YOUNG INDIA
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
AN ECONOMIC HISTORY OF BRITISH INDIA
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[Illustration: DADABHAI NAOROJI]
YOUNG INDIA
AN INTERPRETATION AND A HISTORY OF
THE NATIONALIST MOVEMENT
FROM WITHIN
LAJPAT RAI
FOREWORD BY J. T. SUNDERLAND
ILLUSTRATED
[Illustration: colophon]
“The people of India are capable of administering their own affairs
and the municipal feeling is deep rooted in them. The village
communities, each of which is a little republic, are the most
abiding of Indian institutions.”
(LORD LAWRENCE, once Viceroy and Governor-General of British
India).
NEW YORK
B. W. HUEBSCH
1917
Copyright, 1916, by
B. W. HUEBSCH
First edition, August, 1916
Second edition, April, 1917
Printed in U. S. A.
DEDICATED
TO
THE MEMORY OF MY DEAREST FRIEND
THE LATE LAMENTED
DWARKA DASS, M. A. OF THE PUNJAB
WHO DIED OF A BROKEN HEART, AT THE
COLLAPSE OF PUBLIC LIFE IN
HIS NATIVE PROVINCE,
(OCTOBER 1912)
AS AN HUMBLE TRIBUTE TO HIS UNCOMPROMISING
ATTITUDE TOWARDS PUBLIC LIFE, HIS
LOFTY PRINCIPLES, AND HIS NOBLE
ADVOCACY OF THEM
FOREWORD
Mr. Lajpat Rai, the author of this book, is one of the most widely
known, most honoured and most influential public men in India. For more
than twenty years he has been a leading member of the bar in Lahore, the
capital city of the large province of the Punjab, and has long been
prominent in public affairs both local and national.
From almost the beginning of the National Indian Congress he has been an
active leader in that body, which is the most important political
organization in the country. The last time I was in India (two and a
half years ago) I found that he was being widely talked of for the
Presidency of the Congress at its approaching yearly meeting.
Conspicuous in Indian educational work and a founder of the large and
flourishing Anglo-Vedic College in Lahore, he has for a dozen years or
more held the position of either Vice-President or Honourary Secretary
of the College, and also that of Lecturer in History.
He started _The Punjabee_, a leading paper in the province, published in
English, and has edited a monthly magazine and a weekly paper printed in
the vernacular, besides writing for other Indian periodicals and for
reviews in London.
The Arya Samaj, an important, fast growing and influential movement of
religious reform in India, which rejects idolatry and caste and is
active in promoting education, social reforms and the elevation of
woman, counts Mr. Rai among its honoured leaders.
He has organized relief work during periods of famine in India, and has
for some years led in an extensive movement for the elevation of the
“Depressed Classes,” that is, the forty millions of “outcasts” or
“untouchables” whose condition is so miserable. Several years ago I
attended a National Conference to promote this work, at which he
presided and delivered a powerful address.
Mr. Lajpat Rai has made three or four extended visits to England and
three to America. In England he has spoken in many cities as a delegate
from the National Indian Congress, for the purpose of acquainting the
British public with the real condition of things in India, and to urge
upon the British Government the granting to the Indian people of certain
important political reforms. In America he has made a careful study of
our history and institutions, our industrial and social movements, our
political and religious life, and especially our schools and
universities, and our educational systems and methods. He is impressed
with the leadership which the United States is attaining in the world of
education, particularly education in scientific, industrial,
technological and agricultural directions, and he finds much here which
he desires to see introduced into his own country.
From the beginning of the New National Movement in India, Mr. Rai has
been one of its most prominent leaders. He is an ardent patriot, is
proud of his country, her civilization, her literature and her great
place in the world’s history, and he believes she is destined to have a
great future, commensurate with her great past. But now she is a subject
land, ruled by a foreign power, her own people having practically no
voice in the direction of their own national affairs or the shaping of
their future destiny. This deeply grieves and galls him, as it does a
large part of the Indian people. The Nationalist Movement, of which he
gives an account in this book, is a protest against present political
conditions, and a demand for larger freedom and independence. Indeed,
its aim is self-rule; not necessarily severance of connection with the
British Empire, but partnership in the Empire,--home rule inside the
Empire like that enjoyed by Canada, Australia and South Africa.
The British Government of India frowns upon this Nationalist Movement,
tries to suppress it, and places its leaders under ban. This is the way
despotic governments always treat subject peoples as soon as they grow
restive in their bonds and try to loosen them or throw them off. Mr.
Lajpat Rai has had to pay heavily for his patriotism. In 1907 he was
seized by the Government and, without trial or even being told what was
his offence, was secretly sent away to prison in Burmah, and kept there
six months. He was suspected of disloyalty and sedition, but not the
slightest evidence was found against him. His only crime was that he was
a Nationalist, and was working in perfectly open and legal ways to
secure greater liberty for his country. After his release from prison,
he brought legal suits against two newspapers, one in India and one in
London, that had published charges of sedition against him; and,
notwithstanding the fact that the powerful influence of the Government
was on the side of the papers, he won both suits,--so clear was his
case.
For a full dozen years India has been seething with unrest, seething
with dissatisfaction over present political conditions. During the past
ten years there has been not a little bomb throwing and not a few signs
of revolution. When the present European war broke out there were at
once increased outward expressions of loyalty; but the unrest has
remained. When the war is over what will happen? That will depend, Mr.
Lajpat Rai believes, upon the course pursued by the British Government.
If the Government in a generous spirit meets India’s just demands, there
will be no revolution. If the Government blindly and obstinately
refuses, the worst may happen.
While Mr. Rai is an ardent and uncompromising advocate of the
Nationalist Cause, he has always counselled procedure by evolutionary
and not by revolutionary measures, by vigorous and determined agitation
and not by bomb throwing. Throughout his entire career he has striven by
every means, through speech and the press, in India and in England, to
move the British Government to prevent revolution, in what he believes
is the only possible way, namely, by inaugurating and carrying out
honestly a policy of justice to the Indian people.
There is in sight an Indian _Renaissance_. There is a “New India in the
Making.” Indeed the stirrings of new life in India are hardly less
marked, less profound or less revolutionary, than in Japan or China. Of
this the book gives a vivid and reliable picture,--and, what is of great
importance, a picture from the inside.
We have many books which portray Indian conditions as foreigners see
them,--particularly as they are seen by Christian missionaries and by
the British rulers of the country. At last we have a book which gives us
the life, the experiences, the wrongs, the sufferings, the hopes, the
aims, the motives, and, what at the present time is most important of
all, the political ideals and ambitions of the Indian people themselves,
portrayed by one of their own number, a leader who has been in the very
heart of the struggle from the beginning, and who has felt it all in his
own life and his own soul.
It is a message to every man and woman in America, and in Great Britain,
too, who loves justice and hates oppression, and who wants to know about
one of the most heroic struggles for liberty now going on in the world.
My own intimate acquaintance with India for many years gives me a
greatly increased sense of the value of Mr. Rai’s book. Perhaps nothing
in the volume will be found more surprising or more interesting to
Americans than the overwhelming evidence of the dissatisfaction of India
with her present political condition, and the fact that the Indian
people want home rule, want it more earnestly than they want anything
else, and that probably nothing less than this will keep them loyal to
Great Britain. This feeling, which had been growing fast for years
before the war broke out, has since sprung into a passion. And we may be
sure that the flame will not burn with less intensity when the soldiers
return who have been risking their lives for Great Britain in Turkey and
Egypt and France, and who have been learning new lessons of
self-reliance, freedom and independence from their contact with the
great world.
It is hardly possible today to take up an Indian periodical of any kind,
Hindu or Mohammedan, secular or religious (I myself regularly subscribe
for and read nine, two of the number making a specialty of a monthly
summary of Indian press opinion), without being brought upon some
expression of this universal desire for self-rule. The people are
disposed to be patient and considerate, and make no demands upon the
Government that will be embarrassing so long as the war lasts. But
everything indicates that when peace comes they will be in no mood to be
treated like children and put off with the usual vague and meaningless
promises.
Since India has borne faithfully and loyally her part in the war, one of
the distinct stipulations in the treaty of peace at the end should be
the granting to her of home rule. This is as much her right as is
autonomy the right of Belgium or Poland. This right is recognized by not
a few Englishmen; it should be recognized by the whole nation, and put
into effect generously, freely, without waiting for struggle and
bloodshed. The advantage to Great Britain would be incalculable. It
would remove from her as a nation her most threatening danger, and it
would give to her Empire a solidity and permanent strength such as it
cannot otherwise secure.
While India wants freedom to shape her own affairs, her wisest minds do
not desire separation from England. They recognize many strong ties
between the two countries which they would not see broken. While they
are determined not much longer to lie prostrate beneath England’s feet,
they would gladly stand by her side, arm in arm with her, firmly united
for great ends of mutual welfare and mutual strength. An Anglo-Indian
Empire is one of the splendid possibilities of the future, binding
Britain and her colonies and her great Asiatic possession together into
a powerful world-spanning federation of free peoples. Something like
this is the dream of India’s greatest leaders, as it is also the dream
of not a few of Britain’s most far-seeing minds.
When this world-revolutionizing war is over, Great Britain must reshape
after a larger and more adequate pattern her whole scheme of Imperial
Government. She must become a Federated Empire. There must be
self-government at home, not only for Ireland but also for Scotland,
Wales and England. And there must be self-government abroad, not only
for Canada, Australasia and South Africa, but, as not less imperative
and not less wise, for India also, to be followed in time, as conditions
can be made favourable, by self-rule more or less complete for all of
Britain’s more important dependencies.
The danger is that Britain may forget India or thrust her aside, as in
the past, to the position of a mere dependency. If she does this she
will plant a cancer in the heart of her Empire, she will create a
volcano under her throne. It will take courage and large statesmanship
to give India home rule, as it took large statesmanship and courage to
give home rule to South Africa. But the splendid venture must be made.
And, made in the right spirit, it will succeed as perfectly as it did in
South Africa.
Has Great Britain statesmen sufficiently far-sighted, with adequate
genius and courage, to do to India the splendid justice of giving her
the home rule which is her right, and then to create a world-circling
federation of free peoples with India a partner in it,--a real
Anglo-Indian Empire? It would be the most brilliant, constructive and
noble work of statesmanship known to the modern world.
Now that Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders and South Africans as
well as Englishmen, Scotchmen, Welshmen and Irishmen have fought side by
side with the soldiers of India, shedding their blood in a common cause,
why should they not all gladly welcome those heroic and loyal men of the
East to a place by their side in the Empire which they have helped to
save?
Need England shrink from the risk? This is her path of least risk. Under
present conditions India is her peril. The one thing that will transform
India from a source of ever-increasing danger to a bulwark of strength,
is to trust her as South Africa has been trusted. She is certainly as
worthy of trust as South Africa was. Thus to trust her, and to lift her
up to a responsible place in the Empire, will appeal to India’s pride as
it has never been appealed to, will create in her an enthusiasm of
loyalty equal to anything seen in any of the self-ruling colonies, will
bind her to Great Britain with bands of steel.
Is it said that India is incapable of ruling herself? That was said of
South Africa; that was said of Canada; that was said of the American
Colonies when they broke off from Great Britain and set up a Government
of their own; that is what England has long been saying of Ireland. That
is what every nation that loves power always says of every section of
its people that wants more liberty.
The truth is, the safest Government in the world for every people of any
intellectual and moral development at all (and India is advanced, both
intellectually and morally) is self-government. No rule so completely
destroys the fibre of a nation as rule by a foreign power. India can
rule herself far better than any foreign nation can rule her.
If India is incapable of self-government today, what an indictment is
that against England! She was not thus incapable before England came.
Has one hundred and fifty years of British tutelage produced such
deterioration? India was possessed of a high civilization and of
developed Governments long before England or any part of Central,
Western or Northern Europe had emerged from barbarism. For three
thousand years before England’s arrival in the Orient, Indian Kingdoms
and Empires had held leading places in Asia, and that means in the
world. Some of the ablest rulers, statesmen, generals and financiers
known to history, as well as many of the greatest thinkers and writers
of mankind, have been of India’s production. How is it, then, that she
suddenly becomes imbecile and unable to stand on her own feet or conduct
her own affairs as soon as England appears on the scene?
To be sure, at the time when England came, India was in a peculiarly
disorganized and unsettled state; for it should be remembered that the
Mogul Empire was just breaking up and new political adjustments were
everywhere just being made,--a fact which accounts for England’s being
able to gain political power in India at all. But everything indicates
that if India had not been interfered with by European nations, she
would soon have been under competent Governments of her own again.
A further answer to the assertion that India cannot govern
herself--surely one that should be conclusive--is the fact that, in
parts, she is governing herself now, and governing herself well. It is
notorious that the very best Government in India to-day is not that
carried on by the British, but that of several of the Native States,
notably Baroda and Mysore. In these States, particularly Baroda, the
people are more free, more prosperous, more contented, and are making
more progress, than in any other part of India. Note the superiority of
both these States in the important matter of popular education. Mysore
is spending on education more than three times as much per capita as is
British India, while Baroda has made her education free and compulsory.
Both of these States, but especially Baroda, which has thus placed
herself in line with the leading nations of Europe and America by making
provisions for the education of all her children, may well be contrasted
with British India, which provides education, even of the poorest kind,
for only one boy in ten and one girl in one hundred and forty-four.
The only ground at all that exists for the claim that the Indian people
are not able to govern themselves lies in the fact that the British
Government during all its history in the land has deprived them, and
still continues to deprive them, against their constant protest, of
practical experience in Government management. They had such experience
before the British came, but since that time they have been robbed of it
to their great injury. Of course, under present conditions, if the
British should leave India in a day, with no body of men trained to take
their places, for a time there would be confusion, just as there would
be confusion in England if everybody there accustomed to Government
management should leave that country in a day.
But the Indian people do not ask England to leave India in a day, or to
leave at all; what they ask is for England to associate with herself the
competent men of India in the government of their own country, and thus
give them the experience in self-rule which is their right and of which
they never ought to have been deprived. With such opportunities for
practical experience extended to them for twenty years, or even for ten
years, they would be ready for the full responsibilities of home rule.
Among the tens of thousands of India’s educated men, and men of natural
capacity for leadership, there is no lack of material to fill, and fill
well as soon as they are given experience, every kind of official
position. Many of the highest judgeships are now filled with great
efficiency by Indians. In no department of the Government where Indians
have been adequately tried have they been found wanting.
The truth is, not one single fact can be cited to show that India cannot
govern herself well if given a chance. It would not be difficult to form
an Indian Parliament today, composed of men as able and of as high
character as those that constitute the fine Parliament of Japan. India
has public men who, if they lived in England and belonged to the English
race, would unhesitatingly be adjudged not only of Parliamentary but of
Cabinet rank. For twenty years before his recent lamented death Mr.
Gokhale was confessedly the equal in intellectual ability and in moral
worth of any Englishman in India, not excepting the three Viceroys under
whom he served. It is no exaggeration to declare that Mr. Justice Renade
had qualifications fully fitting him for the position of Viceroy, or if
he had lived in England, fitting him for the position of Premier.
This is only another way of saying that among the leaders of the various
States and Provinces of India there is abundant material to form
National and Provincial Governments little, if at all, inferior in
ability and in moral character to the Governments of the Western world.
J. T. SUNDERLAND.
New York, June, 1916.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
Foreword, by J. T. Sunderland vii
Preface to the Second Edition xxvii
Introduction 1
I. THE GENERAL VIEWPOINT OF THE INDIAN NATIONALIST 67
First Invasion of India 68
Chandra Gupta and Asoka 69
India Practically Independent Up to the Twelfth Century 70
Muslim Rule 71
Muslim Rule in India not Foreign 73
India Under the British 76
Political Disqualification of the Indians 78
Indians May not Carry Arms 80
Loyalty of Ruling Chiefs 90
Middle Class Desires Political Freedom 92
II. INDIA FROM 1757 TO 1857 95
Conflict of French and English in India 96
How British Rule in India Was Established 96
Methods of Consolidation of British India 97
British Public Ignorant of Facts 98
Conquest of India Diplomatic, not Military 100
The Great Indian Mutiny of 1857 101
How the Mutiny Was Put Down 102
III. INDIA FROM 1857 TO 1905 109
Part I. From 1857 to 1885.
The Bengalee Babu 109
Forces Resisting Denationalisation 114
Political Disappointments 115
Lord Ripon 118
Lord Dufferin 121
Part II. The Birth of the Indian National Congress.
Indian National Congress an English Product 122
Hume, a Lover of Liberty 124
Congress to Save British Empire from Danger 126
The Congress Lacked Essentials of a National Movement 138
Hume’s Political Movement 141
Congress Overawed 142
Congress Agitation in England 144
Causes of Failure of the Congress 145
Part III. The Birth of the New Nationalist Movement.
Swadeshi and Swaraj 148
Men Who Have Inspired the Movement 152
Lord Curzon and Indian Education 156
Lord Curzon’s Secret Educational Conference 158
Indians and Lord Curzon at Cross Purposes 158
The Congress Deputation to England in 1905 159
The Congress of 1905 160
Object of the Passive Resistance Movement 162
IV. THE FIRST YEARS OF THE NATIONALIST MOVEMENT 167
Partition of Bengal 167
Boycott of British Goods 167
Government’s Reply 170
The Second Move of the Bengalees: The National
University 170
Arabinda Ghosh 172
The Nationalist Press 176
Military Measures against Boycotters 177
Lord Minto 179
Indian Press Gagged 180
Deportation of Lajpat Rai 181
Disaffection Driven Underground 183
Lord Hardinge Bombed 184
V. TYPES OF NATIONALISTS 187
The Extremists 187
A Few Nihilists 189
Religious Extremists 189
The Mother Worshippers 190
Vedantists 191
Advocates of Organised Rebellion 195
Har Dayal 195
Hardayalism: Advocation of Full Swaraj 199
Political Freedom the First Condition of Life 200
Arabinda Ghosh--Vedantist and Swarajist 205
Ganesh Vináyak Savarkar 210
The Terrorists 211
Advocates of Constructive Nationalisation 212
Independence, but not at Once 212
Preparing the Nation for Freedom 213
Preparatory Work from Below 214
Brahmo Samaj; Arya Samaj; Ramakrishna Mission 215
The Moderates 216
Gokhale 216
Congress Leaders 219
Passive Resisters 219
VI. INDIAN NATIONALISM AND THE WORLD-FORCES 221
Inspiration through European Nationalism 221
History of Modern Europe Tabooed in Universities 221
Italian-Turko War 222
Interpretation of India to Western World 223
Tagorism 223
VII. THE RELIGIOUS AND THE COMMUNAL ELEMENTS IN
INDIAN NATIONALISM 225
Mohammedan Revulsion of Feeling against the British 226
Disaffection among the Sikhs 228
VIII. THE FUTURE 230
Change in Indian Life and Depth of Nationalism 230
Nationalism Fertilised by Blood of Martyrs 232
Wave of Indian Nationalism is on 233
Propitiation and Petty Concessions Futile 234
Internal Division no Valid Plea for Continuance of
British Rule 235
Illiteracy the Fault of the British and no Bar to Self-government 237
Internal Troubles 238
Unfitness of Orientals for Representative Institutions 238
Nationalism Has Come to Stay 238
Curzons, Macdonnels, Sydenhams, Responsible for
Bombs and Revolvers 240
A SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY OF BOOKS IN ENGLISH 241
APPENDICES
Feudatory Chiefs Powerless 243
Gross Insults to Indians 243
Industrial Ruin of India; Gokhale 244
India a Mere Possession; Gokhale 244
Masses Starved; Sir C. A. Elliot, Sir W. W. Hunter,
William Digby 244
Seventy Million Continually Hungry People in British
India; William Digby 245
Total Area under Cultivation 245
Famines of Money; not Food; Lord George Hamilton 245
Causes of Famines 246
Drain; Montgomery Martin and Digby 246
Enormous Foreign Tribute; Rev. J. T. Sunderland 246
Government Assessment too High; Sir W. Hunter 246
The Ryot; Herbert Compton 246
Indian Plunder; Adam Brooks 247
Swami Abhedananda 247
Alfred Webb 247
“Narrow and Shortsighted Imperial Policy;” Sir A.
R. Colquehoun 248
Taxation; Lord Salisbury 248
Plague, Deaths from 249
Death Rate 249
Indian Finance 249
Land Tax 249
Income Tax 250
Customs 250
Trade Figures for 1913 to 1914 251
Personnel of the Government 251
Figures About Education and Literacy 253
The Flogging of Political Prisoners 253
ILLUSTRATIONS
Dadabhai Naoroji _Frontispiece_
Ram Mohan Roy FACING PAGE 111
Swami Vivekananda “ “ 115
Bal Ganga Dhar Tilak “ “ 162
Arabinda Ghosh “ “ 172
Lajpat Rai “ “ 181
Har Dayal “ “ 195
G. K. Gokhale “ “ 216
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
Considering that in August, 1916, when this book was published, I was
only a stranger in this country, known only to a few individuals, with
almost no credentials of any kind to command the attention of the
reading public, it is extremely gratifying that the first edition should
have been sold out in less than six months. The fact can only be
explained by the broad-minded sympathy of the American public for the
“under dog.” I had a story to tell which the American public decided was
worthy of being heard. So they heard it and now that they have heard it
they want more of it.
