THE DIVIDED LAND
The plains of Eastern Bengal have been formed grain by grain from the
washings of the dividing range of Asia brought down by melted snow on
its way to the sea. Rivers that rise not very far apart on opposite
sides of the Himalaya here unite at last after their thousand miles
of circuit, and finish their course by broad and quiet streams, which
lose the sacred names of Ganges and Brahmaputra. Some of the rivers
also spring from the hill-country of Assam and the ranges where the
pleasant station of Shillong offers a summer residence for the new
Lieut.-Governor of Eastern Bengal as comfortably isolated from his
capital at Dacca, as Simla or Darjeeling is from Calcutta. Thus the
whole country is intersected with vast waterways and streams as slow
and curling as the Ouse. Railways are built only in short sections,
as it were to connect the rivers, and continuous roads must be very
few. Everything goes by water, and the only trouble is that the
rivers sometimes change their course, owing to an earthquake or
other natural caprice. Their channels, too, are continually silting
up, so that the course of the steamers upon their broad surface is
always a little dubious, and, in spite of its slip of railway, the
new capital of Dacca is even now being cut off from the world.
[Illustration: ON THE BRAHMAPUTRA.
[_Face p. 160._
]
But for the square-sailed junks that the Indians use, and for the
long black boats with pointed prow and stern pitched high in air, the
rivers form a fine system of traffic; and if the water takes a fancy
for a new passage through miles of cultivated land the owners of the
fields simply stake out their claims upon the surface, confident
that in God’s good time the river will withdraw, leaving the soil
to future generations only the richer for its deposit. The whole
country is, indeed, one of the richest parts of India, and the rivers
pass between flat lands of mangoes and palm trees, jute or yellow
rice. At times the size and stillness of the streams reminded me of
the Oil Rivers of Southern Nigeria; but how different here are the
firm and fruitful banks from those gloomy creeks and forests of the
slime! When they are not busy in their sunny fields, the people are
chiefly engaged in washing themselves, their babies, and their brazen
vessels. Large numbers are also occupied in fishing, especially for
a bony fish like a gigantic perch, which they drive into the nets
with tame otters, captive in long leashes. Others live by converting
the clay of the banks into enormous potting jars that serve as
stores for grain, _ghee_ (clarified butter), and other food. The
waterways also still carry a certain amount of the country’s ancient
industries—the gold and silver work, the bangles and ornaments cut
from white conchs, and, above all, the hand-woven muslins for which
Dacca was once celebrated throughout the world.
Since England killed the Indian cotton industry for the benefit of
Lancashire, first by imposing duties on imports from India, and
then by the present excise of 3½ per cent. upon Indian cottons
manufactured for India itself, that ancient fame is chiefly found in
museum specimens of past splendour, and in lingering words like the
French “Indienne” for calico print. Even in Dacca the very finest
muslin, such as the cows used to lick up with the grass, feeling
no difference between it and gossamer, is no longer made. It has
fallen out, partly owing to Manchester, partly because there are no
longer enough rich Indians to buy it. But still the great caste of
weavers have clung to their hand-looms as fondly as starving ryots
cling to the land. There is hardly any difference of race in Bengal,
but it so happens that nearly all the weavers are Mohammedans,
descended from the old Hindu families who changed their religion to
please their conquerors in the days when Dacca itself was an Islam
capital of empire. In the last three years, the Swadeshi movement,
which officials have told Lord Morley is specially abhorrent to
Mohammedans, has enormously increased their industry. It has revived
the ancient craft just as it was dying, and so I found the weavers
in every town and village sitting on the floor, with legs stuck
under the wooden loom, plying their thin-spun thread with hereditary
skill—plying it sometimes under water, so that a woman’s skin should
hardly feel a stuff so fine and soft.
