WHY INDIA DEMANDS HOME RULE.
India demands Home Rule for two reasons, one essential and vital, the
other less important but necessary: Firstly, because Freedom is the
birthright of every Nation; secondly, because her most important
interests are now made subservient to the interests of the British
Empire without her consent, and her resources are not utilised for her
greatest needs. It is enough only to mention the money spent on her
Army, not for local defence but for Imperial purposes, as compared with
that spent on primary education.
I. THE VITAL REASON.
What is a Nation?
Self-Government is necessary to the self-respect and dignity of a
People; Other-Government emasculates a Nation, lowers its character, and
lessens its capacity. The wrong done by the Arms Act, which Raja Rampal
Singh voiced in the Second Congress as a wrong which outweighed all the
benefits of British Rule, was its weakening and debasing effect on
Indian manhood. “We cannot,” he declared, “be grateful to it for
degrading our natures, for systematically crushing out all martial
spirit, for converting a race of soldiers and heroes into a timid flock
of quill-driving sheep.” This was done not by the fact that a man did
not carry arms--few carry them in England--but that men were deprived of
the _right_ to carry them. A Nation, an individual, cannot develop his
capacities to the utmost without liberty. And this is recognised
everywhere except in India. As Mazzini truly said:
God has written a line of His thought over the cradle of every
people. That is its special mission. It cannot be cancelled; it
must be freely developed.
For what is a Nation? It is a spark of the Divine Fire, a fragment of
the Divine Life, outbreathed into the world, and gathering round itself
a mass of individuals, men, women and children, whom it binds together
into one. Its qualities, its powers, in a word, its type, depend on the
fragment of the Divine Life embodied in it, the Life which shapes it,
evolves it, colours it, and makes it One. The magic of Nationality is
the feeling of oneness, and the use of Nationality is to serve the world
in the particular way for which its type fits it. This is what Mazzini
called “its special mission,” the duty given to it by God in its
birth-hour. Thus India had the duty of spreading the idea of Dharma,
Persia that of Purity, Egypt that of Science, Greece that of Beauty,
Rome that of Law. But to render its full service to Humanity it must
develop along its own lines, and be Self-determined in its evolution. It
must be Itself, and not Another. The whole world suffers where a
Nationality is distorted or suppressed, before its mission to the world
is accomplished.
The Cry for Self-Rule.
Hence the cry of a Nation for Freedom, for Self-Rule, is not a cry of
mere selfishness demanding more Rights that it may enjoy more happiness.
Even in that there is nothing wrong, for happiness means fulness of
life, and to enjoy such fulness is a righteous claim. But the demand for
Self-Rule is a demand for the evolution of its own nature for the
Service of Humanity. It is a demand of the deepest Spirituality, an
expression of the longing to give its very best to the world. Hence
dangers cannot check it, nor threats appal, nor offerings of greater
pleasures lure it to give up its demand for Freedom. In the adapted
words of a Christian Scripture, it passionately cries: “What shall it
profit a Nation if it gain the whole world and lose its own Soul? What
shall a Nation give in exchange for its Soul?” Better hardship and
freedom, than luxury and thraldom. This is the spirit of the Home Rule
movement, and therefore it cannot be crushed, it cannot be destroyed, it
is eternal and ever young. Nor can it be persuaded to exchange its
birthright for any mess of efficiency-pottage at the hands of the
bureaucracy.
Stunting the Race.
Coming closer to the daily life of the people as individuals, we see
that the character of each man, woman and child is degraded and weakened
by a foreign administration, and this is most keenly felt by the best
Indians. Speaking on the employment of Indians in the Public Services,
Gopal Krishna Gokhale said:
A kind of dwarfing or stunting of the Indian race is going on
under the present system. We must live all the days of our life
in an atmosphere of inferiority, and the tallest of us must
bend, in order that the exigencies of the system may be
satisfied. The upward impulse, if I may use such an expression,
which every schoolboy at Eton or Harrow may feel that he may
one day be a Gladstone, a Nelson, or a Wellington, and which
may draw forth the best efforts of which he is capable, that is
denied to us. The full height to which our manhood is capable
of rising can never be reached by us under the present system.
The moral elevation which every Self-governing people feel
cannot be felt by us. Our administrative and military talents
must gradually disappear owing to sheer disuse, till at last
our lot, as hewers of wood and drawers of water in our own
country, is stereotyped.
