CHAPTER XIV

OTHER SERVICES

The Indian Civil Service is the principal service in India; it

furnishes men for the executive, the magistracy, and judicature, the

revenue administration; and its members constitute not only the Local

Government, but, excepting for the Law member and one or two others,

the Council of the Government of India. Therefore it is in every way

the most important service to have in harmony with the people. It is

not, however, the only service manned by Englishmen, and it is very

necessary that the other services also should be efficient. These are

the Forest Department, the Engineer Department, and the Police. Of the

first two I have nothing to say. They are technical departments, and

although of course I have had a good deal to do with them, only a

member of their own department would have the specialist knowledge to

criticise them. I believe they are dissatisfied, but how far their

grievances can be rectified I don't know.

With the police it is different. Though a separate department, they

work in close touch with the District Magistrate, who is, in fact,

their legal head. He must be intimately acquainted with their working,

and with his Superintendent of Police personally in order that work in

the district may go easily.

The first requisite for a good police-officer is a knowledge of the

language. It is even more necessary for him than for the civilian. It

is an absolute essential. And in the men of my day it was an essential

that was fulfilled for the most part. Whether it will be so with the

men enlisted under the new system of competitive examination in England

is more doubtful. The men of former days entered the service younger,

and the receptivity of their minds for acquiring languages had not been

destroyed by "education." It is, I think, a pity that a competitive

examination has been made the entrance-gate to the police. Such

examinations prove nothing good in those who pass them. They may be

good men, but preparation for examination has not increased that

goodness.

I do not believe in competitive examinations. For instance, take the

Indian Police; what qualities are required in a good Superintendent of

Police? They are ability to command, facility in two languages at

least, tact, a knowledge of human nature. What does an examination

select him for? Ability in any of these? No, but for a retentive

memory of written words such as Greek or Latin, for dry rules such as

grammar, for memory of dry and useless facts such as history as it is

taught, for mathematics. Is there any obvious connection between these

two sets of qualities? There is none whatever. Has experience shown

that ability in the first argues ability in the second? Experience

shows the reverse.

Neither is the athletic ability for which marks are given to Rhodes

scholars any test whatever of anything but itself. Without wishing for

a moment to infer that athletic ability argues a deficiency in mental

ability, I would ask how many of the leaders the world has known were

great athletes? Nelson, or Lord Roberts, or Napoleon, for instance.

Whenever ability of muscle and of brain have occurred together it has

been incidental, not causal. Muscular ability is a good thing, but

there are better things.

Success in competitive examinations proves one thing only--that the

candidate has a good memory for words. It very frequently follows that

he is unable to go beneath words, and that he puts his trust in words

and papers and formulæ because the habit of mind set up by examinations

tends to this.

There is no sense in these examinations for anyone, except perhaps for

those about to be tutors of the same things. Men of action and

scholars are different in grain and the test for one usually eliminates

the other. That there are a few exceptions only demonstrates that

human nature cannot be confined within hard and fast rules. But there

can be successful generalisation.

Competitive examinations are a fetish which Government worships because

it is afraid of taking the responsibility of appointing officers on its

own initiative. It is afraid of the charge of nepotism. But it would

not be nepotism to give the sons of its officers, Civil and Military,

first chance of appointments in the Police. It would be a graceful

recognition of the fact that when a man has spent his life in India he

has lost touch with England and cannot get his sons placed at home,

therefore he deserves consideration for them from the Government he has

served. I do not believe in heredity in such matters because there is

no evidence in its favour; but I do believe in early associations and

traditions. Now the traditions and associations of the sons of

officers who have served in India are with India.

I believe that a much sounder way would be to appoint sons of officers

who have served in India. They have Indian traditions, and, what is

more, having as children learned the language it soon returns to them.

I know this as a fact. Some twenty-five years ago in Upper Burma a

young police-officer was sent to the same station with me in Burma. He

came direct from India, but had been born and brought up in Burma till

he was seven, when he went to England to school. From England, at

eighteen or nineteen, he went to India--the Punjab, I think--and was

appointed to the Police there. When Upper Burma was in need of

officers he was sent to Burma on promotion. On arrival he did not

remember a word of Burmese, but it came rapidly back to him. When

sitting with me when I was talking to the Burmese he would continually

say to me, "Didn't you say so-and-so?" and "Didn't he answer

so-and-so?" Without learning it, his memory recalled the language to

him, and in a month or two he was talking it well and with a good

accent.

There remain the Subordinate Civil Service and the Lower Grades of the

Police, all or nearly all of whom are native to the Province.

In another book, writing on this subject, I said: "I read and hear

continually that many of our native magistrates and judges and police

are corrupt. I am told they take bribes, that they falsify cases, that

they make right into wrong. I wish to say that I have no belief in

such charges. Exceptions there may be, but that the mass of our Burman

fellow-officers are honest I have no doubt." All my experience has

tended to support that view.

Everyone in the world requires looking after, requires check and

supervision, requires that protection between himself and harm that

only a watching eye can give, and in Burma, for the Burmese officials,

these safeguards hardly exist.

It must be remembered that official Burma has no Press to criticise it,

no native society to give it tone, no organised community to help the

individual in the right path. He has many temptations, and a fall is

easy.

I do not believe in the general charge that Burmese are corrupt. That

occasional cases of undue influence should occur is natural if you

consider the circumstances under which they serve. They are not, like

the English officers, independent of their surroundings in social

matters. They have, for company's sake, to associate with the

pleaders, the merchants, the headmen, and others within their charge.

Their families are with them, and they are interested in the happenings

of the town or village, and are concerned in it. They are inevitably

influenced in many ways, which we do not appreciate. They know things

which we do not. In cases that come before them they often know of

events behind the scenes which lead up to the final happening which

comes into Court. It is useless to say that they should not be

influenced by anything but the evidence on the record; they cannot help

being influenced. They have, for instance, known of A being a trouble

to his parents long before the charge which they have to try, and that

is in their minds; or they know B to be a good character, and that his

accusers are doubtful people. It has happened to me, not once but many

times, that on appeal I have read a judgment of a Burmese Subordinate

Magistrate which puzzled me, because, though not contrary to the

evidence, there has evidently been in the writer's mind something more

than the evidence. In such cases I have usually inquired personally

from the magistrate what it was he knew before passing orders on

appeal, and I have sometimes taken further evidence on that point so as

to get the record straight. It is easy to say that magistrates should

not be affected by anything but the recorded evidence, just as it is

easy to say that a magistrate should be blind. Magistrates are human

beings--fortunately.

But, of course, the standard might be higher. This raising of the

standard can, however, only be attained by raising the standard of

independence in the people, and our rule tends to decrease this. Under

self-government it will rise. It is self-government and its consequent

publicity which have purified Courts in England. Look at Judge

Jeffreys and his time. We are not people to adopt too Pharisaic an

attitude.

Elsewhere I have commented on the failure of the "educated" native to

make a good official, and I need not repeat myself. The education we

give is not good for them, but until a national system of education is

instituted I don't see what we can do. The subordinate service, as

long as it is subordinate, cannot attract the best men, because the

prospects are poor.

As to the rank and file of the police I have this to say--they are

unsatisfactory, and the Police Commission did not get at the real

causes. Do Commissions ever get at real causes? Are they not merely

excuses to give "face" to Government? What is the use of examining

innumerable witnesses none of whom have probed the subject? Answers to

difficult questions are not got by asking, but by personal experience:

by a man or men capable of understanding what they see and finding out

the causes.

Pay has something to do with the poorness of the material, but in Burma

at least it is not the principal cause. That cause is that the police

are disliked, and they are disliked because they are part of a legal

system which is disliked and disapproved of. The police are considered

almost as enemies of the people. To rehabilitate the police and get

really good men into it the whole criminal system requires amendment.

When the people like and admire the Courts they will like and will

enter the service of those Courts. Now they will do neither. A

popular Government may be a good Government; an unpopular Government

cannot possibly be so.

