A POSTSCRIPT-PROEM
Two manuscripts of this book were placed in the hands of my friend and agent Mr. Curtis Brown on August 4th, 1914. On the same day another historic event occurred: Great Britain declared war against Germany. In view of that event, I begged Mr. Brown to send one copy to America, out of the range of Zeppelins, and to let the other copy repose in his safe until the war was over.
We are now in May, 1917, and the end has not yet come. But however hard it may be to divert attention from the shifting phases of the stupendous drama, we all feel that it is time to brace our energies and clear our minds for the solving of the problems which await us in the world after the war. Of these the problem of India is certainly one of the greatest and most pressing ; so that a book upon " India and the Future " will not, I hope, be regarded as born out of due time.
When publication was resolved upon, the question naturally arose : Should the book be brought up to date ? Should it be revised and re-written in accordance with the altered circumstances ? After earnest consideration, I have decided that question in the negative. The text remains exactly as it stood in 1914. Intervening events, far from having rendered any considerable revision necessary, have merely reinforced one branch of my argument, while they have left the other branch unaffected. They have
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strengthened India's claim to ultimate self-government, while they have not sensibly altered her actual and present capacity or incapacity for it. There are, no doubt, several passages (notably on pp. 167, 267) which I should have expressed differently had I been writing to-day. But it seemed best to let them stand unaltered, so as to keep the whole text, as it were, on one plane of time, and not to flit back and forth between the point of view of 1914 and that of 1917. There is nothing that is really invalidated by the intervention of the war. Anything that was true in 1914 remains true in 1917. Anything that was false in 1914, no doubt remains false ; but as the war has not opened my eyes to my error, I cannot correct it.
One prophecy, it may be said, has been conspicuously falsified, namely, the remark (p. 17) that " the moment England gets into serious trouble elsewhere, India, in her present temper, would burst into a blaze of rebellion." But the plain fact is, paradoxical as it may seem, that England has not been in any trouble which, in relation to India, could be called serious. Her communications have not been cut. The Suez Canal has not been blocked for a moment. She has not been forced to deplete the European garrison in India to a dangerous degree. On the contrary, she has raised such gigantic armies, and produced such enormous quantities of war material, that the maintenance of her military establishment in India involved no considerable diminution of her strength in Europe. Any important rising in India, especially during the first months of the war, might have caused great embarrassment, and would have meant a moral as well as a material advantage to the enemies of England. But it cannot be said that the war has offered any real opportunity to Indian disaffection. England has throughout remained as able as in time of peace to put down any attempt at insurrection, though the effort to do so might doubtless have weakened her in Europe. Germany, in short, might have gained by an Indian revolt, but the movement itself would have
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had no chance of success. Indian discontent was wiser than Irish.
My prophecy, then, can scarcely be said to have been falsified, inasmuch as the condition on which it depended has not arisen. But if it be asked whether my survey of the Indian situation led me to anticipate anything like the splendid outburst of loyalty and devotion which the war actually begot, I must answer with a frank negative. " Loyalty " is a word which is liable to grave abuse. It often implies, on the one side, an unfounded claim; on the other side, a superstitious self-suppression. There are times when loyalty to the actual means disloyalty to the ideal, and when a renunciation of allegiance is the only true virtue. But the loyalty of the princes, the army and a great part of the people of India was, I think, a sentiment as reasonable as it was generous. It was, in the first place, loyalty to the King-Emperor who had shown his personal trust in them, as well as his deep solicitude for their welfare. But it was much more than that. It was an expression of confidence in the ideals of the British Empire, and in the general will of the British people towards justice and humanity. It sprang in some cases, I am sure, from a reasoned and intelligent belief that, in the great world-argument, Britain was in the right, Germany in the wrong—Britain was fighting for safety and honour —Germany for self-aggrandisement. " We shall have to fight her some day," I heard a Maharaja say in 1912;
Well, the great fact is that India as a whole, instead of trying to make additional trouble for England, or even looking on in sullen indifference, has claimed for herself the right of active participation in the affairs of the Empire, whether for weal or woe, and has gallantly shed her blood for its maintenance. She has bitterly disappointed the enemies of England, and afforded a splendid example, not too common in history, of steadfast comradeship in
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the hour of danger and trial. She has given noble proof of gratitude in the very teeth of those who tried to persuade her that she owed no gratitude to a horde of foreign de-spoilers and tyrants. How, then, does this great and impressive fact bear upon the arguments advanced in the following pages ?
