CHAPTER X.

SOUTHERN INDIA.

Unrest in its most dangerous forms has hitherto been almost entirely confined to the Deccan, Bengal, and the Punjab. It has spread to some extent from the Bombay Presidency into the Central Provinces, which, indeed, include part of the Deccan, and it has overflowed both from Bengal and from the Punjab into some of the neighbouring districts of the United Provinces. But thanks very largely to the firm and experienced hands in which the administration of the Central Provinces under their Commissioner, Mr. Craddock, and that of the United Provinces under their Lieutenant-Governor, Sir John Hewett, have rested during these troublous years, the situation there has never got seriously out of hand. Except in Peshawar, where the political propaganda of a somewhat militant colony of Bengalees has stimulated the latent antagonism between Hindus and Mahomedans, our difficulties in the new Frontier Province, as well as along the whole North-West frontier, are of quite a different order, and though the turbulence of Pathan tribes and the occasional outbreaks of Moslem fanaticism amongst them are a cause of constantly recurring anxiety to the Government of India, it is not amongst those hardy and only half-tamed hillsmen that the cry of Swadeshi and Swaraj from Bengal or of "Arya for the Aryans" from the Punjab is likely to elicit any response. Such echoes of far away sedition as may reach their mountain fastnesses provoke only vague wonder at the forbearance and leniency of British rulers, and if ever the British Raj were in jeopardy, Pathan and Baluch would be the first to sharpen their swords and shoulder their rifles either in response to our call or in order to descend on their own account, as their forbears have done before, into the fair plains of Hindustan and carve out kingdoms for themselves from the chaos that would follow the collapse of British power. Along the North-East frontier British India marches with semi-independent States that have little or nothing in common with the rest of India. Nepal, Bhutan, and Sikkim are Himalayan highlands inhabited chiefly by Mongolian Buddhists, who have far more affinity with Tibetans and Chinese than with their Indian neighbours to the south. Assam is little more than an administrative dependency of Eastern Bengal, whilst Burma has been even more accurately described as a mere appendage of India, attached for purposes of administrative convenience to our Indian Empire, but otherwise as effectively divided from it by race, religion, customs, and tradition as by the waters of the Bay of Bengal and the dense jungles of the Patkai Mountains.

In none of these borderlands has Hinduism ever struck root, and in none of them, therefore, is Indian Nationalism, which is so largely bound up with Hinduism, likely to find a congenial soil. But that Southern India where Hinduism is supreme should have remained hitherto so little affected by the political agitation which has swept across India further north from the Deccan to Bengal may at first sight cause some surprise. Yet the explanation is not far to seek, if one bears in mind the profound differences which nature itself has imposed upon this vast sub-continent. Southern India, which may be defined as including the whole of the Madras Presidency and the three native States of Mysore, Cochin, and Travancore, differs, indeed, almost immeasurably from Central and Northern India. South of the high, sun-scorched plateau of the Deccan, from the mouth of the Kistna to the Indian Ocean, the great Indian peninsula rapidly narrows. Tempered by more frequent rains and the moist breezes which sweep across it from both the Malabar and the Coromandel coasts, the climate is more equable and the heat, though more continuous, is less fierce. The whole character of the country is luxuriantly tropical, and though the lowlands are not more fertile than the matchless delta of the Ganges, the more varied prodigality of nature shows itself alike in the waving forests of cocoanut, which are common all along the coast, in the rich tobacco-fields of Madura and Coimbatore, in the plantations of cinchona, pepper, cardamoms, and other spices on the slopes of the Nilgiri highlands, and in the splendid growths of teak, ebony, and sandalwood that clothe the Western Ghats. The population, which in some parts attains extraordinary density and lives almost exclusively on the fruits of the soil, is of the old Dravidian stock, industrious and frugal as in other parts of India, and of a placid and gentle temper. Nowhere else in India does one come into such close contact with its original non-Aryan peoples; and nowhere else has the earliest type of religious and social institutions evolved by the superior civilization of the Aryans been so completely preserved from the disturbing influences of later ages. And yet—such are the curious contrasts which abound in this strange country—nowhere else does one find so many living survivals of the intercourse which occurred from time to time between India and the West, many centuries before Europe turned her eyes towards that Terra Incognita. Nowhere, for instance, has Christianity made more converts of recent years, perhaps because in Southern India there may still be found indigenous Christian communities which trace their origin back to the first centuries of the Christian era. Even if there be no historical foundation for the tradition that it was St. Thomas the Apostle who himself first evangelized Southern India, and was ultimately martyred at St. Thomas's Mount near Madras, there is good authority for believing that Christianity was imported not many centuries later into Southern India by the Nestorian or Chaldaean missionaries from Persia and Mesopotamia, whose apostolic zeal ranged all over Asia, even into Tibet and Tartary. According to the Saxon chronicle, our own King Alfred sent alms to India in 883 for St. Thomas and St. Bartholomew, and at that date there certainly existed, besides some small Christian communities on the Coromandel coast, two flourishing communities on the Malabar coast, where the so-called Syrian Church has maintained itself to the present day. Another curious and perhaps equally ancient link with the West may still be seen to survive to-day in the small community of white Jews at Cochin, which, according to their own tradition, was founded when their forefathers were driven out of Palestine after the destruction of the second Temple. To the charter which they still have in their possession, inscribed, like most west coast title deeds, on copper plates, the date assigned by the best authorities is about 700 A.D., and the powers and privileges which were specifically conferred upon their ancestors show that at that period already they had acquired in a remarkable degree the confidence and friendship of the Hindu Kings of Malabar. The decline of both Christian and Jewish communities seems to have begun, indeed, with the appearance of the first Portuguese invaders from Europe, whose incursions destroyed the peace and tolerance which Christian and Jew had enjoyed in the days of undisturbed Hindu rule.

To what period the subjection of the old Dravidian stock to the superior civilization of the Aryans dates back, or in what manner it was continued, there is little as yet to show. All that is actually known is that at some very remote period Aryan Hinduism was imported into Southern India by Brahmans from the north, who established it in the first place probably by force, and whose descendants have ever since maintained the claims of their sacred caste to a position of religious and social pre-eminence even greater than that which any other Brahmans of the present day have succeeded in retaining. Nowhere else in India does the Brahman, as such, wield the power and assert the prerogatives which the Namputri Brahman enjoys on the Malabar coast. Even the Maharajahs of Travancore, who by birth belong to the Kshatrya or warrior caste, have to be "born again" by a peculiar and costly ceremony into the superior caste before they ascend the throne, and one sept of the Namputri Brahmans successfully exacts in the person of the head of the Azhvancheri family recognition of its spiritual overlordship by personal homage from the Maharajah once in every six years. Nothing, perhaps, conveys more graphically the extraordinary sanctity which attaches to the Brahman caste than the uncompromising manner in which all along the Malabar coast they have enforced and maintained the laws of ceremonial "pollution." Nowhere else have such stringent rules been enacted to fix the precise distance at which the bodily presence of a member of the lower castes is held to defile the sacred person of the Brahman. A Bazar may approach, but must not touch him; a Chogan may not approach him within 24 feet, nor a Kanisan within 36, nor a Pulayan within 64, nor a Nayadi within 72 feet. Equally definite and elaborate are the manifold restrictions on marriage, commensality, occupation, food, ceremonial observances and personal conduct which affect the mutual relations not only between the different castes but also between the innumerable sub-castes into which the higher castes especially have in turns split up. The laws which govern marriage, descent, and inheritance amongst the more important castes throw a peculiarly interesting light on the archaic type of society which has survived in Southern India. Under the matriarchal system of Manumakkathayam, which on the Malabar coast obtains to the present day, descent is traced only through the female line. The male member of the family inherits, but he does so only as the son of a female member of the family through whom he may justly claim kinship, or, to put it in another form, a man's natural heir is not his son, or his brother's son, or the descendant of a common male ancestor, but his sister's, or his sister's daughter's son, or the descendant of a common female ancestress. In the event of failure of heirs through the female line, adoption is permissible, but the adoption must be of females, through whose subsequent offspring the line of natural descent may be carried on. With this ancient system are bound up forms of matrimonial union and tenure of property into the complicated and peculiar nature of which I need not enter here.

