CHAPTER IX

OPIUM AND EXCISE

I will begin what I have to say about this by telling a little story

about what happened to me when I was a Subordinate Magistrate--some

sixteen years ago now.

A Burman was brought up before me charged with possessing opium. A

Sergeant of Police had met him at a rest-house in the jungle the day

before, and had entered into conversation. The man was sickly and told

the Sergeant that he was on his way down from the Shan States, where he

had gone to trade. But he had caught the prevalent fever, had then

lain ill and lost his money. So he was going home again to his village

about fifty miles away, where he hoped to recover his health.

Meanwhile he took a little opium for the fever, for in the Shan States

opium is not contraband.

"Oh, you have opium?" asked the Sergeant.

"I brought some down with me," the man said, producing it. Then the

Sergeant, as in duty bound, arrested him and brought him into Court.

The case was quite clear. The man admitted the opium, urged that he

was ill, also that he did not know--neither of which is a defence in

law--and I passed the smallest sentence that I thought the High Court

would allow to pass without a reprimand. I fined him ten rupees or in

default ten days' imprisonment. Then I went on to other cases and

forgot about it. At four o'clock I left the bench and went to my

private room to sign papers before leaving Court. There was a pile of

them. I signed, the peon pulled away; I signed again, he pulled; and

so on till I looked up. There in the doorway stood the Sergeant. He

seemed embarrassed. He smiled an awkward smile, saluted, and then

stood doubtfully on one foot and the other.

"Well?" I asked, surprised. "What is the matter?"

"Nothing," he replied.

"Then you needn't stay," I said suggestively, and went on signing. He

didn't go. He smiled again and swallowed. I signed a dozen sheets or

more and then looked up, and there he was, still smiling.

"Well," I asked, "what is the matter? Out with it."

"We are all poor men," he said.

"Who are?" I asked carelessly.

"All we police," he said. "I gave a whole rupee, but the others could

give but a penny or twopence each because they are only constables. We

could not afford more. We are poor men, your Honour."

I stopped my signing. "Sergeant," I said, "come here. I don't know

what you're talking about. What is the matter?"

"There is a little girl," he answered, coming up to the table. "That's

the difficulty."

I held my head between my hands. I had no idea of what he could be

talking about. The syncopated method of beginning a conversation which

Burmese often use made my head ache. I stared, he stared. At last I

said:

"Sergeant, I'm going home," and rose. Then it all came out.

It was the opium smuggler. He could not pay the fine, for he was

penniless. He had no friends this side of fifty miles away, and he had

with him a little daughter aged ten years or so. This was, of course,

the first that I had heard of her, but it seems that she was just

outside when her father was being tried, and when she heard he had to

go to gaol she was in despair. They wept together.

Therefore the Sergeant whose zeal had caused the trouble repented of

his work and took up a collection. In the police-office and among my

clerks he got five rupees. That was but half, and they did not know

where to get the rest. Then someone had a brilliant idea. "Go," he

said to the Sergeant, "ask the magistrate." "Therefore," said the

Sergeant, "I came in to your Honour."

"For what?"

"The other five rupees."

I laughed. How could I help it? The audacity of the demand, that I,

the magistrate, should pay half the fine that I had myself inflicted!

"Sergeant," I said severely, "what have you and I to do with offenders

who break the law? Are we to pay for them? What is the good of _your_

arresting them and my fining them if we afterwards pay their fines for

them? We make a mockery of the law and ruin ourselves."

He did not answer.

"You see the point?" I asked.

He did.

"Then I am going home."

The Sergeant saluted. "I didn't suppose your Honour has the money in

Court. Shall I come for it or will your Honour send it over?" he

replied.

"Send what?"

"The five rupees."

I sent it over.

This story, besides illustrating the kindheartedness of the people and

their quickness to see the injustice of a law and try to remedy it,

shows the difficulty Government have in this matter of opium.

Now I do not intend to go into this very controversial subject. I have

read the evidence and the Report of the Opium Commission some years

ago, and I have my own opinion about both. That I will keep to myself.

All I have to say here is that opium in reasonable doses is a most

valuable drug--the most valuable we have. It is in fever-haunted

districts the best friend of the people. Some of the best fighting men

of the Empire take it and demand it. In its time and place it is no

more harmful than liquor, and I have no belief in putting the world

into an iron case of everlasting "Don'ts." People should be made

temperate by training and judicious restriction of opportunity, and not

made the slaves of laws. I don't believe in slavery of any kind.

But opium can be and is abused, and there is no doubt that amongst the

Burmese generally there is a desire that its use be totally prohibited.

A general opinion like that should be respected whether it is right or

wrong.

There comes the difficulty. Take Burma as a whole and consider it.

The vast majority of the inhabitants are Burmese, but in places in

Lower Burma there are large colonies of Hindus and Mohammedans. There

are, moreover, many Chinese traders and carpenters spread about all

over. They are accustomed to use opium, were so accustomed before they

came there, would not have come if they could not have got their

stimulant.

Then, again, Burma is bounded on the east by the independent Shan

States, where there is a great deal of fever, where opium grows, and

the people use it. Beyond these States is China, where opium is grown

largely. Moreover, there are in Lower Burma one or two districts where

fever is very deadly and opium is used by the Burmans with the consent

of public opinion.

Now sum up all these factors, and see how complicated the problem is.

The Burmans generally want opium prohibited. "Very well," says

Government; "we will prohibit it for Burmans; but what about the rest

of the population? They want it; their public opinion does not forbid

it. They are immigrants, and would not have come if they had been

unable to get it. Therefore there must be opium shops for them. But

Burmans shall not be allowed to buy."

So far so good in appearance. The Burman may not buy from the shop,

and doesn't. He buys from a friendly Chinaman, who for a little

commission buys the opium at the shop and hands it over outside.

But this trick was discovered, and Government did its best. It

allowanced all Chinamen. They could buy so much and no more, just

enough for their own use. If they sold to Burmans they had to go

without themselves.

That was excellent, only there were two ways round. One was for

Chinamen who did not use opium--not all do--to act as honest broker;

the other was smuggling from the Shan States. The quantity of opium

smuggled down from the Shan States cannot be estimated, nor can it be

stopped. How can you guard five hundred miles of frontier all mountain

and forest, intersected by forest paths? Opium is light, compact,

easily concealed. Government does its best, but it cannot do the

impossible.

Therefore the Acts are widely evaded, which is always a bad thing; but

there is a worse effect than this--there is discrimination by

nationality.

I do not think there can be anything worse than an Act that says such

and such an act is right and proper for people of one nationality but

wrong and penal for people of another. A Chinaman may walk about and

do openly what if a Burman does he goes to gaol for. What difference

is there between the natures of the two people to make such a

difference? There is none. Therefore the effect of this law, although

it be according to the general desire, is to make the Burman feel that

he is a child not to be trusted. This is a bad feeling. If opium were

totally prohibited in Upper Burma for everybody except Indian troops or

officials sent there by Government, and therefore not free to stay

away, this feeling would not arise. If local option is to have effect

it should be by areas and not races.

The same thing applies to alcohol. An Indian coolie can go and buy

some liquor and have a drink with his friends. A Burman may not. At

least not of licit liquor. Therefore a great deal of illicit liquor is

distilled.

Try to see how demoralising all this is. Take a town like Sagaing, my

last head-quarters, which is really only a big village, and note the

results. There is a liquor shop where European liquors, beer, and

spirits are sold, and there are several shops where native spirits are

sold. A European, or half-caste, or Hindu, or Mohammedan of the better

classes could go and buy a bottle of Bass or of Dyer's ale at the

European shop and take it home for dinner. The Burmese magistrates,

inspectors of police, and so on could not--legally. My Treasury

officer, being a Burman, was debarred; his subordinate, a native of

India, was not debarred. What happens? Well, I don't know. But I

bought a pony once from a very respectable and able Burmese Inspector

of Police, and the first morning I rode him he took me gently but

firmly to the back door of the liquor shop. That gave me an idea, but

I kept the idea to myself. I have often had ideas of this nature.

Then take the poorer classes. Is it good for one race of people to see

another making merry with a glass while it is illegal for them to do

so? Does it not create bitterness, to say the least? Does it not

perpetuate differences that must disappear if self-government is to

succeed?

Here, again, if laws are to succeed they must be in accordance with the

desires of the people. Only the people at large can stop smuggling.

Read the history of how English smuggling was stopped; it was because

no one could smuggle without being informed on--that is to say, public

opinion had turned against them.

But that is not so in Burma. Were prohibition of opium or spirits by

localities where all were treated alike, you could ask the people to

help you to enforce their wish. But for opium and liquor to be sold to

some and refused to others is not a local option. No one likes it, and

no one will help to stop smuggling. That is human nature.

