CHAPTER X
OUR ORIENTAL FUTURE (continued)
On Traitor's Hill the heat of the earlier afternoon was gone. The evening began, the tardy evening of our climate, so unlike that of the tropics, where the day begins suddenly, and the night is sudden too.
In the serene air of that stately prospect every fold and feature in the infinite articulation of London stood out perfectly, so that the volplane of sight sped with ease to the dome of St. Paul's and the towers of Westminster, those divided emblems of division in Church and State. But of the Thames that links them, and in its eastward flow gives to London its only unity, not a trace was to be seen. It was like the hidden path of our future.
For, to lift the purdah of that future, every thought, as it came, added to the conviction and to the certainty that for ourselves the determining trend of destiny lies east. At home, indeed, our problem is the condition of labour; in Europe, our function is to be the refrigerator of the passions of Christendom. But out there we have to face and remedy the old darkening hatred between Occident and Orient, the most dangerous and profound of animosities, and to give life more abundantly to one-fifth of man's species, and to build what the subtle curving tides of Asia shall never sweep away.
We must see, then, plainly what is to be the fourth and last phase of our Asiatic career.
With us Europeans, as already pointed out, between the claims of religion and of the body, nationality has staked out its domain. But it may be said respecting by far the major portion of humanity, and certainly of the Asiatics, that for them this conception of nationality, as the sphere where the impulses of the body, the reasoning of the mind, and the aspirations of the soul can be co-ordinated for the good of humanity, is new. No one more than the oriental has made life bow to religion: no one more than he has made religion bow to life. In the height of his spiritual fervour, in the depth of his materialism, in the satisfaction of his soul by mysticism, in the gratification of his body by luxury, he has surpassed the world. But India never had a citizen. For the saint is not national, or the voluptuary either.
The Asiatic, as we found him, cared for his women, his family, his caste, his co-religionists—in fact for all those whom his senses or his creed recommended, but for his "neighbour" no more than for a dog. In Renan's phrase, there were never Assyrian patriots. This want of public spirit was the reason why India fell so easily into our hands. John Stuart Mill once wrote that our government in India is "not only one of the purest in intention, but one of the most beneficent in act ever known among mankind." So far as history can testify, no native government before our coming was pure in intention or beneficent in act at all. Misereor super turbam—this was what Asia never knew.
Into a world thus constituted came the Englishman. He offered trade—and the Indian traded; order—and the Indian was orderly; prosperity—and the Indian did not decline. But, though he would accept prosperity, he is still not satisfied.
The restless, far-thinking mind of the Asiatic had studied the Englishman very close. It suspected that in the English pharmacopeia was a much more valuable ingredient, some universal specific, some wonder-working potion, freedom. The Asiatic knew, or thought he knew, the Englishman to have made this freedom his divinity. For it appeared that, for the sake of freedom, he was ever losing the world that he had conquered, and was seemingly content to lose it. If India adopted that divinity, she might prosper mightily on the one hand, and, on the other, would be rid of the Englishman in due course. True, freedom is not in her pantheon, but in that countless company of godheads one more or less would not count.
Indian experts have sometimes contended that representative government, and elections, and constitutional procedure, and divisions, are utterly alien and antipathetic to the Indian. But that is open to doubt. Hinduism no more objects to receive all this into its system than a valetudinarian to take a tonic. A parliamentary, an extra, god is welcome. Indeed, a living M.P. has recently been suggested for that position. For Hinduism stocks itself with theogonies. It slips a new divinity with pleasure into its aquarium, to be fed at stated times with the rest.
The Englishman, on his side, does not take the same view, naturally, though he agrees, it is true, to a limited extent. In fact, he has a deeper idea and a better vision. For he intends to gain India, not to lose it, by the gift of sufficient freedom. And if he gains India, he has gained the leadership of the world.
What, then, precisely is this policy of the fourth phase, on which so much hinges? Current ideas, English and Indian alike, need a fair examination.
In the first place, it is thought by many that we are to prepare India to stand entirely by herself. On this theory we are to occupy the responsible, but not very profitable, post of a college tutor who gives the last push to the fledgling over the edge of the nest.