In launching a second edition I take the opportunity of thanking the
American press for their most generous and kindly appreciation of my
little work. To the London Liberal press represented by the _Nation_ and
the _New Statesman_ also I pay my acknowledgments. Their kindly
reception shows the genuineness of their liberalism which, by the by, is
the most valuable asset of English public life. Compare with this the
treatment that has been accorded to me and my book by the British Indian
Government. The first thing they did to injure me was to get the High
Court at Lahore to cancel my license as a lawyer in the Punjab, India,
on the ground of my being the author of a pamphlet called “Some
Reflections on the Political Situation in India,” to which they
objected and which they barred from entry into British India. This order
is of course illegal; but the High Court of the Punjab has not a high
reputation for its legal attainments and is always a willing instrument
of the Executive. Then came the order barring this book. This by itself
ought to be sufficient to show off the amount of political freedom we
enjoy in India, but the year 1916 has been made memorable in the
political history of India by other events of even a more significant
character. Throughout the year, the Government in India continued to
prosecute an English lady of world-wide fame, for the simple reason that
that lady had the audacity of identifying herself with the “Home Rule of
India” movement. Mrs. Annie Besant is an English woman of international
fame. She is one of the most accomplished and eloquent platform speakers
which the English speaking nations possess. She is a distinguished
author and the revered head of the Theosophical Society which has
ramifications all over the world. In addition to her religious and
social and literary activities Mrs. Annie Besant has for some years been
taking an active interest in the Indian Nationalist movement. She owns
and edits two papers, one a daily and the other a weekly, both written
in English and published at Madras, India, in the interests of Indian
Nationalism. She is the founder and President of an Indian Home Rule
League. She is an outspoken critic of the Russian methods of repression,
suppression and confiscation that are in vogue in the Indian
Administration. During Lord Hardinge’s viceroyalty her criticism was
tolerated, as the Head of the Government was known to be friendly to
her. As soon, however, as Lord Hardinge turned his back on India, Mrs.
Besant’s good luck abandoned her and down came the hand of the Madras
Government. The first order against her demanded security for her daily
paper, _New India_. This security was duly furnished and has since been
confiscated and a new security of a much larger sum has been demanded.
Mrs. Besant has complied with these orders also, though under protest
and is contesting them in the courts. One court has rejected her appeal,
holding that though the order of the Government was illegal, the
statutes gave them no power to give relief. She is now appealing to the
Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, in London, and the matter rests
there. Two other Provincial Governments, those of Bombay and the Central
Provinces, took action to restrict her liberty of movement, by
prohibiting her entry into their respective jurisdictions, under the
Defence of India Act. All this has made a sensation and Mrs. Annie
Besant is one of the most popular persons in India at the present
moment. She is considered a heroine and the Nationalist party is backing
her up fully. Her financial losses have been made up to her and her
papers are flourishing. Her Home Rule League is spreading.
Mrs. Annie Besant has not, however, been the only recipient of
Government attention during the course of the year. The Nationalist
leader, Bal Ganga Dhar Tilak, has been persecuted in various ways. A
Magistrate was found to adjudge some of his speeches in favour of Home
Rule as seditious and on the basis of that adjudication, Mr. Tilak was
ordered to deposit security of over $13,000 for good behaviour for a
year, the object being to gag him. On Mr. Tilak appealing to the High
Court the Judges quashed the order, holding that the speeches, read as a
whole, did not violate the law. He is, however, still being followed and
persecuted otherwise.
_Press Act._ The following resolution passed by the Council of the
Bombay Presidency Association in connection with the proceedings taken
by the Government against Mrs. Besant’s _New India_ speaks for itself:
“Having regard to the arbitrary character of the provisions of the
Press Act of 1910 and the manner in which it has been enforced in
the case of several newspapers, and recently in the case of _New
India_, thereby causing public dissatisfaction and discontent, this
Council is of opinion that a representation should be submitted to
the Government by the Association pointing out the oppressive
character of the Act and its administration and asking for its
appeal. The Council, therefore, resolves, that a committee
consisting of Sir Narayan Chandavarkar, Messrs. B. G. Horniman, D.
N. Bahadurji, A. M. Jinnah and the Honorary Secretaries be
appointed to draft a memorial for the purpose and submit it to the
Council within a fortnight.”
_Political Crime in Bengal._ In Bengal there has been no falling off in
the activities of the Revolutionary party in spite of the fact that the
powers taken by the Government under the Defence of India Act have been
ruthlessly exercised. The following extracts taken from a press comment
on the Resolution of the Government of Bengal relating to the working of
the Police Department in 1915 may be of some interest in this
connection:
“The Resolution of the Bengal Government on the Report of the
Police administration in the Presidency for 1915 says that the
criminal record of the year was a black one. Serious crime of all
kinds except rioting showed considerable increase, which was most
marked in the case of offences against property. True cases of
dacoity increased from 289 in 1914 to 643 in 1915, burglary cases
from 30,294 to 39,812 and theft cases from 17,730 to 31,552. The
increase in theft and burglary may be ascribed mainly to the
unfavourable economic conditions caused by partial crop failures in
many districts of the province and by a heavy fall in the price of
jute. In the case of dacoity, however, there appears to be good
reason for attributing the increase almost entirely to the state of
unrest caused by the war.
“Referring to revolutionary crime in Bengal the resolution says:
The outbreak of revolutionary crime in the early part of the year
was followed by a lull after the introduction of the Defence of
India Act in April. The latter part of the year was, however,
marked by renewed activity on the part of the revolutionary party
and the total number of cases believed to be connected with the
movement was 36 as compared with 12 in the previous year. These
cases included 34 dacoities, 2 attempted dacoities, 9 murders and
one attempted bomb outrage.
“With regard to the circulation of seditious literature, the report
of the Inspector General of Police says: Increased activity in the
circulation of seditious leaflets came to notice about June and
continued throughout the year. Under the existing law mere
possession of seditious matter is not an offence and consequently
there are no means of checking the serious evil at the fountain
head. It is only after the seditious and inflammatory matter has
been circulated and mischief done that the law can be put in
motion. There is convincing evidence that the revolutionary party
in Bengal depend largely upon seditious literature to recruit their
ranks and several youths have confessed that they were drawn into
the movement through reading leaflets issued by the revolutionists.
Penalising the possession of seditious matter may not be a complete
cure for the evil, but it will materially assist to check it.”
As recently as December 11, 1916, the Governor laid renewed emphasis
upon the continued existence of serious political crime in Bengal and of
their failure to check or extirpate it.
Since then a new ordinance has been promulgated making the mere
possession of seditious literature penal.
_In the Punjab_ the Government prosecuted a third batch of persons on
charges of political conspiracy, six of whom have since been sentenced
to death and the others to varying terms of imprisonment and
transportation.
_The united demand for autonomy._ The most significant political event
of the year, however, is the presentation to the Viceroy of a joint
memorandum of post-war reforms signed by nineteen out of twenty-two
elected members of the Viceroy’s Legislative Council. In the opinion of
the signatories this is the minimum which will satisfy Indian public
opinion _for the present_. The demands are not far-reaching enough on
the way to autonomy but the document is remarkable as a symbol of unity
between the different religious communities and castes of the Indian
population, on the so-called lack of which the British Imperialist so
much relies, in justification of denying self-government to India.
Coming from men of varying shades of political opinion, pledged by their
oath of allegiance to loyalty to the British Government and by their
connection with the latter, the document is the most conclusive and
scathing condemnation of the existing system of Government in India. We
make no apology for giving the document in full.
MEMORANDUM submitted to H. E., the Viceroy, by the undersigned
elected Additional Members of the Imperial Legislative Council with
regard to Post-War reforms.
There is no doubt that the termination of the war will see a great
advance in the ideals of government all over the civilised world
and especially in the British Empire, which entered into the
struggle in defence of the liberties of weak and small
nationalities and is pouring forth its richest blood and treasure
in upholding the cause of justice and humanity in the international
relations of the world. India has borne her part in this struggle
and cannot remain unaffected by the new spirit of change for a
better state of things. Expectations have been raised in this
country and hopes held out that, after the war, the problems of
Indian Administration will be looked at from a new angle of vision.
The people of India have good reasons to be grateful to England for
the great progress in her material resources and the widening of
her intellectual and political outlook under British rule, and for
the steady, if slow, advance in her national life commencing with
the Charter Act of India of 1833. Up to 1909, the Government of
India was conducted by a bureaucracy almost entirely non-Indian in
its composition and not responsible to the people of India. The
reforms of 1909 for the first time introduced an Indian element in
the direction of affairs in the administration of India. This
element was of a very limited character. The Indian people accepted
it as an indication on the part of the Government of a desire to
admit the Indians into the inner counsels of the Indian Empire. So
far as the Legislative Councils are concerned, the number of
non-official members was merely enlarged with increased facilities
for debate and interpellation. The Supreme Legislative Council
retained an absolute official majority, and in the Provincial
Legislative Councils, where a non-official majority was allowed,
such majority included nominated members and the European
representatives. In measures largely affecting the people, whether
of legislation or taxation, by which Europeans were not directly
affected, the European members would naturally support the
Government, and the nominated members, being nominees of
Government, would be inclined to take the same side. Past
experience has shown that this has actually happened on various
occasions. The non-official majorities, therefore, in the
Provincial Councils have proved largely illusory and give no real
power to the representatives of the people. The Legislative
Councils, whether Supreme or Provincial, are at present nothing but
advisory bodies without any power of effective control over the
Government, Imperial or Provincial. The people or their
representatives are practically as little associated with the real
government of the country as they were before the reforms, except
for the introduction of the Indian element in the Executive
Councils, where again the nomination rests entirely with the
Government, the people having no voice in the selection of the
Indian members.
The object which the Government had in view in introducing the
reforms of 1909 was, as expressed by the Prime Minister in his
speech in the House of Commons on the second reading of the Indian
Councils Bill (1st April, 1909), that “it was most desirable in the
circumstances to give to the people of India the feeling that these
Legislative Councils are not mere automatons the wires of which are
pulled by the official hierarchy.” This object, it is submitted,
has not been attained. Apart from this question of the Constitution
of the Legislative and Executive Councils, the people labour under
certain grave disabilities, which not only prevent the utilisation,
but also lead to the wastage, of what is best in them, and are
positively derogatory to their sense of national self-respect. The
Arms Act which excludes from its operation Europeans and
Anglo-Indians and applies only to the pure natives of the country,
the disqualification of Indians for forming or joining Volunteer
corps, and their exclusion from the commissioned ranks of the Army,
are disabilities which are looked upon with an irritating sense of
racial differentiation. It would be bad enough if these were mere
disabilities. Restrictions and prohibitions regarding the
possession and use of arms have tended to emasculate the civil
populations in India and expose them to serious danger. The
position of Indians in India is practically this, that they have no
real part or share in the direction of the government of the
country, and are placed under very great and galling disabilities
from which the other members of the British Empire are exempt and
which have reduced them to a state of utter helplessness. The
existence, moreover, of the system of indentured emigration gives
to the British Colonies and the outside world the impression that
Indians, as a whole, are no better than indentured coolies, who are
looked upon as very little, if at all, above the slave. The present
state of things makes the Indians feel that, though theoretically
they are equal subjects of the King, they hold a very inferior
position in the British Empire. Other Asiatic races also hold the
same, if not a worse, view about India and her status in the
Empire. Humiliating as this position of inferiority is to the
Indian mind, it is almost unbearable to the youth of India whose
outlook is broadened by education and travel in foreign parts where
they come in contact with other free races.
In the face of these grievances and disabilities, what has
sustained the people is the hope and faith inspired by promises and
assurances of fair and equal treatment which have been held out
from time to time by our Sovereigns and British statesmen of high
standing. In the crisis we are now going through, the Indian people
have sunk domestic differences between themselves and the
Government and have faithfully and loyally stood by the Empire. The
Indian soldiers were eager to go to the battlefields of Europe, not
as mercenary troops but as free citizens of the British Empire
which required their services, and her civilian population was
animated by one desire, namely, to stand by England in the hour of
her need. Peace and tranquillity reigned throughout India when she
was practically denuded of British and Indian troops. The Prime
Minister of England, while voicing the sentiments of the English
people in regard to India’s part in this great war, spoke of
Indians as “the joint and equal custodians of one common interest
and future.” India does not claim any reward for her loyalty, but
she has a right to expect that the want of confidence on the part
of the Government, to which she not unnaturally ascribes her
present state, should now be a thing of the past and that she
should no longer occupy a position of subordination but one of
comradeship. This would assure the Indian people that England is
ready and willing to help them to attain self-government under the
ægis of the British Crown, and thus discharge the noble mission
which she has undertaken and to which she has so often given
voluntary expression through her rulers and statesmen. What is
wanted is not merely good government or efficient administration,
but government that is acceptable to the people because it is
responsible to them. This is what India understands would
constitute the changed angle of vision.
If, after the termination of the war, the position of India
practically remains what it was before, and there is no material
change in it, it will undoubtedly cause bitter disappointment and
great discontent in the country, and the beneficent effects of
participation in common danger, overcome by common effort will soon
disappear, leaving no record behind save the painful memory of
unrealised expectations. We feel sure that the Government is also
alive to the situation and is contemplating measures of reform in
the administration of the country. We feel that we should avail
ourselves of this opportunity to respectfully offer to Government
our humble suggestions as to the lines on which reforms should
proceed. They must, in our opinion, go to the root of the matter.
They must give to the people real and effective participation in
the government of the country, and also remove those irritating
disabilities as regards the possession of arms and a military
career, which indicate want of confidence in the people and place
them in a position of inferiority and helplessness. With this view,
we would take the liberty to suggest the following measures for
consideration and adoption:
1. In all the Executive Councils, Provincial and Imperial, half the
number of members should be Indians; the European element in the
Executive Councils should, as far as possible, be nominated from
the ranks of men trained and educated in the public life of
England, so that India may have the benefit of a wider outlook and
larger experience of the outside world. It is not absolutely
essential that the members of the Executive Councils, Indians or
Europeans, should have experience of actual administration, for, as
in the case of Ministers in England, the assistance of the
permanent officials of the departments is always available to them.
As regards Indians, we venture to say that a sufficient number of
qualified Indians, who can worthily fill the office of members of
the Executive Council and hold portfolios, is always available. Our
short experience in this direction has shown how Indians like Sir
S. P. Sinha, Sir Syed Ali Imam, the late Mr. Krishnaswami Iyer, Sir
Shams-ul-Huda and Sir Sankaran Nair have maintained a high level of
administrative ability in the discharge of their duties. Moreover,
it is well known that the Native States, where Indians have
opportunities, have produced renowned administrators like Sir Salar
Jang, Sir T. Madhava Rao, Sir Sheshadri Ayer, Dewan Bahadur
Raghunath Rao, not to mention the present administrators in the
various Native States of India. The statutory obligation, now
existing, that three of the members of the Supreme Executive
Council shall be selected from the public services in India and
similar provisions with regard to Provincial Councils should be
removed. The elected representatives of the people should have a
voice in the selection of the Indian members of the Executive
Councils and for that purpose a principle of election should be
adopted.
2. All the Legislative Councils in India should have a substantial
majority of elected representatives. These representatives, we feel
sure, will watch and safeguard the interests of the masses and the
agricultural population, with whom they are in closer touch than
any European officer, however sympathetic, can possibly be. The
proceedings of the various Legislative Councils and the Indian
National Congress and the Moslem League bear ample testimony to the
solicitude of the educated Indians for the welfare of the masses
and their acquaintance with their wants and wishes. The franchise
should be broadened and extended directly to the people,
Mohammedans or Hindus, wherever they are in a minority, being given
proper and adequate representation, having regard to their
numerical strength and position.
3. The total number of the members of the Supreme Council should be
not less than 150, and of the Provincial Councils not less than 100
for the major provinces, and not less than 60 to 75 for the minor
provinces.
4. The Budget should be passed in the shape of money bills, fiscal
autonomy being conceded to India.
5. The Imperial Legislative Council should have power to legislate
on, and discuss and pass resolutions relating to, all matters of
Indian administration, and the Provincial Councils should have
similar powers with regard to Provincial administrations, save and
except that the direction of military affairs, of foreign
relations, declarations of war, the making of peace, and the
entering into treaties, other than commercial, should be vested in
the Government of India. As a safeguard, the
Governor-General-in-Council or the Governor-in-Council, as the case
may be, should have the right of veto, which, however, should be
exercised subject to certain conditions and limitations.
6. The Council of the Secretary of State should be abolished. The
Secretary of State should, as far as possible, hold in relation to
the Government of India a position similar to that which the
Secretary of State for the Colonies holds in relation to the
Colonies. The Secretary of State should be assisted by two
permanent Under-Secretaries, one of whom should be an Indian. The
salaries of the Secretary and the Under-Secretaries should be
placed on the British estimates.
7. In any scheme of Imperial Federation, India should be given
through her chosen representatives a place similar to that of the
self-governing dominions.
8. The Provincial Governments should be made autonomous, as stated
in the Government of India’s despatch dated 25th August, 1911.
9. The United Provinces, as well as the other major provinces
should have a Governor brought from the United Kingdom and should
have an Executive Council.
10. A full measure of local self-government should be immediately
granted.
11. The right to carry arms should be granted to Indians on the
same conditions as to Europeans.
12. Indians should be allowed to enlist as volunteers and units of
a territorial army established in India.
13. Commissions in the Army should be given to Indian youths under
conditions similar to those applicable to Europeans.
MANINDRA CHANDRA NANDY OF KASIMBAZAR.
D.E. WACHA.
BHUPENDRANATH BASU.
BISHAN DUTT SHUKUL.
MADAN MOHAN MALAVIYA.
K. V. RANGASWAMIENGAR.
MAZHARUL HAQUE.
V. S. SRINIVASAN.
TEJ BAHADUR SAPRU.
IBRAHIM RAHIMTOOLA.
B. NARASIMHESWARA SARMA.
MIR ASAD ALI.
KAMINI KUMAR CHANDA.
KRISHNA SAHAY.
R. N. BHANJA DEO OF KANIKA.
M. B. DADABHOY.
SITA NATH ROY.
MOHAMED ALI MOHAMED.
M. A. JINNAH.
It might be noted that the demands are extremely moderate and
accompanied by rather exaggerated acknowledgments of the effects of
British rule in India. They proceed from a body of professed loyalists.
They have received wide support from representative organisations of
Hindus and Mahommedans as well as from representative men of all
classes, castes and denominations.
_India in England._ In England the exigencies of the war have left no
time for the British Parliament to devote to the meagre discussions of
Indian affairs that followed the presentation of East India accounts
once a year. The requirements of the law in this respect have been
conveniently ignored. In the press too, while every expression of
loyalty is lauded to the skies and even cabled to America, the demands
for rights and reforms are silently ignored or hooted with contempt. The
reactionary Lord Sydenham has, however, sounded a note of alarm urging
the “immediate and final” rejection of the demands made by the nineteen
members of the Viceroy’s Legislative Council. The London _Nation_ and
the _New Statesman_ have come out with sympathetic articles.
_India in America._ Here in the United States of America the attention
paid to Indian affairs by the American press, has elicited long
statements by British statesmen in connection with their rule in India.
The Secretary of State for India, the Under Secretary of State for
India, the Viceroy, the Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab, the Finance
Minister have all granted interviews to American correspondents,
assuring the latter of the marvellous progress India is making under
British rule, of the prosperity and loyalty of India and of the extreme
unimportance of the Nationalist party. Judged from these interviews
India must be a very paradise on earth--a garden of Eden. Most of the
statements are vague and misleading, containing half truths and
suppressing important facts. I will pick up one statement for purposes
of illustration. The Finance Minister of India is reported to have
said:
“So far from the people of India groaning under an enormous burden
of taxation India is one of the most lightly taxed countries on the
face of the earth.... The total Revenue, Imperial and Provincial,
for the current year amounted to £86,500,000 and this sum
distributed among the 244,000,000 people of British India gave a
resultant contribution per capita of only seven shillings.”
Now at best this is only a half truth. The Finance Minister should have
added that the total income of India is about £600,000,000 a year,
bringing the average per capita to £2 a year. Seven shillings out of £2
a year is perhaps the heaviest tax paid by any country on the face of
the earth. Equally misleading are other statements about land tax, etc.,
which I am noticing in my new book dealing with Economic Effects of
British Rule in India which is going to the press soon.
The writer is also establishing a kind of Bureau in New York, where all
kinds of information, political, economic, legal, commercial, etc.,
relating to India will be supplied to the American public.
LAJPAT RAI.
New York,
19th January, 1917.
P. S. Since the above was written the newspapers have reported that the
British Government have decided to raise a war loan of $500,000,000 in
India as a “free gift” to Great Britain. Free gift, indeed! Where the
donor and the donee are the same--a free gift by a people vast numbers
of whom do not get two meals a day and have an average income of ten
dollars a year. Imperialism, wonderful are thy feats!!!
NOTE: The _Manchester Guardian_, March 13, 1917, comments as
follows upon the war loan mentioned in the above P. S., the italics
being mine:
“Why was this question of a financial contribution from India
raised now? _For our own part we have the gravest doubt as to the
wisdom or justice of taking any financial contribution from India._
We believe that this is not the best way for India and for the
Empire, in which India can serve the common cause, and _that the
loss it represents to an extremely poor population like that of
India is very much greater than the gain it represents to England_.
If we really are seriously concerned that India ‘should develop in
every way the vast potentialities of her indigenous products’ it
would be better to spend 100 millions [£] on developing her
resources than to take that money from India and in exchange give
Bombay a tariff.”
LAJPAT RAI.
18th March, 1917.
INTRODUCTION
I
During my travels in the world, the one point that has struck me most
forcibly and most painfully, is the lack of true knowledge about the
affairs of India among the “civilised” nations of the globe. Even the
best educated among them know very little about India and what little
they know is not always right. The sources from which the ordinary
stay-at-home Westerner derives his knowledge about India are the
following: (a) missionaries who have been to India, (b) English writers
of the class of Rudyard Kipling and Sir Valentine Chirol, (c) British
officials, (d) serious students of Indian history or Indian literature
like the late Professor Max Müller, the late Miss Noble, and the late
Professor Goldstucker.