In the first place, it has converted what was, from the official point of view, a mere heresy, into something very like an orthodox and accepted principle. Some readers may feel that I am beating at an open door in insisting again and again that the complete enfranchisement of a united India is the only worthy, and indeed the only rational, aim of British policy ; but they must remember that four years ago the door was very far from being officially open—when Lord Hardinge set it ajar, the Marquis of Crewe made all haste to slam it again (seep. 4).
After the events of 1914-17 after we have accepted the aid of India in fighting the battles of the Empire—it is absolutely unthinkable that England should not recognize and frankly acknowledge the duty of giving India, as soon as possible, an equal status in the community of self-governing nations with which she has so gallantly stood shoulder to shoulder in the hour of need. The principle, I take it, is now beyond the sphere of argument; controversy must and will centre round the qualifying clause, " as soon as possible."
Nor will the war in any way tend to assuage the bitterness of the controversy. Much rather, it will give a new air of plausibility to that impatience on the part of the half-Europeanized Indian agitator which I regard as the gravest danger India has to face. I have had some opportunity, during the past three years, of making first hand acquaintance with the tone of thought among Indian students in England, and my observations have been the reverse of encouraging. One must make every allowance, of course, for inexperience, for the heat generated by the action of mind upon mind, in a small circle of youths isolated, as it xiv
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were, in the midst of an alien and not too sympathetic environment, and for the imperfect command of language -which often leads to a violence of expression largely undesigned and but imperfectly realized. For example, I have heard a gentleman reply to a modest paper of my own with a convulsive fury of rhetoric that suggested the oratory of the Mountain during the Reign of Terror—while at the same time he was, for the most part, repeating the very things I had been saying in somewhat less inflammatory language. But, making all possible deductions for rhetorical extravagance, one cannot but realize that these young men are confirmed by their English experiences in feelings of unreasonable hostility to England, while they by no means lose their faith in a mythical India of the past which we are held to have destroyed, and which would miraculously revive if our tyranny were withdrawn. I share their faith in a greater India of the future; but it will not mean a revival of a past which never existed.
This problem of Indian education in England is an extremely difficult one ; but there is all the more reason why we should vigorously apply ourselves to its solution. The present system, or lack of system, is disastrous. I turned eagerly to the report of the Public Services Commission (1917) in the hope of finding some indication of a way out of the difficulty; but it is not even squarely faced and admitted. With all possible diffidence, then, I venture to suggest what seems to me the most hopeful line of action.
The new Civil Service regulations proposed by the Commissioners reduce the age at which the entrance examination must be taken in England, and provide for the annual recruitment of nine Indians by means of examination in India. The successful candidates, Indian and British, are then to undergo a three years' probationary course in England. This, no doubt, is all to the good; but here I part company with the Commissioners. They consider the idea of establishing a special college for this probationary course, and definitely reject it, declaring
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themselves " opposed to the creation of any separate institution."* But what if the way to safety lay just through such an institution? I am inclined to regard it as an urgent necessity, for the sake no less of the British than of the Indian probationers. Before giving my own reasons for this view, let me say that it has behind it the high authority of Lord Sydenham of Combe, who writes in the Nineteenth Century (January, 1917) :
I am so old-fashioned as to regret that Haileybury was abolished as the training-college of the Indian Civil Service. The advantages of bringing together the young men, British and Indian, who are destined to undertake the heavy responsibilities of guiding the progress of India towards nationhood are, I believe, beyond all question. Association at college creates esprit de corps, cements friendships, and imparts the mutual knowledge which is valuable to men who will be scattered widely while performing analogous duties. A common training rubs off social angles and enables a real knowledge of the history, conditions and sentiments of the people of India to be acquired, while it eliminates the crammer who is too often indispensable. The abolition of Cooper's Hill as a preparation for the engineering service of India was decided upon against the advice of the Government of India, and was a great mistake.
What I have further to say will be little more than an amplification of this excellent passage.
