SOCIAL AND OFFICIAL RELATIONS.
On few subjects are more ignorant or malevolent statements made than on
the attitude of Englishmen in India towards the natives of the country.
That social relations between Englishmen and Indians seldom grow
intimate is true enough, but not that the fault lies mainly with
Englishmen. At the risk of being trite, I must recall a few elementary
considerations.
The bedrock difficulty is that Indian customs prevent any kind of
intimacy between English and Indian families. Even in England the
relations between men who are excluded from acquaintance with each
other's families can rarely be called intimate, and except in the very
few cases of Indian families that are altogether Westernized, Indian
habits rigidly exclude Englishmen from admission into the homes of
Indian gentlemen, whether Hindu or Mahomedan. Intercourse between Indian
and English ladies is in the same way almost entirely confined to formal
visits paid by the latter to the zenana and the harem, and to so-called
_Purdah_ parties, given in English houses, in which Indian ladies are
entertained as far as possible under the same conditions that prevail in
their own homes--i.e., to the total exclusion of all males. So long as
Indian ladies are condemned to a life of complete seclusion the
interests they have in common with their English visitors must
necessarily be very few. On the other hand, it is not surprising that
Englishmen, knowing the views that many Indian men entertain with regard
to the position of women, do not care to encourage them to visit their
own houses on a footing of intimacy that would necessarily bring them
into more or less familiar contact with their English wives and sisters
and daughters. There is very much to admire in the family relations, and
especially in the filial relations, that exist in an Indian home,
whether Hindu or Mahomedan, but it is idle to pretend that Indian ideas
with regard to the relations between the sexes are the same as ours. In
these circumstances any social fusion between even the better classes of
the two races seems to be for the present out of the question.
Very sincere and creditable efforts are now, it is true, being made on
both sides to diminish the gulf that divides English and Indian society,
and I have been at various gatherings which were attended by Englishmen
and Englishwomen and by Indians, among whom there was sometimes even a
sprinkling of Indian ladies. But the English host and hostess invariably
found it difficult to prevent their Indian guests forming groups of
their own, and each group seemed to be as reluctant to mingle with other
Indian groups of a different class or caste as with their English
fellow-guests. Indian society has been for centuries split up by race
and caste and creed distinctions into so many watertight compartments
that it does not care for the Western forms of social intercourse, which
tend to ignore those distinctions. It is Indians themselves who regard
us, much more than we regard ourselves, as a separate caste. Moreover,
for the ordinary and somewhat desultory conversation which plays so
large a part in Western sociability the Indian has very little
understanding. He always imagines that conversation must have some
definite purpose, and though he has far, more than most English men, the
gift of ready and courteous speech, and often will talk for a long time
both discursively and pleasantly, it is almost always as a preliminary
to the introduction of some particular topic in which his personal
interests are more or less directly involved. A question which causes a
good deal of soreness is the rigid exclusion of Indians from many
Anglo-Indian clubs. But though a little more elasticity as to the
entertainment of Indian "guests" might reasonably be conceded to Indian
susceptibilities, a club is after all just as much as his house an
Englishman's castle, and it is only in India that any one would venture
to suggest that a club should not settle its rules of membership as it
thinks fit. In the large cities at least there should, however, be room
for clubs which, like the Calcutta Club at Calcutta, serve the very
useful purpose of bringing together by mutual consent the higher classes
of Indians and Englishmen, official and non-official. Yet even there the
exigencies of caste observances, especially in the case of Hindus,
militate against the more convivial forms of intercourse which the
Englishman particularly affects. There are not a few Hindu members who
will talk or play bridge with their English fellow-members into the
small hours of the morning, but who consider themselves bound in
conscience not to sit down to dinner with them; whilst some will
doubtless feel obliged to perform ceremonial ablutions when they go
home. Others again, for similar reasons, would decline to join any
European club. They are no more to be blamed than Englishmen who prefer
to reserve membership of their clubs to Europeans, but the fact remains
and has to be reckoned with.
