# Young India (1916)/Introduction

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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 sub-divided 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.”
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 brightside 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—a retired Indian Civil Servant by no means partial to India 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!”
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.” 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. 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. 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 cen​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, in Bengal, where the returned emigrants from Canada landed in order to proceed to their homes in the Punjab. The Gov​ernment 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, and 24 to death. 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—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 Lahoreand a very 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 viru​lent 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 paean 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 Eng​land 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. 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 when the Roman legions left the English shores in order to defend their own coun​try 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 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. 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).
“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 fo 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 ven​ture 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.”
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 unhealthi¬ ness 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”
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 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. 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. 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 Galib, 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 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 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 themselvesm 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. 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. 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.
* ↑ The italics everywhere in the quotation are mine.
* ↑ See Vincent Smith’s “ Early History of India,” third edition, p. 135.
* ↑ Mr. Vincent Smith is always anxious to deprive India of the credit of all her achievements in art and literature.” Indian Historical Studies by Prof. H. D. G. Rawlinson, p. 227.
* ↑ The italics in the above quotation are mine.
* ↑ See also Mr. E. B. Havell’s Ideals of Indian Art, pp. 11-12. Mr. Havell’s conclusion is: “We may see if we have eyes to see, that all India is one in spirit, however diverse in race and in creed.”
* ↑ First Edition, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1905.
* ↑ See footnote to p. 5, of his “Early History of India,” 3rd ed.
* ↑ A town on the Eastern Coast of India.
* ↑ Some of these sentences have been reduced.
* ↑ In 16 cases these sentences have been commuted to lifelong imprisonment not out of mercy as the Viceroy has himself officially pointed out, but in consideration of the evidence.
* ↑ The great mutiny of 1857, of which more hereafter.
* ↑ Six of them have been sentenced to death, 45 to transportation for life, some to imprisonment and some have been acquitted.
* ↑ The italics are mine
* ↑ The italics are mine
* ↑ Some Reflections on the Political Situation in India, by Lajpat Rai, pp. 24-27.
* ↑ The ludicrous extent to which the prohibition to keep and use arms has been carried will be better illustrated by the following incident reported by the Bengalee of Calcutta. “A five year old boy of Munshi Ganj Road, Kidderpore, had a toy pistol purchased for one anna. On the 8th of August last the child was playing with it but could not explode the paper caps. A thirteen year lad showed him how to do it. The boy was at once arrested by a beat constable and marched off to the Wat Ganjthana with the fire arm. The boy was eventually sent up for trial at Alipur and the Court fined him three rupees.”
* ↑ Commenting on the annual report of the issue of licenses the Indian press have made similar statements. The Punjabee says “while the ruffians bent on crime have been able to secure fire arms by foul means, the law abiding section of the community have for the most part continued helpless owing to the difficulties of obtaining licenses for fire arms.” See also Bengalee of the 6th Oct. 1915.
* ↑ The italics are mine.
* ↑ The italics are mine
* ↑ The examinations have not been discontinued but statutory provision has been made for a large proportion of the appointments formerly filled by examination to be now filled by nomination.
* ↑ Mr. Lowes Dickinson, an English Professor who has largely travelled in India, has practically admitted the truth of this remark. (P. 23, An Essay on the Civilisation of India, China, and Japan. See also pp. 27 and 28.)
* ↑ The Pioneer of Allahabad, a semi-official organ of the Anglo-Indians, has in a recent issue said that “The safety of the State is and must be of far greater importance than the rights of the individuals.“
* ↑ The Western Coast.
* ↑ Heavy wooden sticks.
* ↑ A straw mat.
* ↑ The italics are mine.