The Indian student in England is subjected to a quite unnecessary and unreasonable test of character. It seems to me remarkable that he so often comes through it without serious damage. He is cast loose upon an alien society, which receives him in the main good-humouredly enough, but at the best with a touch of condescension, and very rarely with any approach to real interest or understanding. The first thing he realizes is the ignorance and indifference of the mass of Englishmen with regard to his Motherland. They are willing enough to make it a subject of boastful
* Report of the Commissioners (Ed. 8382), Vol. I., p.174.
A special Indian College at Oxford or Cambridge would be the ideal institution. (Lord Sydenbam's note.]
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declamation, but a subject of study—no ! Ignorance is naturally accompanied by a total absence of tact ; every second word addressed to him on the subject of India, even by well-meaning Britons, is of a nature to set his teeth on edge. Measures are being taken, indeed, to mitigate his social isolation, and to bring him into contact with intelligent and sympathetic English men and women; but it is doubtful whether the social talent required to make these experiments successful is very general in England. What wonder if Indian students come together in cliques, compare notes on their personal grievances, and inflame each other's sense of the wrong done to their great country in being treated, not only by the man in the street, but by Parliament and the press, as a mere side issue among the more pressing affairs of an alien Empire ? When they do happen to meet with what they regard as really sympathetic treatment, it is too often at the hands of fanatical orientalizers, who share and confirm their illusions as to the past of their country and as to the injustices inflicted by England upon India.
The best, if not the only, way, it seems to me, of amending this undesirable state of affairs would be to erect a great educational institution devoted exclusively to the needs of India, and in which India should be the supreme subject of thought, study and interest. It should bring together, of course, not merely the probationers for the Indian Civil Service, but, as nearly as possible, all young men, of both races, who are destined for public employment in India. If such a college were well-organized, and the right spirit maintained in it, the advantage to Englishmen would be no less than the advantage to Indians, and the general gain would be enormous. Perhaps the chief stupidity of our present system lies in our failure to make the average British cadet (if I may use that term for all young men whose career is to lie in India) realize the magnificence and the absorbing interest of the adventure in which he is about to engage. If one thing is more certain than another,
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it is that from the moment it is determined that a boy is going to devote his life to India, all his thoughts should be concentrated on the scene of his mission. The materials for a " liberal," as distinct from a specialized, education may just as easily be found in India as in Europe ancient or modern. If, in the following pages, a good deal is said as to what I venture to think the idolization of Indian literature and art, that does not imply any disparagement of their value as vehicles of culture. There is all the difference between a critical and an uncritical study of any subject whatsoever. The classical languages of the East afford all that can possibly be desired in the way of " mental gymnastic." Indian history is profoundly interesting and significant. In Indian ethnology alone there is matter for a liberal education.* It should be the easiest thing in the world to kindle in the mind of any intelligent young man an enthusiastic interest in India; and the fact that we make no provision for doing so is, I repeat, perhaps our most conspicuous stupidity. If a youth has so little imagination that in none of its aspects does India make any strong appeal to him, then I am sure he will never be a good administrator, and I doubt whether he will even be a satisfactory engineer, or forester, or policeman.
The late Mr. Gokhale founded at Poona a community entitled " The Servants of India." Why should not the College of the Servants of India take its place among the great institutions of Oxford or Cambridge ? There the Indian student, whether probationer or not, would find one place in England where his country no longer ranked as an intrusive outsider in a close family circle, but stood first in the thoughts, hopes and aspirations of all concerned. There the tone of the institution would be set, in part, by teachers of his own race. Why should not the Vice-Principal be always an Indian ? There a tradition and a code of manners would grow up to which he would yield
* On these points see the excellent remarks in the Report of the Commissioners, Vol. I., p. 175 (Annexure X., pars. 28 & 29).
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willing allegiance. There he would be enabled to discriminate between racial pride and racial vanity, between devoted labour for the future of India and superstitious worship of her past. And there would the British neophyte find no less salutary influences, no less solid advantages. He would be gradually inducted into the atmosphere of the marvellous country that was to be the scene of his life-work. He would serve his apprenticeship to the necessary give-and-take between West and East. It would be a point of honour, as well as of manifest interest, with him to cultivate the tact and sympathy which are so often lacking even in very well-meaning and able British officials. If any young man of either race showed a marked inability to " get on " with his comrades, it would be a sign that he had mistaken his vocation. Of course, a still greater measure of tact would be required by the members of the governing body ; but if we cannot supply the qualities which can run such a college successfully, how can we hope to run an empire ? It is needless to add that the college should in no sense be segregated from the rest of the University. The Indian undergraduates would be encouraged to take their full share in sports and social activities. But they would have, what they now lack—a home and a recognized status in a land strange to them, indeed, but no longer inhospitable. It would go hard but they should come to look on that land with less jaundiced eyes, and to recognize the sincerity of our desire to serve and magnify India, not to humiliate and exploit her.