In the wild hill countries weird remnants of the most primitive races still survive that have not yet been brought within the pale of Hinduism, and here and there a sprinkling of Mahomedans remains as a reminder of the shortlived incursions of Moslem conquerors from the north. But ninety per cent. of the population consists of Hindus, and the social and religious supremacy of Hinduism has never been seriously assailed. Nowhere has Hindu architecture taken such majestic shape, the massive pylons of Madura and Tanjore recalling the imperishable grandeur of the noblest Egyptian temples on the Nile. Southern India is in fact a land of stately shrines which dominate the whole country just as our own great cathedrals dominated England in the Middle Ages. Yet in Southern India, Hinduism has not assumed the aggressive character which it has developed in other regions. Perhaps it feels too secure of the unchallenged supremacy which it has enjoyed through the ages as a social and religious force without ever aspiring to direct political ascendancy. Perhaps the admixture of Dravidian blood has imparted to it a more serene tolerance. Perhaps it appreciates more fully the relief from the turmoils strife, and bloodshed which was brought to Southern India by the advent of British rule. Compare the legend of a pre-British "golden age" propagated by Tilak and his disciples in the Deccan and in Bengal with the remarkable picture of the condition of Southern India at the time when the British power first appeared on the scene which was drawn by a Madras Brahman, the late Mr. Srinivasaraghava Iyangar:—

Southern India had been devastated by wars, famines, and bands of plunderers; the cultivating classes were ground down by oppressive taxation, by the illegal exactions of the officers of Government, of the renters employed to collect the Government dues, and of the sowkars without whose assistance the ryots could not subsist and carry on their calling, and who kept them in a state little removed from perpetual bondage; trade was hampered by insecurity of property, defective communications, and onerous transit duties; the vast majority of the population suffered extreme hardships when there was even a partial failure of crops in small tracts, owing to the great difficulty and cost of obtaining supplies of grain from more favoured regions; the peasantry and even possessors of considerable landed property, when not holding office under Government themselves, were cowering before the pettiest Government officer and submitting to tortures and degrading personal ill-treatment inflicted on the slightest pretext; persons who had chanced to acquire wealth, if they belonged to the lower classes, dared not openly use it for purposes of enjoyment or display for fear of being plundered by the classes above them; the agricultural classes as a whole had few wants beyond those imposed by the necessity for bare subsistence, no ambition or enterprise to try untrodden ways, and no example to stimulate them to endeavour to better their condition, while the rigid usages of castes and communities in which society was organized repressed all freedom of action and restricted the scope for individual initiative. To understand the full significance of the change which has come over the country one has to contrast what he sees at present, unsatisfactory as it may appear from some points of view, with the state of things described above.... Remembering that methods of progress calculated to evoke national feeling and religious enthusiasm are unavailable under the conditions of the case, the progress that has been made ... is little short of marvellous.

It was from Madras that the British power set forth on its unpremeditated course of conquest which was destined ultimately to reach from Tuticorin to the Himalayas. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century the Madras Presidency has been in the fortunate position of having no history. Its northern rivals call it despitefully the "benighted" Presidency. No epithet, however, could be more undeserved, for if its annals for the last hundred years have been unsensational, its record in respect of education, intelligent administration, material prosperity, and all that goes with peaceful continuous progress would entitle it rather to be called the "Model" Presidency. The Native States of Southern India, and above all Mysore, which was for many years under direct British administration, will equally bear favourable comparison with any of the Native States of Central or Northern India. From the standpoint of education, Southern India has long held and probably still holds the lead, thanks in a great measure to the large Christian communities which comprise more than two-thirds of the whole Christian population of India. But in the statistics of literacy based on the last census, the Brahmans figure at the head of all the Hindu castes with the very creditable proportion of 578 males and 40 females per mille. The Western-educated classes in Southern India, whilst as progressive as in any other part, show greater mental balance than in Bengal, and less reactionary tendencies than in the Deccan. Western education has been a steady and perhaps on the whole a more solid growth in Southern India. It has produced a large number of able and distinguished public servants of unimpeachable loyalty to the British raj. The harvest yielded by the ingermination of Western ideas has produced fewer tares. Educated Hindus of the higher castes have played an important part in social reform, and many of them have been associated with the moderate section of the Indian National Congress. The enthusiastic reception given to Mr. Bepin Chandra Pal, during his short crusade at Madras three years ago on behalf of Swaraj, showed that, especially amongst the younger generation, there is at least an appreciable minority who are ready to listen to the doctrines of advanced Nationalism, and the existence of inflammable materials was revealed in the riots which occurred not long afterwards at Tinnevelly and Tuticorin, and again a year later at Guntur. But these appear to have been merely sporadic outbreaks which were promptly quelled, and the undisturbed peace which has prevailed since then throughout Southern India, at a time when whole provinces in other parts have been honeycombed with sedition, is one of the most encouraging features of the situation. There is in the Hinduism of Southern India a peculiar element of conservative quietism to which lawlessness in any form seems to be repugnant. Probably also the racial cry of "Arya for the Aryans" raised in the North of India as the watchword of an anti-British movement is not calculated to rouse the blood of a purely Dravidian population, however powerful the ties created by a common social and religious system.



CHAPTER XI.

REVOLUTIONARY ORGANIZATIONS OUTSIDE INDIA.

It required nothing less than the shock of a murder perpetrated in the heart of London to open the eyes of those in authority at home to the nature of the revolutionary propaganda which has been, and is still being, carried on outside India in sympathy, and often in connivance, with the more violent leaders of the anti-British agitation in India itself. Even now it may be doubted whether they fully realize the importance of the support which the extremists receive from outside India. I am not alluding to the moral countenance which the Hindu reaction has received from eccentric Americans and Europeans on the look out for any novel religious sensation, or which "advanced" politicians have derived from sympathetic members of Parliament and journalists in England[13], but to the secret organizations established in Europe and in America by the Indian extremists themselves as a base for hostile operations against the British Raj. However loudly the extremists protest against the importation of Western influences into India they have certainly not been too proud to borrow the methods of Western revolutionists. They have of all Indians been the most slavish imitators of the West, as represented, at any rate, by the Irish Fenian and the Russian anarchist. Their literature is replete with references to both. Tilak took his "No-rent" campaign in the Deccan from Ireland, and the Bengalees were taught to believe in the power of the boycott by illustrations taken from contemporary Irish history. When the informer Gosain was shot dead in Alipur gaol the Nationalists gloried in the deed, which had far excelled that of Patrick O'Donnell, who shot dead James Carey, the approver in the Phoenix Park murders, inasmuch as Gosain had been murdered before he could complete his "treachery," whereas the murder of Carey had been only a tardy "retribution" which could not undo the past. The use of the bomb has become the common property of revolutionists all over the world, but the employment of amateur dacoits, or armed bands of robbers, for replenishing the revolutionary war-chest has been directly taken from the revolutionary movement in Russia a few years ago. The annals of the Italian risorgimento have also been put under contribution, and whilst there is no Indian life of Cavour, Lajpat Rai's Life of Mazzini and Vinayak Savarkar's translation of Mazzini's Autobiography are favourite Nationalist text-books of the milder order. European works on various periods of revolutionary history figure almost invariably amongst seizures of a far more compromising character whenever the Indian police raids some centre of Nationalist activity. Hence in the literature of unrest one frequently comes across the strangest juxtaposition of names, Hindu deities, and Cromwell and Washington, and celebrated anarchists all being invoked in the same breath.

Equally foreign in its origin has been the establishment of various centres of revolutionary activity outside of India. In America there appear to be two distinct organizations both having their headquarters in California, and branches in Chicago, New York, and other important cities. The Indo-American Association runs an English periodical, Free Hindustan, which was originally started in Canada and thence transferred to Seattle when it began to attract the attention of the Canadian authorities. The moving spirits are students, chiefly from Bengal, who have found ready helpers amongst the Irish-American Fenians. They have also been able to make not a few converts amongst the unfortunate British Indian immigrants who suffered heavily from the anti-Asiatic campaign along the Pacific slope, and some of these converts, being Sikhs and old soldiers, were of special value, as through them direct contact could be established with the regiments to which they had belonged, or, at any rate, with the classes from which an important section of the native army is recruited. Large quantities of seditious leaflets, circulated broadcast three years ago amongst Sepoys, were printed in America. The other organization, called the Young Indian Association, with "head centres" and "inner" and "outer circles" that have a genuine Fenian ring, is even more "extreme," and is connected with the "Indian Red Flag" in India, to which Khudiram Bose, who murdered Mrs. and Miss Kennedy at Muzafferpur, and other young fanatics of the same type belonged. The Young Indian Association seems to devote itself chiefly to the study of explosives and to smuggling arms into India. In Anglo-Indian official circles extreme reticence is naturally observed in these matters, but from other sources I have seen evidence to show that both these associations were in frequent communication with the seditious Press all over India, in the Deccan as well as in Bengal and in the Punjab.

