THE NATIVE STATES.
One of the chief features of the original scheme of constitutional
reforms submitted to the Secretary of State by the Government of India
was the creation of an Imperial Advisory Council composed of ruling
chiefs and territorial magnates. The proposal gave rise to a variety of
objections, the most serious one being the difficulty of adjusting the
relations to the Government of India of a Council in which the most
conspicuous members could have had no definite _locus standi_ in regard
to the internal affairs of British India--i.e., of the larger part of
our Indian dependency under direct British administration. The
difficulty was evaded by dropping the proposal. But to evade a
difficulty is only to postpone it. Though the constitutional reforms are
confined, in their immediate application, to British India, measures of
such far-reaching importance must react more or less directly upon the
whole of our Indian Empire. Is it therefore politic, or, indeed,
possible, to leave out of account the Native States, which occupy
altogether about one-third of the total area of India and have an
aggregate population of over 68 millions, or to ignore the rulers
charged with their administration?
The Native States of India vary in size and importance from powerful
principalities like the Nizam's State of Hyderabad, with an area of
82,000 miles--nearly equal to that of England and Wales and Scotland---
and a population of over 11 millions, down to diminutive chiefships,
smaller than the holdings of a great English landlord. Distributed
throughout the whole length and breadth of the peninsula, they display
the same extraordinary variety of races and creeds and castes and
languages and customs and traditions as the provinces under the
immediate governance of the Viceroy, and their rulers themselves
represent almost every phase and aspect of Indian history. The Princes
of Rajputana, headed by the Maharana of Udaipur, with genealogies
reaching back into the mythical ages, have handed down to the present
day the traditions of Hindu chivalry. In the south of India, the rulers
of Mysore and Cochin and Iravancore, who also claim Rajput blood, still
personify the subjection of the older Dravidian races to the Aryan
invaders from the north. Mahratta chiefs like Scindia and the Gaekwar
date from the great uplifting of the Mahratta power in the eighteenth
century, whilst the Maharajah of Kolhapur is a descendant of Shivaji,
the first Mahratta chieftain to stem the tide of Mahomedan conquest more
than a century earlier. The great majority of the ruling princes and
chiefs are Hindus, but besides the Nizam, the most powerful of all,
there are not a few Mahomedan rulers who have survived the downfall of
Moslem supremacy, just as the Sikh chiefs of Patiala, Nabha, and
Kapurthala, in the Punjab, still recall the great days of Ranjit Singh
and the Sikh confederacy. In some of the Native States the ruling
families are neither of the same race nor of the same creed as the
majority of their subjects. The Nizam is a Sunni Mahomedan, but most of
his subjects are Hindus, and of the Mahomedans some of the most
influential are Shias. The Maharajah of Kashmir, a Hindu Rajput, rules
over many Mongolian Buddhists, whilst there are but few Mahrattas in
Gwalior or Indore, though both Holkar and Scindia are, Mahratta
Princes.
In all the Native States the system of government is more or less of the
old patriarchal or personal type which has always obtained in the East,
but in its application it exhibits many variations which reflect
sometimes the idiosyncrasies of the ruler and sometimes the dominant
forces of inherited social traditions. In Cochin and Travancore, for
instance, the ancient ascendency of the Northern Brahmans over the
Dravidian subject races survives in some of its most archaic forms.
Udaipur and Jaipur have perhaps preserved more than any other States of
Rajputana the aristocratic conservatism of olden days, whilst some of
the younger Rajput chiefs have moved more freely with the times and with
their own Western education. The Gaekwar has gone further than any other
ruling chief in introducing into his State of Baroda the outward forms
of what we call Western progress, though his will is probably in all
essentials as absolute as that of Scindia, another Mahratta chief, whose
interest in every form of Western activity is displayed almost as much
in his physical energy as in his intellectual alertness. Some no doubt
abandon the conduct of public affairs almost entirely to their Ministers
and prefer a life of easy self-indulgence. Others, on the contrary, are
keen administrators, and insist upon doing everything themselves. As
masterful a ruler as any in the whole of India is a lady, the Begum of
Bhopal, a Mahomedan Princess of rare attainments and character. The
Nizam, on the other hand, though an absolute ruler, has recently placed
it on record that he attributes the peaceful content and law-abiding
character of his subjections to the liberal traditions he has inherited
from his ancestors. "They were singularly free from all religious and
racial prejudices. Their wisdom and foresight induced them to employ
Hindus and Mahomedans, Europeans, and Parsees alike, in carrying on the
administration, and they reposed entire confidence in their officers
whatever religion and race they belonged to." To those principles his
Highness rightly claims to have himself adhered.