One thing that is not always realized is to me indisputable. Great as are the differences between us and our Indian fellow-citizens, the points of resemblance are even more remarkable. Perhaps I should rather say the potentialities of assimilation. There is certainly no other non-European race in the world that could so rapidly and so perfectly acquire our language and adapt themselves to our manners ; nor is there any race in whom we are less conscious of immitigable and estranging foreignness. This
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may seem to contradict certain passages in the following pages, but the contradiction is only apparent. If we imagine ourselves for a moment standing in the same relation to the Japanese or Chinese in which we stand to the Indians, we shall realize, I think, how much wider would be the sundering gulf, how much more difficult the problem of bridging it. The fact is, no doubt, that India is leavened with Aryanism, and that even this remote cousinship tells in the end. I have attended more than one Indian debating society, the members of which talked something very like red-hot sedition, not only in the language of the ordinary undergraduate (a little more fluent), but with a perfect observance of all the conventional forms of debate, and—more notable still—with a free use and appreciation of the little touches of facetiousness which are apt to enliven the proceedings of the British debating club. It would, of course, be a mistake to lay too much stress on this quickness of superficial assimilation ; yet, if judiciously utilized, it could not but greatly facilitate the building up of a corporate tradition in an Indian college such as we are discussing.
In the Report of the Royal Commission (p. 175) it is very justly remarked that:
The problems, legal, philosophical, historical and social, with which an Indian civil servant will have to deal in after life, involving as they do the whole question of the interaction of the east and the west, are among the most complex in the history of the world, and the universities can play a great part in their solution by providing the organization for their sympathetic investigation and elucidation.
I venture to believe, even in the face of such high authority, that an invaluable part of that organization would be a college specially devoted to the service of India. By scattering cadets of both races through a score of colleges and many scores of non-collegiate rooms, we throw India into hopeless competition with the multitudinous interests of English and European life. Les absents
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ont toujours tort. What is wanted is a place where India should always be present, predominant, enthroned. The Commissioners themselves admit the importance of establishing " a link of sympathy between the civil servant and the people among whom he works, and creating an enthusiasm for India which the present probationary course is not suited to beget." They propose to create this enthusiasm by means of an " optional subject" to be " taught intensively "—such as " Persian poetry, Indian religions, Indian law, or the study of primitive institutions." I submit that there is one great subject which must be intensively taught to everyone who has opted for an Indian career—and that subject is India.
The Report of the Commission seems to me, on the whole, a conservative rather than a radical document. This was to be expected, and is perhaps as it should be. Practicality rather than ideality ought to be the watchword of such a report; it should not look far into the future, but should rather take all the factors in the case into account, and consider what is possible in the present. But this implies that its recommendations should be regarded as an irreducible minimum, not as a maximum to be beaten down. Not the least significant pages in the Blue Book are those containing dissentient notes by Indian members of the Commission ; and while they are not quite free from that tendency of Indian thought which I have elsewhere described as willing the end while rejecting the means, they are, on the whole, moderate and reasonable. One has only to read them to understand that any haggling over the more liberal recommendations of the Commission must cause a bitterness of feeling which it would be no less unwise than ungenerous to incur. "I have signed the report," says Mr. M. B. Chaubal, " as I am in agreement with its large principles, and as I support its main recommendations for the sympathetic spirit in which, so far as they go, they are conceived. . . . 1/ accepted in their entirety [they] will eventually mean a fair advance over the present state
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of things." But he goes on to show that they are far from satisfying what he believes to be " the reasonable aspirations of the Indian people."