The emergence of Japan has created so powerful an impression in India that one is not surprised to find the Indian revolutionaries, who live for the most part in the dreamland of their own ignorance, looking in that quarter for guidance and even, perhaps, for assistance. But they have been sorely disappointed. Indian students are well received in Japan, but they are in nowise specially petted or pampered, and when they begin to air their political opinions and to declaim against British rule they are very speedily put in their place. Crossing the Pacific from Japan to America last year I met one who had spent two or three years at Tokyo and was going on to continue his technical studies in the United States. He was a pleasant and intelligent young fellow, and confessed to me that what he had seen in Japan had very much modified the views he had held when he left Bengal as to the ripeness of his fellow-countrymen for independence or self-government. He had received a great deal of kindness from his Japanese professors, but the general attitude of the Japanese was by no means friendly, and there was no trace of sympathy with the political agitation in India. There is an Indo-Japanese Society in Tokyo, but it has no connexion with politics, and the Indians complain that it is run for the benefit of the Japanese rather than for theirs. Those who have joined it in the hope of using it as a base for anti-British operations have certainly got very little for their pains. They occasionally write articles for the very few Socialist papers of Japan, but their effective contribution to the cause is of trifling account.

The most dangerous organization outside India was unquestionably that which had its headquarters at the "India House" at Highgate. It was there that Dinghra appears to have concocted the plot which resulted in the murder of Sir W. Curzon Wyllie and Dr. Lalcaca, and though the London correspondent of the Kal, Vinayak Savarkar, who was arrested this year in London to take his trial on the gravest charges at Bombay, magnified the success of the plot by describing its chief victim as "the eyes of the Secretary of State through which he saw all Indian affairs," there is some reason to believe that Dinghra expected to find at the reception another Anglo-Indian official whom the "extremists" were particularly anxious to "remove," and only in his absence struck at Sir W. Curzon Wyllie. There is reason, too, to believe that it was from this "India House" also that came both the idea of murdering Mr. Jackson and the weapons used by the murderer. Though students from all parts of India were enticed into the "India House," the organization seems to have been controlled by Deccan Brahmans, and in the first instance by Shyamji Krishnavarma, who founded scholarships in connexion with it to honour the Indian "martyrs" executed for murderous outrages in India. When the authorities in London very tardily awoke after the murder of Sir W. Curzon Wyllie to the dangerous nature of this organization, to which The Times first drew attention in the spring of 1908, it was still controlled from the Continent by Krishnavarma, who had retreated to Paris long before, leaving his lieutenants to carry on his campaign amongst the young Indian students. The Indian Sociologist itself continued to be openly published in London and to advocate assassination until the tragedy at the Imperial Institute led the authorities to take woefully-belated action in prosecuting successively two printers of the sheet, which was then transferred to Paris.

That altogether considerable quantities of incendiary literature have been produced abroad and imported into India through these various organizations is beyond doubt. Sometimes books like Savarkar's "War of Indian Independence of 1857"—in its way a very remarkable history of the Mutiny, combining considerable research with the grossest perversions of facts and great literary power with the most savage hatred—were bound in false covers as "Pickwick Papers," or other equally innocuous works. Other seditious leaflets besides those for the incitement of mutiny in the native army appear to have come from America, whilst newspapers like the Talvar and the Bande Mataram, which preach the same gospel of murder as Krishnavarrna's Indian Sociologist, are printed on the Continent of Europe. These papers are either smuggled into India in large parcels or sent through the post in envelopes addressed by name to students in schools and colleges, as well as to schoolmasters, pleaders, Government employes—in fact, to all sorts and conditions of people who, for some reason or other, are supposed to be suitable recipients. They naturally fall sometimes into quite the wrong hands.

The importance which the "extremists" attach to the maintenance of these channels of communication with India appears from the following extract from the March issue of the Bande Mataram, which purports to be published in Geneva, and calls itself "a monthly organ of Indian independence":—

We must recognize at present that the importation of revolutionary literature into India is the sheet-anchor of the party. It keeps up the spirit of all young men, and assures them that the party is living. We must therefore try to strengthen all groups of workers outside India. The centre of gravity of political work has been shifted from Calcutta, Poona, and Lahore to Paris, Geneva, Berlin, London, and New York. The Wahabi conspiracy of 1862 was completely crushed because there was no centre in foreign countries where the work could be carried on during the period of persecution. We must take this lesson to heart, that if we desire to hear more of the murder of British officials as a token of the progress and vitality of the party we must strengthen and establish centres of work in many foreign countries. The circulation of revolutionary leaflets, journals, and manifestoes should be looked upon as a sacred duty by all patriots. We are not exaggerating the importance of this work when we use that expression. Let us look upon every leaf of revolutionary literature with almost superstitious veneration and try to make it reach India by all means in our power. For it is the seed of life of our people, &c.

As to the importation of arms into India, the murder of Mr. Jackson, "another Nationalist fete celebrated at Nasik amidst the rejoicings of all true patriots," furnishes an occasion for similar exultation:—

We know that the hero possessed Browning pistols. Now these pistols are not manufactured in India, but in Europe. How have they been imported by the revolutionaries? It is clear that this fact is a testimony to the efficiency of our organization and the secrecy of our activity. Besides, the imported arms are not the only weapons on which we have to rely. Daggers can be manufactured in India out of sharp nails to stab all vile agents of the British Government, English or Indian.

Increased vigilance in this country as well as in the Indian Customs and Post Offices is, however, beginning to check these importations, and only two months later the Bande Mataram was already compelled to strike a less exuberant note. It declares, of course, that "our movement cannot be repressed so long as there are patriotic Indians living under other flags than the Union Jack," but it recognizes that the situation "gives rise to anxious thought," and it winds up in a somewhat depressed tone:—

We admit that for the present all active propaganda among the young men of India with a view to the acquisition of new workers is exceedingly difficult. But there are hundreds of patriotic Indian students in America and Japan who can be inspired with apostolic fervour if only some capable workers are sent among them. The harvest is plenteous, but the labourers are few. We should now realize that, even if the Government succeeds in checkmating us in India at every step, there is ample scope for work for several years among Indians living abroad. We should reflect that steady work is its own reward. We must not imagine that the Idea is not making progress because our particular journal cannot be circulated, or because those workers whom we know personally have been lost. Again, we must not fancy that if heroic exploits of political assassination do not occur every week the movement will die out.

It is not only in regard to the introduction of poisonous literature or of weapons into India that the activity of these organizations deserves to be closely and continuously watched. One of their main objects, as the Bande Mataram points out, is to gain over young Indians who go abroad, especially those who go abroad for purposes of study. The India Office has recognized the necessity of establishing some organization in London to keep in touch with them and to rescue them from unwholesome influences, political and other. This is a step in the right direction, but much more will require to be done, and not only in London. Committees should be formed in other centres, and public-spirited Englishmen abroad could not do more useful work than by social service of this kind. If we want to do any real and permanent good we must spread our nets as wide as the revolutionists have spread theirs. In Paris, for instance, Krishnavarma has set up, since he migrated to the other side of the Channel, an organization for waylaying and indoctrinating young Indians on their way to England, so as to induce them to hold aloof from those who would wish to be their friends when they arrive in London. The number of Indian students abroad is bound to go on increasing, especially with the growing demand for scientific and technical education for which the provision hitherto made in India is regarded as inadequate. Indian parents and Indian associations that ought to know better are apt to think that, if they can only provide for a youth's travelling expenses, he will somehow be able afterwards to shift for himself. It is not infrequently the misery and distress to which he thus finds himself reduced abroad that drive the young Indian into political recklessness, or, at least, render him peculiarly liable to temptation. British manufacturers might also render valuable assistance. Indian parents complain that, owing to the resentment which crimes like the murder of Sir W. Curzon Wyllie have provoked there is great reluctance now on the part of British firms to admit Indians as apprentices to their works, and that in consequence they are compelled to go to other countries where they are treated with less suspicion. This reluctance is perhaps in reality more often due to the fear lest young Indians should afterwards turn their knowledge to too good an account, as the Japanese have often done, in the promotion of competing industries in their own country. However that may be, the results are certainly regrettable. For, if there is one thing that has impressed itself on me during my last visit to India, it is that, if we want to retain our hold, not only upon the country, but upon the people, we must neglect no opportunity of arresting the estrangement which is growing up between us and the younger generation of Indians. It is upon this estrangement that the revolutionary organizations outside of India chiefly rely for the success of their propaganda, and nothing helps them more than the bitterness with which young Indians who come abroad often return to India ready for any desperate adventure[14].



CHAPTER XII.

THE INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS.