Further, it is said that the Burman takes badly to discipline and will

never, therefore, make a good policeman nor soldier.

That he takes badly to discipline is true, but what is the reason?

That he is essentially different from other people? That is absurd.

The reason of it lies in his past history, his environment and

education.

When we took Upper Burma it was hardly an organised nation at all. It

was only a mass of villagers which acknowledged a king over all. There

was no national army--because no need for one--and no large industries.

The Burman has been a free man and he has the religion--or want of

religion--of a free man. He has never had priests to rule him, to

force on him reverence and obedience as virtues, to destroy his

individuality. Therefore he has lived free. And nowadays, although he

is lectured enough on his want of discipline, the advice is given in

the wrong way and apropos of the wrong subject.

He ought in the opinion of his critics to be a good policeman or a good

soldier, or a good employé for the rice merchants in Rangoon, and he is

not. Therefore he is lectured on his want of discipline. "That is to

say," thinks the Burman, "I am lectured and abused in order that I may

be a more useful tool in the hands of a foreign Government, or a more

profitable servant to a foreign merchant--who will reap the benefit."

That is what he thinks and rightly thinks, for the advice is so

prompted and so meant.

He has yet to learn that discipline in act is necessary to enable him

to attain his own ideals, to create and maintain his own

self-government, and to establish industries that will compete with the

foreigner's. He must himself establish organisms in order to succeed.

The Burman is afraid of discipline, partly because it is new to him,

and partly because he is afraid that by surrendering independence of

act he will surrender independence of spirit.

This can only be got over by a true education, by making the boy see

for himself that only in union is strength, and that he must learn to

act with others, and therefore under leaders. He will see this fast

enough if it is carefully shown him when young. He will accept it also

if it is clearly demonstrated to him that obedience in act does not

infer surrender of his soul. It is the latter he is afraid of, and

wisely. Tell him that not only may he think for himself, but that he

is bound to do so, while at the same time subordinating private

opinions to a common end, and you will get discipline as much as you

like. It is a matter of common sense, and he has plenty of that.

The mechanical obedience to masters and spiritual or material pastors

because they have been "set in authority" over us should never be

taught. They have not been set in authority. They may deserve

obedience if they are leaders in the right way, and we should

co-operate with them there by serving them towards an end good for

both. Get the boy to understand that. Then you get that willing and

intelligent obedience which is worth all the mechanical obedience in

the world. This is true in all walks of life. If you wish to read of

a startling example, read of how the Revolutionary troops of France, as

soon as they had gained a little experience, met and overthrew the

wooden and lifeless battalions of Prussia, which had been drilled to

death.

There must be life and intelligence, and a purpose in obedience as in

all else for it to be a virtue. In itself obedience is not an end, it

is only justifiable as a means to an end. It must arise from the

exercise of will, not from its atrophy or from surrender to the will of

others. You obey because you wish to obey, not because you are forced

to do so.

That is the true education in discipline.

But all this can only come with local self-government, local

patriotism, and a national education. They are what make a nation.

CHAPTER XV

LAW REFORM

When the _personnel_ of the Government of India from the bottom to the

top has been reorganised on a basis of understanding of the people, it

will begin to revise its laws, and the first will be its Penal Law, its

Criminal Courts and Procedure.

To do this with any success it will be necessary first to study the

causation of crime, because until you know how it is caused you cannot

possibly frame any system of prevention that is likely to do less harm

than good.

This is a subject that many men have been studying for some years past,

but very little progress has yet been made. The old shibboleths that

crime results from a desire for crime and that the only cure is savage

punishment still hold good with all Governments, though quite

discredited outside official circles. It is a most fascinating

subject, and as it is one I have worked at for many years I may be

excused for devoting a somewhat large space to it here.

It is more than twenty-five years ago that my attention was first

attracted to the causation of crime. I was a young magistrate then,

trying my first cases; very nervous, very conscientious that I should

fulfil all the legal requirements as laid down in the Codes. It had

never occurred to me then that there was any gulf between justice and

law--I supposed that they were one, that law was only codified and

systemised justice; therefore, in fulfilling the Law I thought that I

was surely administering Justice.

I was trying a theft case. I cannot remember now what it was that had

been stolen, but I think it was a bullock. The accused was undefended,

and I, as the custom is, questioned him about the case, not with the

view of getting him to commit himself, but in order to try to elicit

his defence, if any. He had none. He admitted the theft, described

the circumstances quite fully and frankly, and said he was guilty. I

asked him if he knew when he took the bullock from the grazing ground

that he was stealing it, and he answered "Yes." I asked him if he knew

that the punishment for cattle theft was two years' imprisonment, which

practically meant ruin for life, and he replied that he knew it would

be heavy.

Then I asked, "Why did you do it?"

He moved uneasily in the dock without answering, looked about him, and

seemed puzzled.

I repeated the question.

Evidently he was trying to remember back why he had done it, and found

it difficult. He had not considered the point before, and

introspection was new to him. "Why did I do it?" he was saying to

himself.

"Well?" I asked.

He looked me frankly in the face. "I don't know," he said. "I suppose

I could not help it. I did not think about it at all; something just

made me take it."

He was convicted, of course, and I forgot the case.

But I did not forget what he had said. It remained in my mind and

recurred to me from time to time, I did not know why. For I had always

been taught that crime was due to an evil disposition which a person

could change, only he would not, and I had as yet seen no reason to

question this view. Therefore the accused's defence appealed to no

idea that was consciously in my mind. I did not reflect upon it. I

can only suppose that, unconsciously to myself, these words reached

some instinct within me which told me that they were true. And at last

from the very importunity of their return I did begin to think about

them, and, consequently on them, of the causation of crime in general.

A curiosity awoke which has never abated, has indeed but grown, as in

some small ways I was able to satisfy it.

What causes crime? Is it a purely individual matter? If so, why does

it follow certain lines of increase or decrease, or maintain an

average? That looks more like general results following on general

causes than the result of individual qualities. Why is it not curable?

It should have been cured centuries ago. Why does punishment usually

make the offender worse instead of better? If his crime were within

the individual's control, its punishment certainly would deter. It

does not. Any deterrent effect it may have is rarely on him who is

punished, but on the outside world, and that is but little. So much I

saw very clearly in practice, and every book I read on the subject

confirmed this. The infamous penal laws of England a hundred years ago

did not stop crime; flogging did not stop garotting, it ceased for

other causes. I began to think and to observe.

Some three years later my attention was still more strongly drawn to

this subject.

I was then for a short time the Governor of the biggest gaol in the

world, that in Rangoon. It was crowded with prisoners under sentence

for many different forms of crime, from murder or "dacoity"--that is

gang robbery--to petty theft.

The numbers were abnormal, and they were so not only here, but in all

the gaols of both the Upper and Lower Provinces. The average of crime

had greatly risen.

Why was this?

The reason was obvious. The annexation of the Upper Province six years

before had caused a wave of unrest, not only there, but in the delta

districts as well, that found its expression in many forms of crime.

There was no doubt about the cause. But this cause was a general

cause, not individual. The individual criminals there in the gaol did

not declare the war. That was the consequence of acts by the King of

Burma and the Government of India controlled by the English Cabinet,

and was consequent on acts of the French Government. Therefore half of

these individuals had become criminals because of the disagreements of

three Governments, two of which were six thousand miles away from

Rangoon.

There is no getting out of that. In normal times the average of

convicts would have been only half what it was. The abnormality was

not due to the convicts themselves.

Thus if A and B and C were suffering punishment in the gaol the fault

is primarily not theirs. A special strain was set up from without

which they could not stand and they fell.

But if this is true of half the prisoners, why not of the other half?

There was no dividing line between the two classes. Political offences

apart, you could not walk into the gaol and, dividing the convicts into

two parts, say: "The crimes of this half being due to external causes,

they must be pardoned; the crimes of the other half being due to their

own evil disposition, they must continue to suffer." There was no

demarcation.

Therefore, general causes are occasionally the cause of crime. Here

was a long step in advance.