Government has been and is greatly abused for its opium and liquor

policy, but I think if facts are looked at squarely it will be seen

that the situation is very difficult. The only way out that I can see

is through local self-government. If the scheme that I sketch out at

the end of this book took form there would be local option eventually,

and people will submit to what they themselves enact, whereas they

chafe against the same thing when imposed from above. That is human

nature, and it is a very valuable trait of human nature. It is the

revolt against subjection, and the declaration that the objective of

life is to be free. The only morality of any value comes from within;

that imposed from without may improve the body, but it enervates the

soul. Now the body is temporary and the soul eternal.

Here I may end my criticism of the machinery of government. Not that

any of the other branches of the administration are better than those I

have written of. The land laws are, I think, worse, because they are

based on imported fixed ideas and not on any careful investigation of

facts and the underlying causes of facts. The police administration is

bad; the village administration worse than bad. But I do not want to

criticise; I want to establish my point, which is that the unrest in

India is a legitimate unrest, that it is not factitious or political,

but based on very real grievances that must grow till they are relieved.

I have picked out these four branches of the administration: the

Criminal and Civil Courts, the Villages, and the Opium and Excise, for

specific reasons. The reason I chose the first two is because no one

ever seems to have suspected before how bad they were. Everyone has

gone on the fixed idea that because the magistrates and judges are

honest and the law up to date there can be nothing to complain of in

them. The fault must be in the people.

Only as I write I get a letter to this effect from an officer of long

experience. He had "never seen anything wrong with the Courts."

Therefore I have set out the facts to the best of my ability. I want

the reader to see for himself. I don't want him to accept my authority

that they are bad; I don't believe in authority. I want him to think

over the facts I have laid before him and frame his own judgment. I

think that he will see that the Courts which have been declared

impregnable are very vulnerable indeed.

The reason I chose the Village is because it is the unit of

self-government.

The reason I chose the Opium and Excise was different. Whereas

Government has never been criticised for its Courts and its law, which

are bad, it has received unending criticism for its Opium and Excise

policy. Yet, mistakes apart, I don't see how it is much to blame. The

difficulties are inherent. They are the same in nature as those that

beset liquor legislation in England. The question has not been solved

here; far from it. In fact, it is insoluble by Act; it is only soluble

by education of the individual. The right and temperate use of alcohol

and drugs is a personal, not a State question. Therefore where

Government could have been criticised it was not, and where it did its

best in great difficulties it was abused. This will give a key to

another difficulty in India: Government receives hardly any good and

useful criticism from any side. It is abused and praised, but that

understanding criticism which is of the greatest value to individuals

and Governments is wanting. The Indians are feeling serious unrest,

and they cannot diagnose the cause--no one can diagnose himself--so

they strike out at random against Government measures and officials.

They are like a certain party in England who also are unhappy with

things as they are, and who express their dissatisfaction at, say, the

marriage laws--which were made not by man, but by Churches, whose great

supporters were and are women--by smashing the orchid house at Kew. It

reminds me of Andrew Lang's ghost. What he wanted to say was that the

drains were out of order and a danger to all the inhabitants of the

castle. But he suffered from aphasia, and the nearest he could get to

an indication of his meaning was driving round and round the castle at

midnight in a hearse and four.

Most changes arising in societies are incoherent in the same way, but

it must not be supposed that because the expression is irrelevant there

is no real and serious cause beneath it. When an overboiling kettle

spills and scalds the cat who never did the kettle any harm, it is hard

luck on the cat, but it is not unnatural in the kettle. And it would

be dangerous therefore to stop up the spout. Later on the kettle might

explode and damage the cat's master.

The English papers in India want to support Government, which is right;

but the best support they could give would be to point out where

Government goes wrong and help it to go right. They never do that,

because the editors live in towns and know nothing of the country.

Moreover, they too suffer from fixed ideas.

It is the same with the criticism the Indian Government gets from

England. There are here practically only two parties. One says, "Sit

tight on the safety-valve and shoot anyone who comes near you"; and the

other says "Give government to the people." Now there is no organised

Indian people as yet to give it to.

No Government has ever had so little help from intelligent criticism as

the Indian Government; none ever needed it more. No Government in the

world is more sincerely desirous of the good of the people it governs;

none knows so little how to secure it.

You cannot have any work done efficiently unless there is honest and

understanding criticism. No sensible person objects to it if it is

given sincerely and fairly. But that is not so in India. Considering

how unfair most criticism of the Indian Government is, it shows great

self-restraint in the consideration it accords to it. And you can't

expect Government officials to criticise themselves. It isn't part of

their functions and it isn't fair to ask it. Their duty is to carry

out the laws and orders they receive. They have neither the time nor

the attitude of mind to be always criticising them.

But there ought to be somebody whose function is to investigate the

working of government, and to suggest and criticise. In England it

used to be done--badly--by Parliament and the papers. Now no one does

it: everyone now only seeks "party" advantage. In China there used to

be censors whose duty it was, I am told, to watch the working of the

machine and criticise it. That would be an admirable idea if it could

be carried out.

The Government of India should have censors. They should be well paid,

and I think their lives would have to be heavily insured. Their

reports should not be pigeon-holed, but published.

At present this ill-informed criticism of Government has succeeded in

achieving one and is pressing another measure for the alleviation of

the unrest which can do nothing but harm. The danger is that

Government, not knowing the right thing to do and pressed to do

something, will accept these measures rather than be accused of

ignoring the unrest.

India is lost to us--lost in spirit, and only awaiting the opportunity

to be lost in substance. How shall she be regained?

Government have two ideas. Let us see what these are.

PART II

COUNSELS OF DESPAIR

CHAPTER X

THE COUNCILS

The first step that has been taken with the hope of allaying the

discontent in India has been the increase in the Councils of the

Government of India and of the Local Governments of Madras and Bombay,

with the creation of Councils in the other Provinces which did not have

them before.

And as these Councils have been in certain quarters greatly praised as

being not only good in themselves now but as containing the germs of

great possibilities, it is necessary to consider them carefully.

Councils were first instituted in India in 1861, were enlarged in 1892,

and again much enlarged in 1909; thus they are no new thing, and their

value is already fairly obvious. Moreover, since the enlargements of

the Act of 1909 some time has elapsed, so that I am not here

criticising institutions which have not yet had a chance of showing

what they can do.

There are Executive Councils for the Government of India and for the

Provincial Governments of Bombay and Madras, and there are Legislative

Councils for the Government of India and for each Province.

The whole of the law for the constitution of these Councils is

contained in the Indian Councils Acts of 1861, 1892, and 1909, and the

Rules for the nomination or election of the members are contained in

Blue Book Number Cd 6714, published in 1913. I give these references

in order that anyone who cares to go into the subject in greater detail

than I can in this chapter will be able to find all his material

readily. He will be able to see how other Councils than those I intend

to deal with here are constituted; also in what way and by what

constituencies elected members are chosen. There is a great deal that

might well be said on each of these Councils.

But the only Councils I propose to deal with here are those of the

Government of India and of the Province of Burma. I would have liked

to include the Council of Madras but that I think the subject can be

fairly understood without this.

The Executive Council of the Government of India consists of the

Governor-General and nine members. These form the Cabinet of India,

and, subject to the control of the Secretary of State, it has supreme

power. It includes the Commander-in-Chief and members for Finance,

Public Works, Home affairs and so on.

The only alteration made in this Council is by declaring that one of

the members must be an Indian. So far that member has been the Law

Member, and it is somewhat difficult to see how any other post could be

filled by an Indian. You can find Indian lawyers, many, perhaps too

many of them, but where are you to find Indians with that necessary

experience that would fit them to be Finance or Home Members or

Commander-in-Chief, for instance?

The appointment of this Indian gentleman to be Law Member has not been

followed by any striking results. Law in India is petrified, and until

the great reform takes place petrified it must remain. It does not

seem to matter very much who is head of it. When reform comes it will

not be an Indian who could undertake it.

The Legislative Council is formed of the Executive Council and

Additional Members. Before 1909, Additional Members were few, they

were nominated and there was always a good Government majority. Since

1909 it has been constituted as follows:

Nominated Members

28 officials

5 non-officials.

Of these five non-officials one is to represent the Indian Commercial

community, one the Mohammedans of the Punjab, and one the landowners in

the Punjab. The other two nominated members may be anyone apparently.

Then there are twenty-seven elected members; two each to represent the

four large Provincial Councils; one each for the five smaller

Provinces, one each to represent the landowners of six Provinces; five

representatives of Mohammedans in these five Provinces; one member each

to the Chambers of Commerce of Bengal and Bombay; and one extra

Mohammedan member. Thus in this assembly there are represented in a

way nine Provinces as wholes, the landowning class of some Provinces,

one religion and the trade of two cities.