Undoubtedly, that would not be an irrational forecast if one condition were fulfilled. That condition is the adoption by India of Christianity and of all that it implies. As it is, religion in India has a threefold choice. Firstly, the Indian peoples will remain as they are in religion, that is, roughly divided into Hindus and Mohammedans. In that case complete freedom is impracticable, for as soon as we retired, civil war would ensue between the creeds. The result of this anarchy would be, of course, the victory of one party. If the Mohammedans won, India would be unfortunately placed. For Islam is so ill adapted to modern government, that to-day nearly nine-tenths of the whole vast body of Islamites have accepted nonIslamite rulers. Three Moslem states claim, indeed, the imperial title, Morocco, Persia, and Turkey, but we all know whether they are governed tolerably. On the other hand, if the Hindus won, the caste system, the negation of progress, would reassert itself unchecked, and would render civilised government a dead letter.
The second religious possibility is that Indian pessimism, uprooted by western culture, will become atheistical. There are, no doubt, some signs of that mischief. The best Moslem and the best Hindus agree in dreading it, and they feel that our government, in its total religious abstinence, has unconsciously fostered this danger to some degree. As late as 1904, the Education Resolution laid down that "in government institutions the instruction is, and must continue to be, exclusively secular," though the natives would welcome more freedom for their religious teaching in our schools. But a good proof that the future is not with atheism in India, lies in the fact that, as Sir Andrew Fraser has stated, "the genius of Indian thought, the demands of Indian parents, and the strong representations of Indian chiefs are all in favour of religious education." No doubt "the ingenuous youths," as Gibbon called them, in many cases, "reject and despise the religion of the multitude." But even supposing that such views became those of the majority, and that atheism gained a wide footing, no nation would be constituted which we could justifiably abandon to itself.
The third religious choice before India is to embrace the truths of Christianity. India has been familiar with our faith from time out of mind, and the Indian branch of the Church is traced by tradition to the labours of St. Thomas himself. It was King Alfred who inaugurated our Indian connection by sending alms to the foundation that is consecrated by that Apostle's name.
It is a strange fact, for which history vouches, that, coincidently with our definite advent into Hindustan as a governing power, Christianity was struck with a decline. That opinion is founded on the evidence given at the parliamentary inquiry in 1832. As the Abbé Dubois pointed out on that occasion, "the Christian religion has been visibly on the decline during these past eighty years," and the priests were so abandoned, or so starving, as to make "a kind of traffic of the sacraments."
Perhaps this deterioration was hastened by the singular conduct of our government, who up to 1831, at any rate, treated Christianity worse than they treated the vilest of creeds. For instance, our regulations expressly provided that converts to Christianity should be liable to be deprived not only of property, but of children and wife. We obliged Christians to drag the cars of idols, and our magistrates caned them publicly if they disobeyed. Our officials were employed to pull down churches and to build mosques. Thus our administrative Jacobins attacked their own religion without scruple, their policy being the contemporary counterpart of our political atheism at home. They filled the rôle of ostlers to Juggernaut. They took India to be the tied-house of paganism.
Such a scandal could evidently not last, and since then the administration has endeavoured to be strictly impartial, equally friendly or equally indifferent to all sides, presenting itself as of the religion of all, and of the convictions of none. The Indian government, like some beatific Buddha, sits aloof in the enjoyment of theological nirvana. "When Malunka asked the Buddha whether the existence of the world is eternal or not eternal, he made him no reply; but the reason of this was that it was considered by the teacher to be an unprofitable inquiry."
Accordingly, Christianity has made its own way since then, without particular let or hindrance. Will it conquer India? On this matter we have valuable testimony in the shape of a small work by the Bishop of Madras, published at the close of 1907, and marked by plain speaking.
