said--and his words put in a very convenient form what is in the minds
of those who think about Indian questions at all--"It is my deep
conviction that we have reached a point of the utmost gravity and of
far-reaching effect in our continued relations with this land, and I
most heartily wish there were more signs that this fact was clearly
recognised by the bulk of Englishmen out here in India, or even by our
rulers themselves." Now you and the democratic constituencies of this
kingdom are the rulers of India. It is to you, therefore, that I come
to render my account. Just let us see where we are. Let us put the
case. When critics assail Indian policy or any given aspect of it, I
want to know where we start from? Some of you in Arbroath wrote to
me, a year ago, and called upon me to defend the system of Indian
Government and the policy for which I am responsible. I declined, for
reasons that I stated at the moment. I am here to answer to-night,
when the time makes it more fitting in anticipation all those
difficulties which some excellent people, with whom in many ways I
sympathise, feel. Again, I say, let us see where we start from. Does
anybody want me to go to London to-morrow morning, and to send a
telegram to Lord Kitchener, the Commander-in-Chief in India, and tell
him that he is to disband the Indian army, to send home as fast as we
can despatch transports, the British contingent of the army, and bring
away the whole of the Civil servants? Suppose it to be true, as
some people in Arbroath seem to have thought--I am not arguing the
question--that Great Britain loses more than she gains; supposing it
to be true that India would have worked out her own salvation without
us; supposing it to be true that the present Government of India has
many defects--supposing all that to be true, do you want me to send
a telegram to Lord Kitchener to-morrow morning to clear out bag and
baggage? How should we look in the face of the civilised world if we
had so turned our back upon our duty and sovereign task? How should we
bear the smarting stings of our own consciences, when, as assuredly
we should, we heard through the dark distances the roar and scream of
confusion and carnage in India? Then people of this way of thinking
say "That is not what we meant." Then what is it that is meant,
gentlemen? The outcome, the final outcome, of British rule in India
may be a profitable topic for the musings of meditative minds. But we
are not here to muse. We have the duty of the day to perform, we have
the tasks of to-morrow spread out before us. In the interests of
India, to say nothing of our own national honour, in the name of duty
and of common sense, our first and commanding task is to keep order
and to quell violences among race and creed; sternly to insist on the
impartial application of rules of justice, independent of European or
of Indian. We begin from that. We have got somehow or other, whatever
the details of policy and executive act may be, we are bound by the
first law of human things to maintain order.
There are plenty of difficulties in this immense task in England, and
I am not sure that I will exclude Scotland, but I said England in
order to save your feelings. One of the obstacles is the difficulty of
finding out for certain what actually happens. Scare headlines in the
bills of important journals are misleading. I am sure many of you must
know the kind of mirror that distorts features, elongates lines, makes
round what is lineal, and so forth. I assure you that a mirror of that
kind does not give you a more grotesque reproduction of the human
physiognomy, than some of these tremendous telegrams give you as to
what is happening in India. Another point is that the Press is very
often flooded with letters from Indians or ex-Indians--from _Indicus
olim_, and others--too oftened coloured with personal partisanship and
deep-dyed prepossessions. There is a spirit of caste outside the Hindu
sphere. There is a great deal of writing on the Indian Government by
men who have acquired the habit while they were in the Government,
and then unluckily retain the habit after they come home and live, or
ought to live, in peace and quietness among their friends here. That
is another of our difficulties. Still, when all such difficulties
are measured and taken account of, it is impossible to overrate the
courage, the patience and fidelity, with which the present House of
Commons faces what is not at all an easy moment in Indian Government.
You talk of democracy. People cry, "Oh! Democracy cannot govern remote
dependencies." I do not know; it is a hard question. So far, after
one Session of the most Liberal Parliament that has ever sat in Great
Britain, this most democratic Parliament so far at all events, has
safely rounded an extremely difficult angle. It is quite true that in
reference to a certain Indian a Conservative member rashly called out
one night in the House of Commons "Why don't you shoot him?" The whole
House, Tories, Radicals, and Labour men, they all revolted against any
such doctrine as that; and I augur from the proceedings of the last
Session--with courage, patience, good sense, and willingness to learn,
that democracy, in this case at all events, has shown, and I think is
going to show, its capacity for facing all our problems.