To make it clearer to the reader who has not been to India, let me put

it in this way. India is as big as Europe without Russia, and has

three hundred million inhabitants, more than Europe. Suppose Europe

were conquered and administered by Martians, and they were to establish

a Council. If they did it on similar principles to this Legislative

Council of the Government of India it would consist of:

Two members each for Germany, France, Great Britain, and Italy, one

member each for five smaller nations, one representative each for the

landowners in Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Austria, and

Spain, five representatives of Protestants as Protestants, and one each

for the Chambers of Commerce of London and Paris.

What would the reader think of this as a Council to make laws for all

Europe? What would he say? I think he would say many things. He

would also ask some questions. He would ask:

Firstly, how can two members represent great countries--like England

for instance? Or one represent another great area and people like

Spain? Is it conceivably possible that one or at best two individuals

could have the necessary knowledge or impartiality to do this?

His second question would be: How can one man represent landowners

spread over a great territory with different forms of tenure, different

crops, different climates, different nationalities?

His third would be: Two cities are represented; where are the others?

His fourth would be: At best, all these members can but represent, in

even ever so faint a way, their own class who elects them. Say at a

liberal estimate that they represent more or less imperfectly half a

million people; what about the two hundred and ninety-nine and a half

million who are left out? Who are to protect tenants from landlords,

the innumerable unrepresented religions from that one which is

represented, the voiceless cities from the two which have voices? In

fact, who is to protect Europe from these few privileged classes?

That would be analogous to what is happening in India. These questions

are being asked.

The answer to the first question is quite simple. The two members do

not represent Madras, nor does the one member represent Burma. They

represent the non-officials of the Local Council, and that is all; that

is to say, ten or fifteen individuals of much their own class and

standing. It is not likely that they have any knowledge of the country

they are to represent, except the chief town. It is quite certain that

they have never even travelled over half their country, nor speak more

than one or two of the various tongues.

They have no knowledge of the administration anywhere, nor any

administrative ability. If a question vital to their Province arose

they would not know what to do; and if they did know they would not

dare to do it if it involved any responsibility, because they have no

backing in the country supposed to be theirs. They are totally

unknown, even by name, to nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every

thousand inhabitants. In fact, even this is an over-estimate. They

are not only without knowledge of the immense majority of "their"

people, but are antagonistic in race and religion to many of them, so

that it is only the English Government that keeps the peace.

The answer to the second question is much the same as to the first.

Fancy one member representing the Nair landholders of Malabar, the

Poligars, the Tamils, the Telugu landholders, and many others. It is

absurd.

There is no answer to the third question.

The answer to the fourth is that whatever help and representation and

defence the bulk of India can obtain must be obtained from the English

official members. They alone are quite impartial; they may be

comparatively ignorant, but their ignorance is light compared to that

of the native members, for it includes a knowledge of administration

obtained by experience, which none of the latter have. It is we alone

who have raised the people economically, and have done it often enough

against the influence of class.

Therefore the Council of the Government of India is so constituted that

whereas perhaps half a million people are represented directly or

indirectly by class and religion, the two hundred and ninety-nine and a

half million have no representation at all and must depend on the

English officials.

This is no new discovery of mine. Here is what Lord Curzon said in the

debate in the House of Lords on this new Act: "I wonder how these

changes will in the last resort affect the great mass of the people of

India--the people who have no vote and have scarcely a voice. Remember

that to these people, who form the bulk of the population of India,

representative government and electoral institutions are nothing

whatever. I have a misgiving that this class will not fare much better

under these changes than they do now. At any rate, I see no place for

them in these enlarged Councils which are to be created, and I am under

the strong opinion that as government in India becomes more and more

Parliamentary--as will be the inevitable result--so it will become less

paternal and less beneficial to the poorer classes of the population."

It was seen that these Councils were merely by way of handing over the

India we have made to a tiny section of privileged classes whom we were

to keep in power and support with our bayonets. It was seen and

disregarded. Why?

So much for its constitution. Every principle that experience shows

must go to the making of a successful Assembly has been scorned. The

representation, even such as it is, is by class, by race, and by

religion. No assembly where such a method of representation has been

adopted has ever been known. Wherever, even in a small degree, such

differences have existed it has paralysed all action. Take, for

instance, the French National Assembly before the Revolution. Imagine

a House of Commons with members for landowners, for the merchants of

London and Glasgow, and special members for the Catholic Irish in

England and Scotland. Even that would be far less extraordinary than

the Council of India.

This Council has no executive powers, but it can ask questions: it can

discuss the Budget though it cannot make alterations; it can make laws

affecting all India. But all it does is subject to veto by the

Government of India--and naturally so. How could you delegate real

power to a Council which, the English officials apart, has no

representative value of any kind and no administrative experience? The

power behind the Government is the power of England--the Army, the

Navy, and the wealth of England. It is administered by British

officials, and even the native army is officered by English officers.

Is this great English organism to be used for enforcing laws passed by

such a Council as that I have described? To be at its mercy, to be its

servant? Does it enter into the possibility of things?

The Council, the officials apart, is in reality at its very best

advisory only. It cannot be more. It has no power behind it and could

be given no responsibility. Yet without the fear of responsibility

what advice is ever well given? Irresponsible advisers! Of what value

have they ever been in the world's history?

"But"--I have been told and have read often enough--"the Council works

well, it is a success, it has gratified the educated Indian. Why

criticise it, then?" To that I reply, "In what has its success

consisted--what has it done?" And to that I never get any answer

except that it is a success because it has done nothing. The speakers

were afraid, apparently, it might try to do something--to express, for

instance, some of the desires and needs of the people, a few of which I

have tried to explain in this book; to suggest some new policy to

Government, to show how the great and increasing unrest might be guided

into safe channels; and it has been a success because it has done none

of these things and was capable of doing none of them. It has been as

an influence _nil_. All it has done has been empty criticism. A

writer trying to praise it says: "The debates in the Imperial Council

are already not unworthy of older and more famous assemblies." If the

comparison is with the House of Commons it is not inapt. For many

years now debates there have been merely a pretence. The conclusions

are already fixed and the speakers know it. They speak to pass time,

to satisfy the electors that they are really doing something to justify

their existence, and they try to show off--or to score off someone

else. Their speeches have no value. They make no difference to the

result. And the debates in the India Council are no different. It

perhaps gives the members the illusion of power and authority to be

able to badger Government and make long speeches, but it can effect

nothing. The debates are make-believe. How should they be anything

else? The men are not to blame, but the institution.

"But"--again say its advocates--"this is but a beginning. The Council

is but in embryo. Wait till it comes to greater maturity."

To what greater maturity can it come? Is there in this Council any

true idea that can expand and grow? There is no idea at all. Is it

ever contemplated to make it really representative? How many members

would it take to represent three hundred millions of people? On the

British basis, not a liberal one, it would require an assembly of over

four thousand five hundred members. Is that possible?

Is any election possible among the masses of the people?

Is it ever possible that real executive or legislative power should be

given to an assembly when it is the English Government and the English

people who in the last resort would have to carry out those orders and

bear the brunt of their failure?

Think over the facts carefully. Could you make a central Parliament to

govern all Europe? No. For a hundred reasons the idea is impossible.

It is equally impossible in India. It is even more impossible in India

than it would be in Europe.

Finally it is said that this Council has satisfied the educated class

in India.

Has it?

And if it had could there be a greater criterion of its worthlessness

than such satisfaction?

Let us now turn to the Burma Provincial Council. There is no Executive

Council, all executive power lies with the Lieut.-Governor. The

Legislative Council consists of seventeen members.

One member is elected by the Chamber of Commerce, and the other sixteen

are nominated. Of these sixteen, six may be officials; two experts may

be official or non-official; the rest must be non-official; of these,

four must be Burmese, one must be Chinese, and one must be Indian.

The Council has power to enact local legislation for Burma only. That

is to say it can pass special or local laws. It cannot, of course,

interfere with or vary the Imperial legislation, such as the Indian

Penal Codes. Its powers are small and are limited. It is, as will be

seen, representative of nothing. Except the officials, none of the

members have any administrative knowledge; none are known to the people

at large even by name. That they approved or passed any Act modifying,

say, the Burmese law of inheritance, would be no justification for it

before the people. They represent neither people nor ideas. They have

effected nothing and can effect nothing because they have no force

behind them. What have any of them ever done that the people should

repose confidence in them?

For the rest the same criticisms apply as to the Indian Council. The

Lieut.-Governor has all the executive power and he has the power of

veto over all legislation. Naturally he must have this power. If not,

he might be forced into using British power and authority and means for

enforcing Acts that he disapproved of and were passed by men who

represented at best not one thousandth part of the country.

Yet, as long as he has this power of veto, the Council, like the Indian

Council, becomes simply an advisory Council with no responsibility.

And, again, of what value is advice that is not steadied by the sense

of responsibility?