The best and most satisfactory relations are those maintained between
Englishmen and Indians who understand and respect each other's
peculiarities. No class of Englishman in India fulfils those conditions
more fully than the Indian Civil Service. It is, I know, the _bête
noire_ of the Indian politician, and even Englishmen who ought to know
better seem to think that, once they have labelled it a "bureaucracy,"
that barbarous name is enough to hang it--or enough, at least, to lend
plausibility to the charge that Anglo-Indian administrators are arrogant
and harsh in their personal dealings with Indians and ignorant and
unsympathetic in their methods of government.
That the English civilian goes out to India with a tolerably high
intellectual and moral equipment can hardly be disputed, for he
represents the pick of the young men who qualify for our Civil Service
at home as well as abroad, and in respect of character, integrity, and
intelligence the British Civil Service can challenge comparison with
that of any other country in the world. Why should he suddenly change
into a narrow-minded, petty tyrant as soon as he sets foot in India? A
great part at least of his career is spent in the very closest contact
with the people, for he often lives for years together in remote
districts where he has practically no other society than that of
natives. He generally knows and speaks fluently more than one
vernacular, though, owing to the multiplicity of Indian languages--there
are five, for instance, in the Bombay Presidency alone--- he may find
himself suddenly transferred to a district in which the vernaculars he
has learnt are of no use to him. Part of his time is always spent "in
camp"--_i.e._ moving about from village to village, receiving petitions,
investigating cases, listening to complaints. Perhaps none of the
ordinary duties of administration bring him so closely into touch with
the people as the collection of land revenue, for it is there that his
sense of fairness comes most conspicuously into play and wins
recognition. Hence, for instance, in Bengal one of the bad results of
the "Permanent Settlement" of the land revenue, which leaves no room for
the Collector's ordinary work, has been that the people and the civilian
know generally less about each other than in other parts of India. Few
Indians venture to impugn the Englishman's integrity and impartiality in
adjudging cases in which material interests are concerned, or in
settling differences between natives; and nowhere are those qualities
more valuable and more highly appreciated than in a country accustomed
for centuries to every form of oppression and of social pressure for
which the multitudinous claims of caste and family open up endless
opportunities. As he has no permanent ties of his own in India, it does
not matter to him personally whether the individual case he has to
settle goes in favour of A or of B, or whether the native official, whom
he appoints or promotes, belongs to this or to that caste. The people
know this, and because they have learned to trust the Englishman's sense
of fair play, they appeal, whenever they get the chance, to the European
official rather than to one of their own race. But it is especially in
times of stress, in the evil days of famine or of plague, that they turn
to him for help. Nowhere is the "sun-dried bureaucrat" seen to better
advantage than in the famine or plague camp, where the "bureaucrat"
would come hopelessly to grief, but where the English civilian, not
being a "bureaucrat," triumphs over difficulties by sheer force of
character and power of initiative. It is just in such emergencies, for
which the most elaborate "regulations" cannot wholly provide, that the
superiority of the European over the native official is most
conspicuous. If "Padgett, M.P.", would go out to India in the hot rather
than in the cold weather, and instead of either merely enjoying the
splendid hospitality of the chief centres of Anglo-Indian society, or
borrowing his views of British administration from the Indian
politicians of the large cities, would spend some of his time with a
civilian in an up-country station and follow his daily round of work
amidst the real people of India, he would probably come home with very
different and much more accurate ideas of what India is and of what the
relations are between the Anglo-Indian official and the natives of the
country.
Far from having flooded India, as is often alleged, with a horde of
overpaid officials, we may justly claim that no Western nation has ever
attempted to govern an alien dependency with a smaller staff of its own
race, or has admitted the subject races to so large a participation in
its public services. The whole vast machinery of executive and judicial
administration in British India employs over 1,250,000 Indians, and only
a little more than 5,000 Englishmen altogether, of whom about one-sixth
constitute what is called _par excellence_ the Civil Service of India.
