THE CIVILIAN
Let us now consider the Government and its ideas; that is to say, the
men and the laws by which they govern.
First, take the _personnel_, for there is no complaint more insistent
on all sides than that the officers of to-day are not the same as those
of fifty or more years ago. They are out of touch with the people.
It was for some time supposed by Government that this was only
partially true. That government itself, that is, the Secretariats, was
out of touch, was felt and avowed. But it was supposed that this arose
from the specialising of function. The work of secretaries had become
so difficult, so special, so different from district work, that instead
of there being interchange of officers, the secretaries usually passed
all their official lives away from actual contact with the realities of
the people. There were orders passed that in future this was not to
occur, men were to come and go, to do district work for a while, and
then secretariat work, bringing to the latter knowledge gained in the
former.
But it was quickly seen that this had little or no result. If the
secretaries were out of touch, the district officers were hardly less
so. Government, as a whole, had separated from the people. English
and Indian were divided; nothing was gained.
What, then, was the difference between the men of the past and those of
the present? Let us consider.
They went out younger in those days; sixteen, seventeen, or eighteen,
were the usual ages. The usual age for Haileybury cadets was twenty.
Clive, Warren Hastings, Nicholson and John Lawrence went out at
eighteen, Henry Lawrence at seventeen, Meadows Taylor at fifteen. Many
of the administrators were soldiers first, and they too went out young.
Lord Roberts, for instance, landed in India when he was sixteen.
Addiscombe cadets joined at sixteen or seventeen. When Haileybury was
abolished the average age was raised to twenty-three or more, and at
that age it now remains.
Thus, as the first year in India is also spent in training out there, a
man is now not far from twenty-five before he is allowed to act
independently; he used to be twenty-one or less. This is a great
difference.
In England the age when a boy attains his majority and has full freedom
before the law is twenty-one, and in order to elucidate this question I
have tried to discover why the law of England fixed twenty-one. In
Rome a boy was legally of age as regards his person at fourteen though
he had a curator over his property till he was twenty-five. Therefore
this age of twenty-one does not come from Roman law. It seems to have
arisen from a general consensus of observation that at twenty-one the
average young man is fit to be free and should be free. There seems to
be about that age a critical mental stage of adolescence corresponding
to the physical stage at fourteen. However this may be, there seems to
be no doubt that to keep a young man in tutelage till he is twenty-four
or twenty-five is bad for him. The powers of initiative and the sense
of responsibility which mature at twenty-one atrophy thereafter if not
fully used. And no book learning can replace this. Thus nowadays
tutelage is too long continued.
Again, education began later in those days than now, and there was less
of it. Boys ran wild far more than now, when they are cramped up in
schools and conventions at a very early age.
Thus the men of old had individualities; they had not been
steam-rollered flat by public school and university; their boyish
enthusiasm and friendliness were still in them. They had no
prejudices, had never heard of the Oriental mind, were not convinced
beforehand that every Oriental was a liar and a thief, but were
prepared to take men as they found them. They were willing and eager
to learn. Their minds were open as yet to new impressions. They had
not been "fortified by fixed principles" to "safeguard them" against
acquiring any sympathy with Eastern peoples. Therefore they did so
understand and sympathise.
If you will read the records of the past you will see this in a most
marked degree. Englishmen had Indian friends; how rarely do they have
such now! They knew the people's talk, their folk-lore and their
tales. They looked on them as fellow-humans. And the feeling was
reciprocated. Look, for instance, at how they kept the same servants
all their service. Nowadays there is a general howl of the badness of
Indian servants and their untrustworthiness. It was not so then. One
of the most pleasing features of that old life was the affection often
shown between masters and servants. Dickens has noted it. How much of
that do you find now? Not much. A little still there is--who should
know better than I? And if now it is so rare, where is the fault?
Good masters make good servants. And it requires so little goodness in
the master--only a little consideration, a friendly word sometimes.
They give back far more than they receive. If there are many bad
servants, who makes them bad? Their masters; those with whom they
began their service, who did not know how to treat them, how to help
them, how to keep them. At Arcot the Sepoys gave the rice to their
officers and took the conjee themselves; how many regiments would do
that now?
I do not say that there was ever close personal intercourse between
English and Indian; there was not, and in the nature of things there
could not be. But there were mutual consideration and mutual respect.
"We have different ways and different customs; we have different skins.
But underneath it all we are both men." So they thought in the old
days.
Thus in the old days the embryo official came out young, free from
prejudices, full of enthusiasms, ready to learn, to read, to mark,
learn, and inwardly digest all phases of Oriental life about him. Even
thirty years ago when I first went to India there were many of this
type still left. They thought it their duty, as it was their pleasure,
to study the people in order to understand what lay beneath their
customs. It must be thirty years ago that an old civilian turned on me
sharply when I made some ignorant remark about some Malabar custom and
said: "The custom has arisen out of the circumstances of life and no
peculiarity of nature in the people. All peoples are much alike in
fundamentals, and great apparent differences are but superficial, and
arise from environment."