Again, four years later I was on famine duty in the Upper Province, and

the same phenomenon occurred. There was an increase in certain forms

of crime. Thefts doubled. Other crimes such as cheating and

fraudulent dealings with money decreased. Here was again a general

cause. Half of those thieves would have remained honest men all their

lives, been respected by their fellow-men, and, according to religions,

have gone to heaven when they died, but for the famine.

The causes of the famine were want of rain acting on the economic

weakness of the people reared by the inability of government. Thus,

had rain fallen as usual, had the people been able to cultivate other

resources, had government been more advanced and experienced, half

these thieves would not have been in gaol; and no one knew which half,

for thefts of food did not increase. There was, in fact, no reason

they should, as Government provided on the famine camps a subsistence

wage for everyone who came.

On the other hand, certain individuals were saved from misappropriating

money, or cheating in mercantile transactions, because there was little

money left to misappropriate and not much business. If they lived

honestly and went to heaven, the chief cause would be the failure of

rain that year, not any superior virtue of their own. But no one knew

who these individuals were who were so luckily saved.

But when you have acknowledged this, what is becoming of the doctrine

of individual responsibility for crime? If a man has complete

free-will to sin or not, if crime be due to innate wickedness, how does

want of rain bring this on? And where is the common sense or common

justice in punishing him for what is really due to a defective climate?

He cannot control the rain. Manifestly then, as regards at least half

of these thieves, there was no innate desire to steal, because that

could not be affected by the famine. Had they desired to be thieves

they would have been so in any case. The truth is that they did not

desire to be thieves, but when the famine increased the temptation,

and, through physical weakness, decreased their power of resistance,

they fell. They sinned--not through spiritual desire of evil, but

through physical inability to resist temptation.

But if this is true of half, why not of the whole? There is no line of

demarcation. If true of some crime, why not of all? The doctrine of a

man's perfect free-will to sin or not to sin as he pleases is beginning

to look shaky. It will be as well to consider it.

What is free-will?

There is no necessity to discuss the meaning of "free"; we all know it;

there is nothing ambiguous about it; but with "will" it is different.

There are few words so incessantly misused as this word "will."

Philosophers are the worst offenders, and the general public but follow

their blind lead; yet unless you know exactly what you mean by it how

can you use it as a counter of your thought?

What does _will_ mean? "Where there's a will there's a way"--what does

this mean? Does it mean wish? If, for instance, you are poor and

stupid, can any quantity of wish make you rich? If you are weak will

it make you strong? If you have no ear will it make you a musician?

If you are a convict can it liberate you? That is absurd.

"Will," then means more than wish; to the desire must be added the

ability--actual or potential. That is evident, is it not? Without the

ability the wish avails nothing.

"Will," then, has two complements, both of which are necessary to it.

Its meaning is not simple but compound; never forget this; never

suppose that merely wishing with all your power can produce "will." It

cannot unless the ability be developed to aid it.

And now we get back from words to human nature--Is the criminal so

because he wants to be so? No, and No, and No again. No such wicked

fallacy was ever foisted upon a credulous world as this. Nobody at any

period of the world ever wished to be criminal. Everyone instinctively

hates and fears crime; everyone is honest by nature; it is inherent in

the soul. I have never met a criminal that did not hate his crime even

more than his condemners hate it. The apparent exceptions are when a

man does not consider his act a crime; he has killed because his victim

exasperated him to it; he has robbed society because society made war

on him. The offender hates his crime.

"But he is not ashamed of it."

Now that is true. He is not ashamed of it in the current sense. He

hates it; he fears it; but it does not fill him with a sense of sin.

"Therefore," says the purist, "he has a hardened conscience. It is his

conscience, as I said, that is at fault."

But the purist is wrong. He does not understand the criminal. He has

never tried to understand him as I have tried. What the criminal feels

towards his crime is what the sick man feels towards the delirium that

seizes him--what the "possessed of devils" feels towards the possession

when it comes. It terrifies him; he knows he must succumb; he fears

not the mere penalty, but the crime. But he is not ashamed, because he

knows he cannot help it. And punishment exasperates him because he has

not deserved it, and it will do him harm, not good. He wants to be

cured--not made a fit dwelling for still worse devils. And that is

what punishment does.

The effect of punishment in deterring a criminal from repeating his

crime is small. All study of criminal facts proves this. It generally

makes him more prone to crime, not less; and all the great crimes are

committed by men who have been still further ruined in gaols. What

good effect punishment may have is mainly exercised on other than the

criminal.

Punishment has some effect, but how much we do not yet know, because

the matter has never been investigated, and it is not on the patient.

Crime is a disease, and will you stop a fever by punishing the

patients? Whatever good gaols do lies in the fact that they isolate

the unhealthy from the healthy and so stop for a time infection, as do

hospitals with disease. But the hospitals do not discharge the patient

till he is cured; the gaol aggravates the liability to the disease and

turns out the sufferer worse than before.

Let us go back. A man is criminal not because he wishes to be so, but

because he cannot resist the temptation. He lacks will. True, but it

is the ability he lacks, not the wish. Why does he lack ability?

This brings us to the second theory of crime--a new one--that criminals

are born, not made. The tendency to crime is said to be inherent, to

be a reversion, to be inherited. That explains why it is generally

incurable when once contracted.

Many books have been written on this, but one fallacy vitiates them

all. The observers have not observed the criminal in the making but

when made. They have assumed the criminal to be of a race apart, and

so founded their house upon the sand. Lombroso went so far as to lay

down certain stigmata that inferred a criminal disposition. The

stigmata have been shown to be universal, and there is no such thing as

a "criminal disposition." If there be other qualities that do

differentiate the criminal from the normal man, they are not innate.

That those born crippled in some way frequently become criminals is no

exception; it denotes no criminal disposition. But the cripple is

handicapped in the struggle for life. He is cut off from the many

pleasures of work and play, of love and children, which his fellows

have. He is sensitive and he is jeered at and despised. Is it any

wonder that under such circumstances he becomes sometimes embittered?

A cripple is set apart from his fellow-men. There are for him but two

alternatives--to be a saint or a criminal. Love and care and training

will make him a saint; neglect too often makes him a criminal. But to

whom the blame for the latter? Not to him.

Connected with this theory is the supposition that criminality is

hereditary.

There are few subjects on which so much "scientific" nonsense is talked

and written as this of heredity. Not very much is known of it as

regards plants, less of animals, and almost nothing as regards

humanity. Furthermore, the experience gained in plants and animals is

useless as regards humanity. Evolution in humanity tends to greater

brain power, but all cultivation in animals and plants has tended to

destroy brain power and even adaptability. To read books on heredity

is to read a mass of suppositions and hazardous inductions where most

of the facts are negative and the exceptions are positive. There is

nothing so easy and nothing so fatal as this tendency to attribute to

heredity what is due to training, or want of training. It excuses

supineness in Governments and professions. Here is what John Stuart

Mill, a profound thinker, thought of this facile recourse to heredity

as an excuse:

"Of all vulgar methods of escape from the effects of social and moral

influences on the mind, the most vulgar is that of attributing the

diversions of conduct and character to inherent natural differences."

This, too, is what Buckle said: "We often hear of hereditary talents,

hereditary vices, and hereditary virtues; but whoever will critically

examine the evidence will find that there is no proof of their

existence. The way in which they are usually proved is in the highest

degree illogical; the usual course being for writers to collect

instances of some mental peculiarity found in a parent and his child,

and then to infer that the peculiarity was bequeathed. By this mode of

reasoning we might demonstrate any proposition. But this is not the

way in which the truth is discovered; and we ought to enquire not only

how many instances there are of hereditary talents, etc., but how many

instances there are of such qualities not being hereditary."