Again, though the relationship of the Supreme Government to all these
rulers is one of suzerainty, it is governed in each particular case by
special and different treaties which vary the extent and nature of the
control exercised over them. In some of its aspects, the principles of
our policy towards them were admirably set forth in a speech delivered
in November, 1909, by Lord Minto at Udaipur. "In guaranteeing their
internal independence and in undertaking their protection against
external aggression, it naturally follows that the Imperial Government
has assumed a certain degree of responsibility for the general soundness
of their administration, and would not consent to incur the reproach of
being an indirect instrument of misrule. There are also certain matters
in which it is necessary for the Government of India to safeguard the
interests of the community as a whole, as well as those of the Paramount
Power, such as railways, telegraphs, and other services of an Imperial
character." At the same time the Viceroy wisely laid great stress on the
fact that, in pursuance of the pledges given by the British Crown to the
rulers of the Native States, "our policy is with rare exceptions one of
non-interference in their internal affairs," and he pointed out that, as
owing to the varying conditions of different States "any attempt at
complete uniformity and subservience to precedent" must be dangerous, he
had endeavoured "to deal with questions as they arose with reference to
existing treaties, the merits of each case, local conditions, antecedent
circumstances, and the particular stage of development, feudal and
constitutional, of individual principalities." It is obviously
impossible to enforce a more rigid control over the feudatory States at
the same time as we are delegating larger powers to the natives of India
under direct British administration. This is a point which Lord Minto
might indeed have emphasized with advantage. For there seems to be a
growing tendency, probably at home rather than in India, to ignore our
responsibilities towards the ruling chiefs, and to regard them as more
or less negligible quantities in the constitutional experiments we are
making in our Indian Empire. When an emergency arises such as a frontier
war or a military expedition in the Sudan or in China, we appeal
unhesitatingly to the loyalty of the Princes of India, and so far they
have cheerfully borne their share in these Imperial enterprises though
they were never drawn into consultation beforehand, and their own
material interests were not directly involved. On the other hand,
questions which do involve their material interests, questions which
necessarily affect the well-being of their States quite as much as that
of British India, questions of tariff and of currency that react upon
the economic prosperity of the whole of India are settled between
Whitehall and Government House at Calcutta without their opinion being
even invited. Sometimes even decisions are taken without their knowledge
on matters that directly affect their own exchequers, as in the matter
of the opium trade with China. Some of the native States are the largest
producers of the Indian poppy, and in order to satisfy the
susceptibilities, very meritorious in themselves, of our national
conscience, we lightheartedly impose upon them, without consultation or
prospect of compensation, the sacrifice, which costs us nothing, of one
of the most valuable products of their soil and chief sources of
revenue. Can they do otherwise than draw unfavourable comparisons
between the harsh measure meted out to them in this matter and the
generous treatment of the West Indies by the Mother Country when
£20,000,000 were voted out of the Imperial Exchequer towards
compensation for the material losses arising out of the abolition of
slavery?
