"The War Aims of the Allies." Speech delivered
to delegates of the Trades Unions, at the
Central Hall, Westminster, January 5, 1918.
Until now the European servants of the British Government have ruled
India quite autocratically. The powers delegated to and the discretion
vested in them have been so large that they could do almost anything
they liked. They could make or mar the fortunes of millions; they could
further their happiness or add to their misery by the simple fiat of
their will. The only limitation on their power was their own sense of
duty and justice. That some of them did let themselves go is no wonder.
The wonder is that the instances of unbridled oppression and tyranny
were not more numerous than they have actually been. Speaking of the
European services generally, we have nothing but admiration for their
general character. The particular branch of the Public Services that has
been all along entrusted with the general administration of the country
is known as the Indian Civil Service. It is recruited in England and is
overwhelmingly European in personnel. On April 1, 1913, only forty-six
of the 1319 civilians on the _cadre_ were natives of India.
Speaking of the executive organizations that have so far ruled India,
the eminent authors of the Report for the reorganization of the
Government of India remark that it may "well be likened to a mere system
of official posts, actuated _till_ now by impulses of its own, but
affected by the popular ideas which impinge on it from three
sources--the British Parliament, the legislative councils and the local
boards." The sentence would have been correct if in place of "but
affected" the authors had said "and affected but little." "The system,"
they add, "has in the main depended for its effectiveness on the
experience, wisdom and energy of the services themselves. It has, for
the most part, been represented by the Indian Civil Service which,
though having little to do with the technical departments of government,
_has for over 100 years in practice had the administration entrusted to
its hands, because, with the exception of the offices of the Governor
General, Governors, and some members of the executive councils, it has
held practically all the places involving superior control_. It has been
in effect much more of a government corporation than of a purely civil
service in the English sense. It has been made a reproach to the Indian
Civil Service that it regards itself as the Government; but a view
which strikes the critic familiar with parliamentary government as
arrogant is little more than a condensed truth." [The italics are ours.]
The Indian Civil Service has thus developed all the characteristics,
good and bad, of a caste. It has been a powerful bureaucracy, as
exclusive, proud, arrogant and self-sufficient,--if not even more
so,--as the original Brahmin oligarchy of the land, except that while
the Brahmin oligarchy had ties of race, religion and culture with the
rest of the population, the Indian Civil Service is almost entirely
composed of aliens. The ancient Brahmins were, however, kept in check by
the military caste. The mutual jealousies of these two castes afforded
some kind of protection to the people in general. But in the case of the
British Indian Civil Service, the military have given entire support to
their civilian fellow-countrymen and have been completely under their
will.
The Brahmins of India have left a monumental record of their labors.
They produced great thinkers, writers, legislators, administrators and
organizers. In their own time they were as wise, energetic and
resourceful as any bureaucracy in the world has ever been or will ever
be. Yet the system of life they devised cut at the roots of national
vitality. It dried almost all the springs of corporate national life. It
reduced the bulk of the population to a position of complete
subservience to their will, of blind faith in their wisdom, of absolute
dependence on their initiative. It deprived the common people of all
opportunities of independent thought and independent action. It brought
about a kind of national atrophy. And this, in spite of the fact that
they began by imposing a rigorous code of self-denial on themselves and
their class. For themselves they wanted nothing but a life of poverty
and asceticism. Their economic interests were never in theory or in
practice in conflict with those of the rest of the body politic.