Now unfortunately for India most of these people, except those coming
under the last heading, have generally an axe to grind and can not be
accepted as disinterested, well-informed, impartial authorities. Their
reading of Indian history is often perverted and their observations of
Indian life partial and distorted. They go to India with definite aims,
look at persons and things from their own particular angle, and pose as
authorities on matters far beyond the scope of their observations and
studies. With rare exceptions most of the Westerners who go to India go
with the presumption that the people of India belong to an inferior
level of society; that they are heathens, worshippers of stocks and
stones; that they are hopelessly divided into castes and classes; that
these castes and classes are always at each other’s throats; that they
have never had a settled or civilised form of government; that the
British have for the first time in their history given them a settled
government; and that India would go to pieces if British government were
to withdraw.
Writers about India may again be broadly subdivided into two classes:
(a) those of British origin, (b) those of non-British origin. Those of
British origin are in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred tainted with
the imperial bias. They can only look at things from the imperial or
British point of view. Even the best and the most fair-minded of them do
not altogether succeed in freeing themselves from this bias. The bias
acts even against their will. The second class of writers are affected
by the racial and the colour bias. Moreover, nine out of ten amongst
them are made to look at things from the British point of view. As soon
as they land at an Indian port, they are taken in hand by the British
residents, officials and non-officials, and practically the whole of
their trip is arranged for them by the latter. They only see things
which the ruling community want them to see and they only hear and know
what these allow them to hear or know. The few who resolutely refuse to
be thus “programmed” do sometimes see things in their true light, as
the late Mr. Keir Hardie, M.P., and Mr. H. W. Nevinson did.
In this connection I think the following remarks of the latest American
writer on India, Professor Pratt of Williams College, Massachusetts, in
his book on “India and Its Faiths” are very pertinent. Professor Pratt
begins by warning the reader against “the point of view of the native”
himself, as well as against “those European writers who seek to give an
ultra ‘sympathetic’ picture of India.” But his observations about the
other two of the four sources of information mentioned by him are
extremely interesting. He says:
“Much greater is the danger that we, with our Western ideals and customs
so different from those of India, should go to the other extreme and
take one of the two remaining points of view that I referred to above.
One of these is that which characterises a certain type (now happily
decreasing) of earnest but narrow-minded missionary.” The fourth source
of information, which, according to Professor Pratt, “one should regard
with distrust,” comprises “the superficial tourist or the non-missionary
European resident in India.” In his opinion this source is particularly
dangerous, for “it is so natural to suppose that one of our own race who
has travelled in India (and especially one who has lived there
‘twenty-two years’) will be in a position to know all about it.... The
tourist’s ignorance is not surprising, but it is not easy to understand
the ignorance of the average European resident in India.” Professor
Pratt’s remarks about the “average European resident,” who has been
“twenty-two years” in India, are prefaced by an eulogistic tribute to
the British administration of justice in India, which may be accepted
with a little salt. The administration of justice in India is impartial
and as fair as it can be under the circumstances, except when one party
is a native and the other a Britisher. What concerns us here, is
Professor Pratt’s opinion about the resident Englishman’s knowledge of
India. In his opinion “most of the Englishmen” whom he met seemed to him
“singularly lacking in curiosity or interest” about “Indian thought,
religion, traditions and ways of viewing things.” “The Anglo-Indian,”
adds he, “is surprisingly indifferent towards almost everything native.”
Professor Pratt illustrates his conclusions by actual facts which came
under his observation. One English gentleman who had lived in Calcutta
and other parts of the East for many years, said to the professor: “The
natives are all just a lot of animals, don’t you think so?” No wonder
that the professor had to say that his impression was quite different.
For him it was hard to conceive how one “could stay any time among them
without finding them a truly lovable people, and without imbibing
genuine respect and admiration for the simple dignity of their lives,
the quiet courtesy of their manners, their uncomplaining endurance of
hardships, their unbounded hospitality, and the feeling for spiritual
value, which in spite of gross superstitions is unmistakable in the
Indian atmosphere.” Professor Pratt’s “Englishman” had never heard of a
Dr. Bose, “one of the greatest botanists living,” and he did “not think
much” of Tagore’s poetry. “This lack of interest in native life as
such,” continues Mr. Pratt, “and the proud manifestation of conscious
superiority that goes with it, shows itself in the coarser natures _in a
contempt for the ‘black man’_ and ‘a constant swagger of putting him in
his place.’ As a result of this indifference to and _contempt for the
natives_, most of the Anglo-Indians that I know anything about are very
ignorant concerning the religions of India, and _decidedly prejudiced
against them_. Personally I think that the opinions of nine Englishmen
out of ten on the subject of Indian religions are _entirely
untrustworthy_.”[1]
Professor Pratt only speaks of the English residents’ ignorance of
Indian religion, but I am disposed to add that the opinions of
ninety-nine out of every hundred Anglo-Indians on the nature and effects
of British rule in India and the capacity of Indians to manage their own
affairs are equally “_untrustworthy_.” Hence the colossal ignorance
which prevails in the West about what is happening in India politically
and economically. Just think of an honest, fair-minded British writer,
like Lowes Dickinson, presuming to write about political life in India
without discussing the economic effects of British rule.
India being only a dependency, her affairs do not attract that attention
which they would if she were a self-governing country. The British
Parliament disposes of the Indian affairs by an annual discussion of a
few hours in an extremely thin house. The last time the British House of
Commons discussed an important measure affecting India, viz.: one by
which it was proposed to suspend the Indian Civil Service examination
pending the war and to authorise the Secretary of State in Council to
make appointments by nomination, the maximum attendance, it is said,
never exceeded 28. This measure was condemned by the unanimous voice of
the Indian native press, yet there was nobody in the House to give
expression to their views in the matter. The author, himself, has
attended the sittings of the House in different years, when the India
budget was under _discussion_ and can testify from personal knowledge
that the attendance was _always_ very scanty and the speeches, often,
poor.
Yet the fact that India is inhabited by about one-fifth of the whole
human race and that her trading capacity is simply unlimited, entitles
her to a fuller consideration at the hands of the civilised world.
Leaving aside her past, it can not be doubted that she is destined to
play a great part in the development of the near future. As such, the
writer has presumed that the following brief account of the rise and
development of the Indian Nationalist Movement may not be devoid of
interest to British and American readers. The book is of course open to
the objection that it is written by a “native,” but in the eyes of
impartial investigators that should be its merit. The writer has been
closely associated with the movement for the last thirty-three years of
his life, in almost all its phases, religious, social, educational,
industrial and political. It was in 1888 that he joined the Indian
National Congress, the official organisation of the “constitutional”
nationalists, i.e., only four years after it was started.
In the following pages he has tried to give as faithful an account of
the origin and progress of the movement as is possible under the
circumstances. The one fact which qualifies him to interpret the Indian
Nationalist Movement is that his position has always been more or less
detached. He has generally had the confidence of all sections as far as
the broad outlines of their policy were concerned, without identifying
himself with each and every item of their respective programmes.
Whenever occasionally or incidentally he has happened to know of any
projected violence, without exception he has used his influence toward
restraint. By a timely exercise of his influence he once (1908)
succeeded in saving the lives of one Lieutenant Governor and one College
Principal. The conduct of the British in India and their denial of the
fundamental rights of the people, however, continue to add fuel to the
fire and make it impossible for the friends of the constitutional
movement to stop or effectually check the employment of physical force.
Personally the writer is disposed to agree with the Lieutenant Governor
of the Punjab, who said the other day, that open rebellion was morally
less heinous than a campaign of underhand violence by bombs and
revolvers; but what the Lieutenant Governor forgot to notice was that
open rebellion by a subject people must always, in the nature of things,
be preceded by secret propaganda and secret preparations. Secret
preparations in a country like India, access to which is on all sides
controlled by the British, are bound to bring in the use of explosives
and the taking of measures which might paralyse the administration and
weaken its hold on the people. If a Government muzzles its people, shuts
out all open avenues of political propaganda, denies them the use of
firearms and otherwise stands in the way of a free agitation for
political changes, it is doubtful if it can reasonably complain of
secret plots and secret propaganda as distinguished from open rebellion.
The American press has of late been giving out different versions of the
political situation in India. One version affirms that India is on the
point of rebellion; the other that India is devotedly loyal. Both
statements are partially true and both are partially false. India is not
devotedly loyal, yet to all appearances she is so. Nor is India on the
verge of rebellion, though she is full of rebellious spirit. It is
preposterous to contend that her expressions of loyalty on the outbreak
of the war are proof that she is satisfied with British rule as it is.
The anti-British movement is spreading and gaining strength every day,
and it is impossible for the British Government without the aid of the
Indian people to uproot what the British are pleased to characterise as
“Anarchism.”
II
Among other criticisms, to which this book may be subjected, I
anticipate one or two on historical grounds which I would like to answer
beforehand. It may be said that I have painted the early history of
India as “a golden age”; that my references to Chandra Gupta and Asoka
show only the bright side of the shield and that I have throughout
assumed that India is, and has always been, a political unity. Now in
considering this criticism, it should be borne in mind that my sole
object in referring to the past history of India is to show to my reader
that India was not a barbarous country when the British obtained
possession of her, that she has had a long and in some respects a
glorious history; that she was never before governed by foreigners from
without in the political and economic interests of a nation not living
within her territorial limits, as she has been and is being governed
under the British. Whatever may be my personal opinions about ancient
India and her civilisation, I have sufficient knowledge of the Occident
to understand that the Western reader is liable to have some hesitancy
about accepting them in all cases as historical truths. I have therefore
carefully avoided making any statements for which I can not cite good
authority. The statements made may be roughly divided into three kinds:
(1) those relating to pre-Buddhist India, (2) those relating to India of
500 B. C. to about 1000 A. D., (3) those relating to India of Mohammedan
domination.
Now, as regards the first, we have no strictly historical data and the
statements are based on the contents of the literature of the period,
viz., the religious treatises, the law books of the Hindus, and the
epics. There is enough in this mass of literature to justify the modest
statements made in the first chapter of this book about that period of
Indian history, and, if necessary, I would be able to quote good
authority for every statement made by me. Coming to the next period,
viz., from 500 B. C. to 1000 A. D., we have enough historical data in
the writings of the Greeks, the Chinese and the Mohammedans to justify
the general statements made. It may be that my statements about this
period are not complete, but that is because I am not writing a history
of the period. I am only making an incidental reference for the purposes
of this volume. For these purposes it is not necessary to trace the
origin of Chandra Gupta’s rule, or to state his motives for instituting
a department of commerce or a department of vital statistics. Chandra
Gupta himself may have been a “villain,” but there is ample historical
data for an historian like Vincent Smith[2]--a retired Indian Civil
Servant by no means partial to India[3]--to conclude that “the foregoing
review of the civil and the military system of government during the
reign of Chandra Gupta proves clearly that Northern India in the time of
Alexander the Great had attained to a high degree of civilisation
_which must have been the product of evolution continued through many
centuries_.”[4]
As for Asoka, Vincent Smith has discredited the stories of his having
been guilty of excesses ascribed to his early career by other
historians. In any case, all historians are unanimous about the
excellence of his administration. “The lofty moral tone of these edicts”
(_i.e._, Asoka’s edicts), says Rawlinson (page 27 of “Indian Historical
Studies”), “indicates clearly enough that India in the third century B.
C. was a highly civilised country; it must, indeed, have compared
favourably with the rest of the world of the time; for Greece was
sinking fast into a state of corrupt decadence, and Rome, in the throes
of her struggle with Carthage, had scarcely yet emerged from barbarism.”
No Indian need make any higher claim than this for the India of the
third century B. C. Finally, as about the political unity of India in
the past, let it be noted that I do not claim that India was _always_
united under one political authority or even under one political system.
At the same time it is equally untrue that India was never a political
unity. Most of the British writers are disposed to deny that there has
been or is any kind of unity in India. This may be disposed of by the
following quotation from Vincent Smith’s “Early History of India” (page
5): “India, encircled as she is by seas and mountains, is indisputably a
geographical unit, and, as such, is rightly designated by one name. Her
type of civilisation, too, has many features which differentiate it
from that of all other regions of the world, while they are common to
the whole country, or rather sub-continent, in a degree sufficient to
justify its treatment as a unity in the history of the social, religious
and intellectual development of mankind.”[5] He adds, however, that “the
_complete_ political unity of India under the control of a permanent
power, wielding unquestioned authority, is a thing of yesterday, barely
a century old. The most notable of her rulers in the olden time
cherished the ambition of universal Indian dominion, and severally
attained it in a greater or lesser degree; not one of them, however,
attained it completely.” The point admits of great controversy and
anything like a proper discussion would add to the bulk of this book so
much as would be out of proportion to its bearing on the main subject.
Mr. Vincent Smith admits that Asoka’s Empire included the whole of India
proper except a tiny bit of the Southern peninsula lying between Nellore
and Cape Comorin. (See map of Asoka’s Empire in his history, between
pages 162-163.) The exclusion of this bit is based not on any positive
evidence that this part was not included within his empire, but on the
absence of positive evidence to the contrary. It is as if men living two
thousand years after our day should expect it to be proved to their
satisfaction by positive documentary evidence that every bit of India
was included in the British Empire under Queen Victoria. Again, the fact
that Asoka’s Empire did not include the Southernmost part of the Indian
Peninsula was more than compensated by the inclusion of almost the whole
of Afghanistan and Beluchistan and Nepal in his dominions. The
territories comprising the kingdom of Nepal are not included in the
British Empire, although they constitute a necessary part of India. Yet
even Vincent Smith does not doubt that India is a political unity
to-day.
Then again it is only very recently that he and other historians have
found out the data for a history of the Gupta Empire from 320 to 455 A.
D., about the extent of which he says:
“The dominions under the direct government of Samundra Gupta in the
middle of the fourth century thus comprised all the populous and fertile
countries of Northern India.... Beyond those wide limits the frontier
kingdoms of Assam and the Gangetic delta as well as those on the
southern slopes of the Himalayas and the free tribes of Malwa and
Rajputana were attached to the Empire by bonds of subordinate alliance;
while almost all the kingdoms of the South had been overrun by the
Emperor’s armies and compelled to acknowledge his irresistible might.
“Whatever may have been the exact degree of skill attained by Samundra
Gupta in the practice of the arts which graced his scanty leisure, it is
clear that he was endowed with no ordinary powers; and that he was in
fact a man of genius, who may fairly claim the title of the Indian
Napoleon.
“By a strange irony of fate this great king--warrior, poet, and
musician--who conquered nearly all India, and whose alliances extended
from the Oxus to Ceylon--was unknown even by name to the historians
until the publication of this work.[6] His lost fame has been slowly
recovered by the minute and laborious study of inscriptions and coins
during the last eighty years.”
It may be mentioned, in passing, that monarchs of the Samundra Gupta
type, who may be compared easily with a Charlemagne, a Frederick or a
Peter the Great, have flourished in India almost every second
generation. Hindu folk-lore has known them as Vikramadityas (Suns of
Power) and has invested their names with “the halo of Arthurian
romance.” And this was a time in the history of the world when Egypt and
Babylon had already passed away, when China was in a state of “anarchy,”
when the Roman Empire was under the heels of the barbarians, and when
the Saracenic Empire (Caliphate) had not yet come into existence.
England, France and Germany were simply _non est_.
Now, the history of India before 1000 A. D. has not yet been completely
constructed, and who knows but that by future researches some other
Samundra Guptas may be discovered? But in any case, the point is not so
very important. In that sense even now, India may not be called a
complete political unity. It was not so in 1830 A. D. Up till 1849 the
Punjab was independent and so were the other provinces annexed by Lord
Dalhousie. So Vincent Smith’s claim, that it has been so since 1818 A.
D.[7] is not well founded. What is more important for our purpose is the
present and the future. It is claimed that under the British, India is a
political unity though Nepal is still independent.
The critics of Indian aspirations are very unfair, when they compare the
India of the seventeenth or the eighteenth or even of the nineteenth
century with Great Britain, Germany, France and United States of the
twentieth. They forget that the political nations known by these names
are only the growth of yesterday. India is as big as the whole of Europe
excluding Russia. Yet what was Europe before the nineteenth century? It
was a big camp of warring nations and warring religions, engaged in
exterminating and persecuting each other alternately. India was more or
less a political unity when Great Britain was smarting under the heels
of the Romans. It took the British over 1600 years to establish their
present political unity. Compare the following account of “England under
foreign rule” (1013-1204), given by Green in his “Short History of the
English People,” with the condition of things in India from the time of
Samundra Gupta onwards.
“Britain had become England in the five hundred years that followed the
landing of Hengest, and its conquest had ended in the settlement of its
conquerors.... But whatever titles kings might assume, or however
imposing their rule might appear, Northumbrian remained apart from West
Saxon, Dane from Englishman.
“Through the two hundred years that lie between the flight of Aethelred
from England to Normandy and that of John from Normandy to England our
story is a story of foreign rule. Kings from Denmark were succeeded by
kings from Normandy, and these by kings from Anjou. Under Dane, Norman,
or Angevin, Englishmen were a subject race, conquered and ruled by
foreign masters; and yet it was in these years of subjection that
England first became really England.... The English Lords themselves
sank into a middle class as they were pushed from their place by a
foreign baronage who settled on English soil.”
“In 800 A. D.,” says Mr. West, in his modern history, revised edition,
page 4, “Europe was still sunk deep in the barbarism that followed the
long anarchy of the invasions, and the brief revival of Charlemagne had
not gone far toward restoring civilisation. Schools and learning were
almost extinct; commerce hardly existed; communication between district
and district was almost impossible; money was so scarce that revenue had
to be collected in produce; and manners and morals were alike
deplorable.” There has been hardly any period in the history of India
about which anything so disparaging can be said. Again says Mr. West,
“From 814 to about 1100, Europe had three centuries of ‘Dark Ages,’
caused by a new series of barbarian invasions and continued by ‘feudal’
violence of the local military organisation that society adopted to ward
off these invasions.” In fact Europe was in constant war right up to
1870, and the idea of nationhood had not developed till late in the
nineteenth century. It is then not right to taunt the Indians with the
absence of a perfected nationality in their country. Yet it can not be
denied that the idea of nationhood is being developed pretty fast in
India, even on modern lines. In fact I maintain that fundamentally India
has been a nation for the last 2000 years, in spite of the fact that at
times it has been divided into several kingdoms and principalities,
sometimes under a common empire and in other times independent of each
other.
But even if the worst happens and India is split up into a number of
political units, what then? To me this does not appear to be so
appalling as it may seem to others. Some Indians think that in any case
it is better to be _men_ fighting their own battles than to be mere
_creatures_ always in the leading strings of others. They have no faith
in “peace at any price” or in “peace under any circumstances.”
III
This book was written when I was travelling in the United States from
January to May, 1915. It was ready for the press in June, 1915. Its
publication has been delayed by causes which need not be stated.
Since then much has happened in India which bears upon the subject and
might briefly be referred to here.
Early in 1915 something like organised anarchy and disorder broke out in
the Southwestern districts of the Punjab, resulting in the free looting
of many villages in several districts. This lawlessness was due to war.
It is said that the police and the officers were overtaken by panic and
order was not restored until strong measures were taken from the
headquarters. About 4000 persons were arrested in connection with these
disturbances and some 800 of them were sentenced to different terms of
imprisonment, the rest being acquitted for want of evidence.
Towards the end of 1914 and in the first few months of 1915 the Punjab
was the scene of many dacoities and murders, committed by and under the
inspiration of Indians who had returned to India from abroad to take
advantage of the war situation for political purposes. Some of these
persons had gone from Canada; some from China; and some from the Pacific
Coast of the United States. Amongst them were a large number of those
who had been refused admission into Canada by the Canadian authorities
and who had suffered enormously by their trip to Canada and back. The
first clash between the latter and the Government took place at Budge
Budge,[8] in Bengal, where the returned emigrants from Canada landed in
order to proceed to their homes in the Punjab. The Government wanted to
restrict their freedom of movement and would not let them go to
Calcutta, whither a number of them wanted to proceed. These persons had
concealed arms in their possession, and it appears that there was a free
fight between them and the police, resulting in fatal casualties on both
sides. About this time or a little later, the Government of India passed
a special law, authorising officials to intern or imprison any person or
persons in British India without trial, on mere suspicion of his or
their being dangerous to the tranquillity of the country. Under this law
they began to intern a large number of those who had returned from
Canada and the United States and other places outside India, until the
number reached to thousands. Most of them, perhaps, were kept only under
surveillance. Yet a good many of them managed to put themselves into
communication with the revolutionary party in India and eventually
organised a “widespread conspiracy” to subvert British rule. The
Government discovered this conspiracy by means of spies, who entered
into the designs of the conspirators as “_agents provocateurs_.” It
appears from the evidence subsequently given before the special tribunal
appointed to try those who were arrested in connection with this
conspiracy, that their plans were laid out on a comprehensive scale,
with everything organised in a perfect way; that full provision had been
made for finances as well as arms, and that the army had been approached
with more or less success at different places in Northern India. At
first a batch of about 65 were placed for trial before the special
tribunal consisting of two English judges and one Indian. This tribunal
was formed under the special law referred to above, and its decision was
to be final in the sense that no appeal could be made from it to any
other superior court. The tribunal eventually found that the conspiracy
was seditious in its nature, and but for its timely discovery would have
resulted in “widespread disaster.” The proceedings of the tribunal were
not open to the public nor to the press. A brief report of the
proceedings was issued from day to day under the authority of the
tribunal. Some of the accused could not be found. Out of the 61 charged,
only 4 were acquitted, 6 were sentenced to various terms of
imprisonment, 27 to transportation for life,[9] and 24 to death.[10]
Commenting on this trial, the Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab observed
in the course of a speech made in the Punjab Legislative Council held on
September 25, 1915, that “these crimes did all over the Central Punjab
from November, 1914, to July, 1915, create a state not only of alarm and
insecurity, but of terror and even panic, and if they had not been
promptly checked by the firm hand of authority and the active
co-operation of the people, would have produced in the province as was
intended by the conspirators a state of affairs similar to that of
Hindustan in the mutiny[11]--paralysis of authority, widespread
terrorism and murder not only of the officers of the Government but of
loyal and well disposed subjects.” What is significant is, that the
leader, Rash Behari Bose, a Bengalee, who had organised several such
conspiracies, escaped. Commenting upon the same trial, the _Times of
India_, an influential Anglo-Indian paper published in Bombay, remarked:
“If this conspiracy had been disclosed in ordinary times there might
have been a tendency to regard the members as representative of a
considerable class of India ... but, as it is, the revolutionary party
stands out a mere fraction of the population, a dangerous and determined
section of the population perhaps, yet so small that it can not command
any chance of success while the sentiment of the country remains what it
has been so splendidly proved to be.”