The Bishop begins by acknowledging that the ideas and hopes with which he came out to India twenty-five years ago were mistaken. He points out that during the last fifty years a number of strong influences "have greatly modified the attitude of the educated classes towards Christianity." First, universities have been established with a purely secular course of studies. Then, as education spread, "Indians became aware that Christianity was by no means universally accepted by all thinking men in Europe and America." Thirdly, there has been the important revival in Hinduism itself, particularly in the shape of Vedantism, the most popular form of Hindu philosophy. Finally, political aspirations have come, concentrating the Indian mind on political aims. "The facts are obvious. The educated classes of India have steadily become more critical of their English rulers, and more directly opposed to English influence." And this has reacted directly upon Christianity. For five years past "the Oxford Mission to Calcutta have hardly made six converts, and it is stated in the last report of the Cambridge Mission to Delhi that there is not a single case of baptism to show as the result of twenty-five years of college work." Finally, the Bishop writes that, "I can see no evidence of any movement towards Christianity in the higher ranks of Hindu society at present, nor any hope of it in the immediate future; on the contrary, the educated classes seem to me further off from the definite acceptance of the Christian faith to-day than they were when I first came out to India twenty-five years ago."
In these circumstances the Bishop would turn, if the analogy may be permitted, from Judæa to Galilee, from Capernaum to the villages. He would wish, in plain terms, Christian endeavour to concentrate itself on the outcasts, the pariahs, the depressed classes, among whom so much good work has been done already, in Southern India especially. In this aspect of affairs he claims that "the work in India, so far from being a failure, has been going forward for the last thirty years by leaps and bounds, and we have the definite prospect before us of creating and building up a powerful Church of some ten million Christians within the next fifty years."
I drew rein. It would have been no bad task to have analysed further the reasons of this history and of these hopes. But it was beyond my sphere and purpose. Besides, time pressed, and the night felt its way over London.
Enough to conclude that, at no date within the range of present consideration will Christianity win India as a whole.
But if this be so; if Islam and Hinduism are still to divide that world; if all alike are to be immovably at one in the desire to settle old scores and see who is master; if unredeemed arrears of wrong are still to be entered on all ledgers, and the account-books of history can never be totted up; if the Koran on the one side, and the Shastras on the other, are to be the fixed poles of inexhaustible hate—then the sword of England must still be girded to maintain a civilisation which must be still belligerent.
But it is said by others that Indian independence is not within their calculations, at least. They claim that something much more modest is wanted, colonial self-government—Swaraj. India is to be a Canada or Australia, only more so. This scheme has been sketched by an authoritative native hand. To begin with, the grant of colonial self-government is to be wrung from us by an extensive strike or boycott. What will be the first thing that India will do with Swaraj? "We will impose a heavy prohibitive tariff upon every inch of textile fabric from Manchester, upon every blade of knife that comes from Sheffield. We shall refuse to grant admittance to a British soul into our territory. We would not allow British capital to be engaged in the development of Indian resources, as it is now engaged. We shall want foreign capital. But we shall apply for foreign loans in the open market of the whole world, guaranteeing the credit of the Indian Government, the Indian nation, for the repayment of the loan." A pleasing prospect, till one remembers those fatal "locusts" of Pathans, always ready to disable able editors, or to "open their columns" to rich Bengalis, and even to issue an edition, mutilated, of esteemed correspondents.
Or thirdly, it is suggested that India shall have self-government, but shall remain on very friendly terms with England. She is to have the privilege of independence within, but without, at sea, she is to be protected by our navy, for which she will be grateful, and on her frontier by our armies, for which she will be grateful too. That is really most amicable! But there is one objection to it, and a final one. We are not disposed to answer the advertisement. It is not part of Britannia's future to become the Indian maid-of-all-work on a starvation wage.
If, then, these ideas, which occupy so many earnest men, are to be put aside as impracticable, we must look elsewhere to see the development of the coming time. To begin with, it is necessary to look at the Indian constitution, for beneath the unprepossessing cowl of that constitution we may begin to discern the features of the future.
First, it has been the policy of England to govern with as few of our own civilians as possible, and to build up an executive and judicial service, manned by native public servants. For instance, magisterial work is mainly done by natives, and Indian judges sit in the High Court with English colleagues. In contrast with a tiny body of Englishmen, who retain the highest offices of control, the actual administration, in by far its greatest and most important part, is in the hands of natives. It is calculated that these latter now number a million and a quarter.