Not the least remarkable achievement of British rule has been the
building up of a great body of Indian public servants capable of rising
to offices of great trust. Not only, for instance, do Indian Judges sit
on the Bench in the High Courts on terms of complete equality with their
European colleagues, but magisterial work all over India is done chiefly
by Indians. The same holds good of the Revenue Department and of the
much, and often very unjustly, abused Department of Police; and, in
fact, as Anglo-Indian officials are the first to acknowledge, there is
not a department which could be carried on to-day without the loyal and
intelligent co-operation of the Indian public servant. There is room for
improving the position of Indians, not only, as I have already pointed
out, in the Educational Department, but probably in every branch of the
"Provincial" service, which corresponds roughly with what was formerly
called the "Un-covenanted" service. As far back as 1879 Lord Lytton laid
down rules which gave to natives of India one-sixth of the appointments
until then reserved for the "Covenanted" service, and we have certainly
not yet reached the limit of the number of Indians who may ultimately
with advantage be employed in the different branches of the public
service; but few who know the defects as well as the good qualities of
the native will deny that to reduce hastily the European leaven in any
department would be to jeopardize its moral as well as its
administrative efficiency. The condition of the police, for instance, is
a case in point, for any survival of the bad old native traditions is
due very largely to the insufficiency of European control. Mr. Gokhale
has himself admitted as one of the reasons for founding his society of
"Servants of India" the necessity of "building up a higher type of
character and capacity than is generally available in the country." For
the same reason we must move slowly and cautiously in substituting
Indians for Europeans in the very small number of posts which the latter
still occupy. That the highest offices of executive control must be very
largely held by Englishmen so long as we continue to be responsible for
the government of India is admitted by all but the most "advanced"
Indian politicians, and it is to qualify for and to hold such positions
that the Indian Civil Service--formerly the "Covenanted" service--is
maintained. It consists of a small _élite_ of barely I,200 men, mostly,
but not exclusively, Englishmen, for it includes nearly 100 Indians. It
is recruited by competitive examinations held in England, and this is
one of the chief grievances of Indians. But in order to preserve the
very high standard it has hitherto maintained, it seems essential that
Indians who wish to enter it should have had not only the Western
education which Indian Universities might be expected to provide, but
the thoroughly English training which India certainly does not as yet
supply.
In the eyes of the disaffected Indian politician the really unpardonable
sin of the Civil Service is that it constitutes the bulwark of British
rule, the one permanent link between the Government of India and the
manifold millions entrusted to their care. I have already had occasion
to show, incidentally, how unfounded is the charge that, through
ignorance and want of sympathy, the British civilian is callous to the
real interests and sentiments of the people in dealing with the larger
problems of Indian statesmanship. The contrary is the case, for to him
belongs the credit of almost every measure passed during the last 50
years for the benefit of the Indian masses, and passed frequently in the
teeth of vehement opposition from the Indian politician. Nor is it
surprising that it should be so. For the Indian politician--generally a
townsman--is, as a rule, drawn from and represents classes that have
very little in common with the great bulk of the people, who are
agriculturists. The British civilian, on the other hand, often spends
the best years of his life in rural districts, seldom even visited by
the politician, and therefore knows much more about the needs and the
feelings of the people among whom he lives and moves. In the best sense
of the word he is in fact the one real democrat in India. The very fact
that he is a bird of passage in the country makes him absolutely
independent of the class interests and personal bias to which the
politician is almost always liable. Moreover, the chief, and perfectly
legitimate, object to which the Anglo-Indian administrator is bound to
address himself is, as Mr. Bepin Chandra Pal once candidly admitted, to
capture "the heart, the mind of the people ... to secure, if not the
allegiance, at least the passive, the generous acquiescence of the
general mass of the population." To make his meaning perfectly clear,
Mr. Pal instanced the rural reforms, the agricultural banks and other
things which had been done in Lord Curzon's time, "to captivate the mind
of the teeming masses," and he added that "he is a foolish politician in
India who allows the Government to capture the mind of the masses to the
exclusion of his own influence and his own countrymen." Mr. Pal is from
his point of view perfectly logical, and so were the writers in the
_Yugantar_, who, when they elaborated their scheme of revolutionary
propaganda, declared that the first step must be to undermine the
confidence of the people in their rulers and to destroy the spirit of
contentedness under an alien yoke. But could there be a more striking
tribute to the intelligent and sympathetic treatment of the interests of
the Indian masses by their British rulers than such admissions on the
part of the enemies of British rule?