I have for myself, neither in life nor in books, found one single case

in which it could be confidently said that a criminal weakness was

inherited. That A, a criminal, has a son B, who also became criminal,

proves nothing. You must first prove that a similar child of different

stock would not become criminal if brought up as A's son was. You must

also prove that if you took away A's son as a child and brought him up

differently he would still show criminal weakness. But all the facts

negative this. The child even of a criminal tribe in India, if removed

from its environment, grows up like other children. Coming of criminal

ancestors has not handed down a criminal aptitude. You must not

mistake inheritance of other traits for inheritance of criminal

aptitudes. A is very quick-tempered, which he has not from a child

been trained to control. Under sudden provocation he kills a man. His

son B inherits his father's quick temper, is similarly badly brought

up, and the same thing occurs. The hasty hereditary theorist says:

"Behold the inheritance of a propensity to murder." But quick temper

is not a criminal trait; it is often an accompaniment of the kindest

disposition. It is an excess of sensitiveness. The training, physical

and mental, was in each case lacking, and a coincidence of provocation

caused a coincidence of crime.

Let it be once clearly discerned that if a quality be hereditary it is

always hereditary, and cannot appear, except as the result of

heredity--and the absurdity of modern theories will be manifest.

There is not--there has never been in anyone--a tendency to crime until

either gaols or criminal education creates it. No one ever wanted to

commit crime as crime. A daring boy with no outlet for his energy may

break out into violence, robbery, and later into burglary; he would not

have done so had his physical need for exercise and his spiritual need

for facing danger had another outlet. The instincts that led him into

crime were good and noble instincts which, finding no legitimate

channel, found an illegitimate channel for themselves.

In that fine book of Mr. Holmes', entitled _London's Underworld_, is an

account of how hooligans are made. The young men are full of

energy--they want exercise, struggle, the fight of the football field

or the hockey match, and they cannot get it. They have no playground

but the streets and no outlet for their energy save hooliganism. The

pity of it!

What, then, causes crime?

It is never the wish for crime. It is one of two causes. Either it is

the only outlet for some natural instinct which is denied legitimate

outlet by the environment, or it is due to an inability to resist

temptation when it offers.

How can it be prevented?

Now this inability is physical. The wish is spiritual--the ability is

physical and depends greatly on health. With ill-health or

malnutrition in the young the first thing to give is the power of

control. The average of criminals are a stone underweight. Therefore,

crime is dependent to a great extent on health. Ill-health causes

crime; accidental mutilation causes crime; accident creates an aptitude

to crime; neglected youth and education cause crime.

Religion does not affect crime one way or another. The greatest

criminals are often religious. Mediæval Europe was very religious and

very criminal, and there are many other instances. Honesty is inborn

in all; it is part of the "light that lighteth every man that is born

into this world"; it requires no teaching. What must be acquired is

the ability to give effect to it. Crime is a physical, not a spiritual

disease. And crime is no defect of the individual. It is a disease of

the nation--nay, of humanity--exhibited in individuals. You have gout

in your toe, but it is your whole system that is wrong. This disease

can be cured by Humanity alone. Criminals are those whom we should

pity, should prevent, should isolate, and, if possible, cure.

Remember what John Bradford said, looking on a man going to be hanged:

"But for the grace of God there goes John Bradford." He, too, would

have been the same had he had bad training in his youth.

We have all of us within us instincts which rightly directed result in

good, which in default of outlet we can be trained to control, but

which without outlet and without the receipt of training may result in

crime. Crime is, therefore, a defect of training and environment, not

of personality.

CHAPTER XVI

COURTS REFORM

But, pending any such great change as must come in all penal law when

the subject has been carefully studied, there are many smaller

amendments that might be made both in Civil and Revenue Courts and Law.

The pressing need in Criminal Procedure is, I think, a change in the

treatment of an accused person when he is arrested.

The first instinct of an offender is, as I have said, to confess, even

if an understanding person is not available to confess to. He has

offended the Law; he wants to make all amends he can by confessing to

the representative of that offended Personality. I have seen very many

first offenders and talked to them before they got into the hands of

pleaders and others, and my experience tells me that a man who has

committed his first offence is very like a man who has caught his first

attack of serious illness. He is afraid not so much of the results as

of the thing itself. Sin has caught him, and he is afraid of sin. He

wants protection and help and cure. He does not want to hide anything;

his first need is confession to some understanding ear. Many, many

such confessions have I heard in the old days. That is the result of

the first offence.

But this tendency to truth is choked when it is ascertained that as a

result the offender will be vindictively punished and made in the end

far worse than he was at the beginning. Naturally the offender says to

himself: "I am bad now. What shall I be after two years' gaol? Better

fight it out. If I win and get acquitted, at least I shall have a

chance to reform. If convicted that chance will be taken from me for

ever. And fighting will not lose me anything. The penitent prisoner

who confesses gets no lighter punishment than if he had put the Court

to the expense of a long trial. Why therefore repent? It will do me

harm, not good." That is the case now; under reasonable laws it would

be the other way. But even yet in country places he often confesses to

the police by whom he is arrested.

Now by Indian Law no confession to the police may be offered in

evidence. The reason of this is that the police, in their keenness to

secure a conviction, may extort a false confession by torture, and

there have been in fact enough of such cases to cause doubt and to

prevent the police being allowed to receive a confession. Therefore if

the offender wishes to confess he is taken now to a magistrate, there

his confession is recorded. Then he is sent back to police custody.

He is visited by his relatives, a pleader is engaged for him. His

folly in confessing is pointed out to him and he withdraws the

confession, alleging that he had been tortured to confess. His

confession is not only negatived, but a slur is cast on the police

which is hard to remove. Their case and evidence appear tainted, and

the accused often secures an acquittal though the Magistrate knows that

the confession was true.

All this is very common both in Burma and India, and it is disastrous

to allow and to encourage such things, as by our procedure we do

encourage them. There should be a complete change.

When a man is arrested some such procedure should be adopted as this:

He should be told by the police that he is being taken direct to the

magistrate who will try the case, who will hear anything accused has to

say. He should be warned to say nothing to the police. Then he should

be taken direct to the magistrate, who should explain to him fully what

he is accused of and ask him what he has to say.

Whatever his statement be, the magistrate should tell him that he will

himself at once investigate it and summon witnesses; meanwhile the

accused should be remitted to custody, but _not_ to police custody.

That is where all the trouble comes in and all opportunities for making

charges against the police. If there be no gaol there should be a

lock-up in charge of Indian police who are under the magistrate and are

not concerned in the guilt or otherwise of the accused. The

investigating police should only have access to accused by permission

of the magistrate. He should, however, be allowed to see his friends

and a pleader if he wish. But I am sure of this, that the first

offender would rather trust the magistrate, if he were a personality

who he knew would help him, than any pleader.

Further, if a man confess truly, his punishment should be greatly

reduced. I do not say this should be done because he gives less

trouble, but because the frame of mind induced by a free and full

confession is a sounder frame of mind on which to begin reformation

than are defiance and negation, which are now inculcated by our system.

The trial need not wait till the case is complete. The magistrate

could summon the police witnesses at once, and he should examine them

himself, allowing only the police to suggest questions if they wish.

Similarly, with the defence witnesses, they could be examined as they

came in and should be examined by the magistrate himself. No one but

the magistrate should be allowed to speak directly to any party to the

case.

All cross-examination should be absolutely prohibited. If either side

have matters they wish brought out of a witness, they should tell the

magistrate and he would ask such questions as he thought fit. There is

no such curse now to justice as cross-examination by a clever pleader

or barrister. It is a sort of forensic show-off by the advocate at the

cost of the witness, and frequently at the cost of justice. For,

naturally, no one cares to be bullied by a licensed bully, and

witnesses consequently will not come to Court if they can help it.

When in Court they are bamboozled and made to contradict themselves

where they have originally spoken the truth.

I have often been told that acute cross-examination by a clever

barrister is the greatest safeguard justice can have from false

evidence. I don't believe a word of it. A magistrate can by far fewer

and simpler questions expose false evidence better than an advocate

does, because the magistrate is intent only on his business--to find

the truth; the advocate is advertising himself, and trying to destroy

truth as well as falsehood.

But if the magistrate did all the questioning I don't believe there

would be much false evidence. Witnesses will lie to the opposite side,

but not to an understanding Court.