The Hon. Mr. Bhupendranath Basu has spoken on similar lines:
A bureaucratic administration, conducted by an imported agency,
and centring all power in its hands, and undertaking all
responsibility, has acted as a dead weight on the Soul of
India, stifling in us all sense of initiative, for the lack of
which we are condemned, atrophying the nerves of action and,
what is more serious, necessarily dwarfing in us all feeling of
self-respect.
In this connexion the warning of Lord Salisbury to Cooper’s Hill
students is significant:
No system of Government can be permanently safe where there is
a feeling of inferiority or of mortification affecting the
relations between the governing and the governed. There is
nothing I would more earnestly wish to impress upon all who
leave this country for the purpose of governing India than
that, if they choose to be so, they are the only enemies
England has to fear. They are the persons who can, if they
will, deal a blow of the deadliest character at the future rule
of England.
I have ventured to urge this danger, which has increased of late years,
in consequence of the growing self-respect of the Indians, but the
ostrich policy is thought to be preferable in my part of the country.
This stunting of the race begins with the education of the child. The
Schools differentiate between British and Indian teachers; the Colleges
do the same. The students see first-class Indians superseded by young
and third-rate foreigners; the Principal of a College should be a
foreigner; foreign history is more important than Indian; to have
written on English villages is a qualification for teaching economics in
India; the whole atmosphere of the School and College emphasises the
superiority of the foreigner, even when the professors abstain from open
assertion thereof. The Education Department controls the education
given, and it is planned on foreign models, and its object is to serve
foreign rather than native ends, to make docile Government servants
rather than patriotic citizens; high spirits, courage, self-respect, are
not encouraged, and docility is regarded as the most precious quality in
the student; pride in country, patriotism, ambition, are looked on as
dangerous, and English, instead of Indian, Ideals are exalted; the
blessings of a foreign rule and the incapacity of Indians to manage
their own affairs are constantly inculcated. What wonder that boys thus
trained often turn out, as men, time-servers and sycophants, and,
finding their legitimate ambitions frustrated, become selfish and care
little for the public weal? Their own inferiority has been so driven
into them during their most impressionable years, that they do not even
feel what Mr. Asquith called the “intolerable degradation of a foreign
yoke.”
India’s Rights.
It is not a question whether the rule is good or bad. German efficiency
in Germany is far greater than English efficiency in England; the
Germans were better fed, had more amusements and leisure, less crushing
poverty than the English. But would any Englishman therefore desire to
see Germans occupying all the highest positions in England? Why not?
Because the righteous self-respect and dignity of the free man revolt
against foreign domination, however superior. As Mr. Asquith said at the
beginning of the War, such a condition was “inconceivable and would be
intolerable.” Why then is it the one conceivable system here in India?
Why is it not felt by all Indians to be intolerable? It is because it
has become a habit, bred in us from childhood, to regard the sahib-log
as our natural superiors, and the greatest injury British rule has done
to Indians is to deprive them of the natural instinct born in all free
peoples, the feeling of an inherent right to Self-determination, to be
themselves. Indian dress, Indian food, Indian ways, Indian customs, are
all looked on as second-rate; Indian mother-tongue and Indian literature
cannot make an educated man. Indians as well as Englishmen take it for
granted that the natural rights of every Nation do not belong to them;
they claim “a larger share in the government of the country,” instead of
claiming the government of their own country, and they are expected to
feel grateful for “boons,” for concessions. Britain is to say what she
will give. The whole thing is wrong, topsy-turvy, irrational. Thank God
that India’s eyes are opening; that myriads of her people realise that
they are men, with a man’s right to freedom in his own country, a man’s
right to manage his own affairs. India is no longer on her knees for
boons; she is on her feet for Rights. It is because I have taught this
that the English in India misunderstand me and call me seditious; it is
because I have taught this that I am President of this Congress to-day.
This may seem strong language, because the plain truth is not usually
put in India. But this is what every Briton feels in Britain for his own
country, and what every Indian should feel in India for his. This is the
Freedom for which the Allies are fighting; this is Democracy, the Spirit
of the Age. And this is what every true Briton will feel is India’s
Right the moment India claims it for herself, as she is claiming it
now. When this right is gained, then will the tie between India and
Great Britain become a golden link of mutual love and service, and the
iron chain of a foreign yoke will fall away. We shall live and work side
by side, with no sense of distrust and dislike, working as brothers for
common ends. And from that union shall arise the mightiest Empire, or
rather Commonwealth, that the world has ever known, a Commonwealth that,
in God’s good time, shall put an end to War.
II. THE SECONDARY REASONS.
Tests of Efficiency.