From this point of view nothing but good should result from the larger
opportunities given by the recent reforms for the discussion of Indian
questions in the enlarged Councils, so long as the Indian
representatives in these Councils are drawn, as far as possible, from
the different classes which, to some extent, reflect the different
interests of the multitudinous communities that make up the people of
India. The British civilian will have a much better chance than he has
hitherto had of meeting his detractors in the open, and, if one may
judge by the proceedings last winter, when the Councils met for the
first time under the new conditions, there is little reason to fear, as
many did at first, that he will be taken at a disadvantage in debate
owing to the greater fluency and rhetorical resourcefulness of the
Indian politician. It was not only in the Imperial Council in Calcutta
that the official members, having the better case and stating it quite
simply, proved more than a match for the more exuberant eloquence of
their opponents. On the contrary, the personal contact established in
the enlarged Councils between the Anglo-Indian official and the better
class of Indian politician may well serve to diminish the prejudices
which exist on both sides. It is, I believe, quite a mistake to suppose
that the British civilian generally resents the recent reforms, though
he may very well resent the spirit of hostility and suspicion in which
they were advocated and welcomed in some quarters, as if they were
specially directed against the European element in the Civil Service. A
practical difficulty is the heavy call which attendance in Council will
make upon Civil servants who have to represent Government in these
assemblies. Already for many years past the amount of work, and
especially of office work, has steadily increased and without any
corresponding increase of the establishment. Hence the civilian has less
time to receive Indian visitors, and he is often obliged to curtail the
period he spends during the year in camp. Hence also the growing
frequency of transfers and of officiating or temporary appointments.
There are, in fact, to-day barely enough men to go round, and,
obviously, the more frequently a man is moved, the less chance he has of
getting thoroughly acquainted with the people among whom he has to work
in a country such as India, where within the limits of the same province
you may find half a dozen widely different communities speaking
different languages and having different creeds and customs. Perhaps,
too, for the same reasons, there is a tendency towards over-centralization
in the "Secretariats" or permanent departments at the seat of government,
whether in Simla or in the provincial capitals, and the less favoured
civilian who bears the heat and burden of the day in the _mofussil_ is both
more dependent upon them and more jealous of the many advantages they
naturally enjoy. Posts and telegraphs and the multiplying of "regulations"
everywhere tend to weaken personal initiative. Nor can it be denied that
with the increased facilities of travel to and from Europe civilians no
longer look upon India quite so much as their home. The local _liaisons_,
not uncommon in pre-Mutiny days, are now things of the past, and the
married man of to-day who has to send his children home for their
education, and often his wife too, either on account of the climate or
to look after the children, is naturally more disposed to count up his
years of service and to retire on his pension at the earliest opportunity.
The increased cost of living in India and the depreciation of the rupee
have also made the service less attractive from the purely pecuniary point
of view, whilst in other ways it must suffer indirectly from such changes
as the reduction of the European staff in the Indian Medical Department.