It is impossible to acquit the Congress of having contributed to the growth of active and violent unrest, though the result may have lain far both from the purpose of its chief originators and from the desire of the majority of its members. Western education has largely failed in India because the Indian, not unnaturally, fails to bring an education based upon conceptions entirely alien to the world in which he moves into any sort of practical relation with his own life. So with the Indian politician, who, even with the best intentions, fails to bring the political education which he has borrowed from the West into any sort of practical relation with the political conditions of India.

The Indian National Congress assumed unto itself almost from the beginning the functions of a Parliament. There was and is no room for a Parliament in India, because, so long as British rule remains a reality, the Government of India, as Lord Morley has plainly stated, must be an autocracy—benevolent and full of sympathy with Indian ideas, but still an autocracy. Nor would the Congress have been in any way qualified to discharge the functions of a Parliament had there been room for one. For it represents only one class, or rather a section of one class—the Western educated middle, and mainly professional, class, consisting chiefly of lawyers, doctors, schoolmasters, newspaper men; an important and influential class, no doubt, but one which itself only represents an infinitesimal fraction—barely, perhaps, one-hundredth part—of the whole population. To what extent it is really representative even of that small section it is impossible to say, as the members are not returned by any clearly defined body of constituents or by any formal process of election. Originally it attracted the support of not a few non-Hindus, though the Hindu element always largely preponderated, and a small group of distinguished Parsees, headed by Mr. Dadhabai Naoroji, together with a sprinkling of Mahomedans, helped to justify its claim to be called National, in so far as that appellation connoted the representation of the different creeds and races of India. But gradually most of the Mahomedans dropped out, as it became more and more an exponent of purely Hindu opinion, and the Parsees retained little more than the semblance of the authority they had at one time enjoyed.

On broader grounds still the Congress could never be called National in the Western democratic sense of the term, for whatever exceptions it may have been willing to make in favour of individuals, there can be no question of popular representation in India so long as the Hindu caste system prevails, under which whole classes numbering millions and millions are regarded and treated as beyond the pale and actually "untouchable." From time to time a few enlightened Hindus recognize the absurdity of posturing as the champions of democratic ideals so long as this monstrous anomaly subsists, but, whilst professing in theory to repudiate it, the Indian National Congress has during the whole course of its existence taken no effective step towards removing it. Nor is the Congress any more representative of the toiling masses that are not "unclean." No measures have been more bitterly assailed in the Congress than those which, like the Punjab Land Alienation Act of 1900, were framed and have operated for the benefit of the agricultural and other humbler classes—i.e., of the real "people of India," in whose name the Congress speaks so loudly and with so little title.

An earlier generation of Hindus had fully recognized the urgency of social problems, like that of the "depressed" castes, and had realized that, until Indians had brought their own customs and beliefs to some extent into line with the social customs and beliefs of the West, they could not hope to raise their political life on to the Western plane. The Indian National Congress, unfortunately, succumbed to the specious plea put forward in an evil hour many years ago by a distinguished Hindu, afterwards a Judge of the Bombay High Court, Mr. K.T. Telang, who was himself unquestionably an enlightened social reformer, that the "line of least resistance" was to press for political concessions from England where they had "friends amongst the garrison," instead of fighting an uphill battle for social reforms against the dead-weight of popular ignorance and prejudice amongst their own people. That many members of the Congress take part also in social reform conferences and are fully alive to the importance of social reform cannot alter the fact that, by turning its corporate back upon the cause they have at heart, the Indian National Congress has arrested instead of promoting one of the most promising movements to which Western education had given birth.

Do not, however, let us throw the blame wholly upon the Congress. For, like Mr. Telang, it has been induced to put its trust in "the friends amongst the garrison"—Englishmen often of widely different types and characters, like Bradlaugh and Hume and Webb and Sir William Wedderburn, and in more recent days Sir Henry Cotton and Mr. Mackarness—and upon them must rest no small responsibility for the diversion of many of the best talents and energies of educated India from the thorny path of social reform into the more popular field of political agitation.

What has been the result? A self-constituted body of Indian gentlemen who have no title to represent the people and a very slender title to represent the upper classes of Indian society, but who, as I have already said, doubtless represent to some extent a considerable and influential section of Western educated opinion, might have given very useful assistance to Anglo-Indian legislators and administrators had they devoted themselves to the study of those social problems in the solution of which it is peculiarly difficult and dangerous for an alien Government to take any initiative. Instead of that, they set before themselves a task that was impossible because they had no status to perform it. They were fighting all the time in the air, and their proceedings therefore lacked reality. The Congress was not only an irresponsible body, but it was never steadied by a healthy divergency of opinions and the presentation of conflicting arguments. It was not even a debating society, for all represented practically the same interests, held the same views, made the same speeches, which there was no one to question or to refute. Hence the monotony of the proceedings, the sameness of the speeches, sometimes marked with great ability, and generally delivered with much eloquence and fervour, at the short annual sessions. The proceedings were usually controlled by a small caucus who drew up long-winded resolutions, often embodying half a score of resolutions carried in previous sessions. Some one delivered a soul-stirring oration, and then the "omnibus" resolution, which was not even always read out, was put to the vote and passed unanimously. Every one knew beforehand that every speaker would attack the policy of Government, whether he dealt with the ancient stock grievances or with some new question raised by the legislative and administrative measures of the current year; and every one knew also that all the others would applaud. There was no other way of bidding for popularity and making a mark than by achieving pre-eminence in the arts of pungent criticism and exuberant rhetoric. Behind the scenes there were, doubtless, often fierce fights and jealousies, and the struggles in camera are reported to have been sometimes very violent and bitter. But an unbroken front was maintained to the outside world, and the divisions which ultimately almost shipwrecked the Congress very rarely showed themselves on the surface of its proceedings till nearly 20 years after its birth.

The attitude of Government who had accepted the Congress's assurances of loyalty, and recognized its aims, as defined by it, to be "perfectly legitimate in themselves," was laid down for the first time officially in 1890, under Lord Lansdowne's Viceroyalty, in terms that were certainly not hostile:—

The Government of India recognize that the Congress movement is regarded as representing in India what in Europe would be called the more advanced Liberal Party as distinguished from the great body of Conservative opinion which exists side by side with it. They desire themselves to maintain an attitude of neutrality in their relations with both parties, so long as these act strictly within constitutional limits.

To the principles of that declaration the Government of India has strictly adhered ever since, even when, as in 1905, the Congress might have been deemed to have over-stepped those constitutional limits by endorsing the Bengalee doctrine of boycott.

Though the majority of the Congress probably glided unconsciously or without any deliberate purpose from, its earlier attitude of remonstrance and entreaty into violent denunciation of Government and all its works, there had always been a small group determined to drive or to manoeuvre their colleagues as a body into an attitude of open and irreconcilable hostility. That group was headed by Tilak, the strongest personality in Indian politics, who was gradually making recruits among the more ardent spirits all over India. On one occasion, as far back as 1895, when the Congress held its annual session in his own city of Poona, he had attempted to commit it to the aggressive doctrines which he was already preaching in the Deccan, but he soon discovered that the temper of the majority was against him. He was, however, far too tenacious ever to accept defeat. He bided his time. He knew he had to reckon with powerful personal jealousies, and he remained in the background. His opportunity did not come till ten years later when he pulled the strings at the two successive sessions held in 1905 at Benares and in 1906 at Calcutta. It was then that the Congress passed from mere negative antagonism into almost direct defiance of Government. It must have been a proud moment for Tilak when the very man who had often fought so courageously against his inflammatory methods and reactionary tendencies in the Deccan, Mr. Gokhale, played into his hands, and from the presidential chair at Benares got up to commend the boycott as a political weapon used for a definite political purpose. A year later, it is true, Mr. Gokhale and the "moderate" party in the Congress, who had seen in the meantime to what lawlessness the boycott was leading, were anxious to undo or to mitigate at the Calcutta session what they had helped to do at Benares. But again, by dint of lobbying and even more by threatening to break up the Congress, Tilak carried the day, and a resolution was passed in the form upon which he insisted to the effect that the boycott movement was legitimate. It was not till the following year at Surat, after the preaching of lawlessness had begun to yield its inevitable harvest of crime, that the "moderates" recoiled at last from the quicksands into which the "extremists" were leading them. Tilak, however, carried out his threat, and he and his friends wrecked that session of the Congress amidst scenes of disgraceful riot and confusion.