The Secondary Reasons for the present demand for Home Rule may be summed
up in the blunt statement: “The present rule, while efficient in less
important matters and in those which concern British interests, is
inefficient in the greater matters on which the healthy life and
happiness of the people depend.” Looking at outer things, such as
external order, posts and telegraphs--except where political agitators
are concerned--main roads, railways, etc., foreign visitors, who
expected to find a semi-savage country, hold up their hands in
admiration. But if they saw the life of the people, the masses of
struggling clerks trying to educate their children on Rs. 25 (28s.
0-1/4d.) a month, the masses of labourers with one meal a day, and the
huts in which they live, they would find cause for thought. And if the
educated men talked freely with them, they would be surprised at their
bitterness. Gopal Krishna Gokhale put the whole matter very plainly in
1911:
One of the fundamental conditions of the peculiar position of
the British Government in this country is that it should be a
continuously progressive Government. I think all thinking men,
to whatever community they belong, will accept that. Now, I
suggest four tests to judge whether the Government is
progressive, and, further, whether it is continuously
progressive. The first test that I would apply is what measures
it adopts for the moral and material improvement of the mass of
the people, and under these measures I do not include those
appliances of modern Governments which the British Government
has applied in this country, because they were appliances
necessary for its very existence, though they have benefited
the people, such as the construction of Railways, the
introduction of Post and Telegraphs, and things of that kind.
By measures for the moral and material improvement of the
people, I mean what the Government does for education, what the
Government does for sanitation, what the Government does for
agricultural development, and so forth. That is my first test.
The second test that I would apply is what steps the Government
takes to give us a larger share in the administration of our
local affairs--in municipalities and local boards. My third
test is what voice the Government gives us in its Councils--in
those deliberate assemblies, where policies are considered.
And, lastly, we must consider how far Indians are admitted into
the ranks of the public service.
A Change of System Needed.
Those were Gokhale’s tests, and Indians can supply the results of their
knowledge and experience to answer them. But before dealing with the
failure to meet these tests, it is necessary to state here that it is
not a question of blaming men, or of substituting Indians for
Englishmen, but of changing the system itself. It is a commonplace that
the best men become corrupted by the possession of irresponsible power.
As Bernard Houghton says: “The possession of unchecked power corrupts
some of the finer qualities.” Officials quite honestly come to believe
that those who try to change the system are undermining the security of
the State. They identify the State with themselves, so that criticism of
them is seen as treason to the State. The phenomenon is well known in
history, and it is only repeating itself in India. The same writer--I
prefer to use his words rather than my own, for he expresses exactly my
own views, and will not be considered to be prejudiced as I am thought
to be--cogently remarks:
He (the official) has become an expert in reports and returns
and matters of routine through many years of practice. They are
the very woof and warp of his brain. He has no ideas, only
reflexes. He views with acrid disfavour untried conceptions.
From being constantly preoccupied with the manipulation of the
machine he regards its smooth working, the ordered and
harmonious regulation of glittering pieces of machinery, as the
highest service he can render to the country of his adoption.
He determines that his particular cog-wheel at least shall be
bright, smooth, silent, and with absolutely no back-lash. Not
unnaturally in course of time he comes to envisage the world
through the strait embrasure of an office window. When perforce
he must report on new proposals he will place in the forefront,
not their influence on the life and progress of the people, but
their convenience to the official hierarchy and the manner in
which they affect its authority. Like the monks of old, or the
squire in the typical English village, he cherishes a
benevolent interest in the commonalty, and is quite willing,
even eager, to take a general interest in their welfare, if
only they do not display initiative or assert themselves in
opposition to himself or his order. There is much in this
proviso. Having come to regard his own judgment as almost
divine, and the hierarchy of which he has the honour to form a
part as a sacrosanct institution, he tolerates the laity so
long as they labour quietly and peaceably at their vocations
and do not presume to inter-meddle in high matters of State.
That is the heinous offence. And frank criticism of official
acts touches a lower depth still, even _lèse majesté_. For no
official will endure criticism from his subordinates, and the
public, who lie in outer darkness beyond the pale, do not in
his estimation rank even with his subordinates. How, then,
should he listen with patience when in their cavilling way they
insinuate that, in spite of the labours of a high-souled
bureaucracy, all is perhaps not for the best in the best of all
possible worlds--still less when they suggest reforms that had
never occurred even to him or to his order, and may clash with
his most cherished ideals? It is for the officials to govern
the country; they alone have been initiated into the sacred
mysteries; they alone understand the secret working of the
machine. At the utmost the laity may tender respectful and
humble suggestions for their consideration, but no more. As for
those who dare to think and act for themselves, their ignorant
folly is only equalled by their arrogance. It is as though a
handful of schoolboys were to dictate to their masters
alterations in the traditional time-table, or to insist on a
modified curriculum.... These worthy people [officials] confuse
manly independence with disloyalty; they cannot conceive of
natives except either as rebels or as timid sheep.