How important it is to associate the Princes of India with the purposes
of our Indian policy has seldom been more clearly shown than during
these last troublous years when the forces of disaffection have revealed
themselves as a serious public danger. The principle of authority
cannot be attacked in British India without suffering diminution in the
Native States. They are not shut up in watertight compartments and
sedition cannot be preached on one side of a border, which in most cases
is merely an administrative boundary line, without finding an echo on
the other side. The prestige of an Indian Prince in his own land is
great. It is rooted in most cases in ancient traditions to which no
alien rulers can appeal. Nevertheless some of the most experienced and
enlightened of the ruling chiefs showed a much earlier and livelier
appreciation of the subversive tendencies of Indian unrest than those
responsible for the governance of British India. Some of them, like the
Maharajahs of Kolhapur and of Patiala, have been brought face to face
with the same violent, and even with the same criminal, methods of
agitation as the Government of India has had to deal with in provinces
under British administration. The Maharajah of Jaipur and Maharajah
Scindia felt themselves constrained just about a year ago to enact
vigorous measures on their own account against sedition and against the
importation into their States of seditious literature which was still
allowed to circulate with impunity in British India, whilst the State of
Bikanir was the first to introduce an Explosive Substances Act
immediately after the epidemic of bomb-throwing had broken out in
Bengal. Other States have also taken strong preventive measures, but
many have fortunately been spared so far any serious trouble within
their own borders, and their rulers have been able to study the problem
merely as interested observers and from the point of view of the general
welfare of the country.
On August 65 1909, the Viceroy took the unusual step of communicating
direct with all the principal ruling Princes and Chiefs of India on the
subject of the Active unrest prevalent in many parts of the country, and
invited an exchange of opinions "with a view to mutual co-operation
against a common danger." Some doubts were then expressed as to the
wisdom of such a course, on the ground that it might create in the
protected States an impression of exaggerated alarm. 'But the tone and
substance of the replies which his Excellency's communication elicited
showed that there was no reason for any such apprehensions. The Ruling
Chiefs, on the contrary, appreciated and reciprocated the confidence
reposed in them, and their replies, indeed, constitute an exceptionally
interesting and instructive set of documents; for the very diversity of
origin and traditions and influence gives peculiar weight to the
position assumed by the rulers of the Native States towards the forces
of active unrest in India. Had those forces merely been engaged in a
legitimate struggle for the enlargement of Indian rights and liberties,
it is scarcely conceivable that the Ruling Princes and Chiefs should
have passed judgment against them with such overwhelming unanimity.
It may be argued that in replying to a Viceregal _Kharita_, the Ruling
Chiefs could hardly do less than recognize the existence of the "common
danger" to which Lord Minto had drawn their attention. But the careful
analysis of the influences behind the agitation and the practical
suggestions for dealing with it which the majority of the replies
contain, prove that their opinions are certainly not framed "to order."
They represent the convictions and experience of a group of responsible
Indians better situated in some respects to obtain accurate information
about the doings and feelings of their fellow-countrymen than any
Anglo-Indian administrators can be. The language of the Nizam is
singularly apt and direct, "Once the forces of lawlessness and disorder
are let loose there is no knowing where they will stop. It is true that,
compared with the enormous population of India, the disaffected people
are a very insignificant minority, but, given time and opportunity,
there exists the danger of this small minority spreading its tentacles
all over the country and inoculating with its poisonous doctrines the
classes and masses hitherto untouched by this seditious movement." The
Maharana of Udaipur, speaking with the authority of his unique position
amongst Hindus as the premier Prince of Rajputana, not only condemns an
agitation "which is detrimental to all good government and social
administration," but declares it to be "a great disgrace to their name
as also to their religious beliefs that, in spite of the great
prosperity India has enjoyed under the British _régime_, people are
acting in such an ungrateful way." No less emphatic is the Mahratta
ruler of Gwalior:--"The question is undoubtedly a grave one, affecting
as it does the future well-being of India," and "it particularly behoves
those who preside over the destinies of the people and have large
personal stakes to do all in their power to grapple with it vigorously."
The Maharajah of Jaipur, one of the wisest of the older generation of
Hindu rulers, agrees that "only a small fraction of the population has
been contaminated by the seditious germ," but he adds significantly that
"that fraction has, it seems, been carefully organized by able, rich,
and unscrupulous men," and he does not hesitate to declare that "an
organized and concerted campaign, offensive and defensive, against the
common enemy is what is wanted."
