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I
A Bird's-Eye View
THE Viceroy of India rules over three hundred and fifteen million people, or in other words about one-fifth of the human race. His territory equals in extent the whole of Europe, minus Russia. It is less than half the territory of the United States ; but, on the other hand, it outstrips the United States in population by more than three to one. His government, though subject to the control of the Parliament at Westminster, is absolutely autocratic in relation to the people of India. He, and the Governors subordinate to him, are bound by recent regulations to ask the advice of certain Indian gentlemen ; but they are not in the least bound to follow it. The European force behind this autocracy consists of 75,000 soldiers— say, one to every 4,500 of the people. The European executive numbers some 1,500 officials, or one ruler to every 200,000 of the ruled.
Thus summarized in cold figures, the British dominion in India seems wonderful enough. But until you see it in actual working—in its habit, or habits, as it lives— the true marvel of it can be but faintly realized. The more you see of it, indeed, the more incredible it appears. Beside it the Roman Empire seems almost a commonplace affair. The organizing genius of Rome radiated from the centre outwards, and Roman civilization followed the Roman arms, either imposing itself upon barbarisms, or arriving at an amicable compromise with pre-existent civilizations. British, rule in India does not radiate from a centre, but is projected over more than 6,000 miles of sea ;* and British civilization, though it is, to some extent, influencing India by sheer force of contact, remains absolutely alien to the enormous mass of the people. The Briton comes to India to govern, governs, and goes away again. His relations with a few Indians may be more or less friendly ; but he no more enters into the national life of the country than the plumber who puts in your water-pipes, or the electrician who " wires " your house, becomes a member of your family. It is in this complete and deliberately-cultivated externality that*the wonder of British rule consists.
The huge pear-shaped region which we call India is enveloped from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, from Baluchistan to Burma, in the network of the British raj. The meshes of the net are wide, but they are woven with great regularity and they are extremely tough. A fierce attempt to burst through them, in 1857, led only to a firmer re-weaving of the fabric. It is true that about a third part of the whole territory, with a population of 70,000,000, remains under the nominal, and in some cases the more or less real, rule of Indian princes ; but to each court a British resident is attached whose word is law in all essential matters ; and the proudest of the princes rules only " during good behaviour," with no power to enter into foreign relations, or to raise an efficient army of his own. In the largest of the states, Hyderabad and Mysore, the great British cantonments of Secunderabad and Bangalore are a constant reminder that the suzerain power is no effete tradition. In British territory proper, with its million square miles and its 245,000,000 people, the meshes of the net are closer, and its foreignness, its externality, is even more apparent. Is not a net by its
* They were 13,000 miles when the British rule took its rise ; and the voyage, which now occupies some three weeks, then took from six to twelve months. very nature a foreign substance, in relation to the objects which it encloses and holds together ?
The great Presidency towns, Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, are European cities planted on Indian soil. All the prominent buildings are European, though in some of the more recent ones an endeavour has been made to adopt what is known as the " Indo-Saracenic" style of architecture. For the rest, the streets are called by English names, generally the names of bygone Viceroys and Governors, or of the soldiers who conquered the land and quelled the Mutiny—heroes whose effigies meet you at every turn. The shops are English shops, where English or Eurasian assistants traffic in English goods. English carriages and motors bowl along the macadamized or tarred roads of old England. On every hand there is evidence of the instinctive effort to reproduce, as nearly as the climate will permit, English conditions of life. In Bombay, indeed, the merchant princes are no longer Europeans, but Hindus and Parsis. Theirs are the most sumptuous palaces on Malabar Hill; theirs the most "swagger" motors on the Queen's Road and the Apollo Bunder. In Calcutta, though commercial competition is less keen, the great Bengali landowner is a prominent and important personage. But almost the whole life of the people of India is relegated to the back streets, not to say the slums—frankly called in Madras the Black Town. There are a few points— clubs and gymkhanas specially established to that end —where English men, and even women, meet Indian men,, and even women, of the wealthier classes, on a basis of social equality. But few indeed are the points of contact between the Asian town and the European city which has been superimposed upon it. The missionary, the Salvation Army outpost, perhaps the curiosity-hunting tourist, may go forth into the bazaars ; but the European community as a whole cares no more for the swarming brown multitudes around it than the dwellers on an island care for the fishes in the circumambient sea. Leave the Presidency towns and go to the provincial capitals or to the smaller stations, and what do you find ? Go to Allahabad, to Lucknow, to Lahore, to Poona, to Agra, even to Delhi itself—everywhere you are in a British town, with British street names, British shops, British churches, British statues, British red-pillar-letter-boxes, British " Standings for Hackney Carriages," British " No Thoroughfare" and " Trespassers will be prosecuted" notice-boards, British customs, conventions