|
PROLOGUE
THERE is a turn in the Khyber Pass, as it winds from Ali Musjid to Jamrud, where all at once you see the mountain wall drop away to its foundation, and look out over a tawny plain, stretching inimitably into a far-off purple haze.
No spot on earth is more saturated with the romance of history. For that plain is INDIA ; and from here or hereabouts has it been first surveyed by the swarms of oncoming Aryans, by Alexander and his Greeks, by Scythian, Tartar and Afghan hordes, by Timur, by Babar, by Nadir Shah, and other conquerors without number. Behind that purple haze lie Kashmir, the poet's tableland ; Lahore the capital; and Amritsar the holy city, of the Sikhs ; the glorious mosques, palaces and mausoleums of Delhi and Agra, of Fatehpur Sikri and Bijapur ; the tragic fastnesses of the Rajputs ; Benares, unique in its squalid sublimity ; the huge and sinister temples of the South ; upstart smoke-breathing emporiums of the sea-borne invader ; mighty rivers whose names are as old as history ; battlefields by the score, from mythic Kurukshetra to thrice-ensanguined Panipat, from Plassey to Sobraon and Gujrat, where East came to grips with West ; and, circling it all in, the white pinnacles of the most tremendous mountain barrier in the world, in whose impenetrable solitudes superstition can still place unreproved the abode of ever-living sages, holding daily commune with the gods. For the superstitions and legends of this land are as colossal as everything else within its frontiers. Hideous savageries of cult and custom prevailed in it till yesterday, and are not even now extinct. Its myths, its deities, its idols are each more monstrous than the last; and the worship of stocks and stones is inextricably commingled with the no less superstitious worship of filmy and air-drawn metaphysical fantasies. Such is the country on the threshold whereof we stand, as Alexander stood three-and-twenty centuries ago; and working itself out in this historic and prehistoric wonderland, we can now see the most romantic adventure of modern times, a huge, precarious, blundering, heroic experiment in organization, pacification, civilization. Is there any other region in the world which makes such a multiform appeal to the vision, the imagination and the intellect ?
I, at any rate, know of no other. India is the Italy of Asia ; and though the past of India cannot vie with that of Italy in world-historic significance, its present is incomparably more picturesque and fraught with vaster issues.
When I landed in India in the summer of 1912, nothing was further from my thoughts than the writing of such a book as this. But the country cast an instant spell on me. Its surface aspects enthralled me, its problems became an obsession. Gradually the idea grew upon me that there was but one possible solution for these problems, but one honourable, desirable and fortunate consummation to the great adventure. It ·is that idea which informs the following pages.
This is not a book of travel. Of. the surface aspects of India, fascinating as they are, I shall have little to say. The work of the picturesque tourist has been done to unapproachable perfection by the late G. W. Steevens, whose book, In India, is a masterpiece of exact observation and vivid portrayal. Excellent, too, is Mr. Sydney Low's Vision of India ; and Mr. H. W. Nevinson's New Spirit in India- contains many admirable pages both of description and comment. With these writers I attempt no rivalry ; and still less, of course, with the many able authorities on Indian affairs whom the civil and political services have produced.* How, then, can I justify this addition to the mountainous mass of Anglo-Indian literature ? Simply by the fact that I had something to say which has not, to my knowledge, been fully, explicitly and dispassionately said before.
Not that I pretend to have made any great discovery. Many people, as I hope to show, have taken a similar view of the case. But some of them have been restrained by official traditions from speaking out very clearly. Others have spoken with a passionate partisanship, or with a querulous pessimism, which has lessened the weight of their words. I see no reason for pessimism, I see no reason for invective. What I see is an extraordinarily interesting and complicated situation, which wisdom may work out to a triumphant issue, or unwisdom may precipitate to disaster. And I feel so strong a conviction as to the course which wisdom dictates that I should regard it almost as a shirking of duty to refrain from stating my view, for what it is worth.
There is also, of course, the possibility that the situation may be inherently hopeless—one which no conceivable exercise of reason can turn to good. I do not think that this is so ; but if it is—if the experiment is foredoomed to failure—at least let us fail magnanimously, and not stupidly.
I shall not here anticipate the course of my argument. But it may be well to show unmistakably from the outset that the attitude of mind which I criticize and would fain see altered is, in fact, the official attitude of mind.
On August 25th, 1911, the Governor-General in Council signed a momentous despatch to the Secretary of State for
* Without disparagement to others, I may mention Sir Bampfylde Fuller's Studies in Indian Life and Sentiment as an extremely interesting and informing work.
India. It dealt mainly with the question of the change of capital; but the passage which was most eagerly read and welcomed in India ran as follows :
It is certain that, in the course of time, the just demands of Indians for a larger share in the government of the country will have to be satisfied, and the question will be how this devolution of power can be conceded without impairing the supreme authority of the Governor-General in Council. The only possible solution of the difficulty would appear to be gradually to give the Provinces a larger measure of self-government, until at last India would consist of a number of administrations, autonomous in all provincial affairs, with the Government of India above them all, and possessing power to interfere in cases of misgovernment, but ordinarily restricting its functions to matters of Imperial concern.
