India, Old and New Part 7

The elections in the Southern Provinces presented a somewhat different picture though the defeat of "Non-co-operation" was equally complete.

The Nerbudda river has been from times immemorial a great dividing line, climatic, racial, and often political, between Northern and Southern India. It still is so. For, whilst with a few relatively unimportant exceptions the whole of British India--save Burma, which, except from an administrative point of view, is not India at all--has been brought with perhaps excessive uniformity within the scope of the new const.i.tutional reforms, many conditions in the Central Provinces and in the great Presidency of Madras differ widely from those prevailing in the other major provinces north of the Nerbudda, and the actual failure of "Non-co-operation" to enforce its boycott of the elections was less noteworthy than some other features in the new situation. In the Central Provinces the elections themselves were fought out on much the same lines as in the north and with very similar results, if allowance is made for the intellectual backwardness of the province. Political activity and agitation had been confined in the past mainly to Nagpur, the capital, and to the western districts, in which a large Mahratta element predominates especially amongst the better-educated cla.s.ses.

Most of Mr. Tilak's former followers there had joined the "Non-co-operation" movement, and their rigid abstention from the elections left the doors of the Provincial Council wide open for the representation of more sober Indian opinion. The Extremists showed their contempt for the new a.s.sembly by putting up one or two "freak"

candidates in breach of the boycott they were preaching, and actually got in a _dhobi_, or laundryman, at Jubbulpur. But the elections were overshadowed by the preparations for the Nagpur Congress, which was to be the great Gandhi counterblast to the Reforms, and the Extremists, who poured into the province from the neighbouring Bombay Presidency, concentrated their efforts on the creation of an atmosphere of general unrest favourable to the new line of campaign upon which the rump of the old Indian National Congress was about to enter with the open renunciation of the fundamental article of its original creed--loyalty to the British connection.

It seems one of the strangest of the many anomalies with which the Indian situation teems that the Central Provinces should have been chosen of all others as the scene for a great spectacular demonstration of revolt against the state of "slavery" to which Indians have been reduced by a "Satanic" alien rule. It is one of the precepts of Mr.

Gandhi's gospel of "Non-co-operation," though doubtless only as a counsel of perfection, that Indian husbands and wives must cease to bring "slave" children into the world until India has attained _Swaraj_.

Yet in the Central Provinces a larger proportion of Indian children than in any other province are born every year to a state of degradation much more closely akin to slavery, which is not imposed upon them by any alien rulers, but by the ancient traditions of those of their own race and creed whose interest it is to perpetuate at the expense of their less fortunate fellow-countrymen the most cruel form of caste tyranny.

Of the total population of the Central Provinces, which numbered some sixteen millions at the last Census in 1911, one-fifth belong to that order of humanity which stands so low in the eyes of Hindus that it is unworthy to be reckoned as possessing any caste at all. These no-castes stand at the very foot of the social ladder of Hinduism, and in theory at least they can never hope to climb even on to its lowest rungs, though in practice the most stringent laws can be gradually circ.u.mvented with the help of needy Brahmans or will yield to the pressure of changing economic conditions. They are "untouchable," _i.e._ that any physical contact with them involves defilement of which the caste Hindu can only cleanse himself by ritual ablutions and other forms of ceremonial purification. Go into a village which is partially inhabited by these unfortunate people, mostly called Mahars in that part of India, and you will find that they are forbidden even to draw water from any but their own wells, as by drawing it from wells used by caste Hindus they would render them impure. In the larger urban schools under Government control British laws, which recognise no caste distinctions, enforce the admission of Mahar boys, some of whom do extremely well. But in a village school you will often see the poor little "untouchables,"

if admitted at all, relegated to mats on the outside verandah, where they may pick up such sc.r.a.ps of teaching as they can. The Government inspector of schools may remonstrate, but he knows that few teachers will make any serious attempt to mend matters, and that if they did the caste-boys would be withdrawn by their indignant parents.

When I was touring a few years ago in the Central Provinces with a British commissioner, who was carrying on an inquiry into certain grievances of the peasantry in connection with irrigation, the villagers from the more remote villages were frequently collected along the road to tell their story, and they brought with them their land-records.

These the "untouchables" had to lay on the ground at the feet of the Brahman subordinate, who would have been defiled had he taken them straight out of their hands, and only after they had withdrawn a few paces did he condescend to pick up the books and verify them before pa.s.sing them on to his British superior. The latter, on the other hand, though the representative, according to Congress orators, of a "Satanic"

Government that has reduced Indians to "slavery," never hesitated to question the poor "untouchables" closely and good-humouredly, not merely about the particular matter at issue, but about the condition of their crops or the health of their village, and sometimes gave a friendly pat on the back to the youngsters who accompanied their elders, whilst the Brahman stood by in stony and disgusted silence.