But one can never be sure how long a handicraft, no matter how
beautiful, can hold its own against the mills. Even under Swadeshi
the hand-looms will probably disappear, and the main produce of
Eastern Bengal is no longer the most delicate fabric in the world,
but the roughest. It is jute. It is not literally true that this
dark and fibrous plant, something between a mallow and a flax, grows
only in East Bengal, but it grows best there, and almost all that
is used in the jute factories of Dundee is imported from this land
of rivers. I believe it was through the Dundee shippers, not more
than one generation ago, that jute first came to the Tay, but since
then the prosperity of the jute wives on the Tay has varied with the
prosperity of the peasant wives on the Ganges, and, unhappily, it has
often varied inversely.
It is very doubtful whether the immense increase of the jute crop
has been of real benefit to the peasant. The price is variable. In
1906, for example, it went up to 14_s._ 8_d._ a maund (82 lbs.), and
all the peasants laid down their land in jute, thus creating such
a scarcity of rice that its price went up more than double—from an
average of 5_s._ 4_d._ to 12_s._ a maund. In some districts rice rose
to more than three times its normal price. Drought and flood combined
to increase the scarcity, and a terrible famine ensued. Of course, it
ought not to have been so. Economists would say that the sale of the
jute and the export of the rice should bring in money with which the
peasants could purchase food. The trouble was that reality refused to
support the economic doctrine.
Jute, like flax, is a very exhausting crop, yet I have seen it
actually planted on the same field with rice, and at the same time,
because it grows quicker, and can be harvested while the rice is
green and short. Nothing but a deluge can restore the soil so
treated, and, at the best, jute wants more room and more labour.
Then there are the middlemen to be considered—the British and Jewish
middlemen who swarm at the centres of the jute trade, where the heavy
wooden junks lie thick as a town upon the rivers. Lastly, there is
the zemindar or landowner. He comes under the Permanent Settlement
of Bengal, and his rent or tax to Government is fixed for ever. But
within limits he can raise the rent on the cultivator, and it is
in the nature of landlords to raise the rent. They are not rich
themselves, these zemindars. Throughout Bengal I heard lamentable
stories of their genteel but increasing poverty that reminded me
of the distressed Irish landlords of twenty years ago. Like the
French, they have the custom of dividing the land equally among the
children, and the Mohammedans endow their daughters in the division,
which is very nice of them, but only hastens the family ruin. Unless
a zemindar family launches out into other forms of labour beyond
eating its rents, the number of hangers-on to small parcels of land
increases, and their condition is often pitiable. All the more
because, though the Settlement is permanent, the cesses or rates
nominally levied for roads and District Boards, but really applied
to all manner of other purposes, are continually increasing, and the
curse of malaria, which saps the vitality and rots the brain, appears
to be falling with peculiar virulence upon the zemindar class.
It is a question whether jute and the export of rice have benefited
any one except the merchants and middlemen. Owing to the fall in
jute, the peasants were growing quantities of rice again when I was
there; but next year the rice might go down and jute up, and so they
live in a gambler’s uncertainty, and lay up no store of food, as the
custom used to be, against the evil day. They sell everything as it
grows, and with the money buy Rangoon rice which makes them sick.
Many paternal officials, though bred on our university economics,
told me that to save the people they would even prohibit jute, tax
exported rice, and abolish the cotton excise.
So far we may say the contest lies between Dundee and Eastern
Bengal, but though I believe it to be a vital matter, that contest
is tranquil and slow compared to the dramatic battle raging between
Eastern Bengal and the British cities of Liverpool and Manchester.