and traditions rampant on every hand. Everywhere, no doubt, there is a " native " town, more or less adjoining the British civil station and military cantonment. Sometimes, as at Delhi and Benares, this town is a show place which everyone visits ; but in other cases neither travellers nor the ordinary run of residents give it so much as a passing thought. Externally the British station is extremely unlike a town in the old country. Land was apparently of no value when these settlements were laid out; so that each bungalow stands in a spacious " compound," often acres in extent, and the dwellings of a hundred Europeans, with their servants, will often occupy an area that would accommodate many thousands in the adjacent bazaar, or in a city of Europe or America. It must be owned that the Anglo-Indian leads a spacious life. His settlements realized the ideal of the " garden city" before that term was invented. Miles of roadway, from 70 to 130 feet wide, are densely overarched by those wonderful trees which are the incomparable glory of India. In many places there are three rows of trees, and a tan-covered ride skirts the macadamized driving-way. Every house has its own embowering trees ; and there are often—as, for instance, at Lahore and Amritsar—spacious public gardens as well. The result is, of course, that distances are enormous, and walking, even when the temperature admits of it, is impossible. Everybody rides or drives, and of late years the "motor-cycle is much in evidence. Even the shops stand- in their own compounds, and you approach your tailor's by a carriage drive that would do credit to a duke's town-house.
The life of these stations, though comfortable and pleasant, is by no means extravagantly luxurious. But whatever else it may be, it is utterly, aggressively British. The sahib generally rises early, has his " chota hazri," or morning cup of tea, and goes off for his still more indispensable morning " exercise." If the hounds do not meet, he and his " memsahib" are probably content with a canter along the tan-track of the Mall, round the race-course, and back by Dalhousie Road, Lytton Avenue and Lansdowne Park —some six or eight miles in all. Then he has his bath, and runs through a few official files before breakfast. After breakfast he sets to work in earnest to govern the country, as magistrate, as revenue assessor and collector, as conscience-keeper to an Indian prince, as head of some huge district, or, it may be, as governor of a province more populous than Great Britain. He leaves off governing for tiffin at two, and then governs again till tea-time. Between tea and dinner he goes to the Club, meets the other sahibs of the station, male and female, civil, political and military, plays tennis, and (after dusk) Badminton by lamplight, listens to the regimental band discoursing melodies from " The Up-to-Date Girl," and looks at the English illustrated and sporting papers. At eight he goes home to dress for dinner at eight-thirty. For a domestic meal he puts On a " short coat " and a black tie, and the same if he is dining out " quite quietly." If that deprecatory formula does not occur in the invitation, he arrays himself in swallow-tail and white choker, and expects to drink champagne. Often, before he goes to bed, he will again plunge into the "files" which are always awaiting him, and burn the midnight oil over reams of conflicting perjuries in some case that has come before him on appeal. For it is no easy job this governing of India, nor does the British official take it easily. His innocent recreations are not more than enough to keep him " fit." The routine above sketched is, in many cases, varied by periodical excursions " into districts," when the official lives for weeks in tents, moving from village to village, and investigating on the spot questions of revenue, police, irrigation, public works and what not. This, however, must be regarded, not as a hardship, but as a pleasant variety in his duties ; for the Indian servant has mastered the art of tent life, and can generally make his sahib extremely comfortable, even under unpromising circumstances.
I am not, for the moment, either praising or dispraising the government thus conducted. For the moment the point to be noted is its undisguised and systematic foreign-ness. India is administered from a network of foreign townships, planted in her midst, in close association with another network of cantonments, or foreign military camps. Of the heads of the Government not one is an Indian. A very few Indians hold moderately high appointments, especially judicial ; but they are, to the mass of the civil and political services, at the outside, as one in twenty. No Indian holds or can hold in the military service a rank equal to that of a British captain.* In subordinate civil functions—in the secretariats, in the police, the post-office, the telegraphs, the railways, and so forth—millions of Indians are employed, but always under the eye of European superiors. A considerable number of British officials do their work not only conscientiously but enthusiastically. They study the people they are set to rule over, encourage and develop the better sides of their character, master their languages, even their dialects, and govern, in a word, not only capably but sympathetically. These, however, are necessarily exceptions. The average British official, though honest, hard-working and efficient according to his fights, does little to mitigate the crude fact of racial domination. He seldom dreams of wearing a velvet glove on the iron hand. He sincerely
* This is now about to be altered (1917). believes that the Oriental character understands and appreciates nothing but despotism; and he consistently acts up to that belief—for which, indeed, there is a great deal to be said. I am not, I repeat, either praising or condemning him. I am simply trying to throw into relief the astounding fact that we have in India three hundred million people whose political life consists in " obeying orders given in a foreign accent."