Non-Official Anglo-Indians.
The problem becomes more complicated by the existence in India of a
small but powerful body of the same race as the higher officials; there
are only 122,919 English-born persons in this country, while there are
245,000,000 in the British Raj and another 70,000,000 in the Indian
States, more or less affected by British influence. As a rule, the
non-officials do not take any part in politics, being otherwise
occupied; but they enter the field when any hope arises in Indian hearts
of changes really beneficial to the Nation. John Stuart Mill observed on
this point:
The individuals of the ruling people who resort to the foreign
country to make their fortunes are of all others those who most
need to be held under powerful restraint. They are always one
of the chief difficulties of the Government. Armed with the
prestige and filled with the scornful overbearingness of the
conquering Nation, they have the feelings inspired by absolute
power without its sense of responsibility.
Similarly, Sir John Lawrence wrote:
The difficulty in the way of the Government of India acting
fairly in these matters is immense. If anything is done, or
attempted to be done, to help the natives, a general howl is
raised, which reverberates in England, and finds sympathy and
support there. I feel quite bewildered sometimes what to do.
Everyone is, in the abstract, for justice, moderation, and
suchlike excellent qualities; but when one comes to apply such
principles so as to affect anybody’s interests, then a change
comes over them.
Keene, speaking of the principle of treating equally all classes of the
community, says:
The application of that maxim, however, could not be made
without sometimes provoking opposition among the handful of
white settlers in India who, even when not connected with the
administration, claimed a kind of class ascendancy which was
not only in the conditions of the country but also in the
nature of the case. It was perhaps natural that in a land of
caste the compatriots of the rulers should become--as Lord
Lytton said--a kind of “white Brahmanas”; and it was certain
that, as a matter of fact, the pride of race and the possession
of western civilisation created a sense of superiority, the
display of which was ungraceful and even dangerous, when not
tempered by official responsibility. This feeling had been
sensitive enough in the days of Lord William Bentinck, when the
class referred to was small in numbers and devoid of influence.
It was now both more numerous, and--by reason of its connection
with the newspapers of Calcutta and of London--it was far
better able to make its passion heard.
During Lord Ripon’s sympathetic administration the great outburst
occurred against the Ilbert Bill in 1883. We are face to face with a
similar phenomenon to-day, when we see the European Associations--under
the leadership of the _Madras Mail_, the _Englishman_ of Calcutta, the
_Pioneer of_ Allahabad, the _Civil and Military Gazette_ of Lahore, with
their Tory and Unionist allies in the London Press and with the aid of
retired Indian officials and non-officials in England--desperately
resisting the Reforms now proposed. Their opposition, we know, is a
danger to the movement towards Freedom, and even when they have failed
to impress England--as they are evidently failing--they will try to
minimise or smother here the reforms which a statute has embodied. The
Minto-Morley reforms were thus robbed of their usefulness, and a similar
attempt, if not guarded against, will be made when the Congress-League
Scheme is used as the basis for an Act.
The Re-action on England.
We cannot leave out of account here the deadly harm done to England
herself by this un-English system of rule in India. Mr. Hobson has
pointed out:
As our free Self-Governing Colonies have furnished hope,
encouragement, and leading to the popular aspirations in Great
Britain, not merely by practical success in the art of
Self-Government, but by the wafting of a spirit of freedom and
equality, so our despotically ruled Dependencies have ever
served to damage the character of our people by feeding the
habits of snobbish subservience, the admiration of wealth and
rank, the corrupt survivals of the inequalities of
feudalism.... Cobden writing in 1860 of our Indian Empire, put
this pithy question: “Is it not just possible that we may
become corrupted at home by the reaction of arbitrary political
maxims in the East upon our domestic politics, just as Greece
and Rome were demoralised by their contact with Asia?” Not
merely is the reaction possible, it is inevitable. As the
despotic portion of our Empire, has grown in area, a large
number of men, trained in the temper and methods of autocracy,
as soldiers and civil officials in our Crown Colonies,
Protectorates and Indian Empire, reinforced by numbers of
merchants, planters, engineers, and overseers, whose lives have
been those of a superior caste living an artificial life
removed from all the healthy restraints of ordinary European
Society, have returned to this country, bringing back the
characters, sentiments and ideas imposed by this foreign
environment.