Liverpool stands for salt, Manchester for cotton, and Eastern Bengal
has taken a solemn vow not to touch either their salt or their cotton
till the burning wrong of Bengal is redressed. By the burning wrong
they mean the Partition of the Bengali people into two separate
and unconnected governments, Bengal proper to contain 18,000,000
of the race, and Eastern Bengal to contain 25,000,000. With the
addition of the outlying and alien provinces of Behar, Chota Nagpur,
and Orissa, Lord Curzon estimated the population of Bengal under
the old capital of Calcutta at 54,000,000, of whom 9,000,000 would
be Mohammedans; while, including the outlying and alien province
of Assam, the population of “Eastern Bengal and Assam” with a new
capital at Dacca would come to 31,000,000, of whom 18,000,000 would
be Mohammedans. Throughout the whole of Bengal, whether East or West,
it must be again remembered that the people are homogeneous, both
Mohammedans and Hindus belonging to the Bengali race, speaking the
same language, living in amity side by side for generations past, and
only divided in religion because some of their number, chiefly of the
lower and less educated castes, had long ago embraced Islam for the
most persuasive of reasons.[36]
Various schemes for sharing out the administrative burden of the vast
province with its dependencies had been discussed for at least twelve
years before, and there were obvious ways in which it could have
been done—by creating the three contiguous districts of different
race into a new western province with the capital at Patna, or by
placing them under Chief Commissioners, while in either case Bengal
should be raised to a Presidency under a Governor in Calcutta,
enjoying the same privileges as Madras and Bombay. By the Charter
of 1833 we promised a Governorship for Fort William (Calcutta), and
the promise was renewed by Lord Dalhousie in 1853. It is hard in
England to understand the difference that Indians feel between a
Lieutenant-Governor trained in Anglo-Indian routine and a Governor
appointed from among the leading men of England, and coming to
their country free from the narrowing routine of the Service and
Anglo-Indian society. But a very short time in India shows what that
difference means.
Far from carrying out these pledges or following a smaller scheme
of devolution favoured by Mr. Brodrick (Lord Midleton), at that time
Secretary of State for India, Lord Curzon determined to split the
Bengali people roughly in half and give them two Lieutenant-Governors
instead of one—with a view, of course, to “greater administrative
efficiency”; for, as Mr. John Morley somewhere remarked, “the usual
excuse of those who do evil to other people is that their object is
to do them good.” The first sign of Lord Curzon’s purpose was Sir
Herbert Risley’s letter of December 3, 1903, announcing a Partition
in the name of the Government of India. The scheme then proposed
was instantly met by a storm of opposition throughout Bengal, among
Mohammedans and Hindus alike, and to the credit of Anglo-Indians it
must be said that the opposition of the Bengalis was supported by
many of the officials and by the leading Anglo-Indian newspapers,
though the worldly success of officials and newspapers largely
depends on Government favour.
Always impatient of criticism, Lord Curzon hastened through Eastern
Bengal, lecturing the Hindu leaders and trying to win over the
Moslems. With the Moslems, by one means or another, he partially
succeeded, but the opposition among the bulk of the Bengal population
continued as determined as ever. Hundreds of indignation meetings
were held; I believe about two thousand in all. Great petitions
were presented; one with 70,000 signatures attached was sent to
the Home Government. But it was all in vain. The English people
paid no attention; they were not sure where Bengal was; most of
them had never heard of it apart from tigers, and did not care what
Partition meant. The Home Government perhaps had its own reasons for
“letting Curzon down gently.” The scheme was hustled through almost
in secrecy, and almost avowedly against his better judgment, Mr.
Brodrick gave his assent. The fatal “Government Resolution on the
Partition of Bengal” was issued from Simla on July 19, 1905; it was
followed by the Proclamation of September 1st, and a blow was given
to the credit of our country and to her reputation for justice and
popular government, from which it will take us long years of upright
administration and reform to recover.[37]
On October 16th of the same year the Resolution took effect, and
the Partition became what Mr. Morley in an unhappy moment called “a
settled fact.” The anniversary of that national wrong has now become
the Ash Wednesday of India. On that day thousands and thousands of
Indians rub dust or ashes on their foreheads; at dawn they bathe in
silence as at a sacred fast; no meals are eaten; the shops in cities
and the village bazaars are shut; women refuse to cook; they lay
aside their ornaments; men bind each other’s wrists with a yellow
string as a sign that they will never forget the shame; and the whole
day is passed in resentment, mourning, and the hunger of humiliation.
In Calcutta vast meetings are held, and the errors of the Indian
Government are exposed with eloquent patriotism. With each year the
indignation of the protest has increased; the crowds have grown
bigger, the ceremonial more widely spread, the fast more rigorous.