Commenting upon the severity of the sentences inflicted, the Indian
press took occasion to point out the grievous wrongs under which the
country suffered at the hands of the British. After the conclusion of
this case, over 100 persons more were indicted at Lahore[12] and a large
number at Benares, in connection with the same conspiracy. Besides, a
number of men belonging to the military were tried and convicted in
different stations in Northern India.
In Bengal political crime was rampant in a virulent form throughout
1915. The Bengalee revolutionaries have kept the Government pretty busy
all along the line, murdering police officials, looting treasuries, and
committing dacoities, sometimes under the very nose of the police in the
heart of the metropolis, resulting occasionally in so-called pitched
battles between the police and the revolutionaries. Numberless trials
have been going on in special tribunals constituted under the Defense of
India Act, as well as in the ordinary courts. Large numbers of persons
have been punished and equally large numbers are still undergoing trial.
There was a serious rising in Singapore, which was eventually put down
with the help of the Japanese and French troops, and in connection with
which a good many European lives were lost. Similarly, men smuggling
arms and seditious literature, or attempting to smuggle arms, or
otherwise carrying on anti-British propaganda, have been discovered,
arrested and held in Burma, Singapore, Hongkong, Shanghai and Ceylon. A
large number of Indians are in internment in Hongkong. Two Indian
revolutionaries were deported from Japan, at the instance of the British
Government, and several have been, I hear, interned in Java by the
orders of the Dutch Government. Har Dayal and several others have been
active in Europe and Asia Minor. The Hindu revolutionaries in the United
States have also been busy in their propaganda. It is said that the
Germans have been helping the Indians with funds and arms. How far they
did render any substantial help in this matter is not known, but the
conclusion of the Lahore Special Tribunal, that it was known to the
leaders of the “Gadar” party in San Francisco in 1914, that a war
between the British and Germans was on the _tapis_ in August of that
year, appears to be without foundation. The Indians who left the United
States in 1914 to organise a rebellion in India, were neither financed
nor otherwise inspired by the Germans. They went of their own accord,
with their own money and on their own hook. Some of them were men of
means. It may be true, however, that the Germans have helped the Indian
revolutionaries with money and arms since. So much about the
revolutionaries.
IV
Now something about the activity of the other wing of the Indian
nationalists. When the war started, all of them declared for England,
some sincerely, others for reasons of expediency. All were influenced by
hopes of advancing their cause. For a time the appreciation in
England--in and out of Parliament--amply justified their expectations.
The first shock came when the British War Office refused to accept the
offers of the Indian students in British universities to enlist in the
army or as volunteers. The same fate met the offers of educated Indians
in India. The offers made by some native princes and in a few cases by
other members of the aristocracy for personal service were accepted,
otherwise no relaxation in favour of any Indian was made in the rules
for enlistment in the regular army or in the volunteers. The following
extracts from the two leading Indian dailies of Calcutta and Allahabad
will explain what I mean. The _Bengalee_ of Calcutta said:
“When the war suddenly broke out in Europe there was a great outburst of
feeling in India to serve the Empire in any capacity. There was a
widespread desire among the more ardent spirits in this country to fight
in defence of the Empire, and in Bengal, at any rate, there was an eager
rush to enlist as volunteers. These young men were willing to cast aside
their attitude of aloofness from what was primarily England’s concern.
They set before themselves a new ideal, the ideal of national
self-realisation. By their participation in this struggle they felt they
would be fighting the battles of their own freedom. It was the highest
tribute the Government could expect from the people of this country of
their loyalty and devotion to the throne. But the chill air of official
scepticism nipped the scheme in the bud. We were told at the time not to
embarrass the Government in any way; but we still lived in hopes that
some means might be devised which would enable our young men to
participate in this struggle so that from comradeship in arms there
might arise comradeship in life leading to the necessary elevation of
our status in the Empire. But a bureaucracy, with its instinctive
disregard of others’ feelings and interests, not only threw cold water
on this salutary scheme but applied its mind to forging new fetters of
repression. Thus the Defense of the Realm Act came to be passed, which
is far more drastic and stringent than the similar statute in England.
Internments have since become the order of the day. The whole thing
offers a painful illustration of the psychology of the bureaucratic mind
in its endeavour to breed loyalty and prevent disaffection. For while
the spontaneous offer of our people, which was the outcome of a generous
impulse and of genuine sentiments of loyalty and devotion, has been
refused, fresh doses of repression are being applied to the wound thus
inflicted on the minds of the people. But the crisis is not yet over,
nor has the rising tide of feeling in this country completely subsided.
There is a demand for men, always for more men, at the front. It seems
we can not have too many men or too much of munitions if we desire a
crushing victory. All the factories of England--and every available
factory has been utilised for the manufacture of munitions of war--are
working at top speed for the production of powder and shells for cannon.
As regards men, volunteers are pouring forth from Canada, Australia, New
Zealand and the mother country itself, in fact from all parts of the
British Empire, except India. Can any one say why this invidious
distinction is yet maintained? Why, while gifts of every sort from us
are gladly accepted, the most precious gift of all, that of personal
service with all the attendant risk that it implies, continues to be so
unwelcome? Lord Kitchener is still calling for men. Mr. Bonar Law’s
recent speech at Shrewsbury indicates that even conscription may have to
be resorted to. Why not then accept the offers of our men? The regular
troops in the fighting line have earned no end of praise from the
highest authorities for the display of their martial qualities. The
Ambulance Corps shows the latest potentialities in our young men that
are capable of development under proper guidance and training. We have
not the slightest doubt that our volunteers would prove themselves
equally fit and capable, no matter what the duties they are called upon
to discharge. This war is said to be a war of democracy against
militarism and autocracy, a holy war of justice and righteousness
against the violation of international morality and the independence of
small nations. Are these assertions strictly consistent with the refusal
of our loyal offer, which also amounts to a denial of our equality of
status with the rest of the Empire? If, during the heat of the war and
in the midst of the crisis, there be yet observed and maintained this
patent inequality of treatment and this assertion of racial superiority,
how can we expect that they will be altogether forgotten or cast aside
after the war when the readjustment comes to be made? Repression, we
repeat for the hundredth time, is a disintegrating force. It alienates
sympathies, destroys union and throws people into camps. Co-operation on
the other hand is a healing and a cementing principle. But without
equality of treatment there can not be any co-operation, and without
co-operation there can not be any prospect of permanent peace. By
accepting our offer the Government may give an earnest of future reforms
and concessions. It will sensibly ease and improve the situation both
here and at the front. But bureaucracy has so far failed to realise the
situation and avail itself of the opportunity. Let not the words ‘too
late’ be written by the future historian, regarding the action of the
bureaucracy in this chapter of the history of India.... India wants
equality of status with the rest of the Empire, and as a means to this
end her sons want to fight as volunteers in this war; and if what Burke
has said be true of Englishmen, neither the one nor the other of India’s
claims can be justly denied to her.”
In its issue of September 8, 1915, the _Leader_, of Allahabad, said:
“The not unkindly critics of John Bull have often remarked that he has
got a stolid temperament and an unemotional nature. The occasions are
few and far between when he allows himself to be swayed by any strong
outburst of passion. One such exception to this general course of
conduct was furnished last year at the outbreak of the war.... When Lord
Hardinge wired to England the message of India, her ungrudging and
whole-hearted response to the call of the hour, its announcement in the
House of Commons touched the deepest chords in the hearts of Englishmen.
Then, for once, they let themselves go. There was almost a storm of
English emotion. Even the _Times_ thought that it foreshadowed a great
change in the relations of India and England. ‘Asiaticus’ joined the
chorus and swelled the pæan of the praise of Indian loyalty. He recanted
his words of former days. He even praised Mr. Tilak. Mr. Roberts spoke
of a change in the angle of vision. Other statesmen and other papers
uttered the same language of joy and hope. All this naturally raised the
hopes of India. Some, more imaginative than others, conjured up visions
of glory. They imagined they could see the distant gleam of
self-government. Others again, with a less imaginative nature, thought
that even if self-government was still a far-off dream, they might yet
see better days. The landing of Indian troops on the European soil was
the signal for the outburst of another demonstration of feeling. Their
heroic deeds, their unquestioning devotion to duty, formed the theme of
sketch writers and leader writers in the English press. And yet to any
one who has closely followed the course of events during the last six or
seven months and studied the writings of the English press and the
utterances of notable Englishmen in England and India, nothing is more
clear than that an ominous reserve has again overtaken the English mind.
Mr. Bonar Law talks of a consultation with the colonies, and forgets the
very existence of India. Mr. Austen Chamberlain, since the day he
assumed his office, has put a seal on his lips, and, whatever may flow
beneath the surface from Downing Street to Delhi or Simla, nothing has
fallen from his lips that can inspire confidence or kindle hope. The
House of Lords have already given their reply to a sympathetic Viceroy,
when, in the name of avoiding controversial issues, they shelved the
question of an Executive Council for these provinces, which is another
way of saying that they strangled it. Lord Curzon, Lord MacDonnel and
Lord Sydenham are not likely to learn the wisdom which the force of
events would teach to more plastic minds. If Indian students in England
approach the higher authorities with a prayer that they may be admitted
to the Officer’s Training Corps, they are told to wait--indefinitely. If
Sir George Scott Robertson, with imprudent enthusiasm, suggests the
creation of an Indian guard, he is roundly told that he is impatient.
‘Asiaticus’ has again frankly gone back upon his short-lived liberalism,
and Sir Valentine Chirol is no better. Convenience suggests the
postponement of discussion of the Indian Budget, and the statute allows
it. Out here in India the doctrine of unconditional loyalty is held up
to us. We are told that it is a folly, if not a crime, to talk of what
may come to India when the time for readjustment comes. Meanwhile Indian
speculation, so natural to a nation of speculators, is roaming free.
Hopes spring up only to give place to fears....
“There are not wanting men among us also who have only one counsel to
give, and that is, wait and see. No doubt the virtues of patience are
great, but we think that so far as patience alone is concerned India may
easily throw out a challenge to any nation in the world. If India will
not help herself she will have little reason to grumble if others will
not help her. Let us distinctly tell England that the time for half
measures and gingerly reform has gone and that for bold and courageous
steps has come.”
V
The Indian National Congress, the official organisation of the
constitutional party, held its annual session at Madras in December,
1914. In the course of his speech, the President remarked:
“If English rule in India meant the canonisation of a bureaucracy, if it
meant perpetual domination and perpetual tutelage, and increasing
dead-weight on the soul of India, it would be a curse to civilisation
and a blot on humanity.”
Again he asks complainingly:
“The right to carry arms, the right to bear commissions in the Army and
lead our men in the cause of the Empire, the right to form volunteer
corps in the defence of hearth and home, how long will these be denied
to the Indian people? How long will India toddle on her feet, tied to
the apron-strings of England? It is time she stood on her own legs. If
England were obliged, as was Imperial Rome in her day, to abandon India
in the hour of some great danger, what could be more humiliating to
England and to India alike, than for India to be left unarmed and
untrained in the use of arms, as her civil population now is, a prey to
internal anarchy and external aggression? What a commentary would it be,
on 150 years of British rule in India, that England found the people
strong though disunited and left them helpless and emasculated?”
At Christmas, 1915, the Congress again met under the presidency of Sir
S. P. Sinha, who was in 1908 the first Indian appointed to be a member
of the Governor General’s Executive Council, the British Cabinet in
India. In the words of an Indian magazine, the speech delivered by him
as coming from a man who has obtained “wealth, high position and honour”
from the British connection and who has been “in the inner Councils of
the Government,” is most significant in its ideals as well as demands.
His ideal of a government for India has been borrowed from Abraham
Lincoln of the United States, viz., “Government of the people, _by the
people_, for the people.” He says:
“What I do say is that there should be a frank and full statement of the
policy of Government as regards the future of India, so that hope may
come where despair holds sway and faith where doubt spreads its
darkening shadow, and that steps should be taken towards self-government
by the gradual development of popular control over all departments of
Government and by removal of disabilities and restrictions under which
we labour both in our own country and in other parts of the British
Empire.”
Among the definite reforms and remedial and progressive measures which
he demands are:
“Firstly--The grant of commissions in the army and military training for
the people.
“Secondly--The extension of local self-government.
“Thirdly--The development of our commerce, industries and agriculture.”
Regarding the first he goes into details as follows:
“1st. We ask for the right to enlist in the regular army, irrespective
of race or province or origin, but subject only to prescribed tests of
physical fitness.
“2nd. We ask that the commissioned ranks of the Indian army should be
thrown open to all classes of His Majesty’s subjects, subject to fair,
reasonable and adequate physical and educational tests, and that a
military college or colleges should be established in India where proper
military training can be received by those of our countrymen who may
have the good fortune to receive His Majesty’s commission.
“3rd. We ask that all classes of His Majesty’s subjects should be
allowed to join as volunteers, subject of course to such rules and
regulations as will ensure proper control and discipline, and
“4th. That the invidious distinctions under the Arms Act should be
removed. This has no real connection with the three claims, but I deal
with it together with the others as all these disabilities are justified
on the same ground of political expediency.”
As to the reasons why we should have self-government, he said:
“A British Premier early in this century very truly observed, ‘Good
government can not be a substitute for self-government.’ Says a recent
writer in a well-known British periodical, ‘Every Englishman is aware
that on no account, not if he were to be governed by an angel from
heaven, would he surrender that most sacred of all his rights, the right
of making his own laws.... He would not be an Englishman, he would not
be able to look English fields and trees in the face, if he had parted
with that right. Laws in themselves, have never counted for much. _There
have been beneficent despots and wise law-givers in all ages who have
increased the prosperity and probably the contentment and happiness of
their subjects but yet their government has not stimulated the moral and
intellectual capacity latent in citizenship or fortified its character
or enlarged its understanding. There is more hope for the future of
mankind in the least and faintest impulse towards self-help,
self-realisation, self-redemption, than in any of the laws that
Aristotle ever dreamt of._[13] The ideal, therefore, of self-government
is one that is not based merely on emotion and sentiment, but on the
lessons of history.”
What is, however, most significant, is his reply to the criticism often
made by ignorant and prejudiced Englishmen and others as to what would
be the fate of India if England were to withdraw from India and as to
the Indians’ fitness to manage their affairs or to fight their battles.
He observes:
“I take leave to point out, therefore, that it is not correct, at any
rate at the present time, to assert of any sections of the Indian people
that they are wanting in such physical courage and manly virtues as to
render them incapable of bearing arms. But even if it were so, is it not
the obvious duty of England so to train them as to remove this
incapacity, especially if it be the case, as there is some reason to
believe, _that it is English rule which has brought them to such a
pass_? England has ruled this country for considerably over 150 years
now, and surely it cannot be a matter of pride to her at the end of this
period that the withdrawal of her rule would mean chaos and anarchy and
would leave the country an easy prey to any foreign adventurers. There
are some of our critics who never fail to remind us that if the English
were to leave the country to-day, we would have to wire to them to come
back before they got to Aden. Some even enjoy the grim joke that were
the English to withdraw now, there would be neither a rupee nor a virgin
left in some parts of the country. I can conceive of no more scathing
indictment of the results of British rule. A superman might gloat over
the spectacle of the conquest of might over justice and righteousness,
but I am much mistaken if the British nation, fighting now as ever for
the cause of justice and freedom and liberty, will consider it as other
than discreditable to itself _that after nearly two centuries of British
rule India has been brought to-day to the same emasculated condition as
that of the Britons in the beginning of the fifth century_[14] when the
Roman legions left the English shores in order to defend their own
country against the Huns, Goths and other barbarian hordes.”
The reader may well compare this with the following observation made by
the present writer in a pamphlet[15] recently issued by him on the
political situation in India.
“The whole world is free to keep arms and use arms. Every civilised
nation is interested in giving a military training to her boys and
citizens and in teaching them the use of arms and other military
tactics. Some countries do this by conscription, others do it on a
voluntary basis. No government entitled to be called sane thinks of
denying arms to such of its people as want to use them for legitimate
purposes. The free possession of arms and free training in military
tactics for purposes of individual and national defence is the
birthright of every son of a mother. Even the Amir of Kabul does not
deny that to his people. Nations are vying with each other in their
military preparations and in giving military training to their citizens.
Even China is thinking of introducing conscription. In Japan military
training is compulsory. In some places even the girls learn the use of
arms and practise fencing. In the United States as well as in the other
States of America the negroes and the American Indians can keep arms and
receive military training. But the Indians of India can not keep arms.
Every nation is interested in the manufacture of arms and ammunition and
in inventing effective methods of dealing with their enemies.
Governments give every encouragement to those who invent new arms or
improve old ones. All this is denied to the Indians.[16] Why? Because
they are a subject people. Their government cannot trust them. The
strength of the native army in India cannot exceed a certain proportion
of the British army; they cannot handle the artillery; and numerous
other restrictions are imposed upon the possession and use of arms by
them. Why? Are they not fit to handle arms? Are they not brave? Are they
intemperate? None of these things can be said of them. Yet no Indian can
get a commissioned rank, however high by birth or social position,
however fit by education. No Indian can be admitted into a military
college in India or in Great Britain. Why? Are they unfit, or
intellectually and physically imbeciles? The truth is that the
Government of India, not being their _own_ government, they cannot be
trusted. They can be enrolled as mere soldiers and that only in certain
numbers. Beyond that they cannot get any military training or military
rank. Nor can the civil population be trusted to keep arms, much less
to manufacture them. Much fuss has been made over the Indians having
been allowed to participate in the European War. The Indians have gone
mad over the incident, as if that were the greatest boon that could be
conferred on them. The truth is that the step was actuated by and taken
purely in British interests. Without the Indian contingent Great Britain
could not send a decent expeditionary force to France. The whole of the
white army could not be removed from India. In removing large numbers of
them, it was necessary to remove proportionately large numbers of the
native army also. The British Government is always distrustful of the
native army. No amount of false statements and fallacious reasoning can
conceal the fact that the British in India cannot allow the Indians to
manufacture or carry arms, cannot give them a military training, cannot
even keep a large native army (more than double the strength of the
permanent British garrison) because, being foreigners, they cannot trust
them. They fear that some day the arms or military training given them
may be used against themselves. Looking at it from their point of view,
perhaps, it cannot be said that they may not be right. But then, why ask
the Indians to accept the pretence that the Government is national, and
that they are the equal subjects of the crown; why hide the truth and
make false and hypocritical declarations to the contrary? The British
know the weakness of their rule in India, and in the disarming of the
people they see the best guarantee of the continuance of their own rule
and power. In the matter of arms, the present situation in India is
this. One may steal arms; one may smuggle them; one may illicitly
purchase them, from those who have the freedom of possessing, for the
purpose of committing crime, but one cannot have them for defending his
life and property, or the life and honour of his family (wife, mother,
sisters, and daughters).[17]
“It is this which gives awful power to the lawless portions of society
and which explains the losses and hardships of those who have suffered
from the depredations of the latter and are suffering from dacoities and
robberies and murders in Bengal and Punjab and elsewhere. There are
plenty of arms in the country for the criminal, but none for the
peace-loving (who only want them for defensive purposes). All this
because the Government of India is a foreign government which cannot
trust its subjects and which does not believe in their loyalty. In the
light of this fact, all talk about the extraordinary outburst of loyalty
becomes stale. So long as this state of things continues, it is useless
for the Government to expect that the people can accept it and treat it
as if it was their own national government. Never before, since the
introduction of British rule in India, was the sense of helplessness,
that arises out of the consciousness of being a disarmed people,
brought home to the people of India so vividly and strongly as during
the war. A new fear has dawned on the public mind. Suppose the British
lose, we are lost, says the Indian. The Germans may come or the Russians
or even the Amir of Kabul, we cannot even make a show of resistance. A
people so helpless and dependent deserve to be despised by the world.
The war has made the Indian feel that, as a British subject, he is
really a despicable creature entitled to no consideration at the hands
of the other people of the world. Even the negroes (whether in Africa or
America) are much better placed than he is. The prayers of Indian C. I.
E.’s and Rai Bahadurs and Khan Bahadurs notwithstanding, the British
cannot be invincible forever. The time is to come when their prowess in
arms will decay. What will then be the fate of India and Indians? Will
they be transferred like sheep? If they are not actually transferred by
agreement, the nation replacing the English as the world power will take
possession of India. The very idea is disquieting and crushingly
humiliating. But this is not the only circumstance which constantly
reminds the Indian people that their Government is an alien Government,
whose interest in them is only secondary.”
I will give one more quotation on this subject, and this time from the
speech of a Parsi gentleman of extremely moderate views. Says Mr. Wacha:
“In connection with this war there is one serious disappointment to
which I cannot refrain from making reference in this place. Many an
enlightened and intelligent person, irrespective of caste and creed, in
every province of the Indian Empire, has applied, from the very date of
the declaration of war, to go to the front and fight side by side with
the soldiers of the regular Indian army. Even to-day thousands on
thousands are willing and ready to take up arms in the great cause for
which the Allies are fighting. But unfortunately, the permanent
bureaucracy of the land has sternly, if politely, refused those
applications, the why and the wherefore of which has never been made
known. It is this attitude of the Government, in the midst of the great
tragic crisis, that has caused the bitterest disappointment to which
many a leading organ of public opinion has given full expression.