Now, I sometimes say to friends of mine in the House, and I venture
respectfully to say it to you--there is one tremendous fallacy which
it is indispensable for you to banish from your minds, taking the
point of view of a British Liberal, when you think of India. It was
said the other day--no, I beg your pardon, it was alleged to have been
said--by a British Member of Parliament now travelling in India--That
whatever is good in the way of self-government for Canada, must be
good for India. In my view that is the most concise statement that
I can imagine, of the grossest fallacy in all politics. It is a
thoroughly dangerous fallacy. I think it is the hollowest and, I am
sorry to say, the commonest, of all the fallacies in the history of
the world in all stages of civilisation. Because a particular policy
or principle is true and expedient and vital in certain definite
circumstances, therefore it must be equally true and vital in a
completely different set of circumstances. What sophism can be more
gross and dangerous? You might just as well say that, because a fur
coat in Canada at certain times of the year is a truly comfortable
garment, therefore a fur coat in the Deccan is just the very garment
that you would be delighted to wear. I only throw it out to you as
an example and an illustration. Where the historical traditions, the
religious beliefs, the racial conditions, are all different--there to
transfer by mere untempered and cast-iron logic all the conclusions
that you apply in one case to the other, is the height of political
folly, and I trust that neither you nor I will ever lend ourselves to
any extravagant doctrine of that species.
You may say, Ah, you are laying down very different rules of policy in
India from those which for the best part of your life you laid down
for Ireland. Yes, but that reproach will only have a sting in it, if
you persuade me that Ireland with its history, the history of the
Rebellion, Union and all the other chapters of that dismal tale, is
exactly analogous to the 300 millions of people in India. I am not at
all afraid of facing your test. I cannot but remember that in speaking
to you, I may be speaking to people many thousands of miles away, but
all the same I shall speak to you and to them perfectly frankly. I
don't myself believe in artful diplomacy; I have no gift for it. There
are two sets of people you have got to consider. First of all, I hope
that the Government of India, so long as I am connected with it and
responsible for it to Parliament and to the country, will not be
hurried by the anger of the impatient idealist. The impatient
idealist--you know him. I know him. I like him, I have been one
myself. He says, "You admit that so and so is right; why don't you do
it--why don't you do it now?" Whether he is an Indian idealist or a
British idealist I sympathise with him. Ah! gentlemen, how many of
the most tragic miscarriages in human history have been due to the
impatience of the idealist! (Loud cheers.) I should like to ask the
Indian idealist, whether it is a good way of procuring what everybody
desires, a reduction of Military expenditure, for example, whether it
is a good way of doing that, to foment a spirit of strife in India
which makes reduction of Military forces difficult, which makes the
maintenance of Military force indispensable? Is it a good way to help
reformers like Lord Minto and myself, in carrying through political
reform, to inflame the minds of those who listen to such teachers, to
inflame their minds with the idea that our proposals and projects are
shams? Assuredly it is not.
And I will say this, gentlemen. Do not think there is a single
responsible leader of the reform party in India, who does not deplore
the outbreak of disorder that we have had to do our best to put down;
who does not agree that disorder, whatever your ultimate policy may
be--must be with a firm hand put down. If India to-morrow became a
self-governing Colony--disorder would still have to be put down with
an iron hand; I do not know and I do not care, to whom these gentlemen
propose to hand over the charge of governing India. Whoever they might
be, depend upon it that the maintenance of order is the foundation
of anything like future progress. If any of you hear unfavourable
language applied to me as your representative, do me the justice to
remember considerations of that kind. To nobody in this world, by
habit, by education, by experience, by views expressed in political
affairs for a great many years past, to nobody is exceptional
repression, more distasteful than it is to me. After all, gentlemen,
you would not have me see men try to set the prairie on fire without
arresting the hand. You would not blame me when I saw men smoking
their pipes near powder magazines, you would not blame me, you would
not call me an arch coercionist, if I said, "Away with the men and
away with the pipes." We have not allowed ourselves--I speak of the
Indian Government--to be hurried into the policy of repression. I
say this to what I would call the idealist party. Then I would say
something to those who talk nonsense about apathy and supineness. We
will not be hurried into repression, any more than we will be hurried
into the other direction. This party, which is very vocal in this
country, say:--Oh! we are astonished, and India is astonished, and
amazed at the licence that you extend to newspapers and to speakers;
why don't you stop it? Orientals, they say, do not understand it.