According to the Rajah of Dewas, one of the most enlightened of the
younger Hindu chiefs, "it is a well known fact that the endeavours of
the seditious party are directed not only against the Paramount Power,
but against all constituted forms of government in India, through an
absolutely misunderstood sense of 'patriotism,' and through an
attachment to the popular idea of 'government by the people,' when every
level-headed Indian must admit that India generally has not in any way
shown its fitness for a popular government." He goes so far even as to
state his personal conviction that history and all "sound-minded" people
agree that India cannot really attain to the standard of popular
government as understood by the West.
It is another Hindu ruler, the Rajah of Ratlam, who points out the close
connexion, upon which I have had to lay repeated stress, between
religious revivalism and sedition. He recognizes that "Hindus, and for
the matter of that all Oriental peoples, are swayed more by religion
than by anything else." Government have hitherto adopted, and rightly
adopted, the policy of allowing perfect freedom in the matter of
religious beliefs, but as the seditionists are seeking to connect their
anarchical movement with religion, and the political _Sadhu_ is abroad,
it is high time to change the policy of non-interference in so-called
religious affairs. The new religion which is now being preached, "with
its worship of heroes like Shivaji and the doctrine of India for India
alone," deserves, this Hindu Prince boldly declares, to be treated as
Thuggism and Suttee were treated, which both claimed the sanction of
religion. "It pains me," he adds, "to write as above, but already
religion has played a prominent part in this matter, and religious books
were found in almost every search made for weapons and bombs. The _rôle_
of the priest or the _Sadhu_ is most convenient, and rulers have bowed,
and do bow, to religious preachers. These people generally distort the
real import of religious precepts, and thereby vitiate the public mind.
The founders are sly enough to flatter the Government by an occasional
address breathing loyalty and friendship, but it is essential to check
this religious propaganda."
The rulers of the Native States are not content merely to profess
loyalty and reprobate disaffection. With the exception of the Gaekwar,
whose reply, without striking any note of substantial dissent, is,
marked, by a certain coolness that has won for him the applause of the
Nationalist Press, they respond heartily to the Viceroy's request for
suggestions as to the most effective measures to cope with the evil.
Most of them put in the very forefront of their recommendations the
necessity of checking the licence of the Indian Press, to which they
attribute the main responsibility for the widening of the gulf between
the rulers and the ruled. And it should be remembered that these
opinions were expressed some months before the Imperial Government and
the Government of India decided to introduce the new Press Act. The
Nizam holds that newspapers publishing false allegations or exaggerated
reports should be officially called upon "to print formal contradiction
or correction as directed." For, in his Highness's opinion, "it is no
longer safe or desirable to treat with silent contempt any perverse
statement which is publicly made, because the spread of education on the
one hand has created a general interest in the news of the country, and
a section of the Press, on the other hand, deliberately disseminates
news calculated to promote enmity between Europeans and Indians, or to
excite hatred of Government and its officers in the ignorant and
credulous minds." Several Chiefs recommend more summary proceedings and
less publicity in the case of political offences, as, though such
measures may appear arbitrary at first sight, "they are quite suited to
the country." Several agree that a closer watch should be kept on
"religious mendicants" who go about in the guise of _Sadhus_ preaching
sedition, and that a more intimate exchange of secret intelligence
should take place with regard to the seditious propaganda between the
different States and the Government of India. Others believe in the
creation of counter-organizations to inform and encourage the loyal
elements.
But it is perhaps on the question of education that some of the Ruling
Chiefs speak with the greatest weight and authority, and there is
nothing they more deeply deplore than the divorce of secular instruction
from religious and moral training, which they hold responsible for much
of the present mischief. "Strange as it may sound," says the Rajah of
Dewas, "it is a well-known fact that the germs of the present unrest in
India were laid by that benefactor of the human race, education."
Another Chief is of opinion that, as the formation of character is the
highest object of education, all public schools should be graded by the
results they achieve in this direction rather than by high percentages
in examinations; whilst others strongly recommend the extension of the
residential college system and greater care in the selection of good
teachers.
