to the war, in men and material, was colossal
and was ungrudgingly given. She had a right to expect in return generous
treatment; but what did she get? She got the Rowlatt Bill. Now, of
course, there was a great deal of wicked, lying nonsense talked by
agitators about the provisions of the Rowlatt Bill, and the people were
grossly misled. But the plain fact remains that when India had emerged
from the trying ordeal of the war, not only with honour untarnished, but
having placed us under a great obligation, our first practical return
was to pass a repressive measure, for fear, forsooth, that if it was not
passed then it might be pigeon-holed and forgotten. India asked for
bread and we gave her a stone--a stupid, blundering act, openly
deprecated at the time by all moderate unofficial opinion in India. What
was the result? The Punjab disturbances and the preventive massacre of
the Jallianwala Bagh. I do not propose to dwell on this deplorable and
sadly mishandled matter, save to say that so far from cowing agitation,
it has left a legacy of hate that it will take years to wipe out; and
that the subsequent action of a number of ill-informed persons in
raising a very large sum of money for the officer responsible for that
massacre has further estranged Indians and emphasised in their eyes the
brand of their subjection.