It is a little hard on the I.C.S. that they should be foreigners here,
and then, when they return to their native land, find that they have
become foreigners there by the corrupting influences with which they
are surrounded here. We import them as raw material to our own
disadvantage, and when we export them as manufactured here, Great
Britain and India alike suffer from their reactionary tendencies. The
results are unsatisfactory to both sides.
The First Test Applied.
Let us now apply Gokhale’s first test. What has the Bureaucracy done for
“education, sanitation, agricultural improvement, and so forth”? I must
put the facts very briefly, but they are indisputable.
_Education_. The percentage to the whole population of children
receiving education is 2.8, the percentage having risen by 0.9 since Mr.
Gokhale moved his Education Bill six years ago. The percentage of
children of school-going age attending school is 18.7. In 1913 the
Government of India put the number of pupils at 4-1/2 millions; this has
been accomplished in 63 years, reckoning from Sir Charles Wood’s
Educational Despatch in 1854, which led to the formation of the
Education Department. In 1870 an Education Act was passed in Great
Britain, the condition of Education in England then much resembling our
present position; grants-in-aid in England had been given since 1833,
chiefly to Church Schools. Between 1870 and 1881 free and compulsory
education was established, and in 12 years the attendance rose from 43.3
to nearly 100 per cent. There are now 6,000,000 children in the schools
of England and Wales out of a population of 40 millions. Japan, before
1872, had a proportion of 28 per cent. of children of school-going age in
school, nearly 10 over our present proportion; in 24 years the
percentage was raised to 92, and in 28 years education was free and
compulsory. In Baroda education is free and largely compulsory and the
percentage of boys is 100 per cent. Travancore has 81.1 per cent. of
boys and 33.2 of girls. Mysore has 45.8 of boys and 9.7 of girls. Baroda
spends an. 6-6 per head on school-going children, British India one
anna. Expenditure on education advanced between 1882 and 1907 by 57
lakhs. Land-revenue had increased by 8 crores, military expenditure by
13 crores, civil by 8 crores, and capital outlay on railways was 15
crores. (I am quoting G.K. Gokhale’s figures.) He ironically calculated
that, if the population did not increase, every boy would be in school
115 years hence, and every girl in 665 years. Brother Delegates, we hope
to do it more quickly under Home Rule. I submit that in Education the
Bureaucracy is inefficient.
_Sanitation and Medical Relief_. The prevalence of plague, cholera, and
above all malaria, shows the lack of sanitation alike in town and
country. This lack is one of the causes contributing to the low average
life-period in India--23.5 years. In England the life-period is 40
years, in New Zealand 60. The chief difficulty in the way of the
treatment of disease is the encouragement of the foreign system of
medicine, especially in rural parts, and the withholding of grants from
the indigenous. Government Hospitals, Government Dispensaries,
Government doctors, must all be on the foreign system. Ayurvaidic and
Unani medicines, Hospitals, Dispensaries, Physicians, are unrecognised,
and to “cover” the latter is “infamous” conduct. Travancore gives
grants-in-aid to 72 Vaidyashalas, at which 143,505 patients--22,000 more
than in allopathic institutions--were treated in 1914-15 (the Report
issued in 1917). Our Government cannot grapple with the medical needs of
the people, yet will not allow the people’s money to be spent on the
systems they prefer. Under Home Rule the indigenous and the foreign
systems will be treated with impartiality. I grant that the allopathic
doctors do their utmost to supply the need, and show great
self-sacrifice, but the need is too vast and the numbers too few.
Efficiency on their own lines in this matter is therefore impossible for
our bureaucratic Government; their fault lies in excluding the
indigenous systems, which they have not condescended to examine before
rejecting them. The result is that in sanitation and medical relief the
Bureaucracy is inefficient.
_Agricultural Development_. The census of 1911 gives the agricultural
population at 218.3 millions. Its frightful poverty is a matter of
common knowledge; its ever-increasing load of indebtedness has been
dwelt on for at least the last thirty odd years by Sir Dinshaw E. Wacha.