The substitution of Indian for European doctors in outlying stations where
there are no European practitioners is a distinct hardship for married
officials, as there is a good deal more than mere prejudice to explain the
reluctance of Englishwomen to be treated by native medical advisers. Nor
is it possible to disguise the soreness caused throughout the Indian Civil
Service by the recent appointment of a young member of the English
Civil Service to one of the very highest posts in India. No one
questions Mr. Clark's ability, but is he really more able than every one
of the many men who passed with him, and for many years before him,
through the same door into the public service and elected to work in
India rather than at home? No Minister would have thought of promoting
him now to an Under-Secretaryship of State in England, and apart from
the grave reflection upon the Indian Civil Service--- and the belief
generally entertained amongst Indians that it was meant to be a
reflection upon the Indian Civil Service--his appointment to a far
higher Indian office implies a grave misconception of the proper
functions of a Council which constitutes the Government of India.
None of these minor considerations, however, will substantially affect
the future of the Indian Civil Service if only it continues to receive
from public opinion at home, and from the Imperial Government as well as
from the Government of India, the loyal support and encouragement which
the admirable work it performs, often under very trying conditions,
deserves. An unfortunate impression has undoubtedly been created during
the last few years in the Indian Civil Service that there is no longer
the same assurance of such support and encouragement either from
Whitehall or from Simla, whilst the attacks of irresponsible partisans
have redoubled in intensity and virulence, and have found a louder and
louder echo both on the platform and in the Press at home. The loss of
contact between the Government of India and Anglo-Indian administrators
has been as painfully felt as the frigid tone of many official
utterances in Parliament, which have seemed inspired by a desire more
often to avoid party embarrassments at Westminster than to protect
public servants, who have no means of defending themselves, against even
the grossest forms of misrepresentation and calumny, leading straight to
the revolver and the bomb of the political assassin. The British
civilian is not going to be frightened by one more risk added to the
vicissitudes of an Indian career, but can you expect him to be proof
against discouragement when many of his fellow-countrymen exhaust their
ingenuity in extenuating or in casting upon him the primary
responsibility for the new Indian gospel of murder which is being
preached against him? Mr. Montagu was well inspired in protesting
against such "hostile, unsympathetic, and cowardly criticism" as was
conveyed in Mr. Mackarness's pamphlet; but this pamphlet was mere sour
milk compared with the vitriol which the native Press had been allowed
to pour forth day after day on the British official in India before any
action was taken by Government to defend him.
The new Viceroy, who himself belongs to one of the most important
branches of the British Civil Service, may be trusted to display in his
handling of the British civilian the tact and sympathy required to
sustain him in the performance of arduous duties which are bound to
become more complex and exacting as our system of government departs
further from the old patriarchal type. Our task in India must grow more
and more difficult, and will demand more than ever the best men that we
can give to its accomplishment. The material prizes which an Indian
career has to offer may be fewer and less valuable, whilst the pressure
of work, the penalties of exile, the hardship of frequent separation
from kith and kin, the drawbacks of an always trying and often
treacherous climate, will for the most part not diminish. But the many
sided interests and the real magnitude and loftiness of the work to be
done in India will continue to attract the best Englishmen so long as
they can rely upon fair treatment at the hands of the Mother Country. If
that failed them there would speedily be an end not only to the Indian
Civil Service, but to British rule itself. For the sword cannot govern,
only maintain government, and can maintain it only as long as government
itself retains the respect and acquiescence of the great masses of the
Indian peoples which have been won, not by generals or by Secretaries of
State, or even by Viceroys, but by the patient and often obscure
spadework of the Indian Civil Service--by its integrity, its courage,
its knowledge, its efficiency, and its unfailing sense of justice.