And with all this talk of self-government, of an Imperial Indian

Parliament and local parliaments, of election and representation, there

is in no village in the Indian Empire any self-government at all, even

in the smallest matters. The villages are one and all under the rule

of a Government official, and every vestige of self-government has been

destroyed. India may have representatives in the India Council and a

voice, even if an impotent voice, in Imperial matters, but it may have

no representation in its Village Council, and no voice in the smallest

village concern.

The whole base on which any self-government could rest has been

destroyed. And instead of building up from below a system of

self-government that would proceed from the people and be so founded as

to stand any shocks, it is sought to begin self-government from the

top, by suspending in the air Councils that rest on nothing, that mean

nothing, that have as much solidity and reality as kites would have.

This, too, must have been foreseen, because it is obvious. Why, then,

was it done?

Was there ever in any history a _reductio ad absurdum_ like these

Councils of Despair?

CHAPTER XI

THE INDIAN AS CIVILIAN

The next measure which has insistently been pressed on the Government

is that far more Indians should be admitted to the Civil Service. It

is now composed almost exclusively of Englishmen, and the conditions

are such that it is difficult for Indians to enter. This, it is

claimed, should be altered, and the Civil Service should be to a great

extent Indianised.

Well, as I have said, the Government of India is not Indian, it is

English. It is essentially English, the more so and the more

necessarily so because it is in India. It consists of very few members

compared to the work it has to do, and it is of the highest importance

therefore that it be completely efficient. England has made herself

responsible for India, and she cannot shirk or divide this

responsibility. She cannot say: "I will by admitting a few Indians

into the service shift some of the responsibility onto them and so onto

India." That is unthinkable. The Government of India is English, and

until by revolution or devolution it disappears it must remain English.

It is the Army and Navy of England which ensure India's safety.

Therefore her first duty, not only to herself but to India, is to

enlist in her superior service such men as will govern most efficiently.

Now to govern efficiently we must govern in our own way. There are not

for us nor any people two ways of doing a thing well; there is one way

only possible at the time--one way in which the genius of the governing

race can best express itself. That is the one we must follow, and to

ensure its success we must have in the service men who are not merely

by education, but by what is far more important, by instinct, best

fitted to carry out the ideas of government. You must have officers

who will know what to do not only when they are told, but when they are

not told, who, being one in race and feeling with the Government, will

instinctively do all in accordance with it.

For it must never be forgotten that the government of India is a very

difficult matter, and will always be so. It is not plain-sailing, like

the Local Government of any self-governing people, or even of Russia.

The administration of India is alien. The system is alien; and though

it need not be so much out of touch with the people as it is now, alien

it must remain. As long as the government is alien the machinery must

be so. Englishmen could not work machinery they did not understand.

Even in self-governed countries there is always a feeling against

government. Taxes are hard things to bear. This is shown in socialism

and many other ways. But in an alien-governed country like India this

discontent is much greater. Government has not only to bear the blame

for its own faults, but has to vicariously suffer for the shortcomings

of the monsoons and the inroad of plague. It is responsible, in the

people's ideas, for everything. The internal peace which is taken for

granted in most European countries cannot be so assumed in India. We

are very often within measurable distance of riot, and an unchecked

riot may quickly develop into an insurrection. The first essential,

therefore, of government is the maintenance of peace and the immediate

suppression of any symptom of unrest.

Now the forces at the disposal of the authorities are not large. For

the whole province of Burma, as large as France and England, and with a

thousand miles of wild frontier and ten millions of people, there are

only four British and eight Indian regiments. There are, or were,

besides (I have not the latest figures) some ten thousand military

police, who are men recruited in India and officered by English

officers from Indian regiments. The Burmese police are only for civil

duty and detection. They are not for "keeping the peace" purposes.

For the whole of India there are but 70,000 British troops and 140,000

native for a population of 350,000,000, with a difficult and turbulent

frontier. There is manifestly no margin to waste; the resources

available must be used with the utmost efficiency. There must be

direct understanding and co-operation between the military officers who

command the forces and the District Officers who supply the

information, the intelligence and the direction. Now if the District

Officer were an Indian this could not be. It is no reflection on

either the courage or the capacity of the Indian to say this, for the

quality necessary is neither of these. It is one which he does not and

cannot have, but which is essential for the proper carrying out of his

duties. It is _camaraderie_ with the other officers.

Official relations between civil and military are always difficult. It

is impossible to lay down hard and fast rules defining their respective

responsibilities. There is a certain antagonism between the objects

each wishes to attain and the way to attain them. The civilian wishes

as far as possible to avoid bloodshed; to soothe, not irritate, nor

threaten. Fighting is the last thing he wants. The soldier, on the

other hand, wants to get at his enemy and have it over; to stir him up

if he be not already stirred up enough. He wishes action that is

short, sharp, and decisive. The civilian is long-suffering. Therefore

disagreements arise, and that these conflicts of official opinion

should be minimised, something more is necessary than that the men on

both sides be good officers. They must be friends. The rubs of

official intercourse must be effaced over the mess-table, the

card-table, the camp fire; must be forgotten in talks of home, of

mutual friends. How often has it not happened that it has been the

mutual appreciation of a poet, the remembrance of a charming woman, the

admiration of an opera, that has rendered possible that co-operation

which is the soul of work. There must be the continual consciousness

on both sides that theirs is not a temporary official relationship.

They will meet continually hereafter at other stations, at

head-quarters, at dinners, races, clubs--in the East and at home. They

must be friends all through; there must be a mutual understanding.

Now if the civilian were an Indian gentleman all this could not occur.

That Indians are often honourable and cultured gentlemen I know; that

in essence all humanity is one I am never tired of affirming. But

there are differences of race, real differences, important differences,

differences that the Indian himself should be the last to try to

ignore. Every nation is given by nature the qualities peculiar to it

and which it is its duty to cultivate for the world's sake. To attempt

to sink your individuality in that of another is an injury not only to

yourself but to the whole world. An Indian gentleman cannot be an

Englishman. It is no use his trying. He only makes himself absurd.

He can be something quite as good if he will cultivate his own talent;

but he has not our talent. He is not an Englishman, and only an

Englishman by birth has that _camaraderie_ with other Englishmen that

is essential. Even a Frenchman or a German would not have it.

Therefore it would be impossible to place Indian civilians in places

where co-operation with military or military police-officers would be

essential.

Further, it is not the English officers alone who create the

difficulty. It is the men--English and native. Men of fighting races

in India will not acknowledge the authority of Indians of other

nationalities, even if supported by Government.

I will tell a story in illustration.

I was stationed nearly twenty years ago at a district head-quarters in

Burma where there was a battalion of Military Police recruited in Upper

India. There was also a young Mohammedan civilian who had passed into

the Civil Service in London and been posted to Burma. He was an

excellent fellow in his way.

It happened one morning that I rode down to the Battalion Commandant's

house to see him on some matter. We discussed our business, and after

it was finished the Subadar of the battalion, a great soldierly Sikh,

came in. He and the Commandant talked for a while, and when he was

leaving E. said:

"By the by, Subadar Sahib, we are coming up this evening to the range

to do a little firing. Send up the marker and four rifles."

"_Four_ rifles?" queried the Subadar.

E. nodded.

"For whom?"

"For the four Sahibs," said E.

The Subadar counted. "The Deputy Sahib, Huzoor (E.), Hall Sahib, and

who else?'

"Oh," said he, "Mahommed V. Sahib," naming the Indian civilian.

The Subadar turned away with a gesture of scorn.

"A sahib? he?" he growled.

Now suppose this Indian civilian had grown up into charge of a district

and had to direct or go with these men into action? What would happen?

But it may be said that matters could be so arranged that civilians who

were Indians were not posted to troublesome or frontier districts, or

that they were given judicial and not executive appointments. They

make, it is said, good judges. Why keep them out of duties they do

well?

But have those who advocate this ever considered what it would mean?

It would be the creation of a class within a class. The civilian who

was an Indian would be differentiated from the English civilians; he

would be ear-marked as "not for executive duties." Is that a

possibility, and if it were, would not this differentiation be worse

than entirely excluding them? The _corps d'élite_ would still remain

English and the grievance be where it is.

Let us look facts in the face. The Civil Service of India is a

peculiarly English service; it is efficient exactly in so far as it is

English; when Indians enter it they must be inefficient more or less.

Not only are they not good for the service, but the service is not good

for them. They would be better and happier out of it, and they feel

that themselves. They have gained their ambition and regret it all

their lives. I have known several Indians who were civilians and all

were unhappy. One was very much so. This is his story. It all

happened a long time ago now, not in Burma, and I do not think any

susceptibilities can be hurt by recalling it.

He was a Madrassi of the race and caste of Chettis, not the

money-lending Chettis, but another branch who always seek Government

service. His people were well off and he was sent to England to

school; then to Wren's to study for the Civil Service, into which he

passed high up, and after two years at Oxford he came to Madras and was

posted to a district on the west coast. He was a nice fellow, clever,

agreeable, and most people liked him. In England he had been given

access to good society, and no difference had been made between him and

his English fellow-students. He expected it would be the same in

India. He was a member of the Indian Civil Service and would be

accepted as such.