We must be careful not to contemn this bureaucracy. Indeed, such contempt would lie ill in the mouths of us Englishmen, who are energetically framing our own government more and more on bureaucratic lines. This system of a native civil service has been justly called one of the most successful of our achievements, and is certainly unparalleled in Asia. As for its quality, those who can look back to the past assert, with Sir John Strachey, that, "nothing in the recent history of India has been more remarkable than the improvement that has taken place in the standard of morality among the higher classes of native officials." Those who can speak with scarcely less authority of the present, say, with Sir Bampfylde Fuller, that, "in all my experience of native Indian officials I have rarely met one who was not loyal to his salt. Indeed, devotion to one's chief and to one's service is one of India's most conspicuous virtues." On the other hand, it should be remembered that all this depends for its existence, and for its standard, on that band of men at the top.
Secondly, it has been our policy since the Mutiny to reinvigorate and fortify, by indirect methods of advice and control, the native states, which, of course, are solely administered by natives and comprise so large a part of India. Of their loyalty the Mutiny gave full evidence, for, as Lord Canning described it, they were the breakwater against the storm which would otherwise have annihilated us. And they have furnished many proofs since then of the same spirit.
Up till quite recently not so much could be said of their administration. As late as the 1880's it could still be described as a wilderness of misrule; and even to-day, with some few shining exceptions, if we wish to think of them as a whole in that capacity, it must be as of states emerging from the Middle Ages.
A third feature of our constitutional development is well worth attention. In the long course of history the three old Presidencies have of course disappeared. In their place a new organisation has been gradually making its way, and has been considerably enlarged quite recently. Practically, British India now consists of nine great provinces or, in reality, different countries: Bombay, Madras, Bengal, the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, the Punjab, Burmah, Eastern Bengal and Assam, the Central Provinces, and finally the North-West Frontier Province. The fact that the first two of these are administered by governors, the next five by lieutenant-governors, and the last two by chief commissioners, must not conceal from us that here are a set of what may be termed separate nations in embryo.
A fourth feature is that, since the abolition of the old constitution of the Company, India has been brought strictly within the purview of our democracy. No need to dwell upon that machinery, worked by the Secretary of State for India, and so familar to the minds of all of us. Sufficient to say that, as Lord Morley has stated, "the democratic constituencies of this kingdom are the rulers of India."
The last feature of the constitution is the one that has been so much before the public eye since the Act of 1909. At home, a powerful hand had seized the rudder and shaken out more sail. Lord Morley inaugurated a momentous departure in the highest departments of state. At the close of 1908 the King-Emperor himself, by proclamation to the princes and peoples of India, took occasion to explain its purport: "From the first, the principle of representative institutions began to be gradually introduced, and the time has come when that principle may be prudently extended. Important classes among you, representing the ideas that have been fostered and encouraged by British rule, claim equality of citizenship and a greater share in legislation and government. The politic satisfaction of such a claim will strengthen, not impair, existing authority and power."
It is desirable to attend to the precise bearing of the changes thus indicated upon the central and culminating authority of the government of India.
From the earliest times of the Indian constitution, from 1773 at any rate, there existed under statute a governor-general and a small council, in whom the supreme executive and legislative power yonder was vested. But under the Indian Councils Act of 1861, the governor-general was directed to nominate certain members "additional" to this council, for purposes of legislation only. It is material to observe that half of these additional members were to be non-officials, and that, as a matter of practice, most of these non-officials were always natives of India. Presumably, it is mainly to this statute that the King-Emperor referred in signifying that, from the first, representative institutions had been recognised in principle. Further, it is to be seen that the old executive council began to acknowledge a division of its functions by widening its personnel for legislative occasions.
The Act of 1892 went further, but on the same lines. The numbers and the powers of the legislative council were increased. Thus gradually the legislative council asserts itself, and becomes, in a certain modified measure, representative.
And now we arrive at the Indian Councils Act of 1909. Under this measure the viceroy's legislative council loses its name altogether to become the Imperial Council. It is now to have no less than sixty additional members, of whom thirty-five are nominated by the governor-general. But the remaining twenty-five are to be actually elected by specified electorates, and every three years there is to be a general election. Evidently, representative institutions of a species have been definitely inaugurated, especially as the general principles animating these changes have been followed, with variations, in the provincial administrations. Above all, it should be added that, even on the executive council of the governor-general, which is the very stronghold and central keep of our position, an Indian member has been introduced, together with similar appointments to the provincial executive councils. Finally, we have the appointment of two Indian gentlemen on the Indian council in Whitehall.