Yes, but just let us look at that. We are not Orientals; that is the
root of the matter. We are in India. We English, Scotch, and Irish,
are in India because we are not Orientals. We are representatives, not
of Oriental civilisation, but of Western civilisation, of its methods,
its principles, its practices; and I for one will not be hurried into
an excessive haste for repression, by the argument that Orientals do
not understand patience or toleration.
You will want to know how the situation is viewed at this moment in
India itself, by those who are responsible for the Government of
India. This view is not a new view at all. It is that the situation is
not gravely dangerous, but it requires serious and urgent attention.
That seems for the moment to be the verdict. Extremists are few, but
they are active; their field is wide, their nets are far spread.
Anybody who has read history knows that the Extremist often beats the
Moderate by his fire, his heated energy, his concentration, by his
very narrowness. So be it; we remember it; we watch it all, with that
lesson of historic experience full in our minds. Yet we still hold
that it would be the height of political folly for us at this moment
to refuse to do all we can, with prudence and energy, to rally the
Moderates to the cause of the Government, simply because the policy
will not satisfy the Extremists. Let us, if we can, rally the
Moderates, and if we are told that the policy will not satisfy the
Extremists, so be it. Our line will remain the same. It is the height
of folly to refuse to rally sensible people, because we do not satisfy
Extremists. I am detaining you unmercifully, but I doubt whether--and
do not think I say it because it happens to be my department--of all
the questions that are to be discussed perhaps for years to come, any
question can be in all its actual foundations, and all its prospective
bearings, more important than the question of India. There are many
aspects of it which it is not possible for me to go into, as, for
example, some of its Military aspects. I repeat my doubt whether there
is any question more commanding at this moment, and for many a day to
come, than the one which I am impressing upon you to-night. Is all
that is called unrest in India mere froth? Or is it a deep rolling
flood? Is it the result of natural order and wholesome growth in
this vast community? Is it natural effervescence, or is it deadly
fermentation? Is India with all its heterogeneous populations--is it
moving slowly and steadily to new and undreamt of unity? It is the
vagueness of the discontent, which is not universal--it is the
vagueness that makes it harder to understand, harder to deal with.
Some of them are angry with me. Why? Because I have not been able to
give them the moon. I have got no moon, and if I had I would not part
with it. I will give the moon, when I know who lives there, and what
kind of conditions prevail there.