These caste discriminations doubtless originated in remote ages when the Aryan conquerors from the north gradually subdued the aboriginal Dravidian populations. The "untouchables" are mostly remnants of that population, some of them still very primitive jungle folk whom the Census cla.s.ses as "animists," or nature-worshippers, _i.e._ they still worship trees and stones and the spirits that are supposed to dwell in them. But they tend gradually to include in their worship some of the G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses of the Hindu Pantheon, especially those who are credited with power to avert the worst scourges to which the people happen to be subject. Under a sacred roadside tree I have seen in one place a rude stone, roughly shaped to represent the G.o.ddess of Small-pox, and alongside of it a clay image of a tiger that had killed a man on that very spot, set up in the hope of averting further manifestations of its wrath, and also of appeasing the dead man's soul so that he might remain quietly within the tiger and become a kindly protector to the village. The appropriation of Hindu deities is usually the first step towards their absorption into the Hindu social structure.

Others, the more progressive, have settled down as cultivators, a few occasionally becoming quite considerable land-owners. Others, again, have taken to weaving and to petty trade. Under British rule they have progressed all along the line. A Mahar regiment has been raised, officered by Mahomedans from the north, as no Hindu would think of serving with "untouchables," and though Hindu sepoys must not be brought into proximity with it, it has always behaved very creditably.

Some Mahars are now well educated, and in favour of two of them the Governor of the Central Provinces has exercised the right conferred upon him to nominate a certain number of members to the Provincial Legislative Council in order to give some representation to communities too backward to secure any for themselves under the existing franchise.

One of the best results of British governance and of Western education has been to stimulate even amongst the "untouchables" a new sense of self-respect and self-reliance and a wholesome desire to emerge from the degradation to which the custom of centuries has condemned them. It is amongst them that of late years Christian and even Mahomedan missionaries have found all over India their most fruitful field, and in some provinces ma.s.s-movements to Christianity have taken place, which are admittedly due in the first place to a desire for social emanc.i.p.ation, but will steadily lead, if properly handled, to moral and religious advancement. One of the great problems now before the missionary societies of all Christian denominations is how these tens of thousands of converts can be taught and trained, and it is of great promise for the future that a Commission of Inquiry composed of British and American and Indian Christian missionaries has recently issued a report on Village Education in India which has approached this problem, amongst others, with a broad-minded appreciation of its economic and social as well as purely religious aspects.

Is it surprising that when the Indian National Congress, that has. .h.i.therto done nothing for them beyond embodying in its programme vague expressions of sympathy, is agitating for the severance of the British connection, and Extremist orators perambulate the country to preach a boycott of British officials, the Mahars should have sent in pet.i.tions imploring the Governor not to abandon them or surrender the power which has alone done something to raise them out of the slough of despond? Mr.

Gandhi, however, who would be a great social reformer had he not preferred to plunge into a dangerous political agitation, is not himself blind to such an awful blot as "untouchability" has made on Hindu civilisation, and some of his followers, prompted perhaps less than he is himself by a generous reforming spirit, have not been slow to see what abundant materials lie ready to their hand in these vast ma.s.ses, profoundly ignorant and superst.i.tious, if they can only be drawn into the turbid stream of "Non-co-operation" by some novel and ingenious appeal to their fears or to their appet.i.tes.

In the Madras Presidency, never swept to the same degree as Bengal or Bombay by the waves of political unrest, the electoral struggle a.s.sumed a form, peculiar to Southern Indian conditions, in which "Non-co-operation" entered very little. For Southern India has its own life-history which differentiates it in many respects from other parts of India, and in none more so than in the survival of the Brahman's ancient ascendancy, until recently almost unchallenged in this stronghold of Hinduism.

Mostly of the primitive Dravidian stock that inhabited the peninsula before the great Aryan inflow from the north, and still speaking Dravidian languages, the people of Southern India have preserved in its most archaic form the social system of Hinduism which the Aryan conquerors, probably never more than a small minority, imposed upon them by the relative superiority of their civilisation quite as much as by force of arms. Of a much fairer complexion, the Aryans became the ruling "white" race of those days, and to preserve their racial prestige they enforced the most rigid laws for the differentiation of caste--which originally meant colour. The Brahmans, being the law-givers, naturally framed laws to secure the pre-eminence of their own caste, and to the present day, for instance, in the more remote parts of Southern India, men of the lower castes may be seen retiring hastily from the road at his approach, lest they should pollute the air he breathes by coming within a forbidden distance of him.

In Southern India, where Buddhist influence never secured any firm footing, Hinduism had its golden age during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, whilst the tide of Mahomedan invasion was pouring in successive waves into Northern and Central India. The last and greatest of the Hindu kingdoms of Southern India did not succ.u.mb to the sword of Islam till 1565, and the splendid ruins of Vijianagar bear out, if we make allowance for oriental hyperbole, the contemporary testimony of a Persian Amba.s.sador that "the pupil of the eye has never seen a place like it and the ear of intelligence has never been informed that there existed anything to equal it in the whole world." The Moslem conquerors laid Vijianagar low. But, by the curious irony of fortune, it was from a descendant of its royal house, some remnants of which escaped destruction, that the British, by whom Mahomedan domination was to be in turn overthrown, received their first grant of land on the Carnatic coast close to where Madras now stands.