Mr. Abdur Rahim, Judge of the Madras High Court, does not sign the report, but presents a long Minute of his own which is well worth reading. In the forefront of his reasons for dissatisfaction with the existing state of affairs, and even with the recommendations of his fellow-commissioners, stands the fact—which, he says, appeared in evidence—that " an Indian career does not rank at all high in the estimation of English youths of more than average capacity and ambition." " Such men," he says,
prefer one of the many careers open to them in England. . . . It has also been brought to our notice that the increasing activities of social life in manifold directions have, in England, so augmented the demand for educated men, that only a very limited number of young men of superior calibre are available for foreign employment, and to this small number, service in self-governing colonies seems to appeal more strongly than service in India. There can be no doubt that the offers which Indian services ordinarily get proceed mostly from candidates of average attainments and rather limited outlook, more or less obliged by circumstances to seek for a living in a land which otherwise does not evoke much enthusiasm in their breasts. I am not inclined to depreciate the many good qualities of such men, and have no doubt that they prove quite equal to the daily duties of official business. But we cannot look with confidence to recruits of this type as a body to supply the higher order of administrative talent which alone can enable a foreigner to understand the real forces at work in the very complex conditions of modern India, and to guide them with sympathy.
Whence Mr. Rahim deduces the urgent need for allotting to Indians a much larger share of responsible offices.
If the fact be as he states, another and supplementary deduction forces itself upon us—namely, that steps should be taken to make the service of India attractive to the best ,class of young Englishmen. I do not mean that we should bribe them by increased salaries and pensions, but that we should give India a chance to seek out her elective
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affinities, by bringing her history, art and general conditions within the ordinary ambit of a liberal education. It is rather discreditable that this should not long ago have been done. So long as India remains a closed book to ninety-nine per cent, even of educated Englishmen, what chance has she to exercise her incomparable fascination upon those who are by nature accessible to it ? If it be true (as I fear it is) that many young men go to India as a last resource, because they cannot find suitable employment elsewhere, the fact is a grave reproach to us. The existence of a great Indian College would probably do much to remedy this state of affairs ; but more than that is required ; it is necessary that India should come to her rights as a subject of instruction in the higher forms of public schools.* Furthermore, we should take steps to correct the prevalent impression—-a survival from long bygone ages—that there is any special hardship in official life in India. That an Indian career is strenuous, and often full of disappointments, cannot be denied ; but apart from quite exceptional circumstances, the material conditions are pleasant enough, and not infrequently delightful. There is little or no foundation for the idea that service in India demands sacrifices of health and comfort that ought to be specially paid for. This is especially true since the motor-car has done so much to diminish distances. In some ways, the life of an Indian station is more spacious and civilized than any that Europe has to offer, except to the very wealthy.
Whether we can afford to give our best brains to the service of India is, in theory, a very serious question; but in practice it does not arise at all, for the simple reason
* There should be a good supply of Indian fiction—not merely of Kipling—in every school library. Many almost forgotten novels of the early part of last century make excellent reading : Pandurang Hari ; The Confessions of a Thug, and other books of Meadows Taylor's ; the extraordinarily able Chronicles of Budgepore, etc., etc.
In this connection. Sir Theodore Morison's excellent Minute on differential rates of pay for Englishmen and Indians ought to be studied. See Report of the Commissioners, Vol. I., p. 371.
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that there is, or ought to be, no choice in the matter. We are once for all committed to this great enterprise, and, at whatever sacrifice, we are bound in honour to carry it through. The more ability and energy we devote to it in the near future, the shorter will be the term of our trustee-? ship, and of the " drain " upon our intellectual resources. Moreover, if a new spirit were infused into the service of India, the Anglo-Indian, on his return, would be all the better fitted for the service of England. The reaction upon home politics of a truly enlightened Government of India could not but be beneficial.
Since this book was written, India has lost one of her greatest servants. The name of Mr. G. K. Gokhale occurs often in the following pages, and generally in connection with some criticism of his views. But I am sure that, had Mr. Gokhale lived to do me the honour of reading these passages, he would have recognized in them the profound respect in which I held his character and talents. He will certainly be long remembered, not only by Indians, but by all lovers of India, as one of the most authentic heroes of his race.
It only remains to say that, while I have made no change in my text of 1914, I have added a few footnotes arising out of recent events, and documents published since the outbreak of the war. To these supplementary notes I have always appended the date (I9I7).
London, May, 1917.
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