I want, if I may, to make a little literary digression. Much of this
movement arises from the fact that there is now a large body
of educated Indians who have been fed, at our example and our
instigation, upon some of the great teachers and masters of this
country, Milton, Burke, Macaulay, Mill, and Spencer. Surely it is a
mistake in us not to realise that these masters should have mighty
force and irresistible influence. Who can be surprised that educated
Indians who read those high masters and teachers of ours, are
intoxicated with the ideas of freedom, nationality, self-government,
that breathes the breath of life in those inspiring and illuminating
pages. Who of us that had the privilege in the days of our youth, at
college or at home, of turning over those golden chapters, and seeing
that lustrous firmament dawn over our youthful imaginations--who of us
can forget, shall I call it the intoxication and rapture, with which
we strove to make friends with truth, knowledge, beauty, freedom? Then
why should we be surprised that young Indians feel the same movement
of mind, when they are made free of our own immortals. I would only
say this to my idealist friends, whether Indian or European, that for
every passage that they can find in Mill, or Burke, or Macaulay,
or, any other of our lofty sages with their noble hearts and potent
brains, I will find them a dozen passages in which history is shown to
admonish us, in the language of Burke--"How weary a step do those
take who endeavour to make out of a great mass a true political
personality!" They are words much to be commended to those zealots
in India--how many a weary step has to be taken before they can form
themselves into a mass that has a true political personality! My
warning may be wasted, but anybody who has a chance ought to try to
appeal to the better, the riper, mind of educated India. Time has gone
on with me, experience has widened. I have never lost my invincible
faith that there is a better mind in all civilised communities--and
that this better mind, if you can reach it, if statesmen in time to
come can reach that better mind, can awaken it, can evoke it, can
induce it to apply itself to practical purposes for the improvement
of the conditions of such a community, they will earn the crown of
beneficent fame indeed. Nothing strikes me much more than this, when
I talk of the better mind of India--there are subtle elements,
religious, spiritual, mystical, traditional, historical in what we may
call for the moment the Indian mind, which are very hard for the most
candid and patient to grasp or to realise in their full force. But our
duty, and it is a splendid duty, is to try. I always remember a little
passage in the life of a great Anglo-Indian, Sir Henry Lawrence, a
very simple passage, and it is this, "No one ever ate at Sir Henry
Lawrence's table without learning to think more kindly of the
natives." I wish I could know that at every Anglo-Indian table to-day,
nobody has sat down without leaving it having learned to think a
little more kindly of the natives. One more word on this point. Bad
manners, overbearing manners are disagreeable in all countries: India
is the only country where bad and overbearing manners are a political
crime.
The Government have been obliged to take measures of repression; they
may be obliged to take more. But we have not contented ourselves with
measures of repression. Those of you who have followed Indian matters
at all during the last two or three months are aware there is a reform
scheme, a scheme to give the Indians chances of coming more closely
and responsibly into a share of the Government of their country. The
Government of India issued certain proposals expressly marked as
provisional and tentative. There was no secret hatching of a new
Constitution. Their circular was sent about to obtain an expression
of Indian opinion, official and non-official. Plenty of time has been
given, and is to be given, for an examination and discussion of these
proposals. We shall not be called upon to give an official decision
until spring next year, and I shall not personally be called upon for
a decision before the middle of next Session. One step we have taken
to which I attach the greatest importance. Two Indians have for the
first time been appointed to be members of the Council of India
sitting at Whitehall. I appointed these two gentlemen, not only to
advise the Secretary of State in Council, not only to help to keep him
in touch with Indian opinion and Indian interests, but as a marked
and conspicuous proof on the highest scale, by placing them on this
important and ruling body, that we no longer mean to keep Indians at
arm's length or shut the door of the Council Chamber of the paramount
power against them. Let me press this important point upon you.
The root of the unrest, discontent, and sedition, so far as I can make
out after constant communication with those who have better chances of
knowing the problem at first hand, than I could have had--the root of
the matter is racial and social not political. That being so, it is
of a kind that is the very hardest to reach. You can reach political
sentiment. This goes deeper. Racial dislike is a dislike not of
political domination, but of racial domination; and my object in
making that conspicuous change in the constitution of the Council
of India which advises the Secretary of State for India, was to do
something, and if rightly understood and interpreted to do a great
deal, to teach all English officers and governors in India, from the
youngest Competition wallah who arrives there, that in the eyes of the
ruling Government at home, the Indian is perfectly worthy of a place,
be it small or great, in the counsels of those who make and carry on
the laws and the administration of the community to which he belongs.
We stand by this position not in words alone; we have shown it in act
and shall show it further.