Perjury would disappear. What is its present cause? Contempt of the

Court and sympathy with either complainant or accused, which sympathy

sees no chance of justice for its object except by perjury. Because a

trial is a fight. There is not a human being East or West who would

not be ashamed to lie to a Court he knew was trying to do its best for

all--parties and public. It is because the Courts as at present

constituted do as much harm as good that perjury is rampant and

condoned. It is so in all countries, it has been so in all periods.

Then, as soon as possible, juries should be introduced. This cannot be

done until the law, especially as regards punishment, is greatly

altered in accordance with the common sense of the people, but it is

the objective to be aimed at as soon as possible. Until the public

co-operate with the Courts in all ways you will never have a good

system of justice. Crime hurts the people far more than it hurts

Government. Don't you think the people know that? And don't you

suppose they want it prevented even more than Government does? In any

case that is the fact. They hate the Courts now because they don't

prevent or cure crime; they only make matters worse.

The only objection I see to this proposed alteration is that it will

take more time and so cost more money. At first it may do so, but even

then what the public loses by more taxes it will more than save in

having to pay less to lawyers. How much unnecessary money is now paid

to lawyers? Enough, I am sure, to double the magistracy and then leave

a big balance. Courts should be made for the people, not for lawyers.

And in time crime would so decrease that there would be saving all

round.

The reform of the Civil Courts should follow somewhat the same lines.

A man should not have to wait to see a civil judge till his case is all

made out. He should be able to go to him at once and confide in him,

and the judge should send for the other party and try to make an

arrangement between them so that no suit should be filed. Not until

that has been done and not unless a judge give a certificate of its

necessity should a suit be allowed to be filed as it is now. And then

when it is filed the judge should conduct the case and not the

advocates on each side. That is the only way to stop the perjury which

increases and will increase. Magistrates and judges must cease to be

umpires of a combat, and become investigators of truth.

As regards the laws of marriage and inheritance, no great change can be

made until there is a real representative Assembly to make these

changes, but even there something could be done. That fossilisation of

custom described by Sir Henry Sumner Maine should stop. Because a High

Court proved a hundred years ago that a certain custom existed there is

no evidence that it does or should exist now. To establish precedents

of this nature is to stop all progress of every kind; we have a vision

different from the poet's

Of bondage slowly narrowing down

From precedent to precedent.

Why should not fresh inquiries into custom be made from time to time,

it being understood that any Court-ruling only applied to that time and

place, and did not bind the future? Something must be done. Things

cannot go on as they are. We reproach the Indians for want of

progress, but we ourselves are the main cause of that stagnation. We

bind them and they cannot move.

As regards land policy there is this to be said, that fixed ideas are a

mistake.

In Bengal there was at one time a fixed idea that all land did and must

belong to large land-owners, and so, partly out of sheer ignorance,

partly out of prejudice, a race of Zemindars was created out of the

tax-gatherers to the Mogul Empire. The result has been sad.

Again in Burma the same idea prevailed for a while, and headmen were

encouraged to annex communal waste as their private land. This was

unfortunate.

Then came a reaction, and all large estates were denounced as bad.

There was to be a small tenantry holding direct from Government,

forbidden to alienate their land, and all leasing of land to tenants

was forbidden.

This I understand to be the policy still. It is a policy of fixed

ideas, and as applied to anything that has life, like land tenure, it

is unfortunate, no matter what the fixed idea be.

If there be one truth above another that is clear in studying land

systems it is that no one permanent system is good. The cultivation of

land, like all matters, undergoes evolution and change. What is good

to-day may not be good to-morrow. The English system of large estates

cultivated by tenants did, at one time in English history, produce the

best farming in the world. English farming was held up as an example

to all countries and was so admitted by them. The system of large

estates allowed of the expenditure of capital, experiments in new

cultivations and new breeds of cattle, and variety of crops. It suited

its day well. And though its full day has passed, there will never be

a time when some large estates will not be able to justify themselves.

Even if, as apparently is the case now in England, _petite culture_ is

that best adapted to the cultivation of the day and the needs of the

people, yet there is still room for large estates. A dead uniformity

of small holdings could not but be unfortunate for any country.

Further, although excessive alienation of land through money-lenders

may be very bad, yet stagnation in ownership may be worse. India and

Burma are progressive, and changes must take place. Cultivators will

become artisans and traders; city people will like to return to the

land. There is an ebb and flow which is good for all. Too great

rigidity of system will stop progress. A good system of land tenure is

that which is in accordance with the evolution of the people it applies

to and assists in that evolution.

While recognising that for the bulk of the people small holdings are

best, it will not forbid larger estates; while admitting that the

alienation of land through borrowing recklessly from money-lenders is

bad, it will see that the progress of the people from purely

agricultural towards a state of industrial activity is not checked. It

takes all sorts to make a State.

It may be good for the cultivator to hold direct from Government, but

if Government is to be the landlord it must act up to its name. It

must give compensation for improvements when a tenant has to relinquish

the land. Otherwise no tenant will improve, and the necessity for

improvement, for wells, irrigation, embankments, manuring, and so on,

is the greatest necessity of agriculture. In my own experience I have

seen that the system of State land tenure in Upper Burma does stop

improvements.

That is the light in which the land question has to be worked out, on

broad comprehensive lines--that, while acknowledging the present, sees

also the future, which, while seeing one form of good does not deny

another.

So, with an understanding and a sympathetic _personnel_, the

administration would be brought nearer to the people, until at length

when their capacity for self-government had developed they would be

able to take over our administrative machine little by little and work

it themselves.

They could never do that now. If by any chance they did get possession

of the machinery at present, they would set to work to smash it till

none remained.

CHAPTER XVII

SELF-GOVERNMENT

And thus the sheltering Government of India having been reformed both

in its _personnel_ and in its laws, brought into touch and sympathy

with its people, a start would be made with self-government.

That, of course, must begin with the village, which is the germ from

which all self-government that is of any value has always begun, and on

the health and vitality of which it must always depend. The village

organism must be restored to the state in which we found it, and from

that be helped and encouraged to grow to greater things.

The whole of the present conception of the village as an appanage of

the headman, and the conception of the headman as an official of

Government, must be swept away and a new and true conception must be

arrived at.

The village is a self-contained organism, and the headman is its

representative before Government and its executive head, the real power

being in the Council. Powers and responsibility reside in the village

as a whole and in no individual. The people must not be ruled, but

rule themselves.

Now as to the exact way in which this conception should be carried out

it is impossible to say. In each Province--in distinct parts of the

same Province--the village system assumed different forms to meet

different circumstances. In Madras the village community was in many

details different from that in Burma, and in the North-West still more

so. Therefore, the particular way in which the conception should be

realised would vary greatly. And only by experience could a

satisfactory form for each Province be evolved. Neither would it be

possible even in Burma to go back to the old form exactly. Events have

marched since then, and what was satisfactory thirty or more years ago

would not be so now. The villages must not be reconstituted by copying

the past; they must be constituted anew, maintaining, however, the

spirit of the past and giving scope for evolution in the future.

Therefore, the scheme that I am about to unfold must be taken to be

merely tentative and apply only to Burma. The principles are, I think,

right; the details must, of course, be discovered by experience.

Practice alone would show how far they realised the objective that is

to be aimed at--the constitution of a village organism on natural lines

that would govern itself without any need for interference and would be

able to grow and evolve.

My scheme is as follows:

In every village a Council should be constituted and the headman should

be its executive head.

How this Council should be constituted I do not know. I think there

should be wards, each of which should have an elder, representative of

the people, but no rigid system of election should be laid down. I

have found that villages and wards can very often appoint a

representative man by general consent, which is much better than by

election. That should only occur in case of a dead-lock. The Council

should itself define the wards, and it should be allowed to co-opt

additional members. All representation by class or religion should be

prohibited. The unit is not so many people, but a section of a

village--neighbours dwelling together and whose interests are thereby

united. Appointment to the Council should be indefinite; that is to

say, an elder should remain an elder until he resigned or until the

ward turned him out. I don't think they would like continual

elections. An election is a bad means to a desired end--that of

obtaining the best representative. And in small communities the sense

is usually apparent without it.