Mahomedan domination came so late to Southern India and lasted for such a brief period that it never disturbed, even to the small extent that it did in Northern India, the social stratifications of Hinduism, which have equally withstood there more than anywhere else the subtler pressure of Western civilisation under British rule. Take, for instance, a small town like Tirupati, only a few miles from Chatnagiri, where the Rajahs, whose forebears made that momentous grant to Francis Day a little less than three centuries ago, still live in modest state. Were Tirupati still ruled by the Vijianagar kings in all their splendour, it could hardly present a better-preserved picture of ancient Hindu life.

At the foot of a steep range of hills crowned with venerable temples whose sanct.i.ty has from times immemorial attracted a constant stream of pilgrims, and possessing some famous temples of its own, it is essentially a Brahman town, and lives almost entirely by ministering, at more or less extortionate rates, to the material and spiritual needs of pilgrims, averaging about a thousand a day in ordinary times and scores of thousands at the special festival seasons, on their way to and from the sacred hill-top. There are whole streets of lodgings for their use, consisting chiefly of small bare cubicles, and rows of shops at which they can purchase their simple vegetarian food and innumerable religious trifles as mementoes of their pilgrimage. When I approached Tirupati, early in the morning, a few groups of pilgrims were already on their way to the hill-sanctuaries and peasants were starting work on the temple lands outside the town. Sacred monkeys gambolled about the trees and still more sacred cows had begun to exercise their daily privilege of browsing for food wherever their fancy leads them, even amongst the vegetables exposed for sale in the public market-places. The Brahmans themselves were still engaged in performing their elaborate morning devotions and ablutions, but the members of their household had already swept the approach to their low, one-storied, flat-roofed houses and stencilled on the threshold with white liquid chalk the geomantic patterns, finished off with scattered marigolds, which keep away the evil spirits. The Brahman quarters surround the temples, of which of course only the outer courtyards are accessible to other than high-caste Hindus. The low-caste "untouchables," who do the menial work of the town, live strictly segregated in their own quarter, which consists only of mud huts and even flimsier shelters of platted palm-leaves and bamboos. The whole town wore an air of leisured superiority as if conscious that there can be no need for special effort when the G.o.ds bring pilgrims to provide for the wants of its "twice-born" inhabitants.

There are scores of other Tirupatis in which the Brahman still reigns supreme by virtue of his _quasi_-sacerdotal caste. But in the public life of Southern India, as British rule has moulded it, he has owed a pre-eminence only recently disputed to a monopoly of Western education in modern times almost as complete as the monopoly which he enjoyed of Hindu learning and culture before the advent of the British. As soon as he saw that the British _Raj_ threatened no curtailment of his hereditary supremacy in the religious and social world of Hinduism, he was quick to profit by all the material advantages which the country as a whole derived from a new era of public security and peace. He realised at once that Western education might open up for him opportunities of making himself almost as indispensable, if on a somewhat humbler scale, to the alien rulers of India as he had formerly made himself to the indigenous rulers in the land. Thus the Brahmans acquired from the first a virtual monopoly of all the subordinate public services in the Madras Presidency and, as time went on, of all the higher posts gradually thrown open to Indians. They crowded also into all the new liberal professions fostered by Western education, and, above all, into the legal profession for which they showed, as most Indians do, a very special apt.i.tude. But, like all monopolists, they were tempted to abuse their monopoly, the more so as they regarded it merely as a legitimate adaptation to the new conditions imported by British rule of the ancient privileges always vested in their caste. They resented any attempt on the part of Hindus belonging to inferior castes to follow in their footsteps along the new paths of Western learning and to qualify for a share of employment in the public services, for which under the British dispensation all Indians are ent.i.tled to compete on equal terms irrespective of all caste discriminations. The non-Brahmans were slow to start, and when they did start, they had to contend with the jealous opposition of the Brahmans, who combined, as Hindu castes know how to combine, against unwelcome intruders into a profitable field of which they had secured early possession. When the Public Services Commission was in Madras eight years ago, we heard many bitter complaints from non-Brahmans that, whenever one of them did succeed in getting an appointment under Government, the Brahmans with whom or under whom he had to work would at once unite to drive him out, either by making his life intolerable or by turning against him the European superior to whose ear they had easy access. For it is one of the weaknesses of an alien bureaucracy that, in regard to routine work at least, its weaker members are apt to be far too much in the hands of their native a.s.sistants. The Brahmans later on formed the bulk of the new Western-educated and "politically-minded" cla.s.s, and the Madrasee Brahmans played a considerable part in the Indian National Congress before it broke away from its const.i.tutional moorings.