There is one more difficulty--there are two difficulties--and I must
ask you for a couple of minutes. I only need name them--famine and
plague. At this moment, when you have thought and argued out all
these political things, the Government of India still remains a grim
business. If there are no rains this month, the spectre of famine
seems to be approaching, and nobody can blame us for that. Nobody
expects the Viceroy and the Secretary of State to play the part of
Elijah on Mount Carmel, who prayed and saw a little cloud like a man's
hand, until the heavens became black with winds and cloud, and there
was a great rain. That is beyond the reach of Government. All we can
say is that never before was the Government in all its branches and
members found more ready than it is now, to do the very best to face
the prospect. Large suspensions of revenue and rent will be granted,
allowances will be made to distressed cultivators. No stone will be
left unturned. The plague figures are terrible enough. At this season
plague mortality is generally quiescent; but this year, even if the
last three months of it show no rise, the plague mortality will still
be the worst that has ever been known, I think, in India's recorded
annals. Pestilence during the last nine months has stalked through
the land, wasting her cities and villages, uncontrolled and
uncontrollable, so far as we can tell, by human forethought or care.
When I read some of these figures in the House of Commons, a few
perturbed cries of "Shame" accompanied them. These cries came from the
natural sympathy, horror, amazement, and commiseration, with which we
all listen to such ghastly stories. The shame does not lie with the
Government. If you see anything in your newspapers about these plague
figures, remember that they are not like an epidemic here. In trying
to remedy plague, you have to encounter the habits and prejudices of
hundreds of years. Suppose you find plague is conveyed by a flea upon
a rat, and suppose you are dealing with a population who object to
the taking away of life. You see for yourselves the difficulty? The
Government of India have applied themselves with great energy, with
fresh activity, and they believe they have got the secret of this fell
disaster. They have laid down a large policy of medical, sanitary, and
financial aid. I am a hardened niggard of public money. I watch the
expenditure of Indian revenue as the ferocious dragon of the old
mythology watched the golden apples. I do not forget that I come
from a constituency which, so far as I have known it, if it is most
generous, is also most prudent. Nevertheless, though I have to be
thrifty, almost parsimonious, upon this matter, the Council of India
and myself will, I am sure, not stint or grudge. I can only say, in
conclusion, that I think I have said enough to convince you that I
am doing what I believe you would desire me to do--conducting
administration in the spirit which I believe you will approve;
listening with impartiality to all I can learn; desirous to support
all those who are toiling at arduous work in India; and that we shall
not be deterred from pursuing to the end, a policy of firmness on the
one hand, and of liberal and steady reform on the other. We shall not
see all the fruits of it in our day. So be it. We shall at least have
made not only a beginning, but a marked advance both in order
and progress, by resolute patience, and an unflagging spirit of
conciliation.
III
AN AMENDMENT TO THE ADDRESS
(HOUSE OF COMMONS. JAN. 31, 1908)
DR. RUTHERFORD (Middlesex, Brentford) rose to move as an Amendment
to the Address, at the end to add,--"But humbly submits that the
present condition of affairs in India demands the immediate and
serious attention of his Majesty's Government; that the present
proposals of the Government of India are inadequate to allay the
existing and growing discontent; and that comprehensive measures
of reform are imperatively necessary in the direction of giving
the people of India control over their own affairs."
MR. DEPUTY-SPEAKER, I think the House will allow me in the remarks
that I wish to make, to refer to a communication that I had received,
namely, the decision arrived at by the Transvaal Government in respect
to the question of Asiatics. Everybody in the House is aware of the
enormous interest, even passionate interest, that has been taken in
this subject, especially in India, and for very good reasons. Without
further preface let me say, this is the statement received by Lord
Elgin from the Government of the Transvaal last night:--"Gandhi and
other leaders of the Indian and Chinese communities have offered
voluntary registration in a body within three months, provided
signatures only are taken of educated, propertied, or well-known
Asiatics, and finger-prints of the others, and that no question
against which Asiatics have religious objections be pressed. The
Transvaal Government have accepted this offer, and undertaken, pending
registration, not to enforce the penalties under the Act against all
those who register. The sentences of all Asiatics in prison will be
remitted to-morrow." Lord Selborne adds, "This course was agreed to by
both political parties." I am sure that everybody in the House will
think that very welcome news. I do not like to let the matter drop
without saying a word--I am sure Lord Elgin would like me to say
it--in recognition of the good spirit shown by the Transvaal
Government.