One may possibly not agree with all the opinions expressed or with all
the recommendations made in this correspondence, but their general
uniformity cannot fail to carry weight. It certainly carried weight with
both the Government of India and the Imperial Government. Not only did
it admittedly contribute to the enactment of the Indian Press Bill of
February last, but it has probably also contributed to bring about a
more general recognition of the urgency of the Indian educational
problem. The effect produced in India itself by the publication of the
views held by the rulers of Native States, many of whom enjoy great
prestige and influence far beyond the limits of their immediate
dominions, was naturally considerable. The "extremists" were lashed to
fury, and none of the seditious leaflets directed against the "alien"
rulers and "sun-dried bureaucrats" was more violent than one issued in
reply to these utterances of the rulers of their own race. One of the
ruling Chiefs to whom it had been sent gave me a copy of it as "a
characteristic document." It is headed: "Choose, O Indian Princes." It
begins, it is true, by assuring them that there is not as yet any
cut-and-dried scheme for dealing with them.
No one but the voice of the Mother herself will and can
determine when once She comes to herself and stands free
what constitution shall be adopted by Her for the guidance
of Her life after the revolution is over. ... Without
going into details we may mention this much, that whether
the head of the Imperial Government of the Indian Nation
be a President or a King depends upon how the revolution
develops itself ... The Mother must be free, must
be one and united, must make her will supreme. Then it
may be that She gives out this Her will either wearing a kingly
crown on Her head or a Republican mantle round Her sacred
form.
But after being exhorted in impassioned accents either to sacrifice
themselves in the great national struggle now at hand, or at the very
least to stand back and keep the ring, they are warned as to the
consequences of disregarding these admonitions:--
Forget not, O Princes! that a strict account will be asked
of your doings and non-doings, and a people newly-born
will not fail to pay you in the coin you paid. Every one
who shall have actively betrayed the trust of the people,
disowned his fathers, and debased his blood by arraying
himself against the Mother--he shall be crushed to dust
and ashes.... Do you doubt our grim earnestness!
If so hear the name of Dhingra and be dumb. In the name
of that martyr, O Indian Princes, we ask you to think
solemnly and deeply upon these words. Choose as you will
and you will reap what you sow. Choose whether you shall
be the first of the nation's fathers or the last of the nation's
tyrants.
In some less rabid quarters an attempt has been made to decry the views
of the native rulers as emanating from petty Oriental despots, terrified
by the onward march of the new Indian democracy. If so it is strange
that whilst these "despots" make no secret of their attitude towards
disaffection, they are equally outspoken on the necessity of a liberal
and progressive policy. The Nizam himself states emphatically that he is
"a great believer in conciliation and repression going hand in hand to
cope with the present condition of India. While sedition should be
localized and rooted out sternly, and even mercilessly, deep sympathy
and unreserved reliance should manifest themselves in all dealings with
loyal subjects without distinction of creed, caste, and colour."
Unfortunately it requires at the present day more courage for an Indian
to hold such language as that than to coquet, as many politicians do,
with violence and crime. Indians in high position are peculiarly
sensitive to printed attacks, perhaps because behind such attacks there
often lurk forms of social pressure, rendered possible by their caste
system, with which we, happily for ourselves, are totally unfamiliar.
One of the most discouraging features of the present situation is that
so few among the "moderate" politicians who are known to share and
approve the views expressed by the Princes of India have had the moral
courage to endorse them publicly.
The fearless response made by the ruling Chiefs to Lord Minto's appeal
for advice and support in the repression of sedition conveys at the same
time another lesson which we may well take to heart. The Government of
India consulted them after the danger had arisen and become manifest. Is
it not possible that, had we maintained closer touch with them in the
past, had we appreciated more fully the value of their knowledge and
experience, the danger might never have arisen or would never have
attained such threatening proportions? At any rate, now that the
consciousness of a common danger has drawn Princes and Government closer
together, no time should be lost in establishing some machinery which
would secure for the future a more sustained and intimate co-operation
between them.