Yet the increasing debt is accompanied with increasing taxation, land
revenue having risen, as just stated, in 25 years, by 8
crores--80,000,000--of rupees. In addition to this there are local
cesses, salt tax, etc. The salt tax, which presses most hardly on the
very poor, was raised in the last budget by Rs. 9 millions. The
inevitable result of this poverty is malnutrition, resulting in low
vitality, lack of resistance to disease, short life-period, huge
infantile mortality. Gopal Krishna Gokhale, no mischievous agitator,
repeated in 1905 the figures; often quoted:
Forty millions of people, according to one great Anglo-Indian
authority--Sir William Hunter--pass through life with only one
meal a day. According to another authority--Sir Charles
Elliot--70 millions of people in India do not know what it is
to have their hunger fully satisfied even once in the whole
course of the year. The poverty of the people of India, thus
considered by itself, is truly appalling. And if this is the
state of things after a hundred years of your rule, you cannot
claim that your principal aim in India has been the promotion
of the interests of the Indian people.
It is sometimes said: “Why harp on these figures? We know them.” Our
answer is that the fact is ever harping in the stomach of the people,
and while it continues we cannot cease to draw attention to it. And
Gokhale urged that “even this deplorable condition has been further
deteriorating steadily.” We have no figures on malnutrition among the
peasantry, but in Madras City, among an equally poor urban population,
we found that 78 per cent. of our pupils were reported, after a medical
inspection, to be suffering from malnutrition. And the spareness of
frame, the thinness of arms and legs, the pitiably weak grip on life,
speak without words to the seeing eye. It needs an extraordinary lack of
imagination not to suffer while these things are going on.
The peasants’ grievances are many and have been voiced year after year
by this Congress. The Forest Laws, made by legislators inappreciative of
village difficulties, press hardly on them, and only in a small number
of places have Forest Panchayats been established. In the few cases in
which the experiment has been made the results have been good, in some
cases marvellously good. The paucity of grazing grounds for their
cattle, the lack of green manure to feed their impoverished lands, the
absence of fencing round forests, so that the cattle stray in when
feeding, are impounded, and have to be redeemed, the fines and other
punishments imposed for offences ill-understood, the want of wood for
fuel, for tools, for repairs, the uncertain distribution of the
available water, all these troubles are discussed in villages and in
local Conferences. The Arms Act oppresses them, by leaving them
defenceless against wild beasts and wild men. The union of Judicial and
Executive functions makes justice often inaccessible, and always costly
both in money and in time. The village officials naturally care more to
please the Tahsildar and the Collector than the villagers, to whom they
are in no way responsible. And factions flourish, because there is
always a third party to whom to resort, who may be flattered if his rank
be high, bribed if it be low, whose favour can be gained in either case
by cringing and by subservience and tale-bearing. As regards the
condition of agriculture in India and the poverty of the agricultural
population, the Bureaucracy is inefficient.
The application of Mr. Gokhale’s first test to Indian handicrafts, to
the strengthening of weak industries and the creation of new, to the
care of waterways for traffic and of the coast transport shipping, the
protection of indigo and other indigenous dyes against their German
synthetic rivals, etc., would show similar answers. We are suffering now
from the supineness of the Bureaucracy as regards the development of the
resources of the country, by its careless indifference to the usurping
by Germans of some of those resources, and even now they are pursuing a
similar policy of _laissez faire_ towards Japanese enterprise, which,
leaning on its own Government, is taking the place of Germany in
shouldering Indians out of their own natural heritage.
In all prosperous countries crafts are found side by-side with
agriculture, and they lend each other mutual support. The extreme
poverty of Ireland, and the loss of more than half its population by
emigration, were the direct results of the destruction of its
wool-industry by Great Britain, and the consequent throwing of the
population entirely on the land for subsistence. A similar phenomenon
has resulted here from a similar case, but on a far more widespread
scale. And here, a novel and portentous change for India, “a
considerable landless class is developing, which involves economic
danger,” as the _Imperial Gazeteer_ remarks, comparing the census
returns of 1891 and 1901. “The ordinary agricultural labourers are
employed on the land only during the busy seasons of the year, and in
slack times a few are attracted to large trade-centres for temporary
work.” One recalls the influx into England of Irish labourers at harvest
time. Professor Radkamal Mukerji has laid stress on the older conditions
of village life. He says:
The village is still almost self-sufficing, and is in itself an
economic unit. The village agriculturist grows all the food
necessary for the inhabitants of the village. The smith makes
the plough-shares for the cultivator, and the few iron utensils
required for the household. He supplies these to the people,
but does not get money in return. He is recompensed by mutual
services from his fellow villagers. The potter supplies him
with pots, the weaver with cloth, and the oilman with oil. From
the cultivator each of these artisans receives his traditional
share of grain. Thus almost all the economic transactions are
carried on without the use of money. To the villagers money is
only a store of value, not a medium of exchange. When they
happen to be rich in money, they hoard it either in coins or
make ornaments made of gold and silver.