The non-Brahmans, nevertheless, under the leadership of such resolute men as the late Dr. Nair, fought their way steadily to the front, and, being of course in a large majority, they had only to organise in order to make full use of the opportunity which a relatively democratic franchise afforded them for the first time at the recent elections. They can hardly themselves have foreseen how great their opportunity was, for they regarded the reforms at first with deep suspicion as calculated merely to transfer substantive power from a British to a Brahman bureaucracy, and so deep was their dread of Brahman ascendancy even in the new Councils that they clamoured to the very end for a much larger number of seats than the sixteen that were ultimately reserved as "communal" seats for non-Brahman electorates. They never needed such a reservation, for they actually carried the day in so many of the "general" const.i.tuencies that out of ninety-eight elected members of the new Provincial Council only fourteen are Brahmans, and it is the Brahmans now who complain, not without reason, that their representation falls short of their legitimate influence in the State, and are already demanding a reservation of "communal" seats for their own caste in future. Lord Willingdon, as a const.i.tutional Governor, chose from the non-Brahman majority in the Council all the three Indian Ministers who form part of the new Provincial Government and preside over the "transferred" departments. This is the most startling transformation scene which any of the Provincial elections has produced. The non-Brahmans have got the chance which they have long claimed. If they rise to the occasion, deal with the Brahmans more fairly than the latter dealt with them, and, remembering the struggle they have had for their own emanc.i.p.ation, help the "untouchables" to rise in their turn out of the state of degradation to which centuries of Brahman domination have condemned them, the reforms may prove to have been perhaps as important a landmark in the moral regeneration of Hindu society as in the development of the Indian body politic. For, though it would be unfair to forget that the rigidity of the great caste system probably alone saved Hindu society from complete disintegration during centuries of internal anarchy and foreign invasions, its survival would be fatal now to the advancement of India on new lines of democratic progress. In any case the triumph of the non-Brahmans is an unmistakable blow to "Non-co-operation." Their one grievance against British rule has. .h.i.therto been that it tolerated Brahman ascendancy and refused to co-operate with them in their pa.s.sionate struggle against it. But now there is nothing to damp their zeal or deter them from co-operating with Government in securing the permanent success of the reforms to which, as they have to admit in spite of their former suspicions, they owe a measure of political advancement that far exceeds all their antic.i.p.ations.

In Southern as well as in Northern India the failure of the Non-co-operationists' frontal attack on the reforms was beyond dispute.

They were resolved to kill them in the womb by laying an interdict upon the elections to the new popular a.s.semblies. No candidate, Mr. Gandhi had p.r.o.nounced, was to enter for election, no elector was to record his vote. At a moment when the elections were already in progress and should have at least tempered his optimism, he himself a.s.sured me that the results as a whole would yet afford a most splendid demonstration of the stern temper of the people that would never trust and would never accept the mockery of reforms proceeding from a "Satanic" Government. He was deaf to my suggestion that, even if the temper of the Indian people was such as he believed it to be, it would have been demonstrated in a manner far more intelligible to the political mind of the West had his followers taken part in the elections, and, after sweeping the board in accordance with his antic.i.p.ations, had then placed their demands, whatever they might be, on record before the world, declaring at the same time that, unless they were fully granted, they would walk out of every Council Chamber in India and bring down the whole edifice of reforms, which would then indeed have been hopelessly shattered. Things, on the contrary, went quite differently. In defiance of Mr. Gandhi, candidates came forward in almost every const.i.tuency, elections were held everywhere, and except for a few insignificant disturbances created by his followers they were held in peaceful and orderly fashion. There were indeed numerous and in some places very large abstentions. That many of those who kept away from the polls were convinced "Non-co-operationists" cannot be denied, but no more can it be denied that many kept away from fear, not altogether unjustified by the event, of actual violence or of the more insidious forms of intimidation which social and religious pressure a.s.sumes with particularly deadly effect in India. Reputable members, including a large proportion of the leaders who had fought for years past the battle of India's political advancement, took their seats in the Provincial Councils and in the All-India Legislature at Delhi. They represented, not unfairly on the whole, all cla.s.ses and creeds and communities, and even all schools of political thought, except, of course, the Extremists, who by their own default remained unrepresented. That the Extremists, whose influence cannot be ignored, should have remained unrepresented is not a matter entirely for congratulation, for the complete exclusion, even when self-inflicted, of any important political party must tend to weaken the authority of a popular a.s.sembly. At the same time, it may be doubted whether the abstention of "Non-co-operationists" has deprived the Indian Councils of more than a very few individuals whose ability and character, apart from their political opinions, would have given them any great weight. The splendid demonstration which Mr. Gandhi had contemplated fell completely flat because an overwhelming proportion of those to whom he directed his appeal refused to endorse his view that the great const.i.tutional changes of which the creation of popular a.s.semblies was the corner-stone were merely a snare and a delusion, and to his cry of "Non-co-operation" they opposed an emphatic affirmation of their belief that the salvation of India lay in co-operation.