This is indeed, as Lord Morley has termed it, "the opening of a very important chapter " in the history of our relations with India. The most recent official information furnished in July 1911 is that "it is the opinion of all concerned in the government of India that this scheme has been a complete success, and that the standard of work in the new legislative councils is worthy of the highest praise." Perhaps hard facts are not quite of this roseate bloom: suffice it that, in spite of several acknowledged drawbacks, the experiment so far has done well.
It has been stated recently by the representative of India in the House of Commons that the country is not "ripe" for any further modification, and that henceforth "Indians must turn their attention to organising an industrial population." But, after all, this enlargement of the councils so that more Indians may be responsibly associated with ourselves, is a policy which, however excellent, must not conceal from view the wider proportions of the future.
For example, Lord Curzon has told us that our connection with India "is still in its youth, and has in it the vitality of an unexhausted purpose." And he has added that, "I believe that we have it in our power to weld the people of India to a unity greater than they have hitherto dreamed of." Let us endeavour to frame a rational conception of this "larger vision and fuller hope," and look ahead.
If we do so, it must seem very obvious that the next matter to which India will address herself is her position in the world and the nature of her freedom. She will not be satisfied with prosperity, with a commercial system, with social amelioration, or even with legislative councils. She has never had a place in the sun, politically, for even the rulership of the Moghuls was not of international significance. Before our coming she was either a mere arena for despots, or a mere running track for barbarians. She was dead or sleeping. But the sleeper will wake. The corpse of the Indian body politic will spring to its feet.
When that time comes, as it will undoubtedly, we shall have to remember the great words of Lord Beaconsfield, uttered originally with reference to India. "Touch and satisfy the imagination of nations," he said, "for that is an element which no government can despise." Thus, security and splendour are the two imperial elements. For India's sake, and for our own, it is our future to combine them.
To comprehend how this will come about, we have to look again, this time more critically, at the Indian constitution and the forces that are moulding it.
It is to be remarked that, in all our domestic discussions as to the reorganisation of the government of India, the position of the native states seems, relatively speaking, to have attracted small attention. Lord Morley is certainly not open to any such criticism, for he wrote at the close of 1908 that "no one with any part to play in Indian government can doubt the manifold advantages of still further developing not only amicable, but confidential, relations with the rulers of India." The minister was writing with reference to a scheme that had emanated from Lord Minto himself, who had proposed to establish no less a body than an Imperial Advisory Council of the princes and chiefs of India. For the moment this scheme has passed into the background, and nothing has come of it. It is certain in some shape to revive. For to omit, as we practically do at present, from the imperial constitution the whole body of these rulers is a flaw too obvious, and too glaring, to stand unremedied for long. For, even as long ago as 1899, Lord Curzon said at Gwalior, that "the native chief has become, by our policy, an integral factor in the imperial organisation of India. He is concerned not less than the viceroy or the lieutenant-governor in the administration of the country. I claim him as my colleague and partner." It is to that doctrine that the constitution will have eventually to conform.
But if, on the one hand, the signs of the time point to the necessity of adding dignity and breadth to the imperial central government, on the other, they point no less emphatically to the necessity of freeing it from many of the duties that now appear progressively to entangle and overwhelm it.
The functions of the central government of India seem to be not only unusually onerous, but to be growing fast. For instance, claiming a share of the produce of the land, it is increasingly brought into the complexities of the land question. It manages landed estates. It undertakes relief works. It administers vast forests. It manufactures salt. It owns the bulk of the railways, and operates a large part of them. It maintains a colossal system of irrigation. It monopolises the note issue, and acts, for the most part, as its own banker. It regulates the balance of external trade through the action of the India Council's drawings. It lends money. Many other are the paternal duties which it performs more and more fully for a fifth of the human race. No wonder that the recent Royal Commission upon Decentralisation in India declared, in 1909, that the central administration has now become "an extremely heavy burden, and one which is constantly increasing with the economic development of the country and the growing needs of populations of diverse nationality, language, and creed."