Months passed ; the King-Emperor paid his memorable visit to India, a finely-inspired act of true Kingship ; and it seemed as though a new era were dawning in the relations of the two peoples. Then someone in England called attention to the liberalism, cautious but explicit, of the above paragraph from Lord Hardinge's despatch; and behold ! the Liberal Secretary of State had nothing more pressing to do than to disavow it. In the House of Lords, on June 24th, I9I2, the Marquis of Crewe said:
There was a certain section in India which looked forward to a measure of self-government approaching to that which had been granted to the Dominions. He saw no future for India on these lines. The experiment of a measure of self-government, practically free from parliamentary control, to a race which was not our own, even though that race enjoyed the advantages of the best services of men belonging to our race, was one which could not be tried. It was his duty as Secretary of State to repudiate the idea that the despatch implied anything of the kind, as the hope or goal of the policy of the Government.
In a later debate (July 29th) Lord Crewe was still more emphatic, laying it down in so many words that: The maintenance and perpetual continuance of British rule is the best way of securing the happiness of the Indian people.*
The bomb thrown at the Viceroy on December 23rd, as he entered the new capital, may probably be construed as a rejoinder to this utterance. It was an imbecile retort, condemned by all reasonable men, in India no less than in England ; yet the fact remains that, by insisting on an inconceivable perpetuity of rule, we not only inflame Indian unreason, but alienate Indian reason. Terrorism I do not regard as an important factor in the case, however unpleasant ; but if the British Government thinks that even the sanest and most law-abiding citizens of India sincerely accept the principle laid down by Lord Crewe, I believe it to be labouring under a disastrous illusion.
This is, in fact, my case ; and it is a case which I cannot expect to commend itself, at first blush, to British, or Anglo-Indian, opinion. Neither can I hope, unfortunately, that my argument will be read with approval in India ; for I have much to say that cannot be agreeable to Indian self-complacency. Those Europeans seem to me very false friends to India who gloze over, or even treat as advantages, the historic misfortunes under which she suffers. At all events, it is an essential part of my case that India is as yet far from being prepared to take an equal place among the civilized nations of the world. A schoolboy of my acquaintance came home the other day much elated because, in the singing class, he had been promoted from the best of those who sing badly to the worst of those who sing well. In the eyes of his elders the distinction did not seem very important; and, similarly, I do not think it important to decide whether India is the most forward of barbarous, or the most backward of civilized, nations. One or other, to my mind, she certainly is ; and this view conflicts very
* Hansard report. The Times report omits " perpetual." " Even the women deplore it," a leading Bengali journalist said to me on the morrow of the outrage. definitely with the opinion of a great many Indians, who hold her to be little less than a divinity under a temporary cloud. I must face with what resolution I may the fate of the impartial commentator who exasperates both parties. But if this book should fall into the hands of any of the Indian gentlemen who treated me with ungrudging cordiality and kindness, I beg them to believe that what I learned from them was a firm faith in the ability of their race to retrieve its age-old misfortunes, and shape for itself a real future as glorious as its mythic past.
I am well aware that if any one of these gentlemen chose to apply a searching criticism to English life, he could, with no extravagance of paradox, retort at many points the reproach of " barbarism " which I am compelled to level against so many aspects of Indian life, both material and spiritual. The incompleteness of Western civilization is only too manifest, in churches redolent of myth and magic, monarchies aureoled in superstition, rank-worship only less contemptible than wealth-worship, militarism, even in times of peace, sapping the best energies of the peoples, and industrialism so iniquitously organized, or unorganized, as to engender the slum and the sweating-shop, and foster the gin-palace and the brothel. " If this be Western civilization," an Indian critic may be tempted to say, " give me Eastern barbarism ! " I suggest, however, that he will do well to resist the temptation. Europe, with all its crimes and imbecilities, is many centuries further from the Ur-Dummheit than un-Europeanized India. It is struggling out of the ages of faith into the age of knowledge. Some of the worst of its evils proceed from the very rapidity of its movement ; whereas the evils of India are those of secular stagnation. I readily admit that the barbarism of India has picturesque and even venerable aspects to which few of the barbarisms of Europe can lay claim ; but that does not make it either desirable or permanently possible in the modern world. In the spelling of Indian names I have been guided by convenience, and have not tried to adhere consistently to any system. The accents on Sanskrit words I have entirely disregarded, as they convey no meaning except to Sanskrit scholars. By " Anglo-Indian " I mean Anglo-Indian, not Eurasian. The attempt to divert to a new and inappropriate use a word so thoroughly established in the English language can lead to nothing but confusion.
One of the following chapters—the sixth—has already appeared in the Fortnightly Review, and is here reprinted by permission of the Editor. |