CHAPTER XII

THE BIRTH OF AN INDIAN PARLIAMENT

Only twelve years ago Lord Morley, with all his advanced liberalism and his broad sympathy for Indian aspirations, could not conceive the possibility of introducing Parliamentary inst.i.tutions into India in his time or for generations to come. He would a.s.suredly have had to revise his opinion could he have attended the first session of the Indian Legislative a.s.sembly. In form its proceedings were not unworthy of a great Parliamentary a.s.sembly. The speeches sometimes rose to a high level of eloquence all the more noteworthy in that English was not the mother tongue of those who delivered them. They were, as a rule, sober and dignified, and if all members did not at once abandon a habit much favoured in the old Councils of putting long strings of questions and moving impracticable resolutions in sonorous harangues, often prepared for them by outside hacks, their own colleagues soon taught them that such methods were no longer likely to pay even for purposes of advertis.e.m.e.nt. The majority quickly acquired a knack of suppressing wind-bags and bores quietly and effectively. The Act of 1919 reserved to Government the appointment of the President of the a.s.sembly for the first four years, after which he will be chosen by the a.s.sembly itself.

Not even the House of Commons could treat the Chair with more unfailing deference than the a.s.sembly showed to Mr. A.F. Whyte, who brought with him the prestige of Westminster traditions and experience to which he from time to time appealed aptly and successfully, and the a.s.sembly appreciated the tact as well as the firmness with which he discharged his novel duties. A gentle reminder of what was the usual practice in the House of Commons was never lost on Indian members whose inexperience occasionally failed to realise the Parliamentary implications of the procedure adopted by them, but was always ready to accept guidance that derived its authority from the wisdom of the Mother of Parliaments.

But the qualities shown by the a.s.sembly transcended mere matters of form. Mr. Whyte bore testimony at the close of the session to debates "well worthy to stand by the side of the best debates in the Imperial Parliament." It was no empty compliment, for they revealed the makings of real statesmanship, and the circ.u.mstances in which the Indian Legislature met for the first time to give collective expression to the feelings of the people of India, called for statesmanship. The King-Emperor's message impressed them with a sense of the great responsibilities and great opportunities arising for them out of the far-reaching rights conferred upon them. The personal appeal with which the Duke of Connaught accompanied the delivery of the Royal message went far to dispel "the shadow of Amritsar," which had, in his own apt phrase, "lengthened over the face of India" and threatened even to darken their own path. For on no subject had Indian feeling been more unanimous during the elections all over the country than in regard to the Punjab tragedy. None had been more persistently exploited by the "Non-co-operationists" to point their jibes at the "slave-mentality" of candidates and electors who were merely the willing dupes of a "Satanic"

Government. On no subject did the a.s.sembly feel itself under a greater obligation to give expression to the unanimous sentiments of the people it represented--all the greater indeed in that opportunity of expression had been denied to the old Legislative Council. It was the acid test to which the sincerity and the whole value of the reforms were put. The atmosphere of the a.s.sembly was never again so tense as when the crucial debate was opened by one of the ablest of the younger members of the Moderate party, Mr. Jamnadas Dwarkadas, from Bombay, on the administration of martial law in the Punjab in 1919. He asked the Government (1) to declare its adhesion to the principle of equal partnership for Indian and European in the British Empire; (2) to express regret that martial law in the Punjab violated this fundamental principle; (3) to administer deterrent punishment to officers guilty of an improper exercise of their powers including the withdrawal of their pensions; (4) to a.s.sure itself that adequate compensation is awarded to those who lost their relatives at the Jallianwala Bagh and elsewhere.

The speaker moved his Resolution with great firmness and power but also with great self-restraint. Most of the Indian speeches in support of it were conceived in much the same spirit, though now and again one got a glimpse of angrier pa.s.sions just beneath the surface. Happily the Government of India responded for the first time with the frankness and generosity which, had it displayed them in a much earlier stage in its handling of the Punjab troubles, would have averted many of the worst consequences. By reprobating, either implicitly or explicitly, the worst abuses of martial law the Home member, Sir William Vincent, the Commander-in-chief, Lord Rawlinson, and Sir G.o.dfrey Fell on behalf of the army administration, succeeded in persuading the a.s.sembly that not only were methods of humiliation and terrorism absolutely repugnant to all traditions of British rule, but that the censure and punishment already inflicted upon officers and officials were in reality far more serious and effective than the Indian mind had been wont to believe.

Indian members were asked to realise that for a British officer a broken career is virtually the end of life, and Sir G.o.dfrey Fell had no need to mention General Dyer's name when he said, "As it was put to me the other day by a very distinguished general officer, to leave the army in these circ.u.mstances would be to many officers a disgrace worse than death."

Government finally accepted the Resolution as it had been moved with the exception of the third clause asking for further punishment--a question which it was not prepared nor in a position to reopen. With the eager approval of a great many of his Indian colleagues the mover withdrew that clause and the rest of the Resolution was pa.s.sed unanimously and, be it noted, with the support of every European member of the a.s.sembly.