The headman should be chosen by the Council from among its members and

his election confirmed by Government. His appointment should be

according to the wish of the Council, that is to say, for life, unless

he resigned or the Council turned him out. He should be responsible to

the Council. The Council, as representing the village, should be

responsible to Government, and it would always be possible for the

Deputy Commissioner to bring pressure on a recalcitrant Council by

threatening to suspend the constitution and place the village under an

appointed headman for a time if they did not carry out their duties

properly.

To this village community should be handed over certain duties, rights,

and responsibilities, much what the headman has now, the collection of

revenue, etc. All civil, criminal, and revenue cases under certain

values and of certain denominations should be handed over to them to

try; that is to say, that cognisance should be refused by our police

and our Courts, so that the parties could go to the Village Council if

they liked. There should be no appeal from the decisions of the

Council, no advocates should be allowed, and no record should be

required. All penalties imposed should be paid into the village fund.

This fund should exist for all villages, and its nucleus should be,

say, half an anna in the rupee of the revenue collections, to which

should be added fines, special rates which the Council should be

empowered to impose for specific purposes, and other forms of revenue

which would vary from place to place. I think a percentage of the

district fund should be given to them. A rate on inhabited houses--a

rent on house sites--would be a good way of raising money. The

purposes for which the fund could be used would be water-supply,

sanitation, roads, lighting, watchmen, and so on. Simple account-books

would have to be kept, and these accounts would have to be audited once

a year.

Model schemes for sanitation, village roads, etc., could be made out

for each village to live up to as fast as it could.

Further, villages should have the power to carry out irrigation works

on their own initiative and under their own control. I consider this a

most important proviso, because I know many villages where this could

be done by the village, whereas it is not possible to individuals. I

also know one recent case in my district where it was done with great

success by the headman and elders. I got them a small grant, and I

often went to see how the work was getting on, but I never interfered

in any way, and the result was most satisfactory. There was at first a

difficulty about collecting the rates, because there was no legal

system under which a man who used the water could be made to pay.

However, this also settled itself.

Irrigation works, roads, and bridges are most necessary to many

villages, but now, unless Government carry out the work, there is no

one to do it. And Government will not carry out small works.

It is by the execution of such works that the village would prosper and

the village fund grow. Loans should be granted for these purposes by

Government, to be repaid out of the profits.

Before our annexation all works were executed by the villages, and the

considerable irrigation works in many places are evidence of their

ability. All this initiative has now been killed. Yet it is a most

valuable asset, not only materially, but morally.

As regards this fund, it will, I know, be objected by many people that

it will be simply an excuse for peculation. "Orientals," they say,

"cannot be honest, and the funds would be misappropriated right and

left."

Exactly this same charge was made when the Co-operative Credit Banks

were started. Their history will sufficiently refute such an

absurdity. Orientals are just as honest as any other people, and,

given a good system, village funds will no more be stolen in India or

Burma than municipal funds are in England.

In organising these villages there is another point to be borne in

mind. In that desperate struggle after rigid uniformity which

distinguishes the Indian Government, every separate hamlet in Burma was

put under a separate headman, and thus made a separate organism.

Now it may be that occasionally the village was too large, and a

division was needed, but in many other cases the disintegration of

long-established units was severely felt. Several hamlets may have one

interest in common. They may be grouped round a small irrigation work,

or along a stream, or have a fishery in common, or be in other matters

of great use to each other. If run as separate organisms there is

bound to be strife, each trying for his own benefit. If allowed to

remain one organism they will be not only more peaceful, but stronger,

and better able to manage their affairs. Thus the rigid formulæ of

Government in this matter as in others should give place to common

sense.

Further: in future, villages should be allowed to coalesce if mutual

interests attract them. Two or three villages if allowed to combine

would carry out works that one could not do.

I see no great difficulty in Burma in thus restoring the organism of

village life. It would require mainly tact on the part of the District

Officer and ability to let alone. His tendency now is always to

interfere if he can. His rule should be never to interfere if he can

help it. When things go wrong persistently it will probably be found

that there is something amiss with the way the village is organised,

and that it requires some slight modification. If a horse can't draw a

cart it is better to see what is wrong with the horse or the cart than

try to move them both along by turning the wheels round yourself. You

won't get far that way. The more you push the more the horse will jib.

And Village Councils will be very willing horses if let alone and the

cart be not too cumbersome or the hill they have to climb too steep.

But they must be left alone. Read the history of municipal

institutions in England and note the principles. They are universal.

Once the village communities are strong and healthy, a further step

could be made by instituting a township or sub-divisional Council, and

later a District Council.

For these I am not prepared to offer any suggestions. It would require

a very careful study of local conditions and of the people, a wide

experience gained from the working of the resuscitated villages, to

know how these should be constituted and what powers and

responsibilities should be entrusted to them. I think a sound analogy

might be obtained from a study of English counties--not so much perhaps

as they are now, but as they were--in spirit, not in law.

After the village organism was established, perhaps in order to its

proper establishment, a local Government Board would have to be

created. This would have to be in time entirely native to the

Province. It is, I think, essential that it should be so. What its

relations with the District Officer would be I do not know. I foresee

difficulties. It is essential for good order in the district that

there be no one between the head and the people. Nevertheless, I don't

think he could establish and work the village organism himself. I

think he would be too tempted to interfere; and, moreover, there would

have to be a certain co-ordination between the systems in various

districts. They need not be the same in detail, but the idea should be

the same. That is because eventually they must coalesce into bigger

organisms. But a District Officer with a strong personality would, I

think, be liable to impress that personality on the village, and as it

must be self-governing that might create difficulties. For as the

villages increased the District Officer would decrease. Gradually his

powers would devolve on the local organisms. There would thus be a

certain rivalry between the District Officer and the local organisms,

which, if the officer were the head of both, might result in injury to

the latter. Perhaps some such relation as exists between the Land

Records Department and the District Officer would be possible. The

Land Records has its own organisation, which works independently of the

district but in harmony with it. All this, however, is not a matter

which can be thought out. It will have to be worked out, and a correct

system can only come little by little, experience showing how

modifications should be made. I do not see any great difficulty

provided there are common sense and unity of aim on both sides.

And from districts--when they had settled down into distinct organisms

more or less self-governing--representatives, not delegates, could be

sent to a Provincial Council. Then you would have a real Council, one

representative of the people because proceeding from the people, not

less surely because not directly. I am not sure that direct election

such as is practised in England and America, for instance, does cause

representation of the people. In England, at all events, it is not so

now. The only power the people have now is to choose between the

delegates of two or more parties. Beyond this they have no voice nor

choice. They cannot find any expression for their own wishes. Their

member may be, probably is, a man they never heard of before the

"Party" sent him to contest the seat. There is, in fact, in England

to-day no real representation of the people at all. By people, of

course, I mean the people as a whole, including all classes. But under

some such scheme as I have sketched out for Burma there would be real

representation of the people, of localities as a whole, units; local

men acquainted with the local conditions would be chosen and not

pleaders, and the locality would hold them responsible. Thus the

opinion of such a Council would represent the wishes of the people; it

could be depended on, and to it could considerable powers be delegated

permanently. It would, in fact, in time constitute a Provincial

Government in federal relations with the other Provincial Governments.

That is the only possible way that a real government can be built up.

And it must always be remembered that the basis is the Village. On the

health of the Village all other things depend; from the healthy working

of the Village all things may proceed. It is the first but not last

word in local self-government.

A very integral part of any self-government is Education, and to that I

come in the next chapter.

CHAPTER XVIII

EDUCATION

To the success of any form of self-government a good education is

absolutely essential; that a people should be able to exercise

self-government it is necessary that they be educated to

self-government; for this capacity no more comes by itself than ability

to build a ship or steer it when built. And as the government must be

self-government, so the education must be a national education and not

an imported one.