These conditions are changing in consequence of the pressure of poverty
driving the villagers to the city, where they learn to substitute the
competition of the town for the mutual helpfulness of the village. The
difference of feeling, the change from trustfulness to suspicion, may be
seen by visiting villages which are in the vicinity of a town and
comparing their villagers with those who inhabit villages in purely
rural areas. This economic and moral deterioration can only be checked
by the re-establishment of a healthy _and interesting_ village life, and
this depends upon the re-establishment of the Panchayat as the unit of
Government, a question which I deal with presently. Village industries
would then revive and an intercommunicating network would be formed by
Co-operative Societies. Mr. C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar says in his pamphlet,
_Co-operative Societies and Panchayats_:
The one method by which this evil [emigration to towns] can be
arrested and the economic and social standards of life of the
rural people elevated is by the inauguration of healthy
Panchayats in conjunction with the foundation of Co-operative
institutions, which will have the effect of resuscitating
village industries, and of creating organised social forces.
The Indian village, when rightly reconstructed, would be an
excellent foundation for well-developed co-operative industrial
organisation.
Again:
The resuscitation of the village system has other bearings, not
usually considered in connection with the general subject of
the inauguration of the Panchayat system. One of the most
important of these is the regeneration of the small industries
of the land. Both in Europe and in India the decline of small
industries has gone on _pari passu_ with the decline of farming
on a small scale. In countries like France agriculture has
largely supported village industries, and small cultivators in
that country have turned their attention to industry as a
supplementary source of livelihood. The decline of village life
in India is not only a political, but also an economic and
industrial, problem. Whereas in Europe the cultural impulse has
travelled from the city to the village, in India the reverse
has been the case. The centre of social life in this country is
the village, and not the town. Ours was essentially the cottage
industry, and our artisans still work in their own huts, more
or less out of touch with the commercial world. Throughout the
world the tendency has been of late to lay considerable
emphasis on distributive and industrial co-operation based on a
system of village industries and enterprise. Herein would be
found the origins of the arts and crafts guilds and the Garden
Cities, the idea underlying all these being to inaugurate a
reign of Socialism and Co-operation, eradicating the entirely
unequal distribution of wealth amongst producers and consumers.
India has always been a country of small tenantry, and has
thereby escaped many of the evils the western Nations have
experienced owing to the concentration of wealth in a few
hands. The communistic sense in our midst, and the fundamental
tenets of our family life, have checked such concentration of
capital. This has been the cause for the non-development of
factory industries on a large scale.
The need for these changes--to which England is returning, after full
experience of the miseries of life in manufacturing towns--is pressing.
Addressing an English audience, G.K. Gokhale summed up the general state
of India as follows:
Your average annual income has been estimated at about £42 per
head. Ours, according to official estimates, is about £2 per
head, and according to non-official estimates, only a little
more than £1 per head. Your imports per head are about £13:
ours about 5s. per head. The total deposits in your Postal
Savings Bank amount to 148 million sterling, and you have in
addition in the Trustees’ Savings Banks about 52 million
sterling. Our Postal Savings Bank deposits, with a population
seven times as large as yours, are only about 7 million
sterling, and even of this a little over one-tenth is held by
Europeans. Your total paid-up capital of joint-stock companies
is about 1,900 million sterling. Ours is not quite 26 million
sterling, and the greater part of this again is European.
Four-fifths of our people are dependent upon agriculture, and
agriculture has been for some time steadily deteriorating.
Indian agriculturists are too poor, and are, moreover, too
heavily indebted, to be able to apply any capital to land, and
the result is that over the greater part of India agriculture
is, as Sir James Caird pointed out more than twenty-five years
ago, only a process of exhaustion of the soil. The yield per
acre is steadily diminishing, being now only about 8 to 9
bushels an acre against about 30 bushels here in England.
In all the matters which come under Gokhale’s first test, the
Bureaucracy has been and is inefficient.
Give Indians a Chance.
All we say in the matter is: You have not succeeded in bringing
education, health, prosperity, to the masses of the people. Is it not
time to give Indians a chance of doing, for their own country, work
similar to that which Japan and other nations have done for theirs?