The atmosphere was thus cleared before the a.s.sembly approached another and only less delicate question. Some time before the Budget disclosed the heavy military expenditure to be defrayed out of Indian revenues, the recommendations of the Committee appointed under the presidency of Lord Esher to inquire into the administration and organisation of the army in India had caused widespread alarm. There were peculiar circ.u.mstances connected with the Committee's Report which were calculated to excite Indian suspicion. The first part, which laid down the general principles in regard to organisation and administration, was drawn up in London and received the approval of the Secretary of State for India before the British members of the Committee proceeded to India, where their Indian colleagues for the first time joined them, whilst the President, Lord Esher, himself never went to India at all. To carry out these principles the Report stated that "the centre of gravity of probable military operations has shifted from West to East. In the future we must contemplate the possibility of our armies operating in the Middle East based partially in India and partially at home.... India has now been admitted into partnership with the Empire, and the Indian Army has fought alongside of troops from other parts of the Empire in every theatre of war. Its responsibilities have thus been greatly widened, and it can no longer be regarded as a local force whose sphere of activity is limited to India and the surrounding frontier territories. It must rather be treated as a part of the Imperial Army ready to serve in any part of the world." Indians interpreted the Report as an attempt on the part of the British War Office to throw upon the Indian Exchequer the cost of a larger army than would be required merely for Indian defence whilst keeping it under its own control for employment at the discretion of British Ministers far beyond the frontiers of India. Official a.s.surances were given both in India and at home that an exaggerated construction had been placed on the meaning of the Report, to which, moreover, neither the British Government nor the Government of India was officially committed, and that in any case Indian troops would not be required to serve outside India except with the consent of the Government of India. These a.s.surances did not prevent the a.s.sembly from pa.s.sing two Resolutions in which it embodied its strong protests. The second part of the Report, containing practical recommendations for the reorganisation of the Indian Army, and alone based on the results of the inquiry actually conducted in India, was far less criticised.

The army estimates themselves would have been enough to cause dismay even if the estimates of other departments, upon which the Indian public looks with more favour, had not clearly been pruned down with more than usual parsimony to meet the large increase in military expenditure. But Lord Rawlinson, who had done his utmost to reduce them to the extreme limit of safety as he conceived it in existing circ.u.mstances, wisely decided to take the a.s.sembly as far as possible into his confidence, and to explain the requirements of the military situation not only from his seat on the Government bench but in private conferences, at which members were freely invited to meet him and his advisers. If he did not altogether convince them, he gave them food for reflection at a time when not only our own North-West Frontier but the whole of Central Asia is still in a state of turmoil, Persia a very doubtful quant.i.ty, and the Ameer of Afghanistan far more eager to sign a treaty of alliance with Soviet Russia than to bring to a friendly conclusion the long-drawn negotiations which the Government of India has sent the head of its foreign department to conduct at Kabul. The appointment of a Committee to visit the North-West Frontier and to study the situation on the spot was admirably calculated to carry the practical education of Indian legislators a long step farther. In regard to other matters, too, Government gave and gained time for reflection by referring them, before committing itself to any definite p.r.o.nouncement of policy, to special committees in which points at issue could be thrashed out much more effectively and with less heat than if only discussed in full house.

Nothing, however, could alter the awkward fact that Government had been compelled to confront the Legislative a.s.sembly at its first session with a Budget showing a deficit and making calls upon the Indian tax-payer absolutely unprecedented in the annals of British-Indian State finance.

The deficit amounted to nearly 19 crores of rupees on a Budget of 130 crores,[3] and the Financial Member, Mr. Hailey, who had only recently succeeded to the financial department, had to admit that the deficit could only be met by increased taxation. That the estimates of the previous year had been so largely exceeded was due beyond dispute to the growth of military expenditure, which, for the current financial year, has been put down at 62 crores, or very nearly half the total expenditure for which provision has to be made. This Budget, moreover, not only came at a time of general economic depression, but coincided with the operation of the new financial arrangements between the Provinces and the Government of India, which have deprived the latter of the facilities it had formerly for mitigating its own financial necessities by adjusting to them the doles paid out of the Central Exchequer to the several Provincial Exchequers. Under the new system various revenues have been definitely allocated to the Provincial Governments for their own free disposal, and in return they have to make fixed annual contributions to the Central Exchequer. These contributions are in no case to be subject to increase in the future, but on the contrary to be reduced gradually and to cease at the earliest possible moment compatible with the irreducible requirements of the Government of India. The Act of 1919, it is true, transfers to the Indian Legislature no direct or complete statutory control over revenue and expenditure, and powers are still vested in the Government of India to override the a.s.sembly in cases of emergency and to enact supplies which it refuses if the Governor-General in Council certifies them to be essential to the peace, tranquillity, and interests of India. But the fact that there was a deficit which could only be met by increased taxation offered exceptional opportunities which might easily have been used for embarra.s.sing obstruction by a young and immature chamber naturally concerned for its own popularity. Even a direct conflict between the Government and the a.s.sembly might not have been impossible, and the consequences would have been lamentable. For if the Government of India had been driven to use its statutory powers to impose taxation and secure supplies in opposition to the Legislature during its very first session, all the hopes of friendly co-operation based on the new const.i.tution would have been wrecked far more disastrously and permanently than by any "Non-co-operation" movement. The Legislative a.s.sembly was wise enough to exercise its rights with sufficient insistence to show that it was conscious of them, but never to strain them. It did not refrain from criticism of almost every department in turn or from motions to reduce the official estimates for them. Many of the criticisms were sound, and some of the reductions were accepted by Government. Mr. Hailey handled a delicate situation with unfailing patience and skill. Even in regard to new taxation he endeavoured to meet, as far as the exigencies of the Budget allowed, the objections of the a.s.sembly to such increases as, for instance, higher postal rates, which press most heavily on the least well-to-do cla.s.ses. Nothing, however, helped him so much to get his Budget through without a serious conflict as the decision of the Government to seek in an increase of the import duties over two-thirds of the new revenue to be raised to meet the deficit. For there Government took up common ground with Indian opinion on fiscal matters and carried into effect the principle laid down by the Select Joint Committee on the Reforms Bill, and endorsed by the Secretary of State, that the Government of India must be granted the same liberty to devise Indian tariff arrangements on a consideration of Indian interests as all other self-governing parts of the Empire enjoy.