Yet even after this the "moderates" lacked the courage of their convictions. The breach has never been altogether repaired, but there have been frequent negotiations and exchanges of courtesies. In the very next year at Madras a man as incapable of promoting or approving criminal forms of agitation as Dr. Rash Behari Ghose was holding out the olive branch to "the wayward wanderers" who had treated him so despitefully at Surat; and last year at Lahore, when Pandit Mohan Malavya was expounding from the chair the latest formula adopted by Congress as a definition of its aims, his chief anxiety seemed to be to prove that it offered no obstacle to the return of the Surat insurgents to the fold. This formula, it may be mentioned, lays down that "the objects of the Indian National Congress are the attainment by the people of India of a system of Government similar to that enjoyed by the self-governing members of the British Empire and a participation by them in the rights and responsibilities of the Empire on equal terms." This is a formula which many "moderates" no doubt construe in a spirit of genuine loyalty, but it does not exclude the construction which more "advanced" politicians like Mr. Pal place upon Swaraj.

The last session of the Congress at Lahore, in December last, is generally admitted to have aroused very little enthusiasm, and there are many who believe that, weakened as it has been by recent dissensions, it will scarcely survive the creation of the new enlarged Councils. These Councils have been so constituted that they will be able to discharge usefully the functions which the Congress arrogated to itself without any title or authority. Perhaps it was the consciousness that the Congress would at any rate be henceforth overshadowed by the new Councils that led Pandit Malavya to inveigh so bitterly in his presidential address at Lahore against the shape ultimately given to the reforms. What one may hope above all is that the Councils will help to give the Indian "moderates" a little more self-reliance than they have hitherto shown. The Indian National Congress has at all times contained many men of high character and ability, devoted to what they conceived to be the best interests of their country, and at first, at any rate, quite ready to acknowledge the benefits of British rule and to testify to their conviction that the maintenance of British rule is essential to the welfare and safety of India. Many of them must have seen that the constant denunciation of Government by men who claimed to represent the intelligence of the country must tend to stimulate a spirit of disaffection and revolt amongst their more ignorant and inexperienced fellow-countrymen. Yet not one of them had the courage to face the risk of temporary unpopularity by pointing out the danger of the inclined plane down which they were sliding, until they actually saw themselves being swept hopelessly off their feet at Surat. It was then too late to avert the consequences of pusillanimity or to shake off their share of responsibility for the evils which the tolerance they had too long extended to the methods of their more violent colleagues had helped to produce. One of the main purposes of the Indian National Congress has avowedly been to set up a claim for the introduction of representative government in India. Yet it has itself seldom escaped the control of a handful of masterful leaders who have ruled it in the most irresponsible and despotic fashion. The Congress has, in fact, displayed exactly the same feature which has been so markedly manifested in the case of municipalities, namely, the tendency of "representative" institutions in India to resolve themselves into machines operated by, and for the benefit of, an extremely limited and domineering oligarchy.



CHAPTER XIII.

CONSTITUTIONAL REFORMS.

When Lord Minto closed at the end of March the first Session of the Imperial Council, as the Viceroy's Legislative Council, enlarged under the Indian Councils Act of 1909, is now officially designated, in contradistinction to the enlarged Provincial Councils of Provincial Governments, his Excellency very properly described it as "a memorable Session." It was, indeed, far more than that. Even to the outward eye the old Council Chamber at Government House presented a very significant spectacle, to which the portrait of Warren Hastings over the Viceregal Chair always seemed to add a strange note of admiration. The round table at which the members of the Viceroy's Legislative Council used to gather, with far less of formality, had disappeared, and the 59 members of the enlarged Council had their appointed seats disposed in a double hemicycle facing the Chair. They sat for the most part according to provinces, and the features as well as, in some cases, the dresses, of the Indian members showed at a glance how representative this new Council really was.

The tall burly frame of the Kuvar Sahib of Patiala was only more conspicuous than that of the Maharajah of Burdawan because the former wore the many-folded turban and brocaded dress of his Sikh ancestry, whereas the latter, like most Bengalees of the upper classes, has adopted the much more commonplace broadcloth of the West. The bold, hawk-like features of Malik Umar Hyat Khan of Tiwana in the Punjab were as characteristic of the fighting Pathan from the North as were the Rajah of Mahmudabad's more delicate features of the Mahomedan aristocracy of the erstwhile kingdom of Oudh. The white swadeshi garments affected by Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, from the United Provinces—who opened the last meeting of the Indian National Congress at Lahore with a presidential address which lasted for two hours and a quarter, and wound up with an apology for its brevity on the ground that he had had no time to prepare it—testified, at any rate more loudly, to the sternness of his patriotic convictions than the equally swadeshi homespun, cut at least in European fashion, of another "advanced" politician, Mr. Bhupendranath Bose, of Bengal. More worthy of attention was the keen, refined, and intellectual face of Mr. G.K. Gokhale, the Deccanee Brahman with the Mahratta cap, who, by education, belongs to the West quite as much as to the East, and, by birth, to the ruling caste of the last dominant race before the advent of the British Raj. The red fez worn by the majority of Mahomedan members showed that their community had certainly not failed in this instance to secure the generous measure of representation which Lord Minto spontaneously promised to them three years ago at Simla. The peculiar glazed black headdress of the Parsee and the silk kerchief of the Burman in turn indicated the racial catholicity of the assembly in which Sir Sassoon David, of Bombay, worthily represents, by his authority as a financier, the small Jewish community of India.

Nor were the different interests and classes, with two important exceptions, less adequately represented than the different races and creeds. Besides the great territorial magnates, of whom I have already mentioned two or three by name, there were not a few other well-known representatives of the landed interests which, in a country like India where agriculture is still the greatest of all national industries, have a special claim to respectful hearing, even though they have hitherto for the most part held aloof from the fashionable methods of political agitation. There was indeed a good deal of disappointment among the urban professional classes, in whose eyes a Western education—or rather education on what are, often quite erroneously, conceived to be Western lines—should apparently constitute the one indispensable qualification for public life. But they too had secured no inconsiderable number of seats, and if the voice of the Indian National Congress did not predominate it had certainly not been reduced to silence.

Doubts were freely expressed among Englishmen before the meetings of the new Councils as to the competence of the Anglo-Indian officials for the novel duties allotted to them in these assemblies. It was argued, not unreasonably, that men who had never been trained or accustomed to take part in public discussions might find themselves at a disadvantage in controversial encounters with the quick-witted Hindu politician. It is generally admitted now that the first Session at any rate of the Imperial Council by no means justified any such apprehensions. Not a few official members, it is true, were inclined at first to rely exclusively upon their written notes, and there was indeed, from beginning to end, but little room for the rapid thrust and skilled parry of debate to which we are accustomed at Westminster. Most of the Indian members themselves had carefully prepared their speeches beforehand, and read them out from typed or even printed drafts before them. In many cases the speeches had been communicated two or three days ahead to the Press, and sometimes a speech was printed and commented upon in the favoured organ of some honourable member, though he had ultimately changed his mind and preserved silence, without, however, informing the editor of the fact. In other cases a speech was published without the interruptions and calls to order which had compelled the orator to drop out some of his most cherished periods. As it was the custom for Indian members to communicate also to the departments immediately concerned the gist of the remarks which they proposed to make, the official members were tempted at first to frame their replies on similar lines and to read out elaborate statements bristling with figures, which would have been much more suitable for circulation as printed minutes. But gradually many of them took courage and showed that they could speak easily and simply, and quite as effectively as most of the Indian members.

Indeed, one of the best speeches of this kind was that delivered on the last day but one of the Session by Mr. P.C. Lyon, a nominated member for Eastern Bengals, in reply to the fervid oration of Mr. Bupendranath Bose on the threadbare topic of Partition. On this, as on other occasions, the florid style of eloquence cultivated by the leaders of the Indian National Congress fell distinctly flat in the calmer atmosphere of the Council-room, as indeed Mr. Gokhale warned some of his friends it was bound to do. During the last two days discussion was allowed somewhat needlessly under the new rules, to roam at large over all manner of irrelevant subjects, but on this occasion it served at least one useful purpose. If it were not that the Bengalee politician has no other grievance to substitute for it, the question of the Partition of Bengal should, one would think, have received its quietus, for two excellent speeches, delivered with much simple force by Maulvi Syed Shams ul Huda, Mahomedan member for Eastern Bengal, and by Mr. Mazhar-ul-Haq, another Mahomedan who sits for Bengal, completed the discomfiture which poor Mr. Bose had already experienced at Mr. Lyon's hands.