Such was the Partition of Bengal, prompted, as nearly all educated
Indians believe, by Lord Curzon’s personal dislike of the Bengali
race, as shown also by his Convocation speech of the previous
February, in which he brought against the whole people an indictment
for mendacity.[38] The Partition marks the beginning of the “unrest”
in its present form. I think some kind of unrest would have been
developed within the next few years in any case. It arises from all
manner of deep-lying causes—from the success of Asiatic Japanese in
war against a great European power, from the general communication by
railway, the visits of even high-caste Brahmans to Europe, the use of
English as a common tongue, the increasing knowledge of our history
and liberties, and the increasing study of our great Liberal thinkers
and John Morley’s works. Add to these things the growing alienation
of the subject races, owing to notorious cases of injustice in
the law courts, ill-mannered arrogance on the part of certain
Anglo-Indians, abusive incitements to violence by Anglo-Indian
newspapers, and a system of espionage by the police and postal
officials. It would be a wonder indeed if any people with a grain of
self-respect left in them had remained unmoved. But beyond question
it was the Partition that directly occasioned the present outbreaks
of distrust and hostility. When their petitions remained unanswered,
and their public meetings had no effect, when the Partition was
carried out with despotic indifference to their feelings and
interests, the Bengali people, and through them the vast majority of
educated Indians, unwillingly became convinced that England no longer
cared what happened to them or their country, provided they paid the
revenue and kept quiet. It was a dangerous conviction to which they
had been brought. England as a whole neither knew nor cared anything
about it. She thought she had done enough when she had entrusted Lord
Curzon and the Home Government with the duty of knowing and caring.
All advocates of the Partition, from Sir Harvey Adamson downwards,
have continually sneered at the Bengali objection to having their
country cut in half as “sentimental.”[39] By “sentimental” I find
that this sort of people always understand an emotion that does not
bring in sixpence. For instance, if we love our country because of
her reputation for justice and freedom, they call us hysterical
sentimentalists; but if we love our country because trade follows
the flag, they call us sound supporters of the Empire. In accordance
with this despicable standard, we may say that the chief objection
to the Partition is one of sentiment. It is none the less strong on
that account. It is the same kind of sentiment as would set Scotland
ablaze with indignation if an English Prime Minister drew a jagged
line from Thurso to Dumfries, and announced that in future Scotland
would consist of two separate provinces, with one government in
Edinburgh and the other in Glasgow, and no connection between them.
A Scotsman’s chief objection might be described as “sentimental”
by people of Sir Harvey Adamson’s mind, but I think “unrest” would
hardly be the word for what would follow.
Yet that is exactly what England has allowed to be done in Bengal.
The root of the indignation is a sentiment—an emotion that does
not bring in sixpence. It is the sentiment of a patriotic and
progressive race cut in two by an action which they believe to have
been arbitrary and suggested by pique. And just because it is a
sentiment, no material advantage or convenience of administration
can ever serve as compensation for the wrong. But even if outraged
national feeling could be set aside as a sentimental complaint,
the other grievances are strong. Calcutta is justly claimed by all
Bengalis for their own capital, as well as the capital of India. It
is the centre of their culture and trade, of justice and government.
It has the best Indian newspapers; it is the home of the best social
intercourse; its University sets the standard of knowledge; its High
Court is regarded with confidence by all Indians as a sure appeal
against injustice. To be separated from Calcutta and compelled to
look to poor, ruinous, decrepit old Dacca as their capital is for
Bengalis an intellectual and material loss. Dacca was a good enough
Mohammedan capital three centuries ago, but now it is difficult to
get at; its river, as I said, is silting up; it has not a single
newspaper worthy of the name; it has no University, no High Court,
and its new Lieutenant-Governor lives for months together far away
at Shillong, almost inaccessible in the hills. It is true that
Government has bought a lot of land north of the town and has laid
out foundations for residences and offices where future officials can
enjoy themselves in comfort. The existence of those foundations is a
common argument against reversing the Partition even among the many
officials who recognized its error. But to the Bengalis it only makes
the thing worse, for their wretched country will now have to pay fora
double set of buildings, a double set of high and low officials, and
a double set of questionable police.