He was not. The first thing that happened was that the Club refused to

admit him as a member. Now to the home-staying Englishman this may

seem a small matter. It is no essential in England to a man's

efficiency, or even to his happiness, that he be member of a social

club. It can make no real difference to his career.

In India it is different. The Club in a country station is the centre

of everything. Practically every European belongs to it. He does not

go occasionally, but every day. At five o'clock, when Courts and

offices close, there is a general resort to the Club, for golf, tennis,

cards, billiards. Most clubs have a women's wing as well, so that the

whole of society is centred in the Club. It is there that matters are

arranged and informally discussed. Work is done at Court, but the

preliminaries of work are often arranged at the Club; or, if not, the

annoyances of work are there removed. You forget over a drink and a

cigar what happened between you at Court. Women, too, use their

influence at the Club, and women's influence is never negligible. The

Club is the real heart of the station's life, and if a man do not

belong to it he is outside the organism, so to speak. I am quite sure

that no senior officer would do his work if he were outside the Club,

and even a junior officer would find it difficult.

Every effort was made to elect Chetty to the Club. The other officials

stood by him loyally, but it was no use. The unofficial Englishmen

refused to allow an Indian to be a member of the Club. Now it is no

use characterising such exclusiveness as wrong, or mischievous, or

narrow, and saying it should not exist. It does exist. It always will

exist. It is very strong, and it is based on instincts that are good

in themselves and cannot be ignored. Club life is only possible to

people of one nationality. You cannot mix in a Club. In Rangoon do

not the Germans have their own club?

The unofficials threatened if Chetty were proposed to overwhelm him

with black-balls, and so his name had to be withdrawn. I may say I do

not think his nominal admission as a member would have made much

difference. Merely allowing a man to enter a club does not admit him

to the intimacy of the Club, and that alone counts. However, Chetty

was refused admittance at all.

There were, of course, other troubles. An Indian who has entered the

Civil Service is really in an impossible position. Socially he belongs

to no world. He has left his own and cannot enter the other. And you

cannot divorce social life from official life. They are not two

things, but one. In the end Chetty shot himself. It was a sad end for

a man gifted and likeable.

And although such an end was unusual, the causes which led to it are

universal. I have known several civilians who were Indians, and, as I

said before, I think they were all unhappy. They felt that fate had

put them in an impossible position. If they married their

fellow-country-women they by this act divorced themselves still further

from European society; if they married an Englishwoman they did no

better; the other Englishwomen would not receive her, and inherent

differences of civilisation rendered married life difficult. I think

that if individuals realised what their ambition would lead to they

would choose any other walk in life than to enter an alien service.

Their ideals are wrong. It is no true ideal for an Indian or Burmese

to wish to be an Englishman. Fate has allotted to him a different

field of usefulness quite as great in its way. An Indian gentleman may

be quite as true a gentleman as an English gentleman and be not in the

least like him. By blind imitation they attempt to attain virtues not

inherent in them, and they ignore other virtues which are inherent and

necessary to the world. They seek after impossibilities and so

negative the achievement of possibilities. They deny their own natures.

It may be that this desire of Indians to enter the Civil Service has

arisen from the desire to begin local self-government--a proper

ambition. But the end cannot be attained in this way. Like all other

edifices, local self-government is built up from below. It is built on

its own foundation. You cannot begin replacing an edifice by removing

the top or middle stones and replacing them with others.

Self-government is not to be attained by gradually altering the roof.

Therefore the claim that they would influence Government is untenable.

Government must do its work in its own way, and that is the English

way. No Indian can tell what this is.

The further claim that it would satisfy the people is equally

untenable. To put a native of one part of India over natives of

another part of India would not please them; it would exasperate them.

And even to put an official over his own people would not please those

under him, though it might please his class. This is a well-known

fact; and if you look below the surface it is not difficult to see the

reasons. The Government is English; a native official is not English.

The people have no confidence in him for that reason. They know that

he is not in intimate touch with Government. In the innumerable acts

of official life which are not bound by rigid rules he is very likely

to be wrong. When an English official says a thing they know he speaks

with authority because his mind is one with that of Government; not so

with a native official. They know it and he knows it, and he knows

they know it. That makes matters difficult to begin with. Moreover,

they are jealous of him. When all high officials are English, natives

are all together; put a native in as an official, and to the general

native mind he is rather like a traitor. They have lost him and gained

nothing. They are not proud of him but angry with him. He is as they

are--why then should he have this power over them? It is not a power

delegated by themselves but by an alien Government. This is quite a

simple fact in psychology and shows itself everywhere. Does a

"ranker," unless under exceptional circumstances and an exceptional

personality, hold the same authority over his former equals as a class

officer does? And there the difference is slight. I am sure that no

greater cause for discontent among the people could be found than by

having Indians as civilians.

And last but not the least, there is the domiciled European population

to be considered. What effect would it have on them if a large number

of Indians were admitted to the administration? The answer is quite

simple and was effectually given during the agitation over the Ilbert

Bill in 1885--they would not stand it.

They are not too pleased with the present state of affairs, with the

great power that lies in one man's hand, that of the head of the

district. They chafe at it and are continually feeling and resenting

its imperfections and limitations. They only submit to it because they

see no way out of it and because he is English. Were he to be often an

Indian they would resent it and make their resentment felt. They would

lose the feeling of security they now have and they would not submit to

this; they would make government impossible. To those who doubt their

power to do this I would recommend a study of the agitation against the

Ilbert Bill, more especially in its latest stages. It is no longer

secret history that a disaster unequalled in Indian history was only

saved at the last minute by the surrender of Government.

And the feelings which caused this are as vital now as then. It may be

taken as an axiom that whatever Government might decree, the great

British mercantile and other interests in India would refuse to allow

any appreciable transfer of authority to the hands of Indians, and in

face of their opposition it could not be done. That an Indian should

rule Indians they would not mind perhaps, but that an Indian should

rule Europeans, and that it should be to an Indian they looked for the

maintenance of peace and order and for the administration of justice,

criminal and civil, is unthinkable. The stability of the

administration is due to its being English, and any threat to that

stability would not be borne.

Besides, to what would it lead? Suppose, by a wild stretch of the

imagination, all the Civil Service in India could be composed of

Indians, what then? That is not self-government. The orders would

still come from Downing Street, the responsibility rest with Parliament

and the English people. The Government would not and could not so be

Indianised; all that would have happened would be that a few hundred

Indian gentlemen had been imperfectly Anglicised. Is that an ideal?

Where would the three hundred and fifty million come in? No more than

they do now. But in any self-government worth the name these people

must come in; they must be the base on which the self-government is

erected.

Government does not see its way. It must do something, and it has no

idea what to do. A wise statesmanship would hold its hand till it saw

clearly. But there is the danger that a hasty statesmanship may in

despair do something for the mere sake of saying it is not standing

still.

There is a way out of the present trouble, but I think it can be seen

clearly enough that admitting Indians to the Civil Service is not that

way. It might, in fact, be a very serious obstacle to following the

right course.

India is lost, and will be regained by no such measures as those

proposed. They will only deepen the gulf and accelerate the final

rupture.

PART III

A NEW INDIA

CHAPTER XII

THE NEW CIVILIAN

India may be regained. How could that be done?

The first point is the _personnel_ of the Indian Civil Service, which

holds all important offices in India, forms the Government, and fills

most of the places on the Indian Council at home.

It depends, as I have said, for its success not upon the ability, but

on the personality of its members. India was achieved by personality

and successfully governed by personality. It is personality alone that

humanises rule and makes it tolerable, that stands between the people

and rigid law, and can create that sentiment which alone binds ruler

and ruled together.

How can that necessary personality be restored to it?

That this lack of personality does not affect only the Indian Civil

Service is a matter of notoriety. It is exactly what our generals

deplored after the Boer War--that the ordinary officer had no

personality. It is a matter of common remark nowadays how exactly

alike all the young men are, echoing sentiments that are not theirs.

It is what the Germans say of us and the Americans, who especially

admire and try to cultivate personality. We once stood before the

world as a nation of personalities. We do so no longer.

To what is this due? Not to natural deficiency, because all children

abound in personality. It is due to what is called "education." That

too is no new discovery of mine, but a matter of common knowledge and

publicity. Read, for instance, Harold Gorst's _The Curse of

Education_. In Paine's _Life of Mark Twain_, systematic training is

called "a blight." Neither is it a new thing. The Duke of Wellington

said Waterloo was won in the playing-fields of Eton--not in the

schools, be it noted. Yet in those days education was nothing like so

rigid as it is now. Then take the notable Englishmen of the last fifty

years; how few have been University men--many not public school men.