The absurd doctrine of the "Oriental mind" had not then arisen to be an
excuse for ignorance and want of understanding. Nowadays it is
supposed to be the mark of culture to talk of it; to the old officials
it would have been the mark of a fool; they thought it their duty to
study the people.
But it is not so now. Young civilians come out with their minds
already closed, and, as a rule, closed they remain. The harm is done
in England before they start. Let me give instances.
It is a custom when a young civilian joins to send him to a district
head-quarters for six months first, to learn his way about before
posting him to any specified work. One such was sent to me ten years
ago, and if I give an account of him it will do for all. For nowadays
they are all turned out of the same mill, have all the same habits of
mind and thought, and their personalities are submerged. If anything,
he of whom I speak was above the average in all ways.
He was a very nice young fellow, with charming manners, and I greatly
liked him.
He became an officer of great promise, and would have risen high, but
he is dead now, and therefore what I say now cannot offend anyone.
Besides, I have nothing to say that would offend. He was, I think,
twenty-three years of age, of good people, educated at a public school
and Oxford, and was as nice a boy as could be found. He had passed
high in the examinations. He was said to be clever, and as regards
assimilating paper knowledge, he was able, but his mind was an old
curiosity shop. He had fixed ideas in nearly everything. He was full
of prejudices he called principles, of "facts" that were not true. He
had learnt a great deal, he knew nothing; and worse--he did not know
how to obtain knowledge. He wanted his opinions ready-made and
absolute first, and only sought for such facts as would support those
principles. He had no notion how to make knowledge by himself. He
wanted authority before he would think. Give him "authority," and he
would disregard or deny fact in order to cling to it. I will take a
concrete instance.
There is amongst Englishmen in Burma a superstition that the Burmese do
not and cannot work. They are "lazy." The men never work if they can
help it, and all the work that is done is done by women. How this idea
arose is an interesting study in the psychology of ignorance, but I
need not enter into that now. The idea obtains universally, and is an
acknowledged shibboleth. My young assistant was not with me many days
before he brought it up.
"Oh," he said, "the Burman is so lazy."
"You are sure of that?" I asked.
He stared at me. "Why, everyone says so."
"Everyone said four hundred years ago that the sun went round the
earth," I answered; "were they right?"
"You don't mean to tell me," he said, "that the Burmese can work."
"I don't mean to tell you anything," I answered. "Here are a quarter
of a million Burmese in this district. Find out the facts for
yourself."
The necessity of having to support his theories with facts seemed to
him unreasonable. "But," he objected, "I can see they are lazy." The
Burman is lazy. That is enough said. What have facts to do with it?
He did not say this, but undoubtedly he was thinking it. However, at
last he did find what he considered a fact.
"You remember, when we rode into that village the other day about noon,
the number of men we saw sleeping in the veranda?"
"True," I said.
"Does not that show it?"
"Suppose," I said, "you had got up at four o'clock in the morning and
worked till ten, in the fields, would you not require a rest before
going out at three o'clock again?"
"Do they do that?" he asked.
"You can find out for yourself if they do or not," I answered.
He looked at me doubtfully.
"But," he objected, "it is notorious."
"So is the fact that the standard of living in Burma is very high. How
do you reconcile the two? Laziness and comfort. The comfort is
evident and real, perhaps the laziness is only apparent."
"A rich country," he said.
"Is it?" I asked. "Look at the dry, bare land, of which nearly all
this district and most of Upper Burma are composed. Is it rich? You
have eyes to see. You know it is not rich; why do you say it is?"
He shook his head almost as if I had hurt him and searched about for a
defence.
"But Lower Burma is rich."
"Certainly; and if you look at the export returns you will see the
enormous amount of rice it grows and exports. Is that rice the product
of laziness?"
"But," he said at last in despair, "if this laziness of the Burman is
untrue, how did the idea become general?"
"Ah," I answered, "that is another matter. Let us stick to one thing
at a time. We are concerned now with whether it is true or not.
Decide that first. See for yourself. Find out an ordinary man's work
and I think you will find it is sufficient. You have the opportunity
of judging, and unless you use that opportunity you have no right to an
opinion at all."
He said no more at the time, but a few days later he returned to the
subject. A High Official had been opening a public work in Mandalay
and had made a speech. Much of the labour for the work had been
Burmese, where usually such labour is imported Indian, and he referred
with satisfaction to the fact. "I am glad to see," said the High
Official, "that the Burmese are taking to hard work." My assistant
brought this up. "Here is authority," he said.
"Certainly," I said; "there is authority on one side; now let us look
at fact on the other; whether is it better to be a peasant-proprietor
on your own land or a day-labourer?"