Russia, which has millions of population but less numerous than that of
India, has already raised and is still raising a popular army full of
ardour and patriotism to overcome the forces of the modern Vandals who
are such enemies of liberty and freedom. The British Colonies are
similarly raising corps after corps to give succour to the mother
country, but strange to say, that while millions in India are on the qui
vive to offer their services, a kind of proscription has gone forth from
the governing authorities that they shall not be enrolled. This is
indeed an un-English attitude which is unreconcilable with the entire
policy of British administration in every other part of the Empire. I am
only echoing the universal sentiments and feelings of my countrymen when
I venture to say in this place that the Rulers of India still seem to
mistrust the people.”
Comparing the policy of the British with Imperial Rome, Mr. Wacha
concludes:
“We all devoutly hope that profiting by this great achievement, Great
Britain will not deny any further to the Indian people the exercise of
arms, _the want of which for so many years has led to their
emasculation_.”[18]
This word “emasculation” affords the key to the situation in India from
the purely Indian point of view. Political, physical and economic
“emasculation” is the keynote of British rule there, and however they
may cloak it with wrappings of pleasant and golden words, and however
they may conceal it in finely woven sentences, like the cloven feet it
emerges at almost every step. The _Modern Review_ puts it well when it
says:
“Under bureaucratic rule, India is the poorest, the most unhealthy and
the most ignorant among civilised countries, and her poverty and
unhealthiness are not diminishing, and education is spreading at a
slower pace than that of the snail. The remedy is Home Rule.”
There is another brief quotation which I will give, from the speech of
the President of the last session of the Indian National Congress, viz.,
the one relating to the poverty of India. He says: “Whatever differences
of opinion may exist as to whether India is growing richer or poorer
under the British rule, there is none with regard to her extreme
poverty. And there can never be political contentment without material
prosperity, shared in by all classes of the people. What the District
Administration Committee of Bengal quotes with approval as regards
Bengal, that our industrial backwardness is a great political danger,
applies in reality to the whole of India.
“No one will be disposed to question the fact of this amazing
backwardness. _Rich in all the resources of nature, India continues to
be the poorest country in the civilised world._”[19]
VI
I do not propose to burden this preface with other complaints which the
Indian politicians make against the British Government, but I can not
refrain from giving one more quotation from my own pamphlet on the
question of Education:
“Let us look at education in India. India has been under British rule
now for a century and a half in some parts, for over a century in
others, and for at least 65 years in the Punjab. Yet the percentage of
illiteracy is well nigh 95 per cent., taking the whole of India.
Greatest ignorance prevails among the peasantry and the military
classes, the two great bulwarks of British rule in India. What has the
Government done to educate these classes? Nothing. Some maintain that
they have been deliberately kept out of education because, once
educated, they may no longer be such willing tools as they are now.
“Agriculture in India, as elsewhere, is the least paying of industries,
and it is not at all strange that large numbers of sturdy Punjabees
prefer to labour in other countries rather than rot on their farms in
the Punjab. In the early years of British rule the educated and the
trading classes flourished and became prosperous, but now they are
thoroughly discontented. The native traders are no longer happy under
British rule, (1) because the railways and foreign import and export
offices dealing directly with the producer and the consumer have ruined
their business, (2) because the facilities available to them in the
early days of British rule have disappeared, (3) because the bureaucracy
is always inciting the agricultural and military classes against them
and heaping insults on their devoted heads both by word and deed. In
almost every province, special legislation has been enacted professedly
in the interests of the agricultural classes but really directed against
the Indian trader or money lender. On the other hand, what has the
Government done to open non-agricultural pursuits to them? Nothing. In
the whole length and breadth of the country there is not a single
technological institute. The private or aided technological institutes
are called by that name only by courtesy. In these days of international
trade there is no provision in any of the Indian universities for the
teaching of modern languages. While Germans, Austrians, Italians,
Americans and Japanese can learn Hindustanee and English in their own
countries in order to further their trade with India, the Government of
India has never given a thought to the necessity of making a provision
for the teaching of German, French, Japanese, &c., to the Indians and of
encouraging Indians to learn these languages. The best part of a boy’s
student life is compulsorily spent in acquiring excellence in the use of
the English language. Indians are not supposed to know other languages
or to trade with other countries, because the English do it for them. It
is not the concern of the British to encourage the native to have direct
commercial transactions with foreign countries. There is not a single
place in India where an Indian student can do research work in chemistry
or other sciences. While the country is full of mines, there is no place
to learn mining. Hundreds of steamers come and go from Indian ports, but
there is no place in India where an Indian youth can qualify himself
even for the merchant marine, not to speak of the navy. In the whole of
India with its splendid resources, there is not a single place where
ships can be built. The Indian Government has never given a thought to
these questions because they do not concern them, because they are not
interested in the development of the indigenous industries and in
raising the status of the people. They have done a lot to encourage the
produce of raw materials necessary for their industries or for their
food (cotton, wheat, oil, seeds, etc.), but almost nothing to encourage
manufacturing industries. Originally they wanted to preserve the Indian
markets for themselves only, but their policy of free trade stood in
the way, and latterly the Germans and now the Japanese are sharing that
market with them. But to teach the Indian to manufacture for his own
consumption has never entered the thought of those responsible for the
administration of India. Perhaps it is not right to say that it never
entered their thought. They are too intelligent and shrewd not to know
that they had not done their duty to India in these matters, but the
interest of their own people was paramount and that they could not set
aside.
“The British Government in India can not go in for universal elementary
education, as there is danger of even greater disaffection resulting
therefrom; they can not give technical education of a high order, as
that might interfere with British industries; they can not protect
Indian industries for the same reason; they can not provide for real
high class commercial education with a teaching of foreign languages and
a knowledge of seafaring and navigation, as they do not want the Indians
to directly engage in oversea trade and contract relations with other
nations. They can not protect and subsidise Indian industries, as that
is opposed to free trade and detrimental to British industries. Yet they
want the Indians to believe that the British Government in India is
primarily conducted in the interests of India.
“The people of India must remain ignorant, illiterate and industrially
and commercially dependent because that benefits England and is for the
advantage of her people.
“But that is not all. The Government of India can not even provide for
high class education in sciences, in engineering, and in medicine, for
the simple reason that the higher positions in these professions they
want to reserve for their own people. Of late the number of Indians,
educated and trained in these departments of knowledge in British and
other foreign universities, has so increased as to become rather
embarrassing to the Government of India. They can not utilise them
without reducing the number of Britishers in these services. This they
do not desire. The result is that there are numbers of trained Indians
in India with high class British and European qualifications who have to
be contented with subordinate positions under Britishers of lesser
qualifications, and perhaps, at times, of no qualifications. The
competitive examinations for higher services are held in England, which
in itself is a great injustice; but this year on account of the war,
there being fewer qualified Britishers to compete for these services,
the Government has resolved to discontinue[20] some of the examinations,
for fear lest a larger number of Indians than is desirable might get
into them. Can they still say that the Government of India is as good as
or perhaps better than a national government? The truth is that they do
not want a larger number of Indians in the higher services because they
can not trust them. For the same reason they distrust private
educational institutions and insist upon the employment of Britishers as
inspectors of schools and as professors in the educational service. They
will allow a certain number of Indians in the higher offices but that
number must not be so large as to make it even remotely possible for
them to create trouble for the Government. The same fear underlies the
administration of local bodies and the constitution and powers of the
Councils. It is simply begging the question to argue that Indians are
not yet ready or fit for representative institutions. The real question
is the dread of power passing from the Britishers into Indian hands.[21]
It is this dread that is the dominating influence in the policy of the
British Government in India. India is a possession and a dependency and
must be administered in the best interests of the master. Many credulous
Indians talk of the liberty-loving traditions of the British democracy,
but they forget that the application of these traditions to India would
make such big holes in their safes, purses, and incomes, that they as
men swayed by self-interest and love of power and glory, can never think
of enforcing these principles in India. The British are good people. In
all personal dealings they are honest, frank, and reliable. But when
national interests are at stake and when the interests of the nation
dictate a different line of policy, they can not help following the
latter, however much injustice and hardship they may inflict upon others
in doing so. The English political moralist and thinker believes and
preaches that the state exists for the people, that state and people are
really interchangeable words, and that the teachings of Treitschke, that
the state is greater than the people and that the latter exists for the
former, is immoral and vicious. In Great Britain and the Colonies the
British act as they believe, but in India they follow the doctrines of
the German professor. The state in India is an authority imposed from
without and is therefore distinct from and independent of the
people.[22] The state in India is the British people, and therefore the
interests of the latter must override those of the Indian people.
Everything in India is judged by that standard. The English may be good,
benevolent, just, kind, and fair-minded, but all these virtues are
dominated by the supreme test mentioned above. All the real troubles of
India arise from this circumstance. Everything connected with India is
looked at from this angle. Unless this angle changes there is no
possibility of any such changes taking place in the system and the
policy of the Government of India as are likely to satisfy the
self-respect of the Indian or to remove the disadvantages from which the
country suffers.”
VII
The most significant development of Nationalism, however, that has taken
place in the last year, is the unity between the Hindus and the
Mohammedans on the question of self-government. It is remarkable how the
war has united the Hindus and the Mohammedans, not only in their
expressions of loyalty to the Government, but also in their demand for
Home Rule and in their dissatisfaction with the prevailing political
conditions in India. For the first time in the history of Indian
Nationalism, the Indian National Congress and the All-India Muslim
League have met in the same city. This was opposed with the whole of
their might by the Ultra-Loyalists among the Mohammedans under the
inspiration of their Anglo-Indian masters. The younger generation of the
Mohammedans, however, is so thoroughly filled with the idea of
Nationalism that they carried the day and succeeded in holding a very
successful session of their league at Bombay in the same week in which
the Indian National Congress was holding its session in that city. The
result was that the members of both organisations met, compared notes,
exchanged civilities, and found out that there was practical unity among
them on all the important questions bearing upon their relations with
the Government. The Muslim League President made pronouncements
demanding self-government, free compulsory education, governmental help
in industrial development, removal of restrictions against the progress
of Indian industries, in almost the same terms and with the same
emphasis, if not even greater, than the Indian National Congress did.
Both the organisations appointed a joint committee to draw up a scheme
of Home Rule which would meet the needs and the approval of both the
great religious communities inhabiting that great country.
During the last year a scheme has been floated by Mrs. Annie Besant, the
president of the Theosophical Society, a woman of great ability and of
world-wide fame, who has adopted India as her home, but who at the same
time is a patriotic Englishwoman, to organise a Home Rule League for
India, separate from and independent of both the Indian National
Congress and the All-India Muslim League. This proposal has met with the
approval of the advanced members of both the Hindu and Mohammedan
communities. Some leaders of the Indian National Congress, however, see
a danger to their Congress in the growth and development of the Home
Rule League. But it is wonderful how the idea has caught hold of the
public mind. Practically the whole of the Nationalist press and the
Nationalist platform, with a few minor exceptions, have declared in
favour of the proposal. The supporters of the Home Rule League met at
Bombay to formally decide the question of giving practical effect to the
idea which has received the joint support of both the Hindus and the
Mohammedans. Mrs. Besant, however, herself, has shrunk from organising
it just now, out of deference to the opinions of some of the leaders of
the Indian National Congress, pending the report of the joint committee
formed to formulate a scheme of Home Rule suited to India. Indian
Nationalism has thus advanced very much during the last year. We have
the two movements--one representing force, the other peaceful
agitation--side by side, as has been the case in the history of similar
movements in other countries. One movement represents the more virile
section of the population who believe in force, violence and terrorism;
the other, those who depend upon appeal to reason, justice and
conscience. The combined force of both, however, produces a momentum
which is sure to become irresistible in the course of time. What is
extremely hopeful is the entirely changed attitude of the Mohammedan
community. The British wished for and tried to create an _Ulster_ among
the Mohammedans of India. They had well nigh succeeded, but the last
three or four years have brought about a complete change. The Mohammedan
masses had really never joined the educated Mohammedan Separatists, but
even the latter have now found out that the policy of separation from
the Hindus which was in their minds for some time, can not eventually
bring any lasting good to their community. With their Hindu countrymen
they feel that India must occupy the first place in their affections and
thoughts, and that it was not inconsistent for them to be Mohammedans in
religion and Indians in politics. Similarly, the Hindu sentiment, that
was growing somewhat anti-Mohammedan on account of the Mohammedan
sentiment of separation, has been greatly softened. The Mohammedans
have begun to feel that they can share in the ancient glory of India
without an outrage to their Mohammedanism. The Hindus have come to
realise that after all the Mohammedan rule in India was not so bad or
tyrannical and oppressive as they were told it was by interested
historians. The Mohammedans feel that they can be as proud of the Hindu
heroes, Rama and Krishna, of the Hindu Epics, the Ramayana and the
Mahabharta, of Hindu science and Hindu philosophy, as the Hindus
themselves are, without being false to their religion or to their
community. Similarly the Hindus feel that they can be as proud of a Sher
Shah and an Akbar and a Shah Jahan, of Alberuni, of Ibn Batuta, of Abul
Fazal, Faizi and Gálib, as the Mohammedans can be. Nay, they can go a
step further and say that even Aurangzeb was not, after all, so bad as
they had supposed him to be. The Hindus and Mohammedans have discovered
that they can take part in their respective festivals and take pride in
their respective past, without in any way being traitors to their
respective religions and communities.
VIII
That the above statements are not mere creations of my own brain, but
are based on fact, will be easily seen from the following extracts which
I make from the speech of the President of the last session of the
All-India Muslim League held at Bombay in December, 1915.
First, about the representative character of the assembly, Mr.
Mazhar-ul-Haq remarked:
“Please accept my sincere and heartfelt thanks for the great honour you
have done me by electing me the President of the All-India Muslim League
this year. It is a proud privilege to preside over and guide the
deliberations of this distinguished gathering, where representatives of
seventy millions of his Britannic Majesty’s Indian Muslim subjects are
assembled in conference for the betterment of their condition, and for
counsel and consultation together on the affairs of their country.”
About the difficulties of the times he says:
“Times are most unpropitious for expressing views and convictions which,
in normal times of peace, there would have been no harm in frankly and
unreservedly putting _before our community and our Government_. The
present terrible conflict of nations enjoins upon us the paramount duty
of saying or doing nothing which would embarrass or weaken the hands of
our Government by producing undesirable excitement in the people, or
lead to any impression upon foreign nations that we are in any way
inimical or even indifferent to the best interests of the Empire.”
As to how Islam established itself in India, how it spread and what is
the present position of the Mohammedans of India, he speaks as follows:
“The first advent of the Muslims in India was along these very
coasts[23] in the form of a naval expedition sent by the third Khalif in
the year 636 A. D. This was more than four hundred years before William
the Conqueror defeated the Saxons at the battle of Hastings. After many
vicissitudes, into the details of which it is unnecessary to go, the
Muslim Empire was firmly established in India. These invaders made India
their home and did not consider it a land of regrets. They lived amongst
the people of the country, mixed with them freely and became true
citizens of India. As a matter of fact they had no other home but India.
From time to time their number was strengthened by fresh blood from
Arabia, Persia and other Muslim lands, but their ranks were swollen
mainly by additions from the people of the country themselves. It is
most interesting to know that out of the present seventy millions of the
Muslim population, those who have claimed their descent from remote
non-Indian ancestors amount only to eight millions. Whence have the
remaining millions come, if not from Indian ranks? The Muslims enriched
the hoary civilisation of India with their own literature and art,
evolved and developed by their creative and versatile genius. From the
Himalayas to Cape Comorin the entire country is studded with those gems
of art which remind one of the glorious period of Muslim rule. The
result was a new civilisation which was the outcome of the combined
efforts of all the peoples of India and the product of the two great
civilisations in the history of the world. During Muslim times all
offices were equally opened to all, without any distinction of class,
creed or colour. The only conditions were fitness and efficiency.
So we have the spectacle of a Hindu prime minister, a Hindu
commander-in-chief, a Hindu finance minister, and a Hindu governor of
Kabul. Ethnology and folklore of India speak eloquently of manners and
customs showing the influence of one people upon the other. The only
link which the Muslims kept with the countries outside India was the
spiritual link of their religion. This was under the circumstances
inevitable. This short historical retrospect may be succinctly expressed
in two words which fully and clearly describe the elements and
conditions of our existence in India. We are Indian Muslims. These
words, ‘Indian Muslims,’ convey the idea of our nationality and of our
religion, and as long as we keep our duties and responsibilities arising
from these factors before our eyes, we can hardly go wrong.
“Indian Muslims are Indians first!
“About what we owe to our non-Muslim fellow subjects I have never
concealed my opinion, and I can only repeat here what I have often said.
I am one of those who have never taken a narrow and sectarian view of
Indian politics. When a question concerning the welfare of India and of
justice to Indians arises I am not only an Indian first, but an Indian
next and an Indian to the last, an Indian and an Indian alone, favouring
no community and no individual, but on the side of those who desire the
advancement of India as a whole without prejudice to the rights and
interests of any individual, much less of any community, whether my own
or another.
“Policies and principles of a nobler kind may be laid down by higher
authorities, but their value is determined by those who have to carry
them out. Thus it has often been the case in India that noble intentions
have degenerated into pious wishes and even into harmful actions. If the
Indian people were real partners in the actual governance of the
country, the Indian point of view would have prevailed, much that is now
admitted to have been mistaken would have been avoided, the country
would have progressed and the ruling classes would have been spared the
bitter and sometimes undeserved criticisms hurled against them. Unless
and until India has got a national government and is governed for the
greatest good of the Indian people, I do not see how she can be
contented. India does not demand ‘a place in the sun’ in any aggressive
sense, but she does require the light of the Indian sun for her own
children.
“Gentlemen, let us descend a little from the generalities into details
and see how the policy of the past has worked not only to our detriment,
but to the positive weakening of the British rule itself. Let us see
what small share we have in the larger life of the Empire. I have
already said that we have no share in laying down the policy upon which
India is ruled. Have we any share even in the different Services of the
country? Are we allowed to serve our own land and the Empire to the best
of our capacity and ability? In every country the three premier Services
are considered to be the Military, the Naval and the Diplomatic.
“Let us begin with the Military. In spite of the numerous martial races
who inhabit India in millions, no Indian can rise above the
non-commissioned ranks. We can not hope to gain a higher position than
that of a Subadar-Major or a Risaldar-Major. Every position that would
give us an independent command is closed to us. The regular army is
limited in number, no volunteers are taken from our ranks and the
general population is rigorously disarmed. The Arms Act perpetuates
invidious distinctions on grounds of colour and creed--distinctions most
humiliating to the people of the country. Going about their ordinary
daily occupations our people may be attacked by dacoits and evilly
disposed persons or even by wild beasts, but they can not defend
themselves. Even _lathis_[24] have been held by some judicial
authorities to be dangerous weapons. Newspapers and official communiques
tell us that ordinary Naiks of our Indian Army have on the battlefield
conducted themselves most bravely and have led their companies with
conspicuous gallantry and ability at times when all the English officers
were either killed or disabled. If our men are capable of such
initiative and valiant deeds on the actual field of battle, why, Indians
naturally ask, should they not be trusted in the piping times of peace?
Had they only been trained and allowed to serve, millions and millions
would have sprung to the side of England at her slightest call in this,
the hour of her need. Indeed, no other nation of the world has such an
inexhaustible source of strength as Great Britain has in the teeming
masses of India, but India has been so maimed and crippled in her
manhood that she can help neither herself nor Great Britain. The idea is
galling and humiliating that, if a time came when India was in danger,
her own sons would not be able to save their hearths and homes, or the
honour and lives of their wives and children, but would have to look to
foreign nations like Japan and Russia for help and succour. Peace and
order are the first requisites of a settled government and without them
there would be mere chaos; but unlimited and long-continued peace has a
tendency to enervate and emasculate people. To make a living nation,
higher qualities are required. A spirit which will not bow before any
adverse wind, an internal strength which will bear all toils and
troubles, a determination which will flinch from no task, however
impossible it may appear, a discipline which will love and be happy in
the service of the country and the Empire, are qualities necessary for
the attainment of that life which I call a full life. These moral forces
can only come into play when people are free and unrestricted in the
exercise of all their faculties. The profession of arms is perhaps one
which breeds this spirit and brings out these potential forces more than
any other. To close it to any portion of humanity is to turn them into
lifeless machines.
“In the Navy, we cannot rise above the rank of a lascar. Attempts are
often made to keep us out even of this lowly position. India has a vast
seaboard, peopled by seafaring nations. To refuse them their birthright
is to waste so much good material which would have gone to increase the
strength of the Empire. Why not have a few Indian dreadnaughts and
cruisers manned by Indians and commanded by their own countrymen? It is
said that the Indians are not fit for the Navy. Having not trained and
tried them, it is not just or fair to say so. Try them first and, if
found wanting, then you have a right to reject them. The history of
ancient India proves that naval capacity is here; but it lies dormant
for want of sufficient opportunity.
“Now I pass on to the Diplomatic Service. Here we are conspicuous by our
entire absence from it. What prevents the Government from utilising the
intellect, the ability and the energy of our people in this direction, I
fail to understand. Why should not some of the numerous posts of
Political Residents and Agents of India be opened to them?