If the a.s.sembly did not see altogether eye to eye with Government as to the necessity for all this increased expenditure and increased taxation, its objections were at least mitigated by a form of increased taxation in which it saw the first step towards fiscal autonomy. In this as in every other question with which the Legislature had to deal, the Government of India showed its willingness to accept as far as possible the guidance of Indian opinion and to act as a national Indian Government, and not merely as the supreme executive authority under the Government of the United Kingdom.

On those terms the a.s.sembly was prepared to take into account the difficulties and responsibilities inherited by Government from past policies from which no sudden departure was possible, or desired even, by responsible Indians who recognise the present limitations of their experience as well as of their rights. Government and Legislature therefore parted in mutual goodwill and with increased confidence in the value of the new policy of co-operation. But the Legislature has only just commenced to realise the extent of its powers, expressed and implied. The latter stretch almost immeasurably farther than the former. Indian-elected members form a large majority in the Legislative a.s.sembly, which has already so largely overshadowed the Council of State that it will probably be difficult for the upper house to exercise over the more popular chamber the corrective influence originally contemplated. The Government of India, of course, retains its great statutory powers, but these could hardly be exercised again in uncompromising opposition to the opinion of the majority of the a.s.sembly now that out of eight members of the Viceroy's Executive Council, which, with him, forms the Government of India, no less than three are Indians, who would presumably be often more amenable than their British colleagues to the pressure of Indian opinion. Under the Act of 1919 the Government of India is not responsible to the a.s.sembly. That may come in a later stage, it has not come yet. But one may rest already a.s.sured that only in extreme cases, and if the majority shows itself far more irresponsible than it has yet given the slightest reason to fear, is Government likely to risk a cleavage between British and Indian members of the Viceroy's Executive Council, or to rely on the fact that no vote of the a.s.sembly can remove it from office, to provoke or face a conflict of which the consequences would extend far beyond the walls of the Legislature. This is a powerful lever of which Indians may quickly learn the use.

In another important direction the first session of the Legislature bore out Sir Thomas Munro's view, expressed, as we have already seen, a hundred years ago, that in India as elsewhere liberal treatment will be found the most effectual way of elevating the character of the people.

Nothing perhaps has tended more to alienate the sympathies of Englishmen from the political aspirations which the founders of the Indian National Congress were bent upon promoting than the subordination of social to political reforms. There remained always some distinguished Indians who ensued both--notably Mr. Gokhale, who founded the society of "the Servants of India," dedicated chiefly to social reform, of which the beneficent activities have expanded steadily throughout a decade of political turmoil. His mantle fell on no unworthy shoulders, and it is a good omen that his chief disciple, Mr. Srinivasa Sastri, has become the leader of the Moderate party in the Council of State, as well as one of the Indian representatives at the recent Imperial Conference in London.

A similar spirit informs the numerous a.s.sociations that have addressed themselves, though with perhaps less success so far, to the more glaring evils of the Hindu religious social system, such as infant marriage, the prohibition of re-marriage of widows, the rigidity of caste laws in regard to inter-caste marriage, and to intercourse between the different castes even at meals. Many interesting experiments have been made by Indians for infusing into education a new moral tone and discipline on Indian lines, and it is due to Indian effort no less than to the encouragement of Government that female education has begun to bridge over the intellectual gulf that tended to separate more and more the men and the women of the Western-educated cla.s.ses. In Madras, to quote only one instance, there is to-day a high school for girls--almost unthinkable two decades ago and only opened ten years ago--in which high-caste Brahman girls live under the same roof and are taught in the same cla.s.s-rooms as not only Hindu girls of the non-Brahman castes, but Mahomedan and native Christian and Eurasian girls from all parts of the Presidency, and the only real difficulty now experienced is in the traditional matter of food, and it is circ.u.mvented, if not overcome, by providing seven different kitchens and seven different messes.