And then, added to all this, is the further tendency of government "to override" in Lord Morley's words, "local authority, and to force administration to run in official grooves." The Commissioners say the same. They declare, in their roundabout circumspect way, that government has hitherto been too much dominated by considerations of administrative efficiency, has paid too little regard to developing responsibility among subordinate agents, and to giving weight to local sentiment and tradition. All this "results, in large measure, in administrative authority in India having to do over again work already accomplished at a stage below. Future policy should be directed to steadily enlarging the spheres of detailed administration entrusted to provincial governments."
Larger principles thus begin to appear above the mass of details, and to dominate the outlook into the future. If, on the one hand, in the old words of Bright, "what you want is to decentralise your government," perhaps to federalise it, on the other, it is desirable to bring native rulers towards the sphere and circle of responsibility. As it is, we are in danger of creating a central government too busy in detail, too close to business, too anxious for what has been done already, too dusty with archives and precedents, too much engrossed with the anise and cummin of public affairs.
Long ago, Lord Wellesley remarked of the secretaries of the government of India that they combined the industry of clerks with the talent of statesmen. But clerks will not command the allegiance of old and haughty nations, steeped in the immemorial pride of race and religion. Government needs to go higher in these days when the tides are at flood, and the waters out, and the file affords no precedent. Otherwise, it will not touch "the imagination of nations," which "no government can despise." And, what is of chief concern to the oriental who traces power to divinity, in the end it will not be strong.
An administration, then, will in time be constituted adequate to give scope to India's wishes, and to lead her to that high office in the world's affairs which she has never yet occupied, but which, it is certain, she will one day fill. Here is by no means a speculation at haphazard. There are already many signs and recorded omens of what the future will produce in this respect. When Natal was in danger of being overrun by an enemy, England applied to India for that help which was promptly and efficiently given. When it was necessary to rescue the Pekin legations from massacre, we turned to India, who despatched a successful expedition. When war broke out in East Africa, an Indian general and Indian troops were found most effective for the task. When it was necessary to man and defend the extreme outposts or coaling stations of the empire, such as Aden, Mauritius, Singapore, or Hongkong, we turned to the Indian army for men. Railways in Uganda or the Soudan are constructed by the help of Indian labour. The plantations of Demerara or Natal are exploited by Indian industry. Egypt is irrigated, and the Nile dammed, by officers trained in India. Indian forest officers tap the resources of Central Africa and Siam, and Indian surveyors explore the earth.
In a word, the future of India is to co-operate with the future of England.
Therefore, when we are justly told, by those who know, that India is not, and never will be, a nation, and that she consists of many nations at eternal variance with one another and parted by the profound abysses of race, creed, language, and history, we can assent. But that assent must not be taken to imply that, ruled by many governments co-ordinated into one common focus, she cannot pursue a definite policy and stand as a clear unity in the future before mankind.
Therefore, too, when we are assured, by those who know, that the Indian will never "love" our government, and that his almost sacred preoccupation is against it, and that there is in his heart an unconquerable and immitigable distaste for its presence, we may agree. But then, we may ask what Englishman "loves" our domestic government, or is "loyal" to its too inquisitive functionaries, or does not feel an innate aversion to the rule of his political opponents, half the nation at least.
It is more to the point to remember, in the words of Sir Andrew Fraser, that as regards social intercourse, "what is required to secure cordial relations between Europeans and Indians is that they should study each other's customs, and that they should keep their hearts open to receive friendships."
Rising to the highest issues of public policy, we may be certain that if India hitherto, with eyes turned introspectively upon herself, and debilitated by the anaemia of her own metaphysics, and embittered by her unparalleled disasters, has not only nourished too much hatred against the stranger within her gates, but has sanctioned too much mutual animosity among her own offspring; if she has, in her despondency, too often regarded life as useless, a mere fitful fever with a recurring attack; if she, who was great when we were barbarous, has become weak when we are strong; then no treatment can be more salutary, and no cure more efficacious, than that she should ascend into the high places of imperial statesmanship, and into the healthful air of freedom, where she and ourselves can grow great together in a never-ending partnership.