“In India, the Civil Service is considered to be the premier public
service of the country. Here, too, we are circumscribed and hedged in by
rules and regulations which make it for our people, if not altogether
impossible, at least very difficult to enter. The examination which is
the only possible way of entry for an Indian is held in London, 7,000
miles away from his home. Those educated youths who can not bear the
cost and expenses of such a journey, are entirely debarred from it,
however brilliant they may be. The fortunate few, who can afford to
compete with Englishmen, have to do so in a language absolutely foreign
to them. Why the examinations should not be held both in England and
India to give the youths of both countries equal chances is an anomaly
which passes my comprehension. For a number of years the country has
been loudly demanding this much delayed justice, but instead, we get the
recent Indian Civil Service Act which has entirely abolished the
competitive system. No doubt the operation of the Act is temporary, but
a wrong precedent has been created, and no one knows to what further
developments it will lead.
“In the minor services of the country, such as Police, Forest,
Education, the higher places have been reserved for Europeans and the
children of the soil have been told that the doors have been shut
against them. One would have expected that at least in these minor
places Indians would not have failed, but all our protests and
entreaties have been of no avail so far.
“Gentlemen, I pass on now to the economical development of the country.
Let us see what progress we have made in this direction. Admittedly
India is an agricultural country and its real life and strength is in
the teeming millions of humanity who live in the villages, principally
by agriculture. Has anything really been done to raise them from their
poverty-ridden and helpless condition? In spite of the jugglery of
figures in which the hearts of statisticians delight, what is the state
of the country and its peasantry? Statistics are supposed to prove every
theory advanced by men anxious to prove their case, but our eyes are
our best witnesses and can not deceive us. India is a country rich in
natural resources--resources which are not inferior to any other country
in this wide, wide world. Her land bears every variety of crops from
cotton and jute to wheat and mustard. Her mines produce every kind of
metal from gold and iron ores down to the best coal, and not excluding
numerous precious stones. She has a climate ranging from the bitterest
cold to the intensest heat. Her rivers and forests are full of life and
materials useful to man. In short, India is a self-contained, miniature
world. In such a country what is the condition of her inhabitants? No
toil or trouble is spared for the cultivation of their fields by the
wretched and over-worked peasantry. All that manual labour can do is
done, but because of the want of scientific methods and other causes
beyond their control, the profits which ought to have been theirs are
lost to them. Side by side with green, minutely and industriously
cultivated fields, we find tiny and dilapidated mud hovels thatched with
old and rotten straw. In these hovels there are neither windows nor
floor-cloths, and the only furniture that they boast of is a few earthen
vessels and perhaps a _chatai_.[25] Human beings and cattle herd
together with no arrangements for sanitation. Such are the conditions in
which the great majority of our people pass their miserable existence.
“In commerce and industry we are no better off. Our old indigenous
industries have been killed by foreign competition and new attempts are
crippled in the interests of other peoples than those of India. The
instance of the cotton excise duties is before us--duties which have
been imposed in the interests of Manchester and Lancashire.
“I now pass on to two of the recent repressive measures, the Press Act
and the Defence of India Act. These acts have worked harshly and told
heavily upon the persons and the properties of some leaders of our
community. Musalmans are intensely agitated, and I should be grossly
negligent in the discharge of my duties as the spokesman of Muslim
India, if I failed to give voice to their feelings on the subject. On
principle and by sentiment I object to repression and coercion, be it
from the Government or from any section of a disaffected people.
“I remember well, how and under what conditions the Press Act was
passed. The members of the Imperial Council gave their consent to the
passing of the bill on the express understanding that the law was
intended for the anarchists and would never be applied in the case of
peaceful citizens anxious to enlighten Government officers as to the
sentiments and feeling of the people. But what is the result? _All the
independent Muslim papers have either been wiped out or are dragging on
a lifeless and miserable existence._[26] The _Comrade_ is gone, _The
Hamdard_ has been strangled to death, the _Muslim Gazette_ ceased to
exist long ago, _Al-Hilal_ is no more, the _Zamindar_ is carrying on its
colourless existence with a sword of Damocles always hanging over its
head. Whoever thought that the Press Act would be applied in this
fashion? Is it possible for the people not to resent such treatment and
are their feelings to be treated so lightly?”
The reader will notice that there is nothing in this book which is in
any way stronger either in language or in sentiments than what the
President of the All-India Muslim League has said in the quotations
given above. Along with these expressions of discontent are also found
in his address very strong declarations of loyalty to the Government and
of appreciation of what they have done for India. The task of appraising
the exact value of both kinds of statements may better be left to the
reader.
This is the dawn of a new day in India which the British will have to
reckon with. We know that they are very skilful in _divide et impera_,
but the Indian people are now awake and that policy may not succeed so
well in the future as it has in the past.
The Indians have no desire to do anything which might in any way injure
or harm the position of Great Britain as a world power. They would much
rather gain Home Rule in India by peaceful means and remain a part of
the British Empire than subvert British authority in India by force or
seek the assistance of any other foreign power to gain their end. But in
case the British continue to trample upon their rights and to humiliate
them and to exploit them as they have done in the past, then there is no
knowing what they might not be tempted or forced to do. What is clear
is this, that the number of such Indians is growing larger and larger
every day who are willing and ready to sacrifice their careers, their
prospects, their happiness and their life at the altar of what they
consider to be their duty to their country.
There are others who think that their patience has been well nigh
exhausted; who can not wait and would strike for their liberty at once,
saying “Our trust is in God.”
IX
Before concluding this introductory part of my study of the Nationalist
Movement in India, I desire to tender my heartfelt thanks to Professor
A. U. Pope, of the University of California, for the encouragement and
advice he has given me in the preparation of this book, and to Dr. J. T.
Sunderland, of New York, for having read my manuscript and written a
Foreword for me.
The reader will, I hope, excuse me for certain repetitions. They are
unavoidable in a book of this kind, where it is desirable to show that
the different communities and classes of the Indian population think on
the same lines in national affairs.
Lastly, I have to beg the pardon of the reader for certain personal
references which may seem to be self-laudatory. I have indulged in this
weakness only when it was absolutely necessary for the continuance of
the thread of the narrative. In one chapter I have retained the third
person singular so as to avoid being understood that I was speaking of
myself.
I am also conscious of the meagreness of certain chapters. The book is
too short to be called a History of the National Movement. It is written
more with the object of drawing the attention of the civilised world to
what is happening in India, than to prepare a complete record of the
movement. The foreign reader can not be expected to be interested in
details. Moreover, he may never read a long and expensive book. Hence
the studied brevity kept in view all through. Nor do I propose to
discuss the fitness of Indians for immediate self-government as that
would largely add to the bulk of the book, but for a brief and able
discussion of the matter I may refer the reader to an article by the
Editor in the _Modern Review_ of Calcutta for February, 1916.
Then again it is to be regretted that the illustrations are so few. I
would have liked to add many more. Many prominent Nationalists find no
place for the simple reason that at the time of sending the book to the
press I have not been able to get their pictures. Originally there was
no idea of having any illustrations. It is too late now to delay the
publication of the book pending the receipt of pictures from India.
Indeed the mail facilities, just now, are so dubious that one can not be
certain of getting them at all so long as the war lasts.
LAJPAT RAI.
Berkeley, California, U. S. A.,
1st of March, 1916.
YOUNG INDIA
AN INTERPRETATION AND A HISTORY OF THE NATIONALIST MOVEMENT FROM WITHIN
CHAPTER I
THE GENERAL VIEWPOINT OF THE INDIAN NATIONALIST
Indian History rolls back to thousands of years before the Christian
Era. Much of it is still enveloped in mystery. What little is known has
been discovered and put in shape within the last hundred years. The
materials, from which the early History of India has been prepared, have
long been in existence, but little of them were known to the Western
people.
It can not be said that a complete history of Ancient India has been
fully and finally constructed. What is known has been discovered bit by
bit. Much yet remains to be found and put in order. It is quite unsafe,
therefore, to dogmatise about the deficiencies of Ancient Indian
civilisation. Yet this much can be said with certainty, that centuries
before the birth of Christ India possessed a marvellous civilisation, a
wonderful literature, a well organised social system, a conception of
government based on law and on the legal rights of subjects _inter se_,
as well as against the ruling monarch.[27]
We have, besides, ample evidences in the ancient literature of India, as
translated and interpreted by Western scholars, to the effect that
democratic institutions were not unknown to Ancient India.[28] Nor can
it be said that the idea of universal sovereignty over the whole of
India under one permanent power was unknown to the Hindus. How often it
was realised and for how long, can not be said with any certainty.[29]
_First Invasion of India_. The first political and military invasion of
India known to history was that of Alexander the Great in 326 B. C.
Alexander was no doubt victorious up to a certain point, but he never
conquered India, nor did he occupy it. He did not reach even so far into
the interior as Delhi on the Jumna. He is said to have left behind him
some officers to administer the affairs of the conquered province, but
it is a well established historical fact that in the conflict between
Chandra Gupta, the Hindu, and Seleucus, the Greek, who was the chief
ruling authority in Babylon after the death of Alexander, Seleucus was
practically worsted and a peace was concluded by which the independence
of India was fully realised. Chandra Gupta ruled over the whole of India
north of Vindhyachal. Bengal as far east as Assam, and the Punjab as
far west as Afghanistan, were among his provinces. Fortunately for us,
we have enough independent testimony in the writings of Megasthenes, the
Greek Ambassador at the court of Chandra Gupta, and other
contemporaneous Greek writers, as to the state of India at that time.
_Chandra Gupta and Asoka._ Megasthenes’ account of the Government of
Chandra Gupta and of the details of the administration under him, is
enough to fill every Indian with pride. Chandra Gupta’s organisation[30]
included almost every form of governmental activity known to modern
Europe. There was a separate department of labour under him, a separate
registrar of births, deaths and marriages, a minister who looked after
public charities, another in charge of trade and commerce, one in charge
of agriculture, and so on. He had a great army, a currency and a navy.
Even then the system of commercial papers was well known to Indians, who
had a great name for honesty and truthfulness. Their word was better
than a bond. Chandra Gupta was followed by Asoka, perhaps the greatest
and noblest Emperor India has had during the historical period. Under
him the whole country was consolidated under one imperial sway. He ruled
not by force, but by love. His love extended even to animals. He is
known to have organised hospitals for the treatment of animals. All this
happened before Christ was born. Between 326 B. C. and the middle of
the eighth century A. D., India knew no foreign masters, in the sense
that it was never ruled for any length of time from without. A few of
the nomadic tribes of Central Asia did penetrate into India, only to be
absorbed and assimilated by the mass of the Aryans already settled and
in power there.
The next foreign invasion of India, which was to leave a permanent mark
on the history and institutions of India and with which starts an
altogether separate epoch in Indian history, was by Abul Qasim in the
middle of the eighth century. For full 400 years the Mohammedans knocked
at the door of India before they could establish a kingdom there. The
first Mohammedan King of Delhi was Kutb-ud-din Aibak, who established a
dynasty in 1206 A. D. The Mohammedans were in possession of some parts
of Sindh and the Punjab between the eighth and the twelfth centuries,
but India was not conquered nor the Hindus beaten until Prithvi Raj, the
last Rajput King of Delhi, was defeated by the treachery of a brother
Rajput chief in the year 1193 A. D.
_India Practically Independent up to the Twelfth Century._ It will be
thus seen that India was practically independent up to the beginning of
the thirteenth century A. D. By independent, I mean that no foreign rule
had been imposed upon it from without. Some parts of the northwestern
provinces of the Punjab and Sindh had been for some time under Muslim
domination, but the main territory was under native rulers and native
laws. As said before, the tribes that overran the northwestern parts of
India between the invasion of Alexander the Great and that of Abul
Qasim, came to settle. Once settled there, they adopted the religion and
the social life of the country and were merged with the natives.
Thenceforth there was no distinction between them and the other Indian
people.
_Muslim Rule._ The Mohammedan rule over India lasted for six centuries
with varying vicissitudes of fortune. For three centuries, from the
thirteenth to the beginning of the sixteenth century, their rule was
practically confined to Northern India. Deccan, Rajputana and Central
India were always more or less independent until Akbar consolidated the
whole country under his flag; though even he failed to vanquish Partap,
the invincible Rana of Udeypore (Rajputana).[31] Partap was defeated,
was driven out of his capital, was pursued and harassed, but he did not
make his submission to the Mogul. Akbar won over to his side almost all
the other Rajput chiefs, some by his prowess, others by friendship, but
the Sessodia[32] chief would not bend his knee. His countrymen simply
worshipped him. So strong was the feeling of patriotism and the love of
independence among the Hindus, even then, that when Akbar one day
announced in the Durbar that he had received a petition of submission
from Partap, the Rajputs present in the Durbar refused to believe him.
It is well known how one of them, Prithvi Raj, a poet, wrote to Partap
of the indescribable grief the report had caused them, and telling him
that the Hindu sun would set forever if Partap would yield; and how he
received an answer that the report was wrong and that Partap would never
yield and would keep the flag flying. That shows how a Hindu servant of
Akbar, who had made his submission and accepted the service of the
Mogul, felt in the matter. Although beaten himself, he would not
acknowledge that the Hindus had been finally beaten so long as Partap
was resisting the Mogul arms. It speaks very highly of the
broad-mindedness of Akbar that, so far back as the sixteenth century, he
allowed one of his Hindu captives and servants to speak out so boldly
and plainly of his love of Hindu independence. Akbar, we must remember,
had succeeded in making alliances with almost all the other important
Rajput houses. The proud Rahtores[33] had given him a daughter for a
bride, and the _Kutchwahas_,[33] Bikanir[33] and Boondi[33] had also
submitted. So Partap had to fight the combined forces of Akbar and his
own brother-Rajput chiefs, some of whom were related to him by the
dearest ties of blood and marriage. Yet single-handed, for a quarter of
a century, did he withstand the efforts of the mighty empire over which
Akbar ruled to force his submission. In the words of Colonel Tod, it is
worthy “the attention of those who influence the destinies of states in
more favoured climes to estimate the intensity of feeling which could
arm Partap to oppose the resources of a small principality against the
then most powerful empire in the world, whose armies were more numerous
and far more efficient than any ever led by the Persians against the
liberties of Greece.”
On his deathbed Partap made his successor swear to eternal conflict
against “the foes of his country’s independence.” This was in the
sixteenth century, four hundred years after the first Muslim king had
ascended the throne of Delhi. But a hundred years had hardly gone by
after the event when the Hindus again questioned Muslim supremacy. The
Sikhs in the Punjab, the Rajputs in Central India, and the Mahrattas in
the Deccan, had started their campaigns before Aurangzeb died in 1707 A.
D. The Muslim supremacy was destroyed by the Hindus and not by the
British.
_Muslim Rule in India not Foreign._ Yet it is not right to say that the
Muslim rule in India was a “foreign rule.” The Muslim invaders were no
doubt foreign in their origin, just as the Normans and Danes were when
they came to England, but as soon as they settled in India, adopted the
country, made it their home, married and raised children there, they
became the sons of the soil. Akbar and Aurangzeb were as much Indians as
are to-day the Moguls and Pathans in Delhi or elsewhere. Sher Shah and
Ibrahim Lodi were no more foreigners in India than were the descendants
of William the Conqueror or the successors of William of Orange in Great
Britain. When Timur and Nadir Shah and Ahmad Shah Abdali attacked India,
they attacked a kingdom which was ruled by Indian Muslims. They were as
much the enemies of the Mohammedan rulers of India as of the Hindus.
The Muslims, who exercised political sovereignty in India from the
thirteenth up to the middle of the nineteenth century A. D., were
Indians by birth, Indians by marriage, and Indians by death. They were
born in India, they married there, there they died, and there they were
buried. Every penny of the revenues they raised in India was spent in
India. Their army was wholly Indian. They allowed new families from
beyond the borders of Hindustan to come and settle in India, but they
very rarely, if at all, employed people who were not willing to stay in
India for good and to make it their home. Their bias, if any, against
the Hindus was religious, not political. The converts to Islam were
sometimes treated even with greater consideration than the original
Muslims. Akbar, of course, did away with that distinction, but even the
most bigoted and the most orthodox Mohammedan ruler of India was not
possessed of that kind of social pride and social exclusiveness which
distinguishes the British ruler of India to-day. If the racial question
ever came into prominence during Mohammedan supremacy in India, it was
not between Hindus and Mohammedans, but between Mohammedans and
Mohammedans, as for instance between _Tuglaks_ and _Pathans_, or between
_Moguls_ and _Lodis_.[34]
In the reign of rulers like Sher Shah, Akbar, Jehangir, and Shah Jahan,
the Hindus were eligible for the highest offices under the crown next
after the princes of royal blood. They were governors of provinces,
generals of armies, and rulers of districts and divisions. In short, the
distinctions between the Hindus and Muslims were neither political nor
social. Looked at from the political and the economic point of view, the
Government was as much indigenous as under Hindu rule. The Muslims never
attempted to disarm the population; nor did they prohibit the
manufacture or import of arms. They did not recruit their servants from
Arabia, or Persia, or Afghanistan. They had no Lancashire industries to
protect, and were under no necessity of imposing excise duties on
Indian-made goods. They brought their own language and literature with
them. For a time, perhaps, they transacted all government business
through that language, but eventually they evolved a language which is
as much Indian as any other vernacular spoken in India to-day. The
groundwork of this language, which is now called Urdu or Hindustani, is
purely Indian. The Muslim rulers of India had no anxiety for, and were
in no way concerned with, the prosperity of the labouring classes of
Persia or Afghanistan. If any one sought their patronage, he had to come
to and settle in India. So their government was an Indian government
and not a foreign government.
History does not record a single instance of India being ruled from
without, by a people of purely non-Indian blood and in the interests of
another country and another people, before the British.[35] India was
always an empire by herself. She was never a part of another empire,
much less a dependency. She had her own army, her own navy, her own
flag. Her revenues were spent for her own benefit. She had her
industries and manufactured the goods she consumed. Any one wanting the
privilege of trading with India under special terms had to obtain the
sanction of her government, as the East India Company did. There was no
India Office in Arabia or in Persia or in Kabul, to which the people of
India looked for initiative in the affairs of their native land.
INDIA UNDER THE BRITISH
India under the British is, however, entirely different.[36] For the
first time in history she becomes a part of another empire. India
to-day is not an empire by herself, but a part of the British Empire, as
Britain once was a part of the Roman Empire. For the first time in
history she has been reduced to the position of a dependency. For the
first time in her history she is ruled from the outside. For the first
time the Indians have been reduced to the position of a subject people,
governed by an alien race residing in a different and far-off country.
For the first time she is ruled by a sovereign who does not live in
India, who sends out every five years a viceroy to administer the
affairs of the country under the authority of a minister in a foreign
land. For the first time her affairs are managed by people who come and
go, under laws made outside of India.[37] All the chief offices of
state, the direction and control of armies, the administration of
revenues, of divisions, of districts, the coining of money, the
administration of justice, the imposing of taxes, etc., are generally in
the hands of foreigners who have absolutely no interest in the country
except as servants of the crown, persons whose interests in the country
cease with the expiration of their term of service. These servants are
recruited and appointed out of India. Indians as such are virtually
ineligible for many of these offices. During the 150 years of British
rule in India, no Indian has been appointed to the governorship of any
province. Indians are ineligible for commissions in the army; they
cannot be enrolled as volunteers. In order to qualify for the Civil
service of their own country, they have to travel six thousand miles, to
take the chance of succeeding once in a while.
_Political Disqualification of the Indians._ For the first time in the
political history of India it has become a political disqualification to
be an Indian. The offspring of an Englishman, domiciled in India and
married to an Indian lady, loses in rank and status by that fact; nor
does the issue of an Indian gentleman from an Englishwoman gain anything
thereby. So the inferiority in both ways lies in Indian blood and Indian
origin. The Muslim who married in India, or the Indian who married a
Persian or Afghan, were not affected thereby in their political
privileges in the Mohammedan régime. An Indian convert to Christianity
is in no better position in India than a Hindu or a Muslim. Thus it is
not a religious inferiority or a religious distinction, upon which the
political disabilities of an Indian are based, but the fact of his being
an Indian by blood and by birth. Never before was India governed by a
handful of officers, military and civil, who came to rule for a period,
going away when that period was over, only to be replaced by another set
equally temporary. India thus loses all or most of what these receive in
the shape of money; she loses all the experience which they gain in the
different spheres of activity that engages them during the period of
their service in India; last but not least, she is deprived of the
satisfaction and pride of claiming these men as her sons, who would in
their turn take pride in her and feel as sons should for their mother.
They come as her rulers, and till the end remain the same. Their sons
and grandsons also may in their turn come as rulers, but never as sons.
The sons of India, who gain the rank of officials, are only servants of
the British. Their position in the Indian services is generally that of
drawers of water and hewers of wood for their British masters.
_All Europeans, Eurasians including Armenians and Jews can carry arms
free of license; not so the Indians._ In India, the Indians only are
forbidden to carry arms except by special permission of their masters;
and permission is of course granted very sparingly and as a matter of
favour, as a special concession and not as a right. The highest, the
noblest, and the purest among the Indians has to be _excepted_ from the
operation of the Arms Act, as an act of mercy on the part of his foreign
rulers. In the hills of his own native country, where his parents,
grandparents, and great grandparents before him were born, where they
perhaps ruled or held positions of trust, where they died, where they
fertilised the soil with their blood, and where within less than a
century they enjoyed absolute freedom, he, their immediate descendant,
must not carry an umbrella over his head to give him shelter from rain
or sun without the risk of being kicked to death or being insulted by
the lowest among the foreign masters of his country.[38] The hoary
Himalayas, the beloved abode of his most respected divinities, are in
some places virtually shut against him because the “white gods” have
developed a fancy for them.
But that is not all. Even outside India he carries the badge of
political subjection with him. The British colonies, more than any other
country, bang their doors on him. He is a pariah all over the world.