"The proprietor, of course," he said.
"This has been a bad year in some districts. Crops have failed. You
can read that from the weekly reports in my office. Many cultivators
have had to abandon their holdings and turn to day labour. Is that
good? Are they to be congratulated on it?"
The boy looked downcast.
"No," he admitted.
"Well, then," I asked, "what will they think of a Government who says
such things?"
He reflected for some time. "But," he said at length, "when one
authority (the High Official) says one thing and another authority
(you) says the reverse, what am I to believe?"
Then came my opportunity. "You are to believe nothing," I said. "You
have eyes, you have ears, you have common sense. They are given you to
use and see facts for yourself. The facts are all round you. You will
never do any good work if you refuse to face facts and understand them.
If you are to be worth your salt as an official you will have to work
by sight, not by faith."
He laughed. At first he seemed puzzled; then he was pleased. He had
been educated to accept what he was told and never to question. His
mind had been stunted and the idea of exercising it again delighted
him. To judge by himself was a new idea to him entirely and he
welcomed it. He began to do so. For the first time since childhood he
was encouraged to use that which is the only thing worth
cultivating--his common sense. But even yet he could not emancipate
himself.
Some time later a new subject came up. This time it was the
disappearance of the Burman. He is supposed to be dying out. The
Indian is "ousting" him. Before long there will be none left. My
assistant had read it in the paper and heard it almost universally,
therefore it must be true. I said nothing at the time, but that day
when I went to office I sent him the volumes of the last two Census
tables with a short note. "Will you kindly," I wrote, "make out for me:
the Burmese population in 1891
the same in 1901
district by district, and let me know where there have been decreases,
also increases, and the percentage of increase."
The next day he came to me with an amused expression on his face and a
paper of figures in his hand.
"I have made them all out," he said, "as you wished. Here they are."
"Then," I said, "let us take the districts with the decreases first.
Please show me them."
"There are none," he answered. "They all show increases."
"Large?" I asked.
"Yes, large," he said; "from a population of about nine million to ten
million in ten years is a good increase. The Burmese are prolific."
"But," I remarked also, "I thought the Burman was disappearing? You
said so on authority. How is that?"
He laughed; he had taken his lesson.
And again, another point. I had received an order from Government
which I thought was mistaken, and I said so. He was a Government
official too, and I could say to him what I could not say to others.
"Then you won't carry it out?" he asked, surprised.
"I am here to carry out orders," I answered, "and of course I shall
carry it out."
"But why then do you criticise it, if it must be carried out?"
"Look here," I said, "before very long you will be sent to a
subdivision of my district to govern it. I shall send you many orders,
and shall expect you to carry them out."
"Right or wrong?"
"Right or--as you may think--wrong. You must do as I say. Without
this, government is impossible. But I do not want you to think as I
do. I want you to think for yourself. If an order appears to you
issued from a misconception on my part, you must not refuse to obey;
but I should expect you to tell me any facts that would lead me to
better knowledge. Your business is not merely to carry out orders, but
to furnish me with correct information how to better those orders. You
are not merely to be part of the district hand, but of its brain too.
I should want you to criticise every order in your mind, try to
understand it, and if you disagree with it to examine your reasons for
disagreement and see if they are good."
"And let you know?"
"Whenever you are certain that I am wrong, and the matter is important."
"But would not criticism be cheek?"
"Not if it is true and valuable. You would be doing me a valuable
service. It is what I want. How do you suppose we are ever to get on
if opinions are to be stereotyped? Thought must be free. But don't
give me opinions or 'authority.' I don't care for either. Give me
facts, and be sure of your facts."
"I see," he said.
"You can be quite kind about it, you know," I suggested.
"Is that what you are to Government," he asked, "when you disagree with
them?"
"I try to be," I said. "I put myself as far as I can in their
position, and give them what I would like to receive myself."
Again it was quite a new idea to him that anyone should want criticism.
He had been educated to believe that any doubt of what authority said
was a sin, perhaps inevitable sometimes, but anyhow always to be
concealed; and he had been told that everyone, from the Creator down,
resented criticisms and would annihilate the critic. That anyone
should prefer knowing the truth even if it prove him wrong seemed to
him impossible. He did not like ever to admit he had been wrong. He
thought truth was absolute and fixed, whereas it is relative and always
growing. He had, unconsciously, the mind of the Pharisee in the Temple.
Now these three instances will point out what seems to me to be wrong
in the previous training of young men sent to India, and in fact in all
training. Their minds instead of being cultivated are stifled. They
are taught to disregard fact and to accept authority in place of it.
They are not only to do what they are told, which is right; but to
think what they are told, which is wrong. And they do. They are
taught to repeat in parrot manner stock phrases and imagine they are
thinking. And this habit once acquired is difficult to get rid of.