And who are these people ? A brutish, savage race, born to tutelage as the sparks fly upwards ? Let us hear Edmund Burke on the point:
This multitude of men does not consist of an abject and barbarous population. . . . [They are] a people for ages civilized and cultivated ; cultivated by all the arts of polished life while we were yet in the woods.
I shall have to argue later that this is a violent and mischievous overstatement; but the fact that it could be made with any sort of plausibility by such a man as Burke is sufficient for my present purpose. And one thing is certain: namely, that every educated Hindu knows this passage by heart, and has rubbed its flattering unction . into the very pores of his nature. Nothing is more frequent in intercourse with Indians than to have them courteously checking themselves on the brink of a reminder that their ancestors were monarchs and sages while ours were woad-stained cave-men or lake-dwellers.* Whether the statement be true, and what, if true, should be deduced from it, need not here be considered. The point is that this race, or rather these races, are far from having no pride of ancestry, far from being congenitally predisposed to
* Mr. G. K. Gokhale, speaking at the. National Liberal Club, London, on November 15, 1905, said : " The people of India are an ancient race who had attained a high degree of civilization long before the ancestors of European nations understood what civilization was. India has been the birthplace of great religions. ' She was also the cradle and long the home of literature and philosophy, of science and arts." admit the superiority of a Western people.* It is true that not even in their wildest moments of arrogance can they claim to have enjoyed, at any period of their past, what we of the West call political freedom. But this does not render them less accessible to democratic ideals and dreams, less sensitive to the diminutio capitis involved in obeying a caste of foreign rulers. History, in short, explains the origin, and accounts for the possibility, of the British dominion in India, but offers no adequate basis for the theory that it is providentially adapted to the unalterable psychology of the Indian people. To any Indian with a gleam of intelligence, it can only appear the final outcome and symbol of a series of historic disasters, stretching back into the very dawn of recorded time.
To such an Indian, and indeed to any moderately unbiased and thinking person, the British rule may seem tolerable, and even indispensable, as a means to an end. But it is hard to understand how any thinking person, English or Indian, can regard it as an end in itself, a thing desirable for its own sake. If England recognizes in time this plain and simple distinction, many of her hardest problems in India will gradually solve themselves, and the history of her Indian Empire will always be to her a legitimate
* As a small illustration of this fact take the following passage from The Heart of Hinduism by Sir Narayan Chandavarkar, a Judge of the Bombay High Court : " From Hindus Englishmen have borrowed the habit of daily bathing. Other nations in Europe are still backward ; but they, too, are slowly learning." At no period of history have Indians been inclined to admit or to realize that they had anything to learn from the outside world. It is surprising to observe how little they profited by the Greek influences which came home to them pretty closely in the centuries alter Alexander's invasion. They learned something in sculpture, but that was all. The theory that their drama shows Greek influences I believe to be mistaken. " Asoka," says Mr. Vincent Smith, " was much more anxious to communicate the blessings of Buddhist teaching to Antiochos and Ptolemy than to borrow Greek notions from them." And again : " The Indians were impressed by both Alexander and Menander as mighty captains, not as missionaries of culture, and no doubt regarded both these sovereigns as impure barbarians, to be feared but not imitated." Early History of India, p. 225. source of pride. But if she declines to recognize it, and obstinately stakes her national prestige upon the endurance for ever and ever of her autocratic rule in India, she is heading towards certain disaster for herself and for all the millions whom Fate has entrusted to her care.
It is not in human nature that such peoples as those of India should rest permanently content to lead their lives under the domination of an alien, unsympathetic, uncomprehending and uncomprehended race. Actual political disaffection may be as yet confined to a small minority ; but there are and will always be plenty of definite and material subjects of discontent, coming home to vast numbers of people ; and, rightly or wrongly, the Sirkar, the Government, will always be held to blame for whatever is amiss. Thus " unrest," though it may simmer down for a time, will always be latent and easily revived ; and if there is one thing more certain than another it is that, the moment England gets into serious trouble elsewhere, India, in her present temper, would burst into a blaze of rebellion.* All sanely patriotic Indians would be plunged in grief, realizing that, whether successful or not, the rebellion could have none but disastrous results. But sane patriotism would have no chance against hot-headed enthusiasm, asking " Are we to submit for ever to the autocratic domination and exploitation of a handful of arrogant foreigners ? " There would be sufficient spe-ciousness in this view of the case to render it irresistible to over-wrought brains. But if, on the other hand, the Government had, for a series of years, in word and in deed, shown that it sincerely realized its true mission, not of carrying on its present routine to all eternity, but of making India a nation and gradually preparing it for self-government, there would be a reasonable probability that, even in England's direst straits, sane counsels would prevail, and India would be in no undue haste to cut the leading-strings and prematurely declare herself an adult and selfsufficient
* As to this, see " Postscript-Proem," p. xii. (1917). 17 political entity. This she is far enough from being, all reasonable people admit; but, thanks to British rule, she is much nearer to political cohesion and competence than she ever was before in the whole course of her history. It lies with us to decide whether we shall recognize and consciously forward this process of evolution, or stupidly attempt to check it, in the interests of an unimaginable permanence of things as they are. We have before us a great opportunity and a great danger; if we neglect the one, we shall infallibly rush headlong into the other.