A Brahmin was forbidden to engage in trade or otherwise accumulate
wealth. His life was a life of strict self-abnegation. This cannot be
said of the Indian Civil Servant. He receives a handsome salary for his
services, expects and receives periodic promotion until he reaches a
position which, from an economic point of view, is not unenviable. After
retirement he is free to engage in trade and otherwise accumulate
wealth. But over and above this, what distinguishes an Indian Civil
Servant from an old Brahmin bureaucrat is the fact that in India he
represents a nation whose economic interest may not always be in harmony
with those of the people of India. He is thus supposed to be the
guardian of the interests of his countrymen, and is expected to further
them as much as he can without altogether endangering the safety of
British rule in India. Looked at from this angle, we have no hesitation
in saying that the work of the Indian Civil Service, too, has in its
way, been monumental. As a rule, they have proved capable
administrators, individually honest, hardworking and alert. They have
organized and tabulated India in a way, perhaps, never done before. But
after all has been said in their praise, it cannot be denied that they
have done India even more harm than the Brahmin oligarchy in its time,
did, by the support they lent to economic exploitation of the country by
men of their own race and religion. Now, in this latter respect, we
want to guard against being misunderstood. The Indian Civil Service has,
in the course of about a century, produced a fairly good number of men
who have honestly and fearlessly stood for the protection of Indian
interests against those of people of their own race and religion. In
doing so they have sometimes ruined their own prospects of promotion and
advancement. Whenever they failed in their self-imposed task, and more
often they failed than not, they failed because the authorities at the
top were forced by considerations of domestic and imperial policy to do
otherwise. On the whole, the defects of the bureaucratic administration
were more the defects of the system than of the individuals composing
it.
The Indian Civil Servant, like the old Brahmin, is autocratic and
dictatorial. He dislikes any display of independence by the people put
under his charge. He discourages initiative. He likes to be called and
considered the _Mai bap_ (mother and father) of his subjects. On those
who literally consider him such he showers his favors. The others he
denounces and represses. This has, in the course of time, led to
national emasculation. That is our chief complaint against the Indian
Civil Service. Of the other services we would rather not speak. They
have by no means been so pure and high-minded as the I. C. S., nor
perhaps so autocratic and dictatorial. The number of men who misused
their powers and opportunities to their own advantage has been much
larger in services other than the I. C. S. Yet they all have done a
certain amount of good work for India; whether one looks at the
engineering works designed and executed by them, or the researches they
have made in the science of healing and preventing disease, or the
risks they have run in preserving order or maintaining peace one cannot
but admire their efficiency and ability. The grievances of the Indian
Nationalists against the Public Services in India may be thus
summarized:
(_a_) That the services monopolize too much power and are practically
uncontrolled by and irresponsible to the people of the country.
(_b_) That the higher branches of the services contain too many
foreigners.
(_c_) That these are recruited in England, and from some of them the
Indians are altogether barred.
(_d_) That even when doing the same work Indians are not paid on the
same scale as the Europeans.
(_e_) That the Government has often kept on men of proved inefficiency
and of inferior qualities.
(_f_) That, considering the economic conditions of India, the higher
servants of the Government are paid on a scale unparalleled in the
history of public administration in the world.
(_g_) That the interests of the services often supersede those of the
country and the Government.
(_h_) And last, but not least, that by the gathering of all powers of
initiative and execution in their hands they have emasculated India.
As regards (_a_) we have already quoted the opinion of the eminent
authors of the report. The principle laid down in the announcement of
August 20, and the scheme proposed are supposed to do away with the
element of irresponsibility. It is obvious that with the introduction of
the principle of popular control into the Government, the power of
individual servants of the executive will not remain what it is now, or
has been in the past. Much that is vested in and done by the service
will be transferred to public bodies elected by popular vote. This will
naturally affect (_b_) and (_c_) also. We will here stop to quote again
from the Report:
"In the forefront of the announcement of August 20 the policy of
the increasing association of Indians in every branch of the
administration was definitely placed. It has not been necessary
for us, nor indeed would it have been possible, to go into this
large question in detail in the time available for our inquiry. We
have already seen that Lord Hardinge's Government was anxious to
increase the number of Indians in the public services, and that a
Royal Commission was appointed in 1912 to examine and report on
the existing limitations in the employment of Indians.... The
report was signed only a few months after the outbreak of war, and
its publication was deferred in the hope that the war would not be
prolonged. When written, it might have satisfied moderate Indian
opinion, but when published two years later it was criticised as
wholly disappointing. Our inquiry has since given us ample
opportunity of judging the importance which Indian opinion
attaches to this question. While we take account of this attitude,
a factor which carries more weight with us is that since the
report was signed an entirely new policy toward Indian government
has been adopted, which must be very largely dependent for success
on the extent to which it is found possible to introduce Indians
into every branch of the administration."