Surely the claim is not unreasonable. If the Anglo-Indians say that the
masses are their peculiar care, and that the educated classes care not
for them, but only for place and power, then we point to the Congress,
to the speeches and the resolutions eloquent of their love and their
knowledge. It is not their fault that they gaze on their country’s
poverty in helpless despair. Or let Mr. Justice Rahim answer:
As for the representation of the interests of the many scores
of millions in India, if the claim be that they are better
represented by European Officials than by educated Indian
Officials or non-Officials, it is difficult to conceive how
such reckless claim has come to be urged. The inability of
English Officials to master the spoken language of India and
their habits of life and modes of thought so completely divide
them from the general population, that only an extremely
limited few, possessed with extraordinary powers of insight,
have ever been able to surmount the barriers. With the educated
Indians, on the other hand, this knowledge is instinctive, and
the view of religion and custom so strong in the East make
their knowledge and sympathy more real than is to be seen in
countries dominated by materialistic conceptions.
And it must be remembered that it is not lack of ability which has
brought about bureaucratic inefficiency, for British traders and
producers have done uncommonly well for themselves in India. But a
Bureaucracy does not trouble itself about matters of this kind; the
Russian Bureaucracy did not concern itself with the happiness of the
Russian masses, but with their obedience and their paying of taxes.
Bureaucracies are the same everywhere, and therefore it is the system we
wage war upon, not the men; we do not want to substitute Indian
bureaucrats for British bureaucrats; we want to abolish Bureaucracy,
Government by Civil Servants.
The Other Tests Applied.
I need not delay over the second, third, and fourth tests, for the
answers _sautent aux yeux_.
_The second test, Local Self-Government:_ Under Lord Mayo (1869-72) some
attempts were made at decentralisation, called by Keene “Home Rule” (!),
and his policy was followed on non-financial lines as well by Lord
Ripon, who tried to infuse into what Keene calls “the germs of Home
Rule” “the breath of life.” Now, in 1917, an experimental and limited
measure of local Home Rule is to be tried in Bengal. Though the Report
of the Decentralisation Committee was published in 1909, we have not yet
arrived at the universal election of non-official Chairmen. Decidedly
inefficient is the Bureaucracy under test 2.
_The third test, Voice in the Councils:_ The part played by Indian
elected members in the Legislative Council, Madras, was lately described
by a member as “a farce.” The Supreme Legislative Council was called by
one of its members “a glorified Debating Society.” A table of
resolutions proposed by Indian elected members, and passed or lost, was
lately drawn up, and justified the caustic epithets. With regard to the
Minto-Morley reforms, the Bureaucracy showed great efficiency in
destroying the benefits intended by the Parliamentary Statute. But the
third test shows that in giving Indians a fair voice in the Councils the
Bureaucracy was inefficient.
_The fourth test, the Admission of Indians to the Public Services:_ This
is shown, by the Report of the Commission, not to need any destructive
activity on the part of the Bureaucracy to prove their unwillingness to
pass it, for the Report protects them in their privileged position.
We may add to Gokhale’s tests one more, which will be triumphantly
passed, the success of the Bureaucracy in increasing the cost of
administration. The estimates for the revenue of the coming year stand
at £86,199,600 sterling. The expenditure is reckoned at £85,572,100
sterling. The cost of administration stands at more than half the total
revenue:
Civil Departments Salaries and Expenses £19,323,300
Civil Miscellaneous Charges 5,283,300
Military Services 23,165,900
___________
£47,772,500
___________
The reduction of the abnormal cost of government in India is of the most
pressing nature, but this will never be done until we win Home Rule.
It will be seen that the Secondary Reasons for the demand for Home Rule
are of the weightiest nature in themselves, and show the necessity for
its grant if India is to escape from a poverty which threatens to lead
to National bankruptcy, as it has already led to a short life-period and
a high death rate, to widespread disease, and to a growing exhaustion of
the soil. That some radical change must be brought about in the
condition of our masses, if a Revolution of Hunger is to be averted, is
patent to all students of history, who also know the poverty of the
Indian masses to-day. This economic condition is due to many causes, of
which the inevitable lack of understanding by an alien Government is
only one. A system of government suitable to the West was forced on the
East, destroying its own democratic and communal institutions and
imposing bureaucratic methods which bewildered and deteriorated a people
to whom they were strange and repellent. The result is not a matter for
recrimination, but for change. An inappropriate system forced on an
already highly civilised people was bound to fail. It has been rightly
said that the poor only revolt when the misery they are enduring is
greater than the dangers of revolt. We need Home Rule to stop the daily
suffering of our millions from the diminishing yield of the soil and the
decay of village industries.