Cobden and Bright, Chamberlain, Beaconsfield, Dickens and Kipling,

Stanley, Captain Scott, and other pioneers of Empire, Huxley and

Kelvin, all the great captains of industry. The two most prominent

members of the Government to-day are not University men. Even where

notable men were University men they did not attain their stature till

they had thrown off its bonds. Gladstone was, for instance, the hope

of the stern, unbending Tories till he had achieved his liberty, when

he could think for himself. Yet even then he only achieved political,

and never spiritual, freedom. Cecil Rhodes said that University dons

were as children in some matters; meaning, however, ignorant and not

ready to learn, which is not a child's attitude.

Therefore the fault lies with the "education."

What is Education?

There are two things that go to the proper upbringing of a child, and

though they overlap in places they are distinct and even sometimes

contradictory; one is Instruction, and the other is Education.

Reading and writing, arithmetic, and all information obtained from

books or lectures or teachers is instruction; the bringing out of the

powers of the child's own mind is education. The object of instruction

is to enable the child to better his education. In itself it has no

value. The mere acquirements of reading and writing--the mere

accumulation of book knowledge--are in themselves worthless. "The

learned fool is the biggest fool." They are only good insomuch as they

help education.

What is education? It is the drawing out of a child's mind so that it

can see life as it is, not a mere mass of phenomena, but a consequence

of underlying causes; it is the exercising of his faculties of right

judgment to meet events as they arise; it is an ability to gauge

himself and others. Education is the cultivation of personality. It

is to the child what careful gardening is to the tree--a help to growth

so that it can develop its potentiality. The gardener helps each tree

to put forth that essential quality of its own that differentiates it

from all other trees and makes it a thing of use and beauty to the

world. It is not a reduction to a common type or the standardisation

of growth, because while the tree must harmonise with the rest of the

garden it must have an individuality of its own.

That is education, and that alone is education. Instruction is simply

providing the necessary food for growth, or giving the necessary

weapons or implements to obtain that food. All instruction that does

not directly tend to nourish personality is worse than waste--it

occupies nerve and energy that are wanted for better things.

This is simple enough, yet the world is full of fallacies on the

subject. Here is one from a well-known writer: "How can you draw out

of a child a love for clean collars, Greek accents, the date of

Bannockburn, or how to eat asparagus."

Well, you can only draw out a child's love for these things by helping

him to see that the acquisition of them is a step towards a result the

child desires to reach. Now Greek accents are only useful to a child

who wishes to become a Greek tutor, and the date of Bannockburn is

useful to no one because it can always be looked up if necessary;

therefore no children have a taste for the latter, and not one in a

thousand for the former. They are not education at all, and even as

instruction they are worthless. A love of clean collars and how to eat

asparagus can be drawn out of children by simply making them realise

that unless they have their love for these things they will expose

themselves to ridicule or contempt for no good purpose. For be it

noted that until you do awaken this self-respect you will not get a

child to put on clean collars enthusiastically, or be careful about

asparagus. Instruction in such matters is useless--you must have

education.

The man or woman properly educated will desire the right things, and

will seek the right way of attaining these things. His actions will

spring from a real living force within him. But if you teach him to do

things because he is told or because it is the custom, you injure his

personality; and as there is no driving force in a law or a custom,

which are bonds, you confine him, whereas you should free him. It is

an admission that he must not or cannot think for himself, but must

blindly follow custom. It is true that he must, not only in boyhood

but all through his life, yield obedience in act to persons,

governments, or rules; but he must not do so blindly. It is a

principal part of education to make the boy see for himself that such

subordination of act is necessary to the progress of the world, because

as individuals we can accomplish no great thing; then he will do it

willingly, knowing its necessity. But it is equally necessary that the

boy never subordinate his judgment to others, because any rule made

absolute is death to progress, and there is no authority, nor rule, nor

convention that should not be broken sometimes; and as time goes on all

must be modified, changed, and relaxed; the ideal of education being

that all authority will become unnecessary, as people will desire what

is right, and do it _proprio moto_. The truth will have made them free.

Now seeing this difference, how much education is there in school or

college? In the classrooms there is none. All that is given in

classes is instruction, which may be useful or detrimental inasmuch as

it helps personality or not. Usually it is detrimental, because it

substitutes "authority" for insight. The child must accept something,

not because he is helped to see that it is true, but because "somebody

says so." Thus his personality is destroyed.

The only education he gets is in the playing-fields. There he learns

to keep his temper, play the game, and co-operate, of his volition,

with others to a desired end.

That is a valuable training, but it does not go very far. He is never

taught to see life as it is for himself. On the contrary, he is

forbidden to do so.

And this continues now till the age of twenty-two or twenty-three, so

that by the time it is over the most receptive period of life is past.

Bacon went to the University at thirteen, and left it at sixteen as he

found it had no more to teach him.

Further, until some thirty or forty years ago a father considered that

he owed some duty to his son--to help him, to lead him, to initiate him

into life.

No one can do this but a father. No one can understand his son like a

father and know what it is necessary for him to learn; to no one will

the son listen, or confide in, as his father. But nowadays I notice

that fathers have abdicated. They consider their duty fulfilled if

they pay for the boy's schooling, and everything is left to the

schoolmaster. Many fathers that I know are quite stranger to their

sons. Mothers, on the contrary, strive more and more to obtain

influence over their sons and bring them up in the principles of women.

But a man must be a man or be nothing.

There is another and very considerable difference between schools now

and the schools of sixty years ago and before. In the earlier period

the schoolmasters were rarely clergymen; now they are practically

always so; and not only that, but boys nowadays are far more under

control and influence of their masters than they were.

Now whatever good points may be claimed for Church teaching by those

who believe in it, there will, I think, be no difficulty about the

admission that the frame of mind, the outlook on the world, of

ecclesiastics is not suitable for men who have to lead an active life.

It is, in fact, the very reverse of what a man requires whose first

duty it is to understand the world and to lead the world. For to the

ecclesiastic the world is a bad place, it has to be borne as best it

can, to be condemned not understood, and all effort is directed not to

this world but to some other. Moreover, the habit of thought of

ecclesiastics is fixed. They believe that not only is truth absolute,

but that they possess it or some of it; the very foundation-rock of

their belief is authority, and freedom of thought is disliked by them

as subversive of their tenets. Their principal qualities are those of

submission, patience and obedience, not merely in act but in thought.

Now boys are apt to imitate their masters, and however secular a course

of education may be, if it be given by ecclesiastics the boys are

certain to be a great deal influenced by their master's outlook on

life. That accounts for much of the pessimism that is observable, for

the "unnatural mildness" of the modern young man. If you keep a boy

under ecclesiastical habits of thought till he is twenty-three, how can

he ever escape into the fresh air of free inquiry? How will he ever

love the world instead of despising it? And no good work was ever done

except by men who loved the world; and love comes from understanding,

not from aloofness.

A boy's education should be directed from an early age towards the work

he is to perform in life. What department of the public service is now

held to be the best served? Is it not the Navy? And naval officers

are caught young and trained _ad hoc_; not a narrow professional

training, but none the less a training with an object. The present

training of Indian civilians up till twenty-three is objectless, and

therefore inefficient. That in the Army the special training is begun

much later may account for the complaints of army officers wanting

personality compared with naval officers.

With engineers and all specialised work the training begins young.

But the Indian civilian is ecclesiastically trained till he is

twenty-three. Then he has to learn his work. Could there be a greater

absurdity?

What then should be done?

In the first place he should be caught young. The work of the Indian

civilian is as important to England as that of the sailor; it is even

more specialised and difficult. He should be trained for it from

fourteen or thereabouts, not from twenty-three.

It should be determined what special qualities are necessary for a good

Indian civilian. I think some of them are obvious enough.

A good physique and a liking for sport.

Good manners and a knowledge of etiquette.

Discipline in act.

Freedom and courage in thought.

Knowledge of life and humanity as they are round him.

Let us consider these.

That physical fitness is the first necessity all will allow. The

climate is severe and takes a great deal out of him, especially in the

hot weather; there must be exposure in the districts; the work is hard

and difficult, and makes great demands upon the physique. Therefore

the physique must be good.

And a medical certificate of soundness is no guarantee of this. A man

may be medically quite sound and yet so prostrated by the heat as to

find his temper and his work affected. His physique lies at the base

of all his work, and must be good. Nothing is now done to secure this;

no investigation has ever been made as to the type that endures heat

the best. Yet undoubtedly there is such a type. In that extraordinary

book, _A Modern Legionary_, it is pointed out that in Tonquin, amongst

the men of the Legion, a certain type stood the climate better than the

others. Whenever any special service had to be performed it was men of

a certain sanguine type that were chosen. Not that they were

physically stronger or braver than the others, but because even in the

greatest heat they retained a certain buoyancy of temperament which the

darker types lost.