I have already had something to say on this subject in former chapters

when writing of the Indian civilian, and the principles which underlie

good education are the same everywhere. A well-educated man is he in

whom his mental and physical powers have been so brought out that he

can face the ordinary vicissitudes of his life with confidence, that he

can understand them and combat them materially to the best of his

ability, and that when materially defeated he may still rise

spiritually above all defeat and discouragement. Education is

necessary to everyone--man or woman, peasant or prince, merchant or

artisan--and that man is best educated who can make the best of his

life whatever its station may be.

Thus it will be seen that education is mainly relative. A man who

would be well educated if in one station of life would be hopelessly

ignorant if in another. I doubt if Whewell would have been considered

educated had fate suddenly made him a soldier, a political officer on a

frontier, or a cultivator. A keen eye gained by experience for market

fluctuations is better for a merchant than all the learning of all the

libraries.

But this specialisation belongs properly to higher education. There

are certain foundation principles necessary to any success in life, to

being able to live it in whatever station with dignity and with

prosperity. What are those principles?

I think the Indian Education Department would say that these are

reading, writing, and arithmetic--that is to say, acquirements. I

should say they are qualities of character.

What are these qualities?

First and foremost is belief in his own people, not his caste or his

creed, but in the people who inhabit his Province, who will eventually

make up his nationality. If the man is to do good work for his people

the boy must desire to do good work--he must have a certainty in the

unlimited possibilities of his people, that though they may be young

now they will grow to a world stature. Therefore, that it is his duty

to help them. He must be sure that this world is good--to be made

better by him and his fellows and his descendants. He has inherited

much; he must hand on more. He has no right to live unless he does his

duty to life and in life--that is to say, he must have a purpose in

life, for without a purpose life cannot be lived.

Secondly, he must see that to the accomplishment of his purpose, which

is but part of the World's Purpose, he must cultivate two qualities,

obedience in act and freedom of thought. He must learn to obey,

because he must see for himself that only by men acting together under

authority can anything be achieved. His obedience will then be a

willing and cheerful obedience, because necessary to his own purpose.

He must obey that later he may be obeyed. He must keep his mind free,

because to admit authority in thought is to kill thought. He must see

things for himself and judge for himself, that when he is able to act

for himself he may do so on truth and not on hearsay. He must learn to

respect the opinions of others which they have founded also on

experience, while not necessarily adopting them, because he may see

things differently.

He must learn self-knowledge to recognise what he can do and what he

can't.

He should cultivate self-command that must not mean self-extinction.

On a base like this all other things come naturally.

Is there any such ideal in elementary education in India? I can safely

say that there is no such ideal. All that the Department seeks to do

is to stuff a child with reading, writing, and arithmetic, and other

learning, regardless of his character or his objective in life.

Therefore elementary education is not popular in Burma, because it

seems to have no good purpose.

That was true of education before we took the country. It was then

mainly, for boys, in the hands of monks, and I do not think that

education when controlled by religion has been popular anywhere in the

world. It has been accepted because there was no other means of

education available, but it was not admired. Our Government has

accepted the monastery schools, and it has also encouraged lay schools,

but neither seem to give much satisfaction.

Now this is not the place to discuss religion of any kind, and I have

no intention of entering into such a vexed question. There are good

things in all religions--borrowed from humanity; there are doubtful

things; there are bad things. But the foundation of every religion is

a declaration that this world is evil and that we should despise it.

Now the objective of all education is to fit a boy for his life, and he

cannot be so fit if he despise life. He must love it, admire it,

desire in all ways to help it, to increase it, beautify it. His

objective must be in this life. Further, the tendency of all faiths is

to raise barriers between races and castes. But it is an essential

part of any true education that a boy understand that in striving for

the good of the community he must ignore all differences. Humanity is

one, and the God of Humanity is One, whatever faiths may say.

Thus religions when mixed with education have a paralysing effect. I

have often heard this said in Burma. Here is a conversation I once had

at a village I knew very well. It occurred, as did most of the talks I

had with the people, just after sunset, when I had my chair set outside

my rest-house, and the people came dropping in to gossip. There were a

number of people, the headman, elders, their wives and children, and

two monks from a neighbouring monastery. They talked quite freely

because they knew that after office hours I forgot I was an official,

or even an Englishman, and just talked to them as one human being to

another. I may add that I had been inspecting the village school where

little boys and girls learned together. I had also been to a monastery

where the elder boys went.

"Well," I said, "what is the news?"

There was an expectant silence. Evidently there was some news; the

question was--who should tell it?

"What is it, Headman?" I asked.

The Headman rubbed an ankle reflectively. "The fact is," he answered,

"there is no news that would interest your Honour; only just village

doings, foolish doings."

"Hum," I said; "that sounds to me as if a young man had been doing

something."

Several of the men smiled--"Possibly with the assistance of a

girl"--and I glanced at some girls. They giggled, and the Headman said

briefly:

"Maung Ka's son has run off with a girl."

"Oh!" I said, turning to Maung Ka, whom I knew well enough--a tall,

fine-looking man, who was looking very gloomy. "It's a way boys have.

There's no harm in it."

"Not if he can support her afterwards," said Maung Ka gruffly.

"Can't he do that?" I asked.

It appeared he couldn't. He had spent all his boyhood in a monastery

"learning" till his father fetched him out. Then he went to the other

extreme and levanted with a girl. "He doesn't know one end of a

bullock from the other," said the father; "he can't plough or sow; he

can't work; he has no common sense. That's what schooling does for a

boy."

Most of the other men agreed with him, and we had a discussion on

education, in which everyone took part.

The general opinion was that schooling should be to fit you for life.

The monks said for eternity, but the villagers--though out of respect

for the monks they said little--evidently didn't make any such

distinction. What wasn't fit for time wasn't fit for eternity.

Reading, writing, and arithmetic were good, because a boy needed these.

Beyond that they seemed to think schooling did harm. A boy learned

more from his father and the other villagers than from school. As to a

girl, "What," asked an elder indignantly, "is the use of a girl

learning to write? What will she write? Love-letters only."

"Well," I asked, "and isn't that good--for the boy who gets them?"

The fact is, the villagers are plain, common-sense men and women, and

what they want for their children is that they be better fitted for the

struggle of life. They do not observe that to be the case at present.

They judge by results, and the results are not good, they say.

In fact, except as to the actual acquisition of reading, writing, and

arithmetic, which may or may not be of much use, the teaching--and

still more than the teaching, the influence--is bad. It unfits for

life, it gives wrong ideals, or it kills all ideals.

The higher education is, I think, worse. It follows an imported

system, and in the importation all the good is left out. In England a

boy's real education comes from association with the other boys and

from his father. From them he learns whatever he does learn of

conduct, of ambition to true ends, of acting in concert, of ability to

judge for himself and stick up for himself.

In India a wrong ideal has been conceived from the beginning. It has

been assumed, tacitly maybe, that an Englishman is the final and

completely perfected work of God and man, and that all nations should

copy him and try to become, if not a sterling Englishman, at least an

electro-plate one.

That is disastrous. It depresses the people by depreciating their own

races and holding up an objective which is impossible, and if possible

would be wrong.

There are in the pasts of nearly all Oriental people ideals which are

quite as good as ours, and far better fitted for them. Are these ever

taught to them? India once led the civilisation of the world; is that

past ever brought up and explained and realised for them? Never, I

think.

Further, higher education to be of any use must be objective. You must

know what you want the boy to be. What does Government want the

products of its higher education to be? I have no idea. Has the

Government?

Of what use are these products of the higher education in India? They

are useful but for two things, to be lawyers or pleaders, or to be

clerks. They are dealers in words, and not in facts or in humanity.