Complaints of the aloofness of the British civilian very seldom proceed
either from Indians of the upper classes or from the humbler folk. They
generally proceed from the new, more or less Western-educated middle
class whose attitude towards British officials is seldom calculated to
promote cordial relations; and they are also sometimes inspired by
another class of Indian who, one may hope, will before long have
vanished, but whom of all others the civilian is bound to keep at arm's
length. There are men who would get a hold upon him, if he is a young
man, by luring him into intrigues with native women, or by inveigling
him into the meshes of the native moneylender, or who, by less
reprehensible means, strive to establish themselves on a footing of
intimacy with him merely in order to sell to other Indians the influence
which they acquire or pretend to have acquired over him. Cases of this
kind are no doubt rare, and growing more and more rare, as social
conditions are passing away which in earlier days favoured them. Less
objectionable, but nevertheless to be kept also at arm's length, is the
far more numerous class of natives known in India as _umedwars_, who are
always anxious to seize on to the coat tails of the Anglo-Indian
official in order to heighten their own social _status_, and, if
possible, to wheedle out of Government some of those minor titles or
honorific distinctions to which Indian society attaches so much
importance.
In other branches of the public service selection has not always
operated as successfully as the competitive system for the Civil
Service. Men are too often sent out as lawyers or as doctors, or even,
as I have already pointed out, to join the Education Department, with
inadequate qualifications, and they are allowed to enter upon their
work without any knowledge of the language and customs of the people.
Such cases are generally the result of carelessness or ignorance at
home, but some of them, I fear, can only be described as "jobs"--and
there is no room in India for jobs. The untravelled Indian is also
brought into contact to-day with an entirely different class of
Englishman. The globe-trotter, who is often an American, though the
native cannot be expected to distinguish between him and the Englishman,
constantly sins from sheer ignorance against the customs of the country.
Then, again, with railways and telegraphs and the growth of commerce and
industry a type of Englishman has been imported to fill subordinate
positions in which some technical knowledge is required, who, whatever
his good qualities, is much rougher and generally much more strongly
imbued with, or more prone to display, a sense of racial superiority.
Nor is he kept under the same discipline as Tommy Atkins, who is
generally an easy-going fellow, and looks upon the native with
good-natured, if somewhat contemptuous, amusement, though he, too, is
sometimes a rough customer when he gets "above himself," or when his
temper is ruffled by prickly heat, that most common but irritating of
hot-weather ailments. In this connexion the remarkable growth of
temperance among British soldiers in India is doubly satisfactory.
On the whole, the relations between the lower classes of Europeans and
natives in the large cities, where they practically alone come into
contact, seldom give rise to serious trouble; and it is between
Europeans and natives of the higher classes that, unfortunately,
personal disputes from time to time occur, which unquestionably produce
a great deal of bad blood--disputes in which Englishmen have forgotten
not only the most elementary rules of decent behaviour, but the
self-respect which our position in India makes it doubly obligatory on
every Englishman to observe in his dealings with Indians. Some of these
incidents have been wilfully exaggerated, others have been wantonly
invented. Most of them have taken place in the course of railway
journeys, and without wishing to palliate them, one may reasonably point
out that, even in Europe, people, when travelling, will often behave
with a rudeness which they would be ashamed to display in other
circumstances, and that long railway journeys in the stifling heat of
India sometimes subject the temper to a strain unknown in more temperate
climates. In some cases, too, it is our ignorance of native customs
which causes the trouble, and the habits of even high-class Indians are
now and then unpleasant. A few months ago, I shared a railway
compartment one night with an Indian gentleman of good position and
pleasant address, belonging to a sect which carries to the most extreme
lengths the respect for all forms of life, however repulsive. Had I been
a stranger to India and ignorant of these conscientious eccentricities,
I might well have objected very strongly to some of the proceedings of
my companion, who spent a good deal of his time in searching his person
and his garments for certain forms of animal life, which he carefully
deposited in a little silver box carried for this special purpose.
Nevertheless it must be admitted that there have been from time to time
cases of brutality towards natives sufficiently gross and inexcusable to
create a very deplorable impression. I have met educated Indians who,
though they have had no unpleasant experiences of the kind themselves,
prefer to avoid entering a railway carriage occupied by Europeans lest
they should expose themselves even to the chance of insulting treatment.