There are other points. No one but landlords feels much disturbed
at the woes of landlords, who suck their livelihood off the land
like ticks off a sheep. But even sheep-ticks have their feelings,
and in Eastern Bengal the zemindars also have a certain use in
the world, especially when hunger drives them to cultivate their
land themselves. To the zemindars the Partition has been a loss
and hardship, increasing their legal expenses, and reducing such
amenity as life afforded them. Naturally, their sufferings are worst
when the line of partition passes straight through their land and
exposes their flanks to double lawyers’ fees from right and left.
An Englishman whose ancestral estate had been thus divided between
the two provinces, told me his existence had been rendered almost
intolerable. He had always been accustomed to go to Calcutta for
business connected with the estate, and as he was a celebrated
polo-player and took an intelligent interest in horse-racing, his
business visits to the capital were both frequent and pleasing. But
now for more than half his business he had to travel far away to
dingy Dacca—no horse-racing; no polo renown! This was no imaginary
or sentimental grievance like the indignation of a proud and ancient
race split in two for the satisfaction of its rulers, and I felt sure
that if only such a case could be brought home to the sportsmanlike
governors of our Empire, they would persuade Lord Morley to regard
his “settled fact” in a more pliable spirit.
The Eastern Bengalis also object to being bound up with the backward
province of Assam, whose people they regard as semi-barbarous, and
for whose improvement they alone will now have to pay, whereas the
cost was formerly shared by all India. “Are we to be Assamese for
ever?” is the scornful question of even Mohammedan peasants when they
meet the sort of man who knows the news. Equally significant was
a small Assamese deputation which came to me in Calcutta, because
they had heard I was a Liberal, and they supposed that a Liberal
Government would listen to Liberal principles. Their petition was for
help in removing the yoke which now binds them to Eastern Bengal,
where the progressive and educated population are too clever for them
by half!
But of all material grievances—of all grievances other than the
central crime of cutting a nationality in half—I think the Eastern
Bengalis most fear their threatened separation from the Calcutta
High Court. It is true that the blow has not yet fallen, but it
is almost certain to fall, and the Government has refused to give
any pledge against it. When I consulted Sir Andrew Fraser, the
Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, upon this subject, he very kindly
referred me to Sir Herbert Risley’s answer to the Bengal Chamber of
Commerce, which had from the first petitioned against the change.[40]
In Sir Andrew Fraser’s opinion, “Lord Curzon’s Government there
placed clearly on record their view that nothing less than a High
Court could ever be established in the new province,” but he appears
to me to have misread the document. In the main sections of his
reply, Sir Herbert Risley carefully guards the Government three times
over from making any guarantee as to the future. He states it as the
Government’s opinion:—
“That it is most unlikely that in the event of the existing
judicial machinery being found inadequate for the service of
the two provinces and of public opinion then demanding the
establishment of a Chartered High Court, any tribunal occupying a
position of less authority and influence would either be proposed
by the Government of India or sanctioned by the Secretary of State.”
But he refuses to bind the future Government either to maintain the
present connection between Eastern Bengal and the Calcutta High
Court, or to establish a new High Court at Dacca in its place. The
fear of the Eastern Bengalis is that in place of a High Court, which
is regarded throughout India as the embodiment of true British
justice uncontaminated by Anglo-Indian prejudice and tradition,
they may be put off with a Chief Court, in which the judges have
been trained under the distorting influence of that prejudice and
tradition. It is hard for us, accustomed to regard all our Courts
as fairly equal in the dispensation of justice, to realize what
that difference implies to Indians. But it is exactly parallel to
the difference they recognize between most Anglo-Indians and the
Englishman straight from home.
FOOTNOTES:
[36] See Introduction, p. 10 ff, and for the history of Eastern
Bengal see Mr. Bradley Birt’s “Romance of an Eastern Capital,” _i.e._
Dacca.
[37] See Introduction, p. 12.
[38] See Introduction, p. 7 ff.
[39] Sir Harvey Adamson’s speech at St. Andrew’s Dinner in Calcutta,
1907.
[40] Proceedings of the Home Department, Simla, October 2, 1905.