Needless to say that amongst the Indian members it was the politician, and especially the more "advanced" politician, who figured most prominently in the discussions. The more conservative Indians were usually content to listen, with more or less visible signs of weariness, to the facile and sometimes painfully long-winded eloquence of their colleagues. When they did intervene, however, their speeches were usually short and none the less effective. In most of the divisions that were taken they supported the Government, and in no single instance was the Government majority hard pressed. The minority in support of any resolution resisted by Government never reached 20, and generally fluctuated somewhere between 16 and 20. The only resolution which would have certainly combined all the native members in support of it was Mr. Gokhale's resolution with regard to the position of British Indians in South Africa, but, as it was accepted by Government, it was passed nem. con. without a division.

That in these circumstances the official members who are at the same time heads of the most important administrative and executive departments should be kept in constant attendance during debates in which many of them, are not in any way directly concerned, and that they should thus be detained in Calcutta at a season when their presence would be far more useful elsewhere, constitutes one of the most serious of the many practical drawbacks of the new system for which a remedy will have to be found. It is as if not only the Parliamentary representatives but the permanent officials of our own great public departments were expected to sit through the debates in the House of Commons, without even the facilities which the private rooms of Ministers, the library, and the smoking rooms at Westminster afford for quiet intervals of work between the division bells. Nor is that all. The Council sat during the very months of the short "cold weather," when it is customary and alone practicable for heads of departments to undertake their annual tours of inspection. The reductio ad absurdum is surely reached in the case of the Commander-in-Chief and the Chief of the Staff. Though the Imperial Council is itself debarred from dealing with Army questions, they could be seen any day sitting through the debates merely because their votes might conceivably be required to maintain the official majority, and, except for one or two short excursions in the intervals between the meetings of Council, they were tied to Calcutta when they ought to have been travelling about the country and inspecting the troops. Yet, it is generally admitted that at no period since the Mutiny has it been more important for the Commander-in-Chief to maintain the closest possible contact with the native army—especially when the Commander-in-Chief is as popular with the Indian soldier as Sir O'Moore Creagh.

Another obvious drawback of the present arrangements is the inconvenience to which members of Council from the provinces were subjected by the irregular intervals at which the Council held its actual sittings. Either they had to waste their time at Calcutta during the intervals, to the detriment of their interests at home, or they had to spend days in railway carriages rushing backwards and forwards from their homes to the capital, for in a country of such magnificent distances there are few journeys that take less than 24 hours, and from Calcutta, for instance, either to Madras or to Bombay takes the best part of 48 hours. Unless arrangements are remodelled so as to enable the Council to transact its business, whether in pleno or in committee, either in one session or in two short sessions, but in any case continuously, many of its most valuable members, who have important business, of their own which they cannot afford to neglect, will cease to attend, and the Council will not only lose much of the representative character, which is one of its best features at present, but will fall inevitably under the preponderating influence of the professional politician. In his closing speech Lord Minto outlined a scheme which would in some measure meet this difficulty, but it is doubtful whether it will prove by any means adequate. Another point which requires consideration is whether it is desirable for the Viceroy to preside himself over the deliberations of the Council. Even if he could properly afford the time for it, it seems hardly expedient that the immediate representative of the King-Emperor should be drawn into the arena of public controversies. Proceedings are bound to grow more and more contentious, and delicate questions of procedure will arise and have to be settled from the chair. These are all matters in which the Viceroy should not be committed to the premature exercise, on the spur of the moment, of his supreme authority.

One of the chief purposes which the creation of the new Councils is intended to achieve is that of enlightening Indian opinion throughout the country by means of the enlarged opportunities given for the discussion of public affairs. But that purpose will be defeated unless the discussions receive adequate publicity. They certainly did not do so this winter. Not only is the art of gallery reporting still in its infancy, but many of the Indian newspapers have still to learn that "it is not cricket" to report only the speeches of their political friends and to omit or compress into a few lines the speeches of their adversaries. A glaring instance of this shortcoming was afforded by the Bengalee. The Nationalist organ published Mr. Bupendra Nath Bose's speech on the partition of Bengal in extenso, as he had intended to deliver it, without taking the slightest notice of the fact that he was repeatedly called to order by the Viceroy and had in consequence to drop out whole passages of his oration, and it published practically nothing else—though perhaps no other indictment of the Government during the whole session was more successfully refuted, both by the official spokesman, Mr. Lyon, and by other Indian members. Apart, however, from any such deliberate unfairness, the communication of speeches in advance to the Press should be strenuously discountenanced. Many official members showed that they could perfectly well dispense with the doubtful advantage of knowing beforehand exactly what their critics were going to say, and, if once this practice is stopped, newspapers, relieved from the temptation of giving undue preference to easy "copy," will learn to cultivate and to rely upon more legitimate methods of reporting. It is to be hoped also that the Gazette of India, which publishes the official verbatim reports, will not in future lag so far behind the actual proceedings.

All these are minor points. The dominant feature of the Session was that in spite of wide divergences of views, the proceedings were generally dignified, sometimes even to the verge of dulness, and with one or two exceptions they were marked by good feeling on all sides. It would be unfair not to give to Mr. Gokhale his full share of credit for this happy result. Though often an unrelenting critic of the Administration, he struck from the first a note of studied moderation and restraint to which most of his political friends attuned their utterances. He naturally assumed the functions of the leader of his Majesty's Opposition, and he discharged them, not only with the ability which every one expected of him, but with the urbanity and self-restraint of a man conscious of his responsibilities as well as of his powers. His was, amongst the Indian members, not only the master mind, but the dominant personality. The European members, on the other hand, showed themselves invariably courteous and good-tempered, and not a few awkward corners were turned by a little good-humoured banter. Nor was it unusual to see the Englishman come and sit down by the side of the Indian member to whose indictment he had just been replying, and in friendly conversation take all personal sting out of the controversy. As Lord Minto aptly put it, the Council-room "has brought people together. Official and non-official members have met each other. The official wall which of necessity to some extent separated them has been broken down. They have talked over many things together." From this point of view, if future sessions fulfil the promise of the first one, the Imperial Council may grow into a potent instrument for good.

Of the deeper significance which underlay the meeting of this remarkable assembly it is still perhaps premature to speak. But cautious and tentative as was the attitude of all parties concerned, and free as, from beginning to end, the proceedings were from any startling incidents, no one can have watched them without being conscious of the presence of new forces of vast potentiality which must tend to modify very profoundly the relations between the governors and the governed in India itself, and possibly even between India and the Mother Country. They are the forces, largely still unknown, which have been brought into play by Lord Morley's Constitutional reforms, and though they made themselves naturally more conspicuously felt in the Imperial Council at Calcutta, they were present in every one of the enlarged Legislative Councils of the Provincial Governments.

It is no part of my purpose to recount in detail the long, though generally dispassionate, controversy to which these reforms gave rise. We may not all be agreed as to the necessity or wisdom of some of the changes embodied in them, and some may think that we are inclined to travel too fast and too far on a road which Indians have not up to the present shown themselves qualified to tread without danger. But there are few Englishmen either at home or in India who do not recognize the statesmanlike spirit in which Lord Morley, loyally seconded throughout by Lord Minto, has approached the very difficult problem of giving to the people of India a larger consultative voice in administration as well as in legislation without jeopardizing the stability or impairing the supremacy of British control. The future alone can show how far these far-reaching changes will justify the generous expectations of their author, but taken as a whole they undoubtedly represent a constructive work which is fully worthy of the fine record of British rule in India.

How very far-reaching they are the merest indication of their most salient features will suffice to indicate. For the sake of convenience, though they form a homogeneous whole, they may be divided roughly into two categories—those that affect the Executive Councils and those that have remodelled the Legislative Councils. To the former category belong:—

(1) The appointment of an Indian member to the Viceroy's Executive Council. Mr. S.P. Sinha, a Bengalee barrister in large practice, was appointed to be legal member, and the ability and distinction with which he discharged the duties of his high office have gone far to remove the misgivings of many of those who were at first opposed to this new departure. It is the more to be regretted that his services will be lost to the new Viceroy, as he has announced his intention of retiring, for personal reasons, at the end of Lord Minto's Viceroyalty[15].

(2) The appointment of one Indian member to the Executive Councils of the Governors of Madras and Bombay. The Rajah of Bobbili has been appointed in Madras and Mr. M.B. Chaubal in Bombay. An Indian will also be appointed to the Executive Council of the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal as soon as that body has been finally constituted[16], and similar appointments will be made to the Executive Councils of the chief Indian provinces when the powers taken to create those bodies shall be put into operation.

(3) The appointment of two Indians, one a Hindu and the other a Mahomedan, to be members of the Council of the Secretary of State, generally known as the India Council, in Whitehall. Mr. K.G. Gupta and Mr. Husain Bilgrami were appointed by Lord Morley in 1907. Mr. Bilgrami retired early in 1910 owing to ill-health and his place has been taken by Mr. M.A. Ali Baig.