On the other hand, speaking from personal experience as well as from
what I have heard on unimpeachable authority, I have no hesitation in
saying that there are evil-disposed, Indians, especially of late years,
who deliberately seek to provoke disagreeable incidents by their own
misbehaviour, either in the hope of levying blackmail or in order to
make political capital by posing as the victims of English brutality.
But even when Englishmen put themselves entirely in the wrong, there is
perhaps a tendency amongst Anglo-Indians--chiefly amongst the
non-official community--to treat such cases with undue leniency, and it
is one of the curious ironies of fate that Lord Curzon, whom the
Nationalist Press has singled out for constant abuse and denunciation as
the prototype of official tyranny, was the one Viceroy who more than any
other jeopardized his popularity with his fellow countrymen in India by
insisting upon rigorous justice being done where Indians had, in his
opinion, suffered wrongs of this kind at the hands of Europeans.
It is a lamentable fact that, amongst Indians, the greatest bitterness
with regard to the social relations between the two races often proceeds
from those who have been educated in England. There is, first of all,
the young Indian who, having mixed freely with the best type of
Englishmen and Englishwomen, finds himself on his return to India quite
out of touch with his own people, and yet has to live their life. Cases
of this kind are especially pathetic, when, having imbibed European
ideals of womanhood, he is obliged to marry some girl chosen by his
parents, with whom, however estimable she may be, he has nothing in
common. Such is the contrariety of human nature that he usually visits
his unhappiness, not on the social system which has resumed its hold
upon him, but on the civilization which has killed his belief in it.
Then there is the very mischievous type of young Indian who, having been
left to his own devices in England, and without any good introductions,
brings back to India and retails there impressions of English society,
male and female, gathered from the very undesirable surroundings into
which he has drifted in London and other large cities. It is he who is
often responsible for one of the most deplorable features in the
propaganda of the seditious Press--namely, the scandalous libels upon
the character of English domestic life, and especially upon the morality
of English womanhood--by which it is sought to undermine popular
respect for and confidence in the Englishman. But our own responsibility
must also be very great, so long as we allow the young Indian who comes
to England to drift hopelessly, without help or guidance, among the
rocks and shoals of English life. Men of our own race, and carefully
picked men, come from our oversea Dominions to study in our colleges,
and we have a special organization to look after their moral and
material welfare. For years past we have allowed young Indians to come
and go, and no responsible hand has been stretched out to save them from
the manifold temptations of an entirely alien society in which isolation
is almost bound to spell degradation and bitterness.
Considering, however, the many inevitable causes of friction and the
inherent imperfections of human nature, whether white or coloured, one
may safely say that between Englishmen of all conditions and Indians of
all conditions there often and, indeed, generally exist pleasanter
relations than are to be found elsewhere between people of any two races
so widely removed. They are never closer than when special circumstances
help to break down the barriers. The common instincts and the common
dangers of their profession create often singularly strong ties of
regard and affection between the sepoy of all ranks and his British
officers--especially on campaign. In domestic tribulations, as well as
in public calamities, Indians, at least of the lower classes, will often
turn more readily and confidently for help to the Englishman who lives
amongst them than to their own people. I need not quote instances of the
extraordinary influence which many European missionaries have acquired
by their devoted labours amongst the poor, the sick, and the suffering,
and in former times, perhaps more than in recent times, even with
Indians of the higher classes. In ordinary circumstances we have to
recognize the existence of both sides of obstacles to anything like
intimacy. Many Indian ideas and habits are repugnant to us, but so also
are many of ours to them. Indians have their own conceptions of dignity
and propriety which our social customs frequently offend. If Englishmen
and Englishwomen in high places in India would exert their influence to
invest the social life of Europeans in the chief resorts of Anglo-Indian
society with a little more decorum and seriousness, they would probably
be doing better service to a good understanding between the two races in
social matters than by trying to break down by sheer insistence, however
well meant, the barriers which diametrically opposite forms of
civilization have placed between them.