I have myself noticed something of the sort in Burma and India. Of

course mere personal observation of this sort proves nothing, but the

subject seems to deserve investigation. That all people do not bear

heat and cold alike is undoubted. In the Russian campaign of 1812 it

was the Italians who stood the cold best of all Napoleon's troops.

Anyhow, the cadet should have not merely a sound physique but a buoyant

physique, and that cannot be ensured under the present system.

Then he should be made a good sportsman; for the Indian civilian no

training is more necessary than this. I do not mean only a cricketer

or football player; neither of these games is of much use out in the

East. I mean a rider who is also fond of horses; a shot who is also

interested in birds and animals.

There is in all sportsmen of this kind a quality which no one else has.

I cannot define it. It comes, I think, from association with people

out of his own rank in one pursuit, from having to go to them for

knowledge he has not got himself and thereby recognising their value,

from a subtle sympathy with nature as not apart from man, nor a setting

for man, but another manifestation of the same Life that is in man.

Nothing is more valuable in enabling a District Officer to keep his

mind sweet. Official work is all concerned with the faults and

shortcomings of others, wherein you are judge and they are culprits.

Official work divides; it insensibly leads you to believe that all men

are liars and robbers, and are trying to deceive you. Throw it aside,

and go out to shoot, stopping in the villages talking of sport and

village affairs, and the whole aspect of life changes. You wash off

your priggishness; you cease to imagine yourself first cousin to the

Deity; you return to your humanity, and with the first snipe you miss

to your extreme fallibility.

Then there is ability at languages. Now although some men may develop

an excess of ability to learn languages, all people have that ability

to a certain extent when young or they could not learn their own

language.

But it is an ability that quickly departs unless kept alive. The way

Greek and Latin are taught is a sure way to destroy any ability for

learning a language a boy may retain. Grammar should never be taught.

No child learns its own language by grammar, and, in fact, grammar only

applies to dead languages, not to living. That has to some extent

dawned on modern educators, but I see that French grammar and regular

and irregular verbs are taught to those learning French. Did Loti and

Maupassant learn French grammar? I wonder. If not, why should anyone

else? But schoolmasters are a hard lot, and there is no one who so

absolutely refuses to learn as he who makes a profession of teaching.

Why should not Hindustani be made the school language for Indian cadets?

Then come good manners. I do not mean only good English manners--those

manners which enable you to pass in a meeting of cultivated English men

and women--but much better manners than those. They are concerned with

your conduct to your equals; but the only good manners that will be of

much use to you in the East are those deeper manners which are equal to

all occasions and can show an equal courtesy to a ploughman as to a

peer, to an old Subadar hero of a hundred fights, to a headman and to a

coolie. Some of it is, of course, convention and must be learned, like

the right thing to do when an old soldier offers you the hilt of his

sword, or a Burman lady brings you some fruit; but most of it, I think,

simply comes from a frame of mind. If you recognise that the common

humanity that binds you is eternal and that the difference of rank or

race or age is a temporary difference that will pass, I do not think

you will quite want for good manners. Orientals are particular about

manners, and they do not respect a man who has none, or who has his own

and not theirs.

Discipline in act is, I think, enough taught now, but freedom of

thought is woefully to seek. It is banned by theology, and

ecclesiastics naturally do not teach it.

As to knowledge of life, that can only come in the living. But it will

not come unless you find the world worth studying and your own life

worth living. If this world is bad, then it is not worth study, and if

the only object of your life here is to fit you or unfit you for life

in some spirit world, then you will not care much to fit yourself for

this world.

Finally, it would appear too as if civilians should go out to India

much younger than they do now. Twenty-three is far too old to begin a

totally new life. For it must be remembered that life in India is a

totally new life to which men have to get accustomed. No matter how

you are trained in England, nothing will enable you to know India but

being in India. The real education cannot begin until the student

lands in the country in which he is to do his life's work. Everything

he may learn at home is preliminary only. Language, people, work have

all to be learned after arriving. However good the material provided

may be, it is, when it lands, simply so much raw material. It has to

learn everything. I do not think the age of twenty is at all too young

to begin such a training; in fact I think nineteen would be better.

But we are now come to what should be done after arrival in India, and

that will require a new chapter.

CHAPTER XIII

TRAINING IN INDIA

Having got the young civilian out to his province he should be

thoroughly trained before being put to work, not given six or nine

months to look round and then put to do work he cannot understand.

If he came out to India at twenty, he could well afford eighteen months

or two years of real training.

During the cold weather he should be with some District Officer,

accompanying him in camp, observing how he works, getting an insight

into the mechanism of Government; during the hot weather he should be

in the hills. By thus keeping him out of the great heat at the

beginning he would become slowly acclimatised. Now he is plunged

straight out from England into the Indian plains.

As to the training he should receive, that is not very difficult to

suggest. First and foremost comes the language, of which a good

colloquial knowledge should be required. It can only be acquired by

talking to the people. A teacher is useful to explain difficulties

encountered by a pupil in trying to talk, but no teacher can teach a

language. In fact, languages cannot be taught--they can be acquired.

The ability of the ear and vocal organs to recognise and reproduce

strange sounds comes only with constant practice; and it must be

practice with the people, for educated men talk differently from

peasants in India as elsewhere. All Acts should be learned by first

clearly understanding the principles that underlie them, the object

sought to attain, and the method by which it is hoped to attain it.

That is the only way to really understand an Act or Code. The detailed

knowledge can be filled in later. In order to enable this to be done

Government would have to frame introductions to their Codes and Acts.

And such introductions would be most valuable not only to learners but

to Government itself. Suppose, for instance, an introduction were

written to the _Village Manual_ explaining exactly what the village

organism is and that the Act and Rules were intended to preserve and

strengthen this organism; it would be immediately apparent that as they

are now they really injure and destroy it. This would lead to a

complete recast of the _Manual_--a most necessary work. And so with

the other Acts and Rules. Now they are issued in a perfectly naked

state that would be almost immodest had they any real life in them.

But there is never any intention or life manifest, only dead formulæ.

Such introductions would also be most valuable in keeping an Act up to

date. A law may fairly fulfil its intention when issued, but as

circumstances change it would become obvious that the Act was out of

date. If however you don't know the intention of the Act, how are you

to judge its relevancy?

Further, such introductions would prevent the abuse of certain

sections. Did, for instance, the Government of India intend sections

109, 110, of the Criminal Procedure Code to be used as they are in

Burma now? I doubt it. But Burma can always say: "How was I to know

the intention? There are the sections. Why shouldn't I use them as I

think fit?"

How would the imprisonment sections of the Civil Procedure Code be

justified? What object are they supposed to attain? No one knows. It

can't be to deter a man from being ruined--that is not necessary; it

can't be to make him pay--the distraint sections are for that; it can't

be to render him a better citizen--gaols don't do that. What are they

for, then? To pander to the creditors' desire for vengeance? It can

only be that. I would like to see Government avow it.

Then the young civilian should get an insight into the customs of the

people and learn to understand what these customs mean. Nothing is

more absurd than the way ceremonies are misinterpreted, not merely by

the casual observer, but by what is called "science." A whole theory

of "marriage by capture" has been built on ceremonies that are

symbolical, not of an absurdity like that, but of certain facts of

human nature common to all marriages in all periods all over the world.

The Nairs of Malabar have been credited with the most extraordinary

forms of polyandry on the strength of ceremonies which were adopted as

a protection to deceive the Brahmins. Human nature is, in its

essentials, always the same. If the learner is helped to look under

ceremonies he will see this. A knowledge of ceremonies has its value,

like a knowledge of clothes has; but as clothes are used for good

reasons--sometimes to hide the form, sometimes to accentuate parts of

the form--so are ceremonies. And ceremonies may and do persist long

after the human need has left them.

Further, he should know something of the economic state of the people.

I think that a District Officer should be acquainted with the principal

industries of his district, so as to be able to give help if need be.

Generally speaking, the help he can give is protection from rash

innovations. The cultivator neither in India nor in Burma is blind to

his own interest, nor is he ignorant. He has behind him an experience

of thousands of years, which have taught him a great deal about the

capability of crops and soils. But he is quite willing to learn more,

only he must make sure first. He cannot afford to experiment. His

system will give him a living, and a change may mean starvation. He

cannot run the risk. Prove to him that a new crop will grow and will

fetch a decent price, and he is eager to cultivate it; but nothing less

than ocular proof will do. That is, of course, right. He has common

sense.

Unfortunately, not everyone has so much sense, and there are continual

attempts being made to get him to make experiments he cannot afford.

He should be protected against these. I can remember two such

attempted booms in Upper Burma, both engineered by Government--one was

cotton, and one was coffee or tea planting.

The cotton boom was very rigorously pressed upon us from England

because I believe someone in authority had promised to "take his coat

off" to make it succeed. But Burma is not a good cotton country, and

the long staple will not grow. Moreover, if it could be grown with

irrigation it would not pay nearly so well as rice. Therefore the

cultivator will have none of it.