Considering that this is his position in his home, he could hardly be
anything else outside. The British Government does not like his going
abroad except as an indentured coolie to the British colonies. He may go
to England on a pleasure trip, but they do not want Indians there in any
numbers. They particularly dislike his going to America and settling
there. The reason is obvious. Travelling abroad gives him opportunities
of comparing British rule in India with the forms of government
prevailing in other countries. Free atmosphere and free environment
raise aspirations which are dangerous, at any rate inconvenient to
British supremacy in India. Moreover, they effectively break down the
hypnotism which has so far enthralled the Indian mind in its judgments
regarding British character. On his return to India, a travelled Indian
becomes a centre of discontent. In the course of their travels some
Indians meet the free-thinkers and revolutionaries of Europe and learn
their methods. All this is naturally disliked by the British.
Therefore, of late, the British have been taking steps to discourage
foreign travelling on the part of Indians. They have been trying to keep
Indian students out of Great Britain by imposing conditions which are
repellent. They have raised the educational standards which had formerly
secured them admission into British universities and British Inns of
Court. They have organised an official bureau in London which,
ostensibly acting as their guardian and adviser, discourages them from
entering British universities, keeps a vigilant eye on their movements,
reports on their conduct to the authorities at home, and insists upon
their seeking admission to British educational institutions through
it.[39] At all Indian ports there are police officers present, who note
down the names of, and particulars relating to, every Indian who leaves
Indian shores. Thenceforth two eyes are almost always watching him, go
wherever he may.
To him, the British embassies in the different countries of the world
mean nothing. He is afraid of seeking their help, first for fear of
getting a rebuff and being insulted, second because he is afraid of
circumstances being created which might force his early departure from
that country. His wrongs are nobody’s wrongs. He may be assaulted, nay,
even killed, or insulted, or robbed, or ill-treated, yet he has no
government to look to his interests. The British Government does not
resent other countries’ excluding him; they are rather happy at it and
in some cases are understood to have exercised their influence against
his entry into foreign countries. The self-governing dominions of the
British Empire have built a solid wall of most revolting and inhuman
laws and regulations against his entry into those dominions. He cannot
go there, even on a pleasure trip or for study, except by submitting to
impossible tests or most revolting conditions.
In this respect he is much better treated by non-British countries. Till
recently he could come and go there quite freely. No European country
bars his visits. Of late the United States, it is said, at the instance
of the British Government, has been following a policy of exclusion. But
once in the country, all universities and institutions receive him,
provided he fulfils their conditions and complies with their
regulations. That much, however, cannot be said of Great Britain. It is
true that Great Britain imposes no restrictions on his coming and going,
as she imposes no restrictions on any one else’s coming and going, but
there are British institutions which would not admit him as a student,
however high his social position or status may be. Even those
institutions which admit him for study, discriminate against him in the
matter of military drill. They would not admit him into their volunteer
corps; nor would they take him as a boy scout. A great many of the
British clubs would have nothing to do with him. The only British club
of note, which has a fairly good number of Indians on its rolls and
which accords them a welcome, is the National Liberal Club. This club is
a noble exception.
Now the British must be an extremely unimaginative people, if they think
that all this does not make the Indian feel the inferiority of his
position. The latter, naturally, ascribes all this to the fact of his
country’s having no national government of her own to protect him and to
advance his interests. All this reminds him most forcibly of the fact
that he belongs to a subject race, that his country does not count in
the world because she is not free and has no embassies, that she has no
flag of her own, nor consular representatives to back her sons, and that
in the great mass of civilised humanity he is a mere cypher. All this
naturally tells on his nerves and he becomes an extremist. He feels that
anything would be preferable to this life of shame and dishonor.
It is difficult for people who have never been placed in a similar
position to realise the sense of humiliation and shame involved in this
condition of things. Let the British for a moment imagine themselves
under similar circumstances, and they may then be in a position to
appreciate the point of view of an Indian nationalist. Let us suppose
for a moment that the Germans conquer England and impose their rule on
the British race. How would the British like their country being
administered by a viceroy of the Kaiser selected by the German
Chancellor, with the help of a council consisting of Germans and of a
bureaucracy recruited almost exclusively from Prussia, with only a
sprinkling of native Britishers? No one can question the efficiency of
the German system. The strong hand of Germany might keep Ireland in
peace and prevent the suffragists and the socialists and the Roman
Catholics disturbing public tranquillity. They might even employ a whole
army of Britishers in the subordinate posts, might pay them handsomely
for military and police duty, might confer decorations and titles on
them, might build even greater engineering works for them than they had
ever done, and might let them retain their language for elementary
education or for religious or domestic purposes. Would the English be
satisfied and would they be contented? Would they consider German rule
to be a blessing and judge it by trade returns? Never![40] Why then,
should they question the patriotism or good sense of the Indians who
want self-government for India? Did not Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman say
that good government could never be a substitute for self-government?
The fact is, that it is impossible for a free-born citizen of a free
country to put himself in the position of a political subject and
realise fully and properly the sense of humiliation and shame involved
therein. The feeling is unknown to him, and he has not sufficient
imagination to place himself in that position. Why cannot a Britisher
see that every Indian, visiting foreign countries, has to hang his head
in shame?
British statesmen, politicians, publicists and journalists all talk of
the blessings of British rule in India, of what the British have done
there in establishing peace and order, in making railways and canals, in
imparting education, in stimulating trade, in administering impartial
justice, in fostering industries, in organising the postal and the
telegraph systems, and in opening the country to the world. They cannot
see why the Indian should wish to get rid of the British. The British
have done so much for him, have brought civilisation to his door, have
raised him from “obscurity,” have given him their language and their
institutions, have opened to him the gates of knowledge, have provided
for him security from both domestic and foreign dangers, and have put
him on the road to ever-increasing prosperity and “_happiness_.” Let us
assume for the moment that all this is wholly true, but can it
compensate for the loss of manhood which is involved in political
bondage? Chains are chains, no matter if gilded. Can the wealth of the
whole world be put in the scales over against liberty and honour? What
would it avail if one were to get the sovereignty of the world but lose
his own soul? A subject people has no soul, just as a slave can have
none. Subjects and slaves are not even the masters of their bodies.
An Indian leader, a high-class Bengali lawyer, who is now one of His
Majesty’s judges in the High Court of Calcutta, once said, while
presiding over a conference in Bengal before he became a judge, that a
subject people could have no politics. A people who have no politics
have no soul. A man without a soul is a mere animal. A nation without a
soul is only a herd of “dumb driven cattle,” and such are the Indians of
the present day. It is a base calumny, and a mean falsehood to say in
reply, that they have been so from time immemorial, that they have
never been free, that they have never cared who ruled over them, that
they have never been patriotic, or that patriotism and a feeling of
nationality are new growths due to contact with the West, and that the
Indian people do not sympathise with the aspirations of the
nationalists. Of course, there are some people in India, as elsewhere,
who, through rolling in wealth, living in purple, inheriting long
pedigrees, carrying high titles, bearing proud names, seem to be happy
and contented under the existing conditions. For them, the security from
molestation they have, the freedom of enjoyment they possess, the
comforts and luxuries which they command, the pleasure which is born of
inactive, lazy, parasitic, debauched lives, is all in all. Any change
may bring all this edifice down; it may spell ruin to them and their
children. The immunity from work, which they at present enjoy, may all
disappear by a change of political conditions. The British Government
has guaranteed them not only their possessions, but also their right to
live and thrive on the ignorance, the superstitions, and the mental and
moral slavery of their followers and subjects.
Such are some of the Nabobs and Maharajas of India. Many of them might
have to cut stones and make roads to earn their living, if they were not
protected by British bayonets. Their harems consisting of numerous
innocent women doomed to life-long imprisonment, to lives of barrenness
and shame and emptiness, their big cellars full of the choicest and the
oldest of whiskies, brandies, and champagnes, their stables full of the
swiftest and the noblest of race horses, their drawing rooms decorated
with gold, silver, silk and velvet, all that money can buy and art can
embellish, their dining tables laden with all inviting dishes and
delicacies which the best paid _cuisine_ in the world can produce, their
ability to travel in special trains and gorgeous saloons, and to command
a new woman and a new wine every day of the year, and to move in the
most fashionable circles,--all depend on the continuance of the existing
conditions. For them, this is life. They do not know what honour is. For
them, struggle, strife, duty, political change, mean a dislocation of
everything dear to them. It would be practical death to them. Yes, it
may be true that such people do not care for political liberty, for
freedom, for independence, for patriotism. For them, their present life
is bliss and they do not want to be molested either by the politician or
by the patriot.
But their number is not large. Some of the ruling chiefs may not speak
out, but in their heart of hearts many of them feel the humiliation of
the situation. A Maharana of Udeypore may not be in a position to assert
his independence and take the chance of losing his State, but even _he_
may not consent to walk behind a Curzon in a coronation procession in
honour of the King of England and the foreign Emperor of India. A
Gaekwar of Baroda may be powerless as against the British army and
British navy, but even he, in a moment of exalted self-respect, may
forget to make an abject obeisance to the King of England. Such men and
even many of less worth and nobility, cannot put up with a Lord Curzon.
It is good for their sense of self-respect and also for the country at
large to have a Curzon for a viceroy. It reminds them, as nothing else
perhaps would, of their degradation and fall.
It is very interesting to observe how the Indian Chiefs writhe and fret
and foam when a Curzon threatens their privileges, tries to limit their
freedom, and otherwise trespasses upon their rights. It is then that a
wave of shame sweeps over them and touches some lingering sense of
self-respect and pride in their hearts. But the infamous, lazy,
debauched lives which some of them have led make it impossible for them
to maintain this indignation long enough for it to goad them to any
sustained effort to throw away their thraldom and assert their manhood.
The injecting of an electric current may temporarily revive a dead body,
may produce some kind of activity even in a parasite, but it cannot put
_life_ into it.
But after all, as compared with the number of people who are alive to
the sense of self-respect and honour, the parasitical crowned heads or
priests or noblemen (Nabobs, Rajas, and Maharajas) are only a few. They
are a mere drop in the ocean, though they possess the means of keeping
themselves in the public eye and of having their trumpets blown and
praises sung by the press and from the platform both in India and in
England. The British too are interested in keeping them at the front, in
parading their loyalty and devotion to the empire, and in magnifying
their importance and greatness.
There are few among the nobility of India who command any real respect
either from the educated section of their countrymen in general, or even
from their own subjects and dependents. Of course there are noble
exceptions to this statement. And yet it is true that a large number of
ruling chiefs are mere figureheads in their states. Their policy is
either dictated or guided or controlled by the British Resident or the
British Political Agent through his creatures or through persons, who,
though not quite his creatures, are afraid of his displeasure. In some
states, the Resident interferes in almost everything, and all the
details of administration pass through his fingers either directly or
indirectly. In others, the Resident watches the administration from a
distance and lays down the broad outlines of policy. There are few
native states, their number may be counted on one’s fingers, where the
ruling chief has a will or capacity to really assert himself, to stand
on his dignity, and to maintain his independence. Even the most
enlightened and the most independent Prince is compelled to consult the
wishes of the Resident and the wishes of the Government of India as
expressed by him.
_Loyalty of Ruling Chiefs_. It would be quite wrong to conclude, as some
people do, that all the ruling chiefs are sincerely loyal to the British
supremacy, or that their acts displaying loyalty are free and
independent expressions of their minds or their will.[41] Some of them
are devoid of any real sense of honour, or are lost to it by habitual
submission or habitual debauchery. They are quite contented to be left
alone to enjoy. There are others, however, who would be only too glad to
throw away the British yoke, if they could only see a way of
successfully doing so. They are not prepared to take their chances. It
should be distinctly understood, therefore, that the Nationalist Party
does not count upon their help or sympathy. A good many perhaps
sympathise with the party of violence, and chuckle at their successes,
but none of them dare do anything to help them in any shape. A few
openly sympathise with the “constitutional” party, but even they cannot
and would not give them any monetary or other kind of help as it might
easily be construed into an act of unfriendliness towards the Paramount
Power, and might mar their relations with that.
The smaller fry, the wealthy banker, the great landlord, the Bengal
Zemindar, and the Oudh Talukdar, are almost completely in the hands of
the British officials. The sympathy of the British officials benefits
them materially. Their antipathy or dislike or aversion would ruin them
financially. The British collector or magistrate holds complete sway
over their souls. They would rather go out of their way to propitiate
him and win his pleasure, than risk the slightest suspicion of an
independent attitude, or of any conduct which even by stretch of
imagination could be construed into independence. Yet there are some,
in Bengal at least, who do sympathise with, and give active help to, the
Revolutionary Party. There are others who sympathise with, and give
occasional monetary assistance to, the Constitutional Party. The latter
class does not count for much in Indian politics, and anything said or
done by them cannot be said to represent the attitude of any very large
section of the Indian community.
Men of wealth and men of means have nowhere led the revolutionary or the
political movements in the history of freedom in this world of ours.
Their interests as a class are opposed to change. Sometimes there does
arise from among their ranks a man of courage, a man endowed with an
adventurous nature or fired by ambition, who leads the movement for
change, in the hope of either establishing a dynasty, or otherwise
leaving a name in history; and sometimes one comes across a wealthy man
who, out of regard for principle, and from conviction, is a patriot, and
joins the patriotic party deliberately, and risks his possessions and
position; but such instances are always few and far between in all
countries.
_Middle Class Desires Political Freedom._ The desire for political
independence, the sense of shame and humiliation born of being a subject
race, of being a political pariah, must from the nature of things be
confined largely to the educated middle class. Even the masses could not
be expected to take a very deep interest in the movement for political
independence. Their ignorance, their illiteracy, but most of all the
hard struggle they have to carry on for barest existence, prevents them
from devoting time or thought to the question. Their time and thought
are given to the fight against hunger and want, against disease and
distress, against misery and wretchedness. They are easy to please. A
slight act of kindness or of charity or of consideration makes them
happy. They are easily confused on fundamental issues. This is true even
in Europe and America, where the common people have received the
benefits of school education, and where they have had a training in
democratic thought for a century or more. The masses are easily led
astray by governments or by classes in league with governments. In every
country it is the educated middle class that leads the movement for
political independence or for political progress. It is the strength of
their convictions, their earnestness, their capacity to suffer for their
convictions, their willingness to sacrifice themselves for principles
and for truth, coupled with the extent and amount of their influence
over the masses, which determines the fate of the movement for liberty.
A movement of that nature never dies. “The battle of freedom once begun
is carried on from father to son,” is as good to-day as it ever was. Yet
the movement may be delayed, or its issue may be confused, or the
contrary, according to the wisdom or the folly of its advocates, or the
amount of earnestness they put in it, or the amount of influence they
have over the masses, as well as by the wisdom or shortsightedness or
cunning of those who oppose it. All the world over, progressive
political movements have had vicissitudes of fortune, stages of
development, times of reactions, defeats and reverses. Governments
always begin by ignoring such movements. Then comes a period of
ridicule, followed by repression. But their efforts are futile. The food
on which the tender plant of liberty thrives is the blood of the martyr.
The rope of the hangman, the axe of the executioner, or the shot of the
gunner, extinguishes individual life, only to make the desire for
corporate life keener and stronger. Banishments, deportations,
imprisonments, tortures and confiscations, are the usual weapons of the
tyrant to strangle liberty, to extirpate those that are after it, but
they have so far proved ineffectual to kill it. Conciliation is
sometimes more successful than repression, but conciliation delayed or
concessions forced have been proved to be worse than useless. The
Nationalist Movement in India has passed through some of these stages,
and is passing through the rest. We presume it will be of some interest
and use to trace its development, and to make a retrospective review of
its successes and failures so far.[42]
CHAPTER II
INDIA FROM 1757 TO 1857 A. D.
Aurangzeb, the 6th Mogul Emperor of India, died in 1707 A. D. Within
fifty years of his death, the Mogul sovereignty in India was reduced to
its last gasp. The seeds sown by his bigotry, fanaticism, and suspicious
nature were ripening and bringing to his successors a harvest of
dissensions and discords, of rebellions and revolts. In the North as
well as the South, forces had been generated which threatened the end of
the Mogul rule. The martyrdom of Guru Teg Bahadur, the Sikh Guru, who
was foully murdered at Delhi, where he had gone on a mission of peace,
had sunk deep into the hearts of his followers, and his son, Guru Govind
Singh, was organising forces which were destined to supplant Mogul rule
in the Land of the Five Rivers.[43] In the Deccan, Sivaji’s[44] standard
and throne had become the rallying point of the fighting forces of
Southern India.
By 1757 A. D., the Sikhs in the Punjab and the Mahrattas in the Deccan
had succeeded in undermining the foundations of the Mogul rule, which
was now steadily disintegrating. The Nizam of Hyderabad, and the Nawab
of Mysore had asserted their independence and were disputing the
mastery of the Deccan with the Mahrattas. Similarly the Nabobs of Bengal
and Oudh owed only nominal allegiance to the King of Delhi. The greater
part of the peninsula, Central India, was under the Mahrattas.
_Conflict of French and English in India._ The political fate of India
was hanging in the balance, when a power arose to take advantage of the
disturbed conditions of things. The French and the English both entered
the arena, taking different sides, and began to shuffle their cards.
They sold their help to the highest bidder, and at the conclusion of
every game, or even in the midst of it, changed partners as often as
they could in the interest of their respective masters. The first
military achievement of note, which gave decisive advantage to the
British, was at the battle of Plassey in 1757. That practically gave
them the key to the sovereignty of India. From 1757 to 1857 was the
century of struggle, both military and diplomatic. The one end kept in
view was the making of the Empire and the amassing of wealth.
_How British Rule in India was Established._ Hindus were played against
the Mohammedans, and vice versa, states and principalities against
states and principalities, Jats against Rajputs, and Rajputs against
Jats, Mahrattas against both, Rohillas against Bundelas, and Bundelas
against Pathans, and so on. Treaties were made and broken without the
least scruple, sides were taken and changed and again changed without
the least consideration of honour or faith. Thrones were purchased and
sold to the highest bidder. Military support was purchased and given
like merchandise. Servants were induced to betray their masters,
soldiers to desert flags, without any regard to the morality of the
steps taken. Pretences were invented and occasions sought for involving
states and principalities in wars and trouble. Laws of all kinds,
national and international, moral and religious, were all for the time
thrown into the discard. Neither minors nor widows received any
consideration; the young and the old were treated alike. The one object
in view was to loot, to plunder, and to make an empire. Everything was
subordinated to that end. One has only to read Mill and Wilson’s
“History of British India,” Burke’s “Impeachment of Warren Hastings,”
Torrens’ “Our Empire in Asia,” Wilson’s “Sword and Ledger,” Bell’s
“Annexation of the Punjab” to find out that the above is a bare and
moderate statement of truth.
_Methods of Consolidation of British India._ Policies (fiscal,
industrial, religious, educational) were all discussed and formulated
from one point of view, viz., the establishing of British authority, the
consolidation of British rule, and pecuniary gain to the East India
Company. If one were to pile up “scraps of paper” which the British
destroyed or disregarded in the making of their Indian empire, one could
fill a decent sized box therewith. The administrations of Wellesley and
Dalhousie alone would furnish sufficient material for the purpose. We
do not know of anything in Indian history which could be compared with
the deeds of this century. It was a century of consistent, prolonged,
and deliberate spoliation, subtle and scientific sometimes, in the
pursuance of which all laws of morality, humanity, and fairness were
tossed aside, and the object in view was persistently and doggedly kept
in view and achieved. It was not the doing of this man or that man, but,
with some noble exceptions, of the whole body of Administrators sent by
the East India Company to manage their affairs in the East. The policies
and doings of the various rulers that were sent from England to
administer the affairs of India differed in degree only.
_British Public Ignorant of Facts._ It is true that the British people
as a whole had no notion of what was going on in India. They were as
ignorant of it, then, as they are to-day of the doings of their
countrymen in that vast “continent.” It sufficed for them to know that
their countrymen were carving an empire there, conquering provinces and
bringing millions of alien people under British rule; as it suffices for
them to know to-day that they have an empire in India. India brought
them wealth and material prosperity. Individuals became fabulously rich
and their wealth filtered downward and filled the whole British nation.
The nation became rich by the dividends of the East India Company, and
by the enormous profits which British manufacturers and British traders
made by the fact of British supremacy in India. That was enough for the
nation. Even when their moral sense was at times shocked by certain
disclosures, which by chance found their way into the press or into the
literature of the country, it was soon calmed and set at rest by the
speeches made by the statesmen at the helm of affairs, who explained
them away, excused their authors on political grounds, and laid down in
high, grandiloquent terms that the general aim of British rule in India
was beneficent, and that this aim was steadily being pursued. The
impeachment of Warren Hastings by Burke should have opened the eyes of
the British public as to what was happening in India; but the eventual
acquittal of that famous pro-consul set matters at rest. And Warren
Hastings was by no means the worst offender. What happened then is
happening every day in India, only in a different way and on a different
scale.
Yet I am not disposed to criticise the British public. Democracies have
no time for the critical examination of the affairs of other countries
and other people. They have their own trouble, enough and to spare. They
look to material benefits, and their imagination is fired and their mind
is thrilled by the fact of so many millions being under their rule. In
the case of the British, both combined make them proud of their
countrymen, who rule and administer India in their name. They have no
reason to be critical. Human nature is human nature after all. Ordinary
human nature is not inclined to be critical at gains, especially when it
does not directly feel the iniquity of the methods by which those gains
are made. But this is only by the way.
To continue the thread of my narrative: the history of British
“conquest” of India from 1757 to 1857 A. D. is a continuous record of
political charlatanry, political faithlessness, and political
immorality. It was a triumph of British “diplomacy.” The British
founders of the Indian empire had the true imperial instincts of
empire-builders. They cared little for the means which they employed.