The authors of the Report then proceed to state the limitations of the
process, subject to the general remark that at the present moment there
are few Indians (we do not admit this) trained in public life, who can
replace the Europeans, and thus to alter the personnel of a service
must be a long and steady process. They admit that:
"If responsible government is to be established in India there
will be a far greater need than is even dreamt of at present for
persons to take part in public affairs in the legislative
assemblies and elsewhere; and for this reason the more Indians we
can employ in the public services the better. Moreover, it would
lessen the burden of Imperial responsibilities if a body of
capable Indian administrators could be produced. We regard it as
necessary, therefore, that recruitment of a largely increased
proportion of Indians should be begun at once."
In the next paragraph they state why, in their judgment, it is necessary
that a substantial portion of the services must continue to be European.
Their reasons may be gathered from the following:
"The characteristics which we have learned to associate with the
Indian public services must as far as possible be maintained and
the leaven of officers possessed of them should be strong enough
to assure and develop them in the service as a whole. The
qualities of courage, leadership, decision, fixity of purpose,
detached judgment and integrity in her public servants will be as
necessary as ever to India. There must be no such sudden swamping
of any service with any new element that its whole character
suffers a rapid alteration."
On these grounds they make the following recommendations:
"I. That all distinctions based on race be removed, and that
appointments to all branches of the public service be made without
racial discrimination" (Paragraph 315).
"II. That for all the public services, for which there is
recruitment in England open to Europeans and Indians alike, there
must be a system of appointment in India, ... and we propose to
supplement it by fixing a definite percentage of recruitment to be
made in India."
"III. We have not been able to examine the question of the
percentage of recruitment to be made in India for any service
other than the Indian Civil Service. The Commission recommended
that 25 per cent. of the superior posts of that service should be
recruited for in India. We consider that changed conditions
warrant some increase in that proportion, and we suggest that 33
per cent. of the superior posts should be recruited for in India,
and that this percentage should be increased by 1-1/2 per cent.
annually until the periodic commission is appointed which will
re-examine the whole subject.... We have dealt only with the
Indian Civil Service, but our intention is that there should be in
all other services now recruited from England a fixed percentage
of recruitment in India, increasing annually."
Now we must admit that this is certainly a distinct and marked advance
on the existing situation. The Indian Constitutional party, however,
wants to have the percentage of recruitment in India fixed at 50 per
cent., retaining at the same time the annual increase suggested. In our
opinion, this difference is not material, provided the number of posts
to which the rule of percentage is to be applied is substantially
reduced. We may state our position briefly.
We are of the opinion that the system of administration in India is much
more costly than it should be, considering the sources and the amounts
of Indian revenues. Unless the industries of the country are developed
we can see no new sources of increased taxation. Consequently, to us,
it seems essential that some economy should be effected in the various
departments of the administration. The only way to effect that economy
is to substantially reduce the number of posts on which it is considered
necessary to retain a certain percentage of Europeans. In speaking of
the machinery of the Government of India, the authors of the Report say:
"_We think we have reason for saying that in some respects the
machinery is no longer equal to the needs of the time._ The normal
work of the departments is heavy. The collective responsibility of
the Government is weighty, especially in time of war. There is
little time or energy left for those activities of a political
nature which the new situation in the country demands. A
legislative session of the Government of India imposes a serious
strain upon the departments, and especially on the members in
charge of them. But apart from the inevitable complexities of the
moment, the growing burden of business, which results from the
changing political conditions of the country, is leading to an
accumulation of questions which cannot be disposed of as quickly
as they present themselves. We find the necessity for reforms
admitted, principles agreed upon, and decisions taken, and then
long delays in giving effect to them. Difficulties are realized,
enquiries are started, commissions report, and then there is a
pause. There is a belief abroad that assurances given in public
pronouncement of policy are sometimes not fulfilled. On this
occasion, therefore, we have taken steps to guard against such
imputations, and to provide means for ensuring the ordered
development of our plans."