In principle, the introduction of natives of India into these inner lines of the British Executive power undoubtedly constitutes, as Lord Lansdowne has said, a "tremendous innovation," but it may be doubted whether in practice the consequences will be as considerable as those of the changes effected by the India Councils Act of 1909 in the composition and attributions of the Imperial and Provincial Legislative Councils. These changes are of a twofold character. In the first place the total number of members has been very materially increased—e.g., in the Imperial Legislative Council from 21 to a maximum of 60; in the Madras and Bombay Legislative Councils from 24 to a maximum of 50; in the Bengal Legislative Council from 20 to 50, &c. Room has thus been made for the introduction of a much larger number of elected members, of whom there will be in future not less than 135 altogether in the different Legislative Councils, as against only 39 under the old statutes. Still more important than the mere increase in the number of elected members is the radical change in the proportion they will bear to official members. Except in the Imperial Council, where, at the instance of Lord Morley, a small official majority has been retained which Lord Minto himself was willing to dispense with, there will no longer be any official majority. The regulations determining the electorates and the mode of election have been framed with praiseworthy elasticity in accordance with local requirements, and care has been taken to provide as far as possible for an adequate representation of all the most important communities and interests. In view of the manifold and profound lines of cleavage which exist in Indian society, it is extremely improbable that all the elected members will ever combine against the official minority except in such rare and improbable cases as might produce an absolute consensus of Indian opinion, and in such cases it is even more improbable that Government would ignore so striking a manifestation. Nevertheless, as a safeguard against the possibility of factious opposition, the right of veto has been reserved to the Provincial Executives and in the last resort to the Governor-General in Council.

Thus the Indian Councils Act of 1909 cannot be said to have actually modified the position of the Indian Legislatures. With regard to the most important of them—viz., the Imperial Council—Lord Morley was careful to make this perfectly clear in his despatch of November 27, 1908, in which he reviewed the proposals put forward in the Government of India despatch of October 1. "It is an essential condition of the reform policy," the Secretary of State wrote, "that the Imperial supremacy should in no degree be compromised. I must therefore regard it as essential that your Excellency's Council, in its legislative as well as in its executive character, should continue to be so constituted as to ensure its constant and uninterrupted power to fulfil the constitutional obligation that it owes, and must always owe, to his Majesty's Government and to the Imperial Parliament." The Indian Executive therefore remains, as hitherto, responsible only to the Imperial Government at home, and the Imperial Council can exercise over it no directly controlling power. The same holds good, mutatis mutandis, of the Provincial Executives and their Councils.

Indirectly, however, the Indian Councils Act of 1909 materially modifies the relations between the Legislative Councils and the Executive by giving to elected and non-official members opportunities which they have never enjoyed before of discussing public policy and making their voices heard and their influence felt on both administrative and legislative matters. The revised rules of procedure, under which supplementary questions may be grafted on to interpellations, and resolutions can be moved not only in connexion with the financial statements of Government, but, with certain specified reservations, on most matters of general public interest, are undoubtedly calculated to afford a vastly larger scope than in the past to the activities of Indian Legislatures, and it will depend very much upon the ability and resourcefulness of members themselves to what extent they may utilize these facilities for the purpose of ultimately creating real powers of control. In an extremely interesting and dispassionate study of the Indian Constitution, and of the effects which the new reforms may have upon it, Mr. Rangaswami Iyengar, a Hindu journalist of Madras, comes to the conclusion that "if the powers now entrusted to the Councils are used with care, wisdom, and discrimination, precedents and procedure analogous to those of the House of Commons might gradually grow up, and might serve as a useful means if not of directly controlling the Executive—a power which under the present constitutional arrangement of the Government of India it is impossible that the Council should possess—at least of directing the Executive into correct and proper channels in regard to administrative policy and administrative action." Not the least important of the changes are those made in regard to Budget procedure. Indian Legislatures will no more than in the past have power to vote or to veto the Budget, but they will have henceforth an opportunity of setting forth their views before the Budget has assumed its final shape. Members will be able to discuss beforehand any changes in taxation, as well as any new loans or additional grants to local governments, and they will be taken into the confidence of Government with regard to the determination of public expenditure. No doubt important heads of revenue are still excluded from the purview of the Councils, but members will have the right of placing on record their views in the form of resolutions on all items not specifically excluded from their cognisance, and the Finance Member will be bound to explain the reasons why Government declines to accept any resolution that may have been passed in the first two stages of the Budget. Much will depend upon the reasonable and practical use which members make of these novel opportunities, for, to quote Mr. Iyengar again, "the progress of constitutional government is not dependent so much upon what is expressly declared to be constitutional rights as upon what is silently built up in the form of constitutional conventions."

In the great speech in which Lord Morley gave the House of Lords the first outline of his Indian reforms scheme there was one singularly pregnant passage. "We at any rate," he said, "have no choice or option. As an illustrious member of this House once said, we are watching a great and stupendous process, the reconstruction of a decomposed society. What we found was described as a parallel to Europe in the fifth century, and we have now, as it were, before us in that vast congeries of people we call India, a long, slow march in uneven stages through all the centuries from the fifth to the twentieth. Stupendous indeed, and to guide that transition with sympathy, political wisdom, and courage, with a sense of humanity, duty, and national honour, may well be called a glorious mission." Whether we succeed in that mission must depend largely upon the loyal assistance we receive from those Indians who claim, in virtue of their superior education, to represent this twentieth century. Lord Morley has fulfilled in no niggardly spirit his pledge to associate the people of India with the Government far more closely than has hitherto been the case in the work of actual day-to-day administration as well as in the more complex problems of legislation. It rests now with the Indian representatives both in the Executive and Legislative Councils to justify Lord Morley's expectations by using the new machinery which he has placed in their hands not for purposes of mere destructive criticism and malevolent obstruction, but for intelligent and constructive co-operation with the British rulers of India, to whom alone, whatever may be their shortcomings, India owes it that the spirit of the twentieth century has spread to her shores.



CHAPTER XIV.

THE DEPRESSED CASTES.

The only classes in British India for whom no real representation has been devised in the enlarged Indian Councils are the millions of humble toilers who constitute what are known as the "depressed castes." Under present social conditions in India, this was probably inevitable. Though, rather unreasonably, the vast majority of them go to swell the numbers of the Hindu population in the census upon which Hindu representation ought, according to Hindu politicians, to be based, those politicians have certainly not as yet shown any title to speak on their behalf. For there is no more striking contrast to the liberal and democratic professions of a body which claims, as does the Indian National Congress, to represent an enlightened, progressive, and national Hinduism than the fact that in the course of its 25 years' existence it has scarcely done anything to give practical effect to its theoretical repudiation of a social system that condemns some 50 millions out of the 300 millions of the Hindu population of India to a life of unspeakable degradation. For a long time to come, the depressed castes will probably find, as in the past, their truest friends and best qualified representatives among the European members of Council, who, just because they are aliens, are free from all the influences, whether of interest or of prejudice, which tend to divide Hindu society into so many watertight compartments. Let any one who has any doubts on this point read some of the documents published in the Blue-books on the reforms—petitions from low-caste communities imploring Government not to commit the defence of their interests to the Hindu Brahman, but to continue to them the direct and unselfish protection which they have hitherto enjoyed at the hands of British administrators.

The "depressed classes" of whom we generally speak as Pariahs, though the name properly belongs only to one particular caste, the Pareiyas in Southern India, include all Hindus who do not belong to the four highest or "clean" castes of Hinduism, and they are therefore now officially and euphemistically designated as the Panchamas—i.e., the fifth caste. Many of the Panchamas, especially in Southern India, are little better than bonded serfs; others are condemned to this form of ostracism by the trades they ply. Such are not only the scavengers and sweepers, but also the workers in leather, the Chamars and Muchis of Northern and Central India, and the Chakilians and Madigas of Southern India, who with their families number 14 or 15 million souls; the washermen, the tadi-drawers and vendors of spirituous liquors, the pressers of oil, and, in many parts of the country, the cowherd and shepherd castes, &c. They are generally regarded as descendants of the aboriginal tribes overwhelmed centuries ago by the tide of Aryan conquest. Some of those tribes, grouped together in the Indian Census under the denominational rubric of "Animists" and numbering about 8-1/2 millions, have survived to the present day in remote hills and jungles without being absorbed into the Hindu social system, and have preserved their primitive beliefs, in which fetish worship, and magic are the dominant elements. Low as is their social status, it is but little lower than that of the Panchamas who have obtained a footing on the nethermost rung of the social ladder of Hinduism without being admitted to any sort of contact with its higher civilization or even to the threshold of its temples.