Moral theorists cannot make empires. Empires can only be built by
unscrupulous men of genius, men of daring and dash, making the best of
opportunities that come to their hands, caring little for the wrongs
which they thereby inflict on others, or the dishonesties or treacheries
or breaches of faith involved therein. Empires can only be conceived by
Napoleons, Bismarcks, Disraelis, Richelieus, and Machiavellis. They can
only be built by Clives, Hastings, Wellesleys, and Dalhousies. Burkes
and Gladstones cannot do that work, nor can Morleys, though they may
connive at others doing it, and might accept it as _fait accompli_.
_Conquest of India Diplomatic, not Military._ The British conquest of
India was not a military conquest in any sense of the term. They could
not conquer India except by playing on the fears of some and the hopes
of others, and by seeking and getting the help of Indians, both moral
and material. The record is as black as it could be; but nothing
succeeds like success, and all that is largely a forgotten page so far
as the present generation of Indians is concerned. Only one feels
disposed to smile when one hears of Indian nationalists being charged in
British-Indian courts with attempting to subvert “the government
established by law.” One is inclined to ask “By what law?” and “Who made
that law?”
_The Great Indian Mutiny of 1857._ We have, however, referred to this
story in these few words only to introduce the great Indian mutiny of
1857, as the first Indian political movement of the nineteenth century.
_The movement was national as well as political. The underlying causes
and the contributory forces were many._ The union of the Hindus and
Mohammedans, the thoroughness of the organisation which preceded the
mutiny, the stubbornness with which the mutineers fought, and the
comparatively few treacheries that characterised the mutinous campaign,
all point to the same conclusion.
The mutiny, however, failed because the people on the whole had no faith
in the constructive capacity of the mutineers. The mutineers had no
doubt agreed to postpone the question of the constructive ends in view,
until after they had turned out the British, but the people could not.
The people’s patience had been exhausted by the military activities of
the preceding century and the accompanying disorder and anarchy, and
they saw before them the possibility of a recurrence of the same in the
case of success attending the arms of the mutineers. They hated the
British; the Indian nobility and aristocracy, as well as the Indian
people, hated them. They sympathised with the mutineers; but they
helped them only half-heartedly. They had no faith in them. The ruling
families of India, the aristocracy and the nobility, were perhaps more
dreaded and hated by the people than were the British. There was no one
to rally them to one standard.
_How the Mutiny was Put Down._ Here again it was British “diplomacy”
that saved the British situation. The British rallied to their support
the newly born aristocracy of the Punjab,--the Sikhs. The Sikhs had been
persecuted and oppressed by the Mohammedans. They were not in a mood to
look favourably at the chance of Mohammedan supremacy being
re-established in India. They had had enough of the “Turk,” as they
called every Mohammedan; and they threw the whole weight of their
recently gathered virility on the side of the British. They were told
and they believed, that in crushing the Mohammedan power, they were
revenging themselves on the slayers of Guru Teg Bahadur, the oppressors
of Guru Govind Singh, and the murderers of his sons. It was the thought
of Sirhind and the incidents associated with the name of that cursed
place,[45] that goaded them to the destruction of the last chance of
Mohammedan supremacy in India.
The mutiny failed, but its course showed with what intensity the
mutineers hated the British. The Indians are a very kind-hearted
people; they would not injure even an ant, much less a human being, if
they could help it, but some of them were guilty of the most cruel
excesses during the mutiny. The British, too, in their turn did not
spare the Indians in any way either during the mutiny or after it.
Innocent and guilty alike were placed before the cannon and shot in
lots.[46] In their marches through the country, British soldiers
tortured men, women, and children,[47] and sometimes hung their heads
or carcasses on the trees.[48] Both sides vied with each other in their
cruelties.
The victors have immortalised the reprisals (or say, the iniquities) of
the vanquished by building permanent memorials on the spots where they
were perpetrated; their own, they have forgotten, and so have perhaps
the descendants of those who were the objects thereof, though they are
recorded in history.
The impression which a visit to these memorials leaves on the mind of an
English visitor can be better realised by the following extract from an
account published in _The Outlook_ (the English journal) on the 3rd of
April, 1915, over the signature of one F. G. A. Speaking of the mutiny
memories and monuments of Lucknow and Cawnpore, the writer remarks:
“Their mutiny memories are quite distinct, as are the impressions they
leave on the pilgrim to these shrines of heroism and devilry. The
battered ruins of Lucknow, testifying to a heroism so splendid as to rob
even death of its sting, bring an inspiration that is almost joyous.
Every crumbling gateway and every gloomy cellar has its tale of heroic
endurance and magnificent defence, and the final relief of the
beleaguered garrison wrote such a finis to the story as erased much of
its earlier bitterness....
“None of this forgiveness is conceivable in those who visit Cawnpore.
Even the sculptured angel over the unspeakable Well bears, on one
profile at any rate, an expression of stern condemnation that holds out
no promise of pardon. The atmosphere of historic Cawnpore is one of
haunting horror and a sadness that will not pass with the years. Time
seems powerless to heal this rancour. I care not whether the pilgrim
wanders through the beautiful Memorial Gardens (in which, significantly,
no native is allowed to enter), feasting his eyes on the _blaze
Bougainvillæa_, or resting them in the shade of the peepul and the
banyan, or whether he lingers in the strangely Italian-looking Memorial
Church and reads the roll of honour that fills a series of mural
tablets; everywhere his soul will be filled with gloom and will cry for
eternal vengeance on the authors of the massacre and on those who threw
the dying with the dead into the awful blackness of the pit. These
memories hold nothing but hate and horror, without one redeeming chapter
to leaven them with comfort or forgiveness.”[49]
The English are mistaken if they think that a reading of the history of
the mutiny and the excesses and cruelties indulged in by the British
does not excite similar feeling in the minds of the Indians. The
British can express their feelings freely. The Indians cannot; their
feelings must be repressed.
It would, however, be better for both parties to try to wipe off the
past in a spirit of mutual trust and mutual good will, which is only
possible if England were to cease to pursue a policy of exploiting India
and to establish her connection with India on a basis of equality,
honesty and justice. That can only be done by treating her as a partner
in the Empire and not as a mere “dependency” or “possession.”
CHAPTER III
INDIA FROM 1857 TO 1905
PART I--FROM 1857 TO 1885
The mutiny was quelled. The ringleaders among the mutineers were killed,
hanged or shot, and with them a lot of those who were innocent. Many of
the rank and file were pardoned, as no government could shoot or hang
all those who had taken part in the mutiny. Their number was legion. The
British Empire in India was saved, but the East India Company was gone.
The system of open pillage was ended. The crown assumed the direct
government of India. The Queen’s Proclamation and the policy of “mercy
and reconciliation” inaugurated by Canning calmed the country.
_The Bengalee Babu._ The only parts of the country which had received
some education on modern lines were the provinces of Bengal, Bombay and
Madras. The number of educated men even in these provinces was small. In
the work of settlement that followed the mutiny, these educated men
found ample scope for their ambition. Men who knew English had the
advantage over those who did not. Men with a knowledge of English were
few. The posts requiring a knowledge of that language were many.
Consequently, the English-knowing Indians were in great demand and
secured ample salaries to make them “happy and loyal.” The
English-knowing Bengalees spread over the whole of Northern India,
lately the scene of mutiny, and materially helped in bringing about
settled conditions of life. They were the pioneers in every department
of governmental activity and were looked to, both by the rulers and the
people, for advice and guidance. The Bengalee is a sentimental being.
His position under the Government filled him with pride and his
gratitude and loyalty were overflowing. The British also liked him
because he was useful, intelligent, keen, shrewd, ready to serve, and
willing to be of use. He relieved the British officer of much of his
intellectual work, and left him ample time for play and rest. Many a
departmental head ruled the country with the brain of the “Bengalee
Babu.” The Bengalee Babu worshipped the Feringhee[50] as _Mai Bap_,[51]
and began to imitate him in his tastes. He began to live as the
Britisher lived; English life, English manners and customs, became his
ideal. Gradually he became very fond of English literature and began to
think as an Englishman thought. The Bengalees were the first to send
their sons to England for their education and to compete for the I. C.
S. (Indian Civil Service) and the I. M. S. (Indian Medical Service).
They with the Parsees were the first to qualify for the English bar. In
England they lived in an atmosphere of freedom.
[Illustration: RAM MOHAN ROY]
With freedom in drinking and eating they also learned freedom of thought
and expression.
The first generation of the Bengalees was thus Anglicised through and
through. They looked down upon their own religion; they thought poorly
of Indian society. They knew nothing of their own past history, and they
glorified in being “Sahibs.”[52] Some of them became Christians. Alarmed
at this transformation, Ram Mohan Roy and a few others resolved to stem
the tide. For a time they succeeded, but only partially. Be it said to
the credit of the Bengalees that a fairly good number refused to be
carried down-stream, and in spite of their English education stuck to
their own religion and their own customs. They saw a good deal in their
society which needed reform; but they declined to make sweeping changes
and would not imitate. These veterans laid the foundations of the modern
Bengalee literature. They wanted to pour their knowledge, derived from a
study of English language and literature, into their own mother tongue,
and in order to enlarge the vocabulary of the latter for their work,
they had to study Sanskrit. Thus in spite of the Anglification of the
first generation of Bengalees, there grew up a class of men imbued with
nationalistic tendencies. Ram Mohan Roy, the founder of Brahmo Samaj,
was the first nation-builder of Modern India.
For a time the field that was opened for the employment of
English-educated Bengalees in Upper India (in the then N. W. Provinces,
in the Punjab, in Behar, in Central India, in Rajputana, even in Sindh)
checked the growth of these tendencies. The feeling of gratitude and
contentment was supreme. The Bengalee was indispensable in almost every
department. The reins of practical management were mostly in Bengalee
hands, whether it was a court of justice, or a Revenue Commissioner’s
office, or a commissariat depot, of an adjutant’s camp, or the
department of land survey, or education. The heads of departments were
always English, but the heads of ministerial establishments were
generally Bengalees. The English could not do without them. The former
did not know the language of the country, nor did they know the
character of the people. The Bengalees were thus an absolute necessity.
With the spread of a knowledge of the English language, the first
generation of English-knowing Indians in every province came to occupy
an important position. While the old-fashioned Pandit or Moulvie sulked,
the English-knowing Hindu or Mohammedan basked in sunshine and
flourished. The British laid down policies and gave orders; the
English-knowing Indian saw that they were carried out. They thus came to
enjoy the confidence of their masters and imitated their vices.
But what was most important was that they began to think like their
English masters. The English read their newspapers; so the Indians
started their newspapers. The English met in clubs and churches. So the
Indians started Samajes and Sabhas and debating clubs. For a time the
English-knowing Indian prided himself in imitating his master. He took
his dress, he took his cheroot and pipe, and also his cup and beefsteak.
He began to live in houses built and furnished in the English way. He
detested Indian life and took pride in being Anglicised. Everything
Indian was odious in his eyes. The Indians were barbarians; their
religion was a bundle of superstitions; they were dirty people; their
customs and manners were uncivilised; they were a set of narrow-minded
bigots who did not know that man was born free. So the English set the
fashion for them in everything. If their English masters went to church
and read the Bible, they did the same. If the English masters indulged
in free-thinking, they did the same. They wanted to be like their
English masters in every way. Their ambition, however, soon met a check.
They could equal the British in drinking and in free-thinking, but they
could not aspire to his position and place in the government of the
country. Some of them decided to try this in the case of their sons.
They sent them to England. A few passed the Indian Civil Service and the
Indian Medical Service examinations, others became barristers. Both
found out by bitter experience that, however able and clever they might
be, whatever their intellectual acquirements, no matter if they were
Christians, or semi-Christians, or free-thinkers, there was a limit to
their aspirations both in service and out of it. That was the first
eye-opener.
In the meantime, the thoughtful among the Indians, who had not taken to
English manners, were anxiously watching the flow of the current. They
saw the disintegrating and denationalising forces that were at work;
they saw that their national edifice was crumbling down brick by brick;
everything which they had valued and held sacred was being devastated
and treated with contempt and reduced to ashes. Their own children were
deserting the old banners to which innumerable generations before them
had clung with love and reverence. They saw all this; they were sorry;
they wept tears of blood; but they could do nothing. They were powerless
before the tide. They tried palliatives, but failed. What was fatal to
their pious wishes was that they could not themselves resist the fruits
which English education brought in the shape of emoluments and rank and
position. They wanted these fruits without the thorns. They soon found
that that was impossible, and so they gave up the struggle in despair
and became reconciled to the inevitable. What they failed to achieve
was, however, brought about by a combination of circumstances which we
will briefly enumerate below.
_Forces Resisting Denationalisation._ 1. The English education imparted
in schools and colleges established by the British, and the Christian
missions (in some instances supplemented by Indian agencies), opened the
gates of Western thought and Western literature to the mass of educated
Indians.
2. Some of the British teachers and professors who taught in the schools
and colleges consciously and unconsciously inspired their pupils with
ideas of freedom as well as nationalism.
[Illustration: SWAMI VIVEKANANDA]
3. The over-zeal of the missionaries in their attacks upon Indian
religions and Indian thought suggested to Indian minds a closer and
deeper study of their own religion and thought.
4. In this they were materially helped by the awakening of Europeans to
the thought of the East. The labours of the European savants and their
appreciation of Eastern thought kindled a fresh fire in the bosom of
Hindus and Mohammedans.
5. The writings of Ram Mohan Roy, Debendra Nath Tagore, Rajendra Lal
Mitra, in Bengal, those of Ranade, Vishnu Pandit and others in
Mahrashtra, of Swami Dayanand and Sir Syed Ahmad Khan in Upper India, of
Madam Blavatsky and the other Theosophists in Madras, brought about a
new awakening, which afterwards received an even stronger impetus from
the writings and speeches of Mrs. Annie Besant and Swami Vivekananda.
This was on the religious and social side mainly, but its national
character was unmistakable.
_Political Disappointments._ The current produced by these causes met
another current, which was generated by political disappointments. The
aspirations of the educated Indian had met a check. The few successes
gained by Indians in the Indian Civil Service examinations alarmed the
British, and they sought for means of keeping them out. One of the means
adopted was to require that the candidates should not be more than 19 to
21 years of age at the time of examination, an age so young as made it
impossible for Indians to come over to England and successfully compete.
This raised a howl and cry in Bengal, and the rest of the country
followed Bengal. Then came other measures like the Vernacular Press Act
of Lord Lytton, and the remission of cotton duties,[53] and so on. The
generation educated in England had some experience of the methods of
political agitation in that country, and they soon began to organise on
those lines. Political agitation on modern lines thus became a fact of
Indian life, and English-educated Indians began to talk of liberty and
self-government.
Thus were laid the foundations of the national awakening, of which so
much has been heard of late. The methods of the English Government in
India, their educational system, their press, their laws, their courts,
their railways, their telegraphs, their post-offices, their steamers,
had as much to do with it as the native love of country, of religion and
nation, which had received a temporary check by the crushing defeat of
the mutineers in 1857, and by the Indian people’s too ready acquiescence
in the political and social domination of the foreigner which ensued.
This time, however, the movement was brought into existence by those who
had received their inspiration from Europe. Within less than twenty
years after the great mutiny, the Nationalist Movement of India was
born, almost at the same time and place at which Lord Lytton was
presiding at the great Imperial Durbar, and announcing that the great
Queen of England was assuming the title of Empress of India. The Durbar
reduced the chiefs of India from the position of allies to that of
feudatories, but it quite unconsciously and against the intentions of
its authors raised in theory the status of the Indian subjects of the
Queen to that of citizens of the British Empire. Little did the authors
of that Durbar realise the inner significance of the move they were
making. That Durbar, we may say, marked the beginning of the movement
which filled the educated Indian with the idea of obtaining his rightful
place in the Empire. He became articulate and began to assert himself.
He was no longer satisfied with the minor positions which he held in the
Government of India. He claimed his country as his own, and raised the
cry of “India for the Indians.” His cry gained strength when he found
that the India which he looked down upon in the fifties or sixties, the
system of thought and life which he considered barbarous, primitive and
old fashioned, and the past which he despised, were after all not so bad
as he had thought.
The latter was the contribution of the Brahmo Samaj, the Theosophical
Society, the Society for the Resuscitation of Sanskrit Literature, the
Bengal Sahitya Parishad, the Maharastra Sabha, the Arya Samaj, the
Sanatan Sabhas and other societies of a similar nature. The Bengali and
the Mahratta writers, who had carried on researches in Indian history
and unearthed valuable documents and written in their respective
vernaculars, contributed materially to the growth of this feeling. The
Theosophical Society began to praise and justify every Hindu institution
and to find science in every custom. In fact, for a time, the
thoughtful began to fear lest the pendulum was swinging the other way
and we were in the midst of a wave of reaction.
_Lord Ripon._ India was in this state of fermentation, religious, social
and political, when Lord Ripon was appointed to the viceroyalty of
India. Lord Ripon was an exceedingly kind man and commanded a broad
outlook. He was very lucky in having come on the heels of an exceedingly
unpopular Viceroy like Lord Lytton. Lord Lytton was a Tory of pronounced
imperial tendencies. Under the inspiration of Disraeli, he had by an
unworthy trick on the ruling chiefs of India changed their position from
that of allies to that of feudatories; he had gagged the vernacular
press by his press legislation; he had blundered into a bloody Afghan
war and was responsible for several other reactionary measures. Lord
Ripon started by undoing most of what Lord Lytton had done. He repealed
the Vernacular Press Act, which at once set the seal of popular approval
on his administration. The most important of his achievements were,
however, constructive. He formulated a policy of local government, and
thus laid the foundations of representative institutions in India; he
substituted merit for patronage and jobbery in filling public services,
by organising competitive examinations for filling a certain number of
posts in the higher branches of the subordinate services; last but not
least, he resolved to so alter the criminal law as to place the European
and the Indian on an equal footing in the matter of trials.
All this aroused the bitterest anger of the Anglo-Indian officialdom.
The Anglo-Indians opposed every one of these measures. They ridiculed
the idea of introducing any measure of local self-government in India,
and predicted that that must be the beginning of the end. They called
the measure rash and ill-advised and impracticable. The natives were
incapable of self-government, they said. Their religious and social
differences made it impossible. Officialdom was equally opposed to the
filling of any posts in government service by open competition. This
would bring in the “Babu,” and the “Babu” they had now begun to hate and
look down upon. The “Babu” was a “low-caste hybrid,” who wrote bad
English and talked of liberty and equality, who lacked in qualities of
docility and submissiveness, which had so far characterised persons
appointed by selection. This interfered materially with the prestige of
the Lord of the District, as people could now get “high” appointments
under the Government independently of him. Why should the people respect
him any more? His was a government by prestige, and measures like these
of Lord Ripon would destroy it. So prophesied the heaven-born “white
Brahmins.” But the worst offence of Lord Ripon was the “Ilbert
Bill,”[54] which aimed at placing the European and the Indian on an
equal footing in the eyes of the law, and would remove the disabilities
of the Indian Magistrate in the matter of the trial of the white men.
“Shall we be judged by the Nigger?” “shall he send us to jail?” “shall
he be put in authority over us? Never! It is impossible! Better that
British rule in India should end than that we be obliged to submit to
such humiliating laws.” The whole tribe of the Anglo-Indians (official
and non-official) opposed the measure most vehemently, and attacked Lord
Ripon as never viceroy was attacked before by his own countrymen in
India. They called him insulting names, passed resolutions condemning
his administration wholesale, proposed his recall before the expiration
of his period of office, and did everything possible to make him feel
that they hated him.
His unpopularity among the Anglo-Indians made him popular among the
Indians. The press and the platform sang his praise. The country was
ablaze with excitement. Never before under British rule had the country
been so enthusiastic in political matters. In Lord Ripon, they thought,
they had found a political Messiah. They gave him addresses, unharnessed
the horses from his carriage, in many places, and otherwise showed their
love and regard for him, which exasperated the European community beyond
measure. The Europeans saw in all this a menace to their power, and the
beginning of the end of imperial despotism in India. They thought they
were on the verge of losing India. In Lord Ripon the Indians recognised
the first British viceroy who was prepared to make an honest attempt at
giving effect to the pledges given and the promises made by Queen
Victoria in her famous proclamation of 1858, when the administration of
India passed into the hands of the regular British Government. Lord
Ripon lost the battle on the particular measure which had aroused the
anger of the European community more than anything else, viz., his
proposed amendment of the Criminal Procedure Code. A compromise was made
by which the principle of the bill was really abandoned. But he had
raised hopes and aspiration which were, so to say, the beginning of
political life in India. On the expiration of his term of office, the
Indians agitated for an extension of his term, which was not granted.
However, they gave him a farewell which still rings in the ears of the
older generation of Indians who took part in it, in Calcutta, in Bombay,
in Benares, and other places.
Lord Ripon left a permanent impression on the minds of the Indians. Lord
Hardinge has won a great deal of popularity, but it is doubtful if he is
so universally loved and honoured as Lord Ripon was.
_Lord Dufferin._ However, the point of the story is, that when Lord
Ripon left India, the country was in a state of perturbation. There was
a great deal of tension still lingering between the Indian and the
European communities. The fire was still smouldering when Lord Dufferin
took charge of the office of viceroyalty. He had been brought up in
diplomacy. To him diplomacy was like mother’s milk. He was a diplomat by
birth as well as by training. His mission was to appease the anger of
the governing class and in a quiet way to undo what Lord Ripon had done.
But he thought that perhaps it might be dangerous to go at it straight.
The cry of political liberty and political equality had been raised. It
was impossible to satisfy it; yet it might be dangerous to strangle it
by force. It was impossible to revive the Vernacular Press Act of Lord
Lytton. It was impossible to stifle political life which had sprung up
in the atmosphere created by Lord Ripon’s policy, and which was making a
rather precocious growth. The more it was opposed, ridiculed and
despised, the more it thrived. So he decided to guide it and to make it
as innocuous as it could be without rousing the suspicions of those who
were to be the tools.