There is nothing paradoxical, nothing even novel, in this view of England's opportunity in India. It has been held and uttered, more or less explicitly, by many English and Anglo-Indian statesmen. It may even be said that the sempiternity of British domination is a recent pseudo-ideal, begotten of that thoughtless Imperialism which regards not only the Indian Empire, but the whole Empire of Great Britain, as an end in itself, and not as a means to a higher end. I am no Little Englander ; on the contrary, I regard the British Empire as one of the greatest, and possibly one of the most beneficent, facts of history. Even in India, I have not the slightest sympathy with those who indiscriminately applaud everything Indian, and have nothing but carping disparagement for the great work England has done. I admire it whole-heartedly; but that does not prevent me from recognizing that it must ultimately go to ruin if it is inspired by a false and impracticable ideal.
The time is ripe for the open recognition and promulgation of a juster view of England's duty and opportunity. Without making too much of the well-meant but rather ineffectual efforts at social approximation between the East and the West, one may safely say that the brutally contemptuous attitude of the West to the East—never the attitude of good or intelligent men—has had its day, and survives only among the dregs of the European population. Bad manners are no longer good form, and it is being generally realized that racial superiority, if it exists at all, is not to be demonstrated by bluster and swagger. And as outward manifestations cannot change without a corresponding change in inward feeling, it is certain that the decline of swagger in manner is not unaccompanied by a decline of swagger in thought. Respect for the human rights of the Indian cannot be quite divorced from respect for his political aspirations ; and even in the most unlikely official quarters one does already find the germs of such respect. Oddly enough, the outward, if not the inward, change is probably to be traced back to the execrated viceroyalty of Lord Curzon; but it has been greatly promoted under that statesman's successors. What is needed now is an explicit recognition in the highest quarters of a change of attitude which, though hitherto unrecognized, is already in great measure accomplished. There is no need for definite pledges, or rash speculations as to the probable rapidity of progress. The essential point is that British rule should be openly confessed and authoritatively proclaimed to be a means, not an end. As soon as this idea or ideal had percolated, as it rapidly would, from the centre to the extremities of the governing body, a happy change in the relations of the two races would, naturally and without effort, manifest itself. I do not mean a social approximation, which seems to me difficult and unimportant. What I mean is that the Indian in official life would feel a new self-respect, and that this feeling would react upon the European attitude towards him. Indian patriotism, in a word, would no longer have to choose between querulous opposition to the Government at every possible point, and pessimistic acquiescence in foreign rule, simply " lest worse befall." There would still be plenty of friction, plenty of difference of opinion as to the best means of attaining the common end ; but they would be the differences of normal political life, not of irreconcilably conflicting purposes and ideals. This is, in outline, the view of England's opportunity which I propose to develop in the following pages. I need not, at this point, further anticipate the course of my argument. But one question which will certainly be asked I can answer quite briefly and without delay. " British rule," it may be said, " is, according to you, a means to an end, that end being a united and self-governing India. Do you propose that this self-governing state should be part of the British Empire, or independent of it ? " My answer is : " Sufficient for the day are the problems thereof." Many a long year will have to pass before India is ripe for self-government ; and who can tell what may be the state and constitution of the British Empire when that date is reached ? It may have broken up into its Component parts ; it may be merged into a larger synthesis ; all we know is that it will be a very different thing from the Empire of to-day. It is sheer waste of time to wrangle over the formula " within or without the Empire." So much alone is certain: we are far more likely to keep India within the Empire by fostering than by obstinately thwarting her natural aspirations. A nation of 300,000,000 cannot be held in permanent subjection, against its will, by a nation of 40,000,000 ; and India, thanks to our rule, is rapidly becoming a nation and developing a will of her own.
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