With most it never is got rid of. You will, for instance, find these
shibboleths of the "disappearing Burman" and his "laziness" repeated by
the highest officials who have been longest in the country, all of whom
have facts in their office disproving them. And these are not the only
prejudices nor even the principal. They are innumerable and serious.
You will in consequence find that administration and even legislation
are affected by them. The whole attitude of Government to the people
it governs is vitiated in this way. There is a want of knowledge and
understanding. In place of it are fixed opinions based usually on
prejudice or on faulty observation, or on circumstances which have
changed, and they are never corrected. Young secretaries read up back
circulars, and repeat their errors indefinitely. That is "following
precedent." They will quote you complacently:
"Freedom broadening slowly down
From precedent to precedent"
and never see the absurdity of the lines. Freedom is the disregard of
precedent where the precedent is wrong or out of date.
There is throughout nearly all English officials (and non-officials) in
India not only a disregard of facts about them, but a want of any real
sympathy with the people among whom they live, which is astonishing.
They often like the "natives," they often are kind to them, wish them
well, and do their best for them, but that is not sympathy. Sympathy
is understanding. It is being able to put yourself in another's place.
I could tell many stories illustrating this want of understanding. One
will suffice. An official I knew well, an excellent fellow,
kind-hearted, humorous, and able, holding a good position then and a
high one now, with a charming wife, living amongst the Burmese and
ruling them, with Burmese servants, clerks, and peons, and continual
Burmese visitors of all classes, called his dog "Alaung." Now "Alaung"
means something very similar to "Messiah," and is a sacred word. A
parallel would be if, say, a Parsee in England called his dog "Christ."
I have seen this official's servants wince when he called out to his
dog. Yet I am sure it never struck him that there was anything out of
the way in this nomenclature. I am sure he never dreamed he would hurt
anyone's feelings by it, or he would not have done it. He certainly
intended no jeer at the religion of his subordinates. It was simply
that he wanted understanding.
Now sympathy is inherent in all children, and is the means whereby they
acquire all the real knowledge they have. A girl being a mother to her
doll, a boy being a soldier or hunter, is exercising and training the
most valuable of all gifts--imaginative sympathy. It is the only
emotion which brings real knowledge of the world about you. Without it
you never understand anything.
It should be incessantly cultivated and fed with real facts to enable
it to grow, and to turn what your sympathy leads you to suspect into
what knowledge confirms. In all young men nowadays it is destroyed by
their education. Their minds are fitted up with obsolete and mistaken
prejudices, which are called principles, and then the door is locked.
They all talk the same, act the same, have the same ideas in their
heads. None of them ever think over what is all about them. They do
their work by paper knowledge and paper principles; the great book of
humanity has been sealed for them. When they try to think they cannot
do so. They have lost the power their childhood had. They argue in
the most extraordinary way. They will make a statement, and if it is
disproved say, "Well, if it is not true it ought to be," and go on as
if that made it true. They will resort to prophecy, and say, "If not
true to-day it will be to-morrow," and so settle it.
Now if brighter days are to be in store for India official or
non-official, English or native, all this must be altered. The whole
principles of education must be revised or abandoned. The less
educated a man is now the more real understanding he is likely to have.
The educated man is a mental automaton. He has sold his soul and got
in its place some maxims, with the aid of which he seeks to govern the
world. He thinks knowledge is got from books. It is not. Books are
most valuable helps, showing you new views of life, giving you new
facts, showing you how to think; but they never give you knowledge of
life. Only experience can do that. But the young man now does not
want to know what is, but what other people say. He is afraid of
himself and yearns for authority.
This has been evident to all who have looked into the matter. Here is
what a modern writer says:
"No English schoolboy is ever taught to speak the truth for the very
simple reason that he is never taught to desire the truth. From the
very first he is taught to be totally careless as to whether a fact is
a fact; he is taught to care only whether the 'fact' can be used on his
side when he is engaged in 'playing the game.'"
Nothing could be more true than this. He is provided with fixed ideas,
and he will welcome any fact that supports them, while deliberately
refusing all facts which are opposed to his ideas. He thinks and
argues to prove his preconceived point, never to elicit truth
regardless of whether that truth agrees with his preconceptions or not.
In fact, he is taught not to think. The Inward Light which is in all
children has been put out. He has become a spiritual coward; he dare
not look the whole truth in the face. He thinks that patriotism
consists in supporting his country or his class through thick and thin.
It does not occur to him that the higher patriotism is to try to help
his country or his class not to go wrong, or if wrong to get right. He
would rather bolster up a mistake, shut his eyes to the fact that it is
a mistake, and go on doing it, than admit his wrong. It is better in
his eyes to be consistently wrong than by admitting mistakes and
correcting them to be inconsistent. He cannot learn.