Tea and coffee planting is only suitable for capitalists, not for

peasants; and as a matter of fact coffee won't grow north of about 12°

north latitude. So these booms fizzled out, but they created a good

deal of trouble first.

Indeed, most of my experiences were putting dampers on enthusiasts,

Government or other, who wanted something grown, and who were ready to

affirm that if it would not grow it ought to grow and must be made to

grow, and sell afterwards as well. I remember a correspondence I had

with a gentleman in Lower Burma on the subject of a fibre-producing

plant which is grown in small patches near the villages of my district

to serve as string. This gentleman heard of the plant and wrote to me

a glowing account of the future before it, strongly urging me to advise

my people--nay, to force my people--to grow it in large quantities for

export. I wrote back that if he was so interested in the matter he

should come up to my district and enter into contracts with the

villagers to grow it for him. They would, I knew, do it at a certain

price which I gave, and I offered to help him in every way. He,

however, indignantly refused. He was not a trader, and the villagers

should grow it on speculation. As it happens, I have a considerable

knowledge of fibre plants gained before I entered Government service,

and as I knew there was no certain market for this fibre I let well

alone.

But most of all, I think a young officer should learn that it is not

only for the people's pleasure but for his own pleasure and for the

good of Government that he should encourage the amusements of the

people. Nothing will give him more influence than this, make him

better known, or cause his official work to go so easily.

It is a continual complaint among the people now that life is so dull.

Our administration has not only taken all the adventure and

picturesqueness out of life, but it has been disastrous to sport.

Boat-racing, for instance, which used to be a great sport all along the

Irrawaddy, is now nearly dead, and amateur dancing troupes which used

to be common in the villages are nearly all defunct. I believe they

are _all_ dead. Now this is a disastrous state of things. Man wants

play as well as work, and if he can't get amusement he will do things

he shouldn't. The principal reason given for this decay is that unless

some high official will interest himself in sports and give them his

encouragement, no one will get them up. Therefore, when I was in

Sagaing I instituted a regatta in the October holidays. It was no

trouble to me. Directly I said I would like to have races there were

plenty of well-known Burmans ready to do all the work with pleasure and

enthusiasm.

The riverside villages caught up the idea. They pulled out their old

racing canoes and did them up anew. Crews were put into training, and

for weeks all the talk was of times and spurts and the merits of this

crew and that. Sagaing didn't know itself.

The races duly came off in the glorious full-moon week of October, when

all Courts are closed for ten days and everyone has holidays. Many

crews came, and their friends and relatives came, and their supporters

and backers, and they brought their wives and sisters with them. In

the evenings we had boat races, at night we had pagoda festivals and

dances and illuminations.

All went well till the final great event, which was a race between our

champion boat and a boat sent over from Mandalay to challenge us.

There was immense excitement about this because the Mandalay boat was

said to be a swagger boat; but then so was ours, a very swagger boat.

Mandalay bet on their boat. Sagaing laid their rupees on the Sagaing

boat; and the banks on both sides the mile-wide river were thronged

with spectators. Then a catastrophe occurred. Just before the race

our steersman was discovered drunk and happy upon the beach. How this

happened I don't know. Why the crew ever allowed him to be separated

from them I can't think; and his own explanation threw no clear light

on the subject. He said in self-defence that the enemy in disguise had

lured him into a toddy shop and "must have hocussed the toddy, for I

only had a couple of cups, yet see me now," and there was great

indignation. Whether in consequence of his defection or not I don't

know, but we lost. Mandalay just romped away from us, and not only

secured the prize, but was declared to have carried off a "cart-load"

of rupees won in bets.

However, notwithstanding that disaster the meeting was a great success,

and now, after ten years, that is the principal event I remember of my

three years' administration. It stands out in my memory, and I think

that probably if the people ever remember me at all it is as the

convener of the first regatta for many years.

There was an amusing sequel to this defeat by Mandalay. For months

afterwards whenever I had an insolvent case in my Court the debtor

attributed his failure to this race. The district was "stony broke" in

consequence, at least so the insolvents in my Court said. The

conversation would run as follows:

_The Judge_ (myself). Well, I have read your schedule, and you are

five hundred rupees out. How is that? Explain.

_Debtor_. I am a honest man, your Honour, and never in debt before.

_Myself_. No doubt. How did it happen this time?

_Debtor_. Well, your Honour will remember that last October your

Honour got up boat races here.

_Myself_. Certainly.

_Debtor_. And Mandalay sent us a challenge.

_Myself_. Well?

_Debtor_. Naturally I believed in _our_ boat. (Note the "our"--his

and mine). I was sure it must win, and for our [his and my] credit I

wagered all I could get on it.

_Myself_. Hum!

_Debtor_. We lost.

_Myself_. There was always a possibility of that.

_Debtor_ (indignantly). Not with a fair race. But they drugged our

steersman. I call it a swindle, but I had to pay, and consequently am

now insolvent and in your Honour's hands.

Was there any truth in this? There was no truth, of course. These

debtors became insolvent through the action of two or three newly

arrived firms of money-lenders. That was clear enough. Possibly they

had a rupee or two on the boat race, but that would hardly affect

matters. They made this appeal to try to get at me--the man--behind

the law in which I was encased. They will do anything to achieve that.

Like all human beings they are terrified at law and want to touch

humanity, no matter what it does. They can bear from a man what they

cannot from a law. This is manifest all through one's official life.

People, for instance, will not come to see you in Court, but come to

your private house. That is to try to get at the humanity they know

you possess. That is what they want--your personality; for it will

understand; whereas a law--what can it know of anything?

Then there are the dancing troupes for girls. What other amusements

have girls but these troupes? They love them. Many girls have told me

that it was the practising for the dances which gave a meaning and an

interest to their girlhood. It taught them what lessons could never

do--grace and elocution and style. It collected the villagers

together; it gave a village something to be proud of. There should be

such troupes in all big villages, and when the village system is

restored there will be no doubt a renaissance of these and other

amusements.

Again, why should not there be village teams of football? The Burmans

like the game immensely, and play it well. But of course for village

play the rules would have to be greatly simplified. They are too

scientific now. It should be a game.

Thus it seems to me a District Officer should be educated to be the

head of his district in all ways, not merely its judge or its

schoolmaster. His other work must be lightened. Much of the work he

does should not be done at all. All interference with the village

should cease. If the suggestions I have to make in a later chapter as

to self-government were adopted, the District Officer would soon feel

the relief. He now seeks for work to do. He should try to avoid work

as much as he can. "Don't interfere, except where you must," should be

his rule. Now it is the other way about. And Government should regard

him quite differently from what it does now. It should trust him, and

not law. He must work within law, but not by law. When he has

something to decide he should consider what is the right and proper

thing to do, and then see if he can legally do it. If not, he must

modify his order till it is within law. Now he looks to the law to

tell him what to do. That is bad. Laws are bonds, not guides. They

cannot give you motive force. They tell you what not to do, and that

is all.

He should be trusted far more than he is. He should not be made to

"fall into line." He should be judged not by his acts, but by the

result of his acts, or his refusals to act, that is, by the state of

his district. He should not be transferred when it can be helped, but

be encouraged to make long stays in a district. He will do so if you

give him a free hand so that he can take a personal interest in his

work and people. The secret of success is personality.

I think if the young men sent out were trained on these or some such

lines there would soon be a very different feeling between people and

Government from what there is now. There would be a mutual

understanding and respect which are now lacking.

There is a further suggestion I have to make as regards District

Officers, not for their training, but for regulating their relations to

the Government above them. They should be consulted prior to all

legislation that affects their districts.

It will, of course, be said that they are now so consulted. Drafts of

new Acts or amendments of Acts are sent round for comment and

criticism, and so District Officers are consulted.

I don't call that consultation; even if it come within the dictionary

meaning of the word it does not come within its spirit.

Take a concrete case: Suppose a new Village Act to be drafted and sent

round to District Officers for criticism, how can any one officer

criticise it effectively, or make useful suggestions, except by chance?

His experience is confined to one, or two, or three districts; the Act

is for the Province. He may make suggestions to suit his district; he

cannot tell if they will suit others. He has no idea why certain

provisions are included. He has no certain basis for constructive

criticism. Very often he won't criticise at all. He says: "What is

the use? It's only sent to me as a matter of form." Besides, as I

have pointed out, the opinions of a number of individuals taken one by

one differ greatly from the opinion of the same number sitting together

and discussing various points of view before framing an opinion.

But what Government wants is the collective opinion of its District

Officers, and not many varying views. It would have far more

confidence in such an opinion, and be more careful in disregarding it.

Why should not District Officers meet once a year to discuss pending

questions, to consider new Acts, to suggest changes in old Acts? Their

proceedings would, of course, be private, and not for publication.

Officers should be encouraged to speak out. It would be a great help

to all of them, and I think it would give Government a sense of

security it has not got now.