Hinduism with all its rigidity is, it is true, sufficiently elastic to sanction, at least tacitly, a slow process of evolution by which the Panchama castes—for there are many castes even amongst the "untouchables"—gradually shake off to some extent the slough of "uncleanness" and establish some sort of ill-defined relations even with Brahmanism. For whilst there is on the one hand a slowly ascending scale by which the Panchamas may ultimately hope to smuggle themselves in amongst the inferior Sudras, the lowest of the four "clean" castes, so there is a descending scale by which Brahmans, under the pressure of poverty or disrepute, sink to so low a place in Brahmanism that they are willing to lend their ministrations, at a price, to the more prosperous of the Panchamas and help them on their way to a higher status. Thus probably half the Sudras of the present day were at some more or less remote period Panchamas. Again, during periods of great civil commotion, as in the 18th century, when brute force was supreme, not a few Panchamas, especially low-caste Mahrattas, made their way to the front as soldiers of fortune, and even carved out kingdoms to themselves at the point of the sword. Orthodox Hinduism bowed in such cases to the accomplished fact, just as it has acquiesced in later years when education and the equality of treatment brought by British rule have enabled a small number of Panchamas to qualify for employment under Government.

But these exceptions are so rare and the evolutionary process is so infinitely slow and laborious that they do not visibly affect the yawning gulf between the "clean" higher-caste Hindu and the "unclean" Panchama. The latter may have learned to do puja to Shiva or Kali or other members of the Hindu Pantheon, but he is not allowed within the precincts of their sanctuaries and has to worship from afar. Nor are the disabilities of the Panchama merely spiritual. In many villages he has to live entirely apart. He is not even allowed to draw water from the village well, lest he should "pollute" it by his touch, and where there is no second well for the "untouchables," the hardship is cruel, especially in seasons of drought when casual water dries up. In every circumstance of his life the vileness of his lot is brought home to the wretched pariah by an elaborate and relentless system of social oppression. I will only quote one or two instances which have come within my own observation. The respective distances beyond which Panchamas must not approach a Brahman lest they "pollute" him differ according to their degree of uncleanness. Though they have been laid down with great precision, it is growing more and more difficult to enforce them with the increasing promiscuity of railway and street-car intercourse, but in more remote parts of India, and especially in the south, the old rules are still often observed. In Cochin a few years ago I was crossing a bridge, and just in front of me walked a respectable-looking native. He suddenly turned tail, and running back to the end of the bridge from which we had both come, plunged out of sight into the jungle on the side of the road. He had seen a Brahman entering on to the bridge from the other end, and he had fled incontinently rather than incur the resentment of that high-caste gentleman by inflicting upon him the "pollution" of forbidden proximity as the bridge, though a fairly broad one, was not wide enough for them to pass each other at the prescribed distance. In the native State of Travancore it is not uncommon to see a Panchama witness in a lawsuit standing about a hundred yards from the Court so as not to defile the Brahman Judge and pleaders, whilst a row of peons, or messengers, stationed between him and the Court, hand on its questions to him and pass back his replies.

No doubt the abject ignorance and squalor and the repulsive habits of many of these unfortunate castes help to explain and to perpetuate their ostracism, but they do not exculpate a social system which prescribes or tolerates such a state of things. That if a kindly hand is extended to them, even the lowest of these depressed can be speedily raised to a higher plane has been abundantly shown by the efforts of Christian missionaries. They are only now beginning to extend their activities to the depressed castes of Northern India, but in Southern India important results have already been achieved. The Bishop of Madras claims that within the last 40 years, in the Telugu country alone, some 250,000 Panchamas have become Christians, and in Travancore another 100,000. During the last two decades especially the philanthropic work done by the missionaries in plague and famine time has borne a rich harvest, for the Panchamas have naturally turned a ready ear to the spiritual ministrations of those who stretched out their hands to help them in the hour of extreme need. Bishop Whitehead, who has devoted himself particularly to this question, assures me that, in Southern India at least, the rate at which the elevation of the depressed castes can be achieved depends mainly upon the amount of effort which the Christian missions can put forth. If their organizations can be adequately strengthened and extended so as to deal with the increasing numbers of inquirers and converts, and, above all, to train native teachers, he is convinced that we may be within measurable distance of the reclamation of the whole Panchama population. What the effect would be from the social as well as the religious point of view may be gathered from a recent report of the Telugu Mission, which most lay witnesses would, I believe readily confirm:—

If we look at the signs of moral and spiritual progress during the last 40 years, the results of the mission work have been most encouraging. It is quite true that naturally the Panchamas are poor, dirty, ignorant, and, as a consequence of many centuries of oppression, peculiarly addicted to the more mean and servile vices. But the most hopeful element in their case is that they are conscious of their degradation and eager to escape from it. As a consequence, when formed into congregations under the care of earnest and capable teachers, they make marked progress materially, intellectually, and morally. Their gross ignorance disappears; they become cleaner and more decent in their persons and homes; they give up cattle poisoning and grain stealing, two crimes particularly associated with their class; they abstain from the practice of infant marriage and concubinage, to which almost all classes of Hindu society are addicted; they lose much of the old servile spirit which led them to grovel at the feet of their social superiors, and they acquire more sense of the rights and dignity which belong to them as men. Where they are able to escape their surroundings they prove themselves in no way inferior, either in mental or in moral character, to the best of their fellow-countrymen. Especially is this the case in the Mission Boarding Schools, where the change wrought is a moral miracle. In many schools and colleges Christian lads of Panchama origin are holding their own with, and in not a few cases are actually outstripping, their Brahman competitors. ... In one district the Hindus themselves bore striking testimony to the effect of Christian teaching on the pariahs, "Before they became Christians," one of them said, "we had always to lock up our storehouses, and were always having things stolen. But now all that is changed, We can leave our houses open and never lose anything."

In the heyday of the Hindu Social Reform Movement, before it was checked by the inrush of political agitation, the question of the elevation of the depressed castes was often and earnestly discussed by progressive Hindus themselves, but it is only recently that it has again been taken up seriously by some of the Hindu leaders, and notably by Mr. Gokhale. One of the utterances that has produced the greatest impression in Hindu circles is a speech made last year by the Gaekwar of Baroda, a Hindu Prince who not only professes advanced Liberal views, but whose heart naturally goes out to the depressed castes, as the fortunes of his own house were made in the turmoil of the eighteenth century by a Mahratta of humble extraction, if not actually of low-caste origin. His Highness does not attempt to minimize the evils of the system.

The same principles which impel us to ask for political Justice for ourselves should actuate us to show social justice to each other.... By the sincerity of our efforts to uplift the depressed classes we shall be judged fit to achieve the objects of our national desire.... The system which divides us into innumerable castes claiming to rise by minutely graduated steps from the pariah to the Brahman is a whole tissue of injustice, splitting men equal by nature into divisions high and low, based not on the natural standard of personal qualities but on accidents of birth. The eternal struggle between caste and caste for social superiority has become a constant source of ill-feeling.... Want of education is practically universal amongst the depressed classes, but this cannot have been the cause of their fall, for many of the so-called higher classes in India share in the general ignorance. Unlike them, however, they are unable to attend the ordinary schools owing to the idea that it is pollution to touch them. To do so is to commit a sin offensive alike to religion and to conventional morality. Of professions as a means of livelihood these depressed classes have a very small choice. Here, too, the supposed pollution of their touch comes in their way. On every hand we find that the peculiar difficulty from which they suffer, in addition to others that they share with other classes, is their "untouchableness."

After a powerful argument against the theory of "untouchableness" and against priestly intolerance, the Gaekwar urges not only upon Hindus, but upon Government the duty of attacking in all earnestness this formidable problem.

A Government within easy reach of the latest thought, with unlimited moral and material resources, such as there is in India, should not remain content with simply asserting the equality of men under the common law and maintaining order, but must sympathetically see from time to time that the different sections of its subjects are provided with ample means of progress. Many of the Indian States where they are at all alive to the true functions of government, owing to less elevating surroundings or out of nervousness, fear to strike out a new path and find it less troublesome to follow the policy of laisser faire and to walk in the footsteps of the highest Government in India, whose declared policy is to let the social and religious matters of the people alone except where questions of grave importance are involved. When one-sixth of the people are in a chronically depressed and ignorant condition, no Government can afford to ignore the urgent necessity of doing what it can for their elevation.