Government accepts a certain number into its service, because the first

ideal of Government is a man who can fill up forms and returns,

speedily, accurately, and punctually. They can do that. When they

have district work to do they fail, because they have no personality,

no freedom of thought, and because the people despise them. The old

officials whom we took over from the Burmese Government, whatever their

defects, had "auza"--personality. It is a commonplace to say that the

Burmese have deteriorated. That is not true. They have as much

potentiality as before, but this potentiality is wiped out by

"education." Far from being really educated, they are merely stuffed,

and their natural abilities stifled. Moreover, they cease to be

Burmans, or Madrassis, or Bengalis, and become a sort of hybrid. This

is due to their English masters, who are obsessed with the idea that

the only way to "educate" anyone is to turn him into a plaster

Englishman. I have had some experience of these unfortunate boys who

have taken degrees.

Personally, if I had to administer a difficult district, I should

choose my Burmese assistants from men who had never been to school, and

to satisfy Government I would engage some B.A.'s and F.A.'s to be their

clerks and fill up the forms. I should be sorry for the B.A.'s,

because I think they have as good stuff in them as the others, but

their want of education has unfitted them for work requiring "auza."

That is really what it amounts to; the school-trained boy is not

educated, whereas the boy brought up in contact with the world is

perforce educated. The first is a hothouse plant; the second a useful

field plant.

I am aware that current opinion puts down the failure of the educated

young Indian to his want of religion. He has been educated out of his

own faith and not accepted into any other; hence his want of character.

Of all the wild shibboleths about India and the Indians this is, I

think, the wildest. That a man is injured by being brought to see the

foolishness of caste, of infant marriage, of harems and zenanas, of all

the forms and ceremonies with which all religions are covered, seems to

me a triumph of illogic. Only the "Occidental mind" at its best could

conceive such an idea. In so far as education destroys these ideas it

does good. Wherein it harms him is by taking him apart from his

people, rendering him not desirous to help them but to disown them. He

is taught that to be an Englishman should be his ideal--that he "should

cultivate English habits of thought"--as if true thought had any

habits--so that, finally, he can't think at all. He is directed to

wrong ideals; he is rendered unhappy; he is _dépaysé_; he is useless

for any work, except being a clerk or lawyer; he has no more character

than a jelly-fish. Instead of wishing to lead his people he wishes to

identify himself with the English Government, be a civilian, and rule

his people. He should be filled with a boundless confidence in the

future of his people, and that it is his duty to help that future to be

realised. He is discouraged and rendered hopeless. Instead of being a

help he is the greatest danger his own people will have to meet when

they move forward. He is a danger to all.

The Education Department of the Government of India is the new

Frankenstein, and the Higher Education is its monster. The students

have sunk under their "education," and in consequence they are unhappy.

Who wonders? But, in fact, an alien Power cannot introduce or work any

real system of education. It must be indigenous--something of the

soil, and not exotic. It, like self-government, must begin with small

things in the village and gradually rise.

Like all things, if it is to live and prosper and extend it must have a

soul. And the soul of education, like the soul of life, is an emotion

tending towards a _desired_ end. The desired end of education is the

rise and progress not merely of the individual but of the nation. That

has been the soul of the progress of Japan; that must be the soul of

the progress of any people; and education will only be enthusiastically

taken up when it is seen to be a means to that end.

Such an education cannot be given by Englishmen. Any Education

Department must be Provincial and draw its vigour from below. It must

not be a machine governed from Simla with text-books as thumbscrews and

manuals as beds of Procrustes.

Before there can be a real Education Department it must be entirely

native of the Province, responsible to the Province for its success.

Can we create such a Department? I think we could, slowly, by handing

our village schools as much as possible to Village Councils, district

schools to District Councils, and the University to the head Provincial

Assembly when it comes into being. They will each have to think out

what result they want, and then how to attain that result.

But all must begin with the village; within it alone is the germ cell

of all future progress.

CHAPTER XIX

CONCLUSION

There are many other subjects connected with the renaissance of India

that I should like to enter into, but I cannot do so here. This book

is already too full of matter that is never easy, and is sometimes

controversial. Such subjects are the real ideals and ideas that

underlay the religions of India, Hindu, and Mohammedan, and which gave

them life until they were hidden under priest-made ritual and killed;

the early history of India as a history of ideas and civilisations, and

not a stupid agglomeration of battles and intrigues; the absolute

necessity, as shown in all history, of representation and legislation

being by territory, and not by class, nor race, nor religion; and there

are many others. Perhaps some day I may return to these matters, or,

more happily, other writers will undertake them. They will see the

interest and pleasure to be derived from the study of humanity and

ideas, and will leave on one side the dusty frippery of ceremonies and

creeds and customs, of the details of battles and palace intrigues and

dynasties. Life lies under all these things, and they but affect it as

old clothes do a man. Meanwhile, I have done what I can to show the

causes of the trouble in India and to indicate in what way it may be

met.

Only in some such way as that I have sketched, only by following

principles of the nature here indicated, can the Government of India be

drawn into accordance with the people. The Government must learn to

understand those many millions over whom it has acquired so great a

power, and in understanding them acquire sympathy with their desires

and needs. The people must learn to know, and recognise, and feel that

Government does understand them; that it has sympathy with them, and

will help them onward to that goal whither their Destiny is calling

them. So will both work together toward that end.

To conquer India was great; it is the one great deed whereby we shall

live in history; but to make of India a daughter, not a subject, to

help her grow out of our care till she is strong enough to walk alone,

that will be greater still.

No nation in the world's history has ever done a deed like that.

To conquer India required great courage, it required ability of the

highest, it needed self-denial, self-sacrifice of the individual for

the nation. What will the freedom of India need in us? It will need

qualities higher even than these are. It will need courage, as great

as or greater even than that which we have shown before--the courage to

leave alone; it will require self-abnegation and self-sacrifice, not

for our own nation, but for India, for Humanity; it will require a

sympathy and understanding such as no nation has ever yet felt for a

foreign people.

Can we do this?

I do not know. Can we with whom representation except of the

wire-pullers of the party has ceased to exist, in whose schools of all

kinds and in whose universities there is no education, whose legal

system is bad beyond all expression, who have under free forms less

real freedom than most other countries, can we give to India what we

have not? I think that we shall have to take the beam out of our own

eye first. Are we prepared to do that?

What will it need in India? It will need courage too, it will need

self-restraint not less than that which we shall have to show, the

courage to go slowly, to restrain the rising tide within the banks of

safety, to so direct it that the flood will fertilise, not destroy.

It will need more than this. What ruined India twice, and what ruins

her now? Division. Race, caste and creed are curses when they make

one man despise or hate another. There is one God. Brahma and Allah

and Jehovah are but names for One if truly seen. His kingdom is in

neither Church nor creed nor Prophet, neither in temple nor in holy

place, but in the hearts of men--all men. If you read truly you will

see that in the beginning all religions were ideas, great streams of

hope and truth driving to one ideal. All truth which is a living truth

is One. But formulæ and castes and creeds and ceremonies and forms,

rites of all kinds, are priest-made things that kill and petrify. All

souls come here from God; not Brahmin souls nor Pongyis' souls nor

Christian souls alone, but every soul in every man that lives, they

come from God and so return. They are part with us of the eternal "I"

in which are lost all "yous" or "theys." Can the Brahmins forget their

legendary pride and prove their vaunted worth by leading India to an

equal freedom and not keeping her back by the slavery they have thrown

upon her? Can the Moslem, casting off the mould of dead tradition,

remember the Omniades, their tolerance, their wisdom, their

civilisation; what they did and, above all, what they did not do?

Can the Buddhist believe that life is good--not evil; to be made the

most of, not feared nor shunned? to be loved and lived?

I do not know. These things are all upon the knees of God.

But for a real new India to arise all these things must come to pass.

She is now India Irredenta. And to be redeemed all Indians must offer

up as sacrifice, not their good things, but all those evil things they

cling to blindly--their hates and their divisions, their pride in what

they should be thoroughly ashamed of, their quarrels and

misunderstandings. There were a sacrifice that God would love.

Will it come to pass? Who knows? We can only do our best--all of us.

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End of Project Gutenberg's The Passing of Empire, by H. Fielding-Hall