The last attempt on the part of the Government to promote social reforms by way of legislation was Lord Lansdowne's "Age of Consent" Bill thirty years ago, and though it was carried through in spite of the violent opposition of Hindu orthodoxy, which then brought Mr. Tilak into public life as its leader, an alien Government pledged to complete neutrality in social and religious matters shrank after that unpleasant experience from a.s.suming the lead in such matters without having at least the preponderating bulk of Indian opinion behind it. Not the least noteworthy event of the first session of the Indian Legislature was the introduction by Dr. Gour, a Hindu member from the Central Provinces, of a private Bill legalising civil marriage which British Indian law so far recognises only between a Christian and a non-Christian, though the Indian States of Baroda and Indore have legalised them for all their subjects. Sir Henry Maine wished to move, as far back as 1868, in this direction when he was Law Member of the Government of India, but to meet even then a fierce orthodox opposition the provisions of the Bill finally enacted in 1872 were so whittled down as to make it practically useless, and it was almost nullified when it came up for interpretation by the Privy Council. The question does in fact involve many material as well as social and religious considerations, as matters of personal law are largely governed by ancient custom in the different communities, and the point at issue was whether it is possible for a Hindu to cease to be subject to Hindu law. More recent attempts to make civil marriage lawful have failed hopelessly. Dr. Gour has had the courage to appeal to the more liberal spirit for which the new reforms stand, and he defended his Bill, which is only a permissive Bill, on the grounds that any measure calculated to break down the ancient barriers between races and creeds and communities must tend to strengthen the sense of national solidarity of which the new Indian Legislature is the expression. It remains yet to be seen what will be the fate of his Bill, but its introduction is in itself not one of the least hopeful signs of the times.

If one turns from the Government of India to the new Provincial Governments and Councils the outlook is, on the whole, not less encouraging. The statutory powers of the Provincial Councils are more definite and can be brought more directly to bear upon Government, but they are not likely to be exercised in any extravagant fashion until time has shown how Indian Ministers discharge their responsibilities to the Councils and how the two wings of the new Provincial Governments work together. In fact, the policy, wisely adopted by Provincial Governors, of treating the two wings of their Government as equally a.s.sociated with them in a common task of governance, has robbed the distinction between "reserved" and "transferred" subjects, if not of all reality, at any rate of the invidious appearance of discrimination which might otherwise have attached to the word "dyarchy." As one Provincial Governor remarked to me, "We are in reality skipping the dyarchy stage."

Indian Ministers, kept fully informed and drawn into consultation on all subjects, are learning to understand the difficulties of government and administration of which, as outside critics, they had little notion, and to value the experience and knowledge which their European colleagues and subordinates freely place at their disposal, whilst the latter benefit both from hearing the Indian point of view and from having to explain and justify their own. Economic depression and financial stringency cannot, however, but react unfavourably upon the new system in the Provinces as well as at Delhi, for all the more practical reforms in which the ordinary Indian elector, whether politically minded or otherwise, is most closely interested, and for which he has been looking to the new Provincial Councils, require money, and a great deal of money. There is a universal demand for more elementary schools, more road-making, more sanitation, a more strenuous fight against malaria, a greater extension of local government and village councils' activities, and the demand cannot be met except by more expenditure. The Indian Ministers and Indian members of the Provincial Councils have to face unpopularity whether by postponing much-needed reforms or by imposing new taxation in order to carry them out. A great many of the best men have naturally been attracted to Delhi, but though the proceedings in the Provincial Councils have more frequently betrayed impatience and inexperience, and sometimes required the monitory intervention of the Governor, they have played on the whole creditably the important part allotted to them in this great const.i.tutional experiment.

It is far less easy to appraise the value of the attempt which has been made at the same time to bring that large part of India which lies outside the sphere of direct British administration into closer touch with it by the creation of a Chamber of Princes, which will at least sit under the same roof with the Council of State and the Legislative a.s.sembly in the great hall of Parliament to be erected in New Delhi. The moment when the Government of India is departing from its autocratic traditions and transferring a large part of its powers throughout British India into the hands of representative a.s.semblies which are to pave the way towards the democratic goal of responsible government, seems scarcely well chosen for the creation of a Chamber which must give greater cohesion, and potentially greater power to resist the spirit of the age, to a body of ruling Princes and Chiefs who all stand in varying degrees for archaic forms of despotic government and whose peoples have for the most part stood hitherto entirely outside the political life of British India.

The Native States, as they are commonly called, scattered over nearly the whole length and breadth of the Indian Empire, cover altogether more than a third of its total area and include nearly a quarter of its total population. Some of them can compare in size and wealth with the smaller States of Europe. Some are but insignificant specks on the map. Great and small, there are several hundreds of them. Their relations with the Paramount Power, which have been not inaptly described as those of subordinate alliance, are governed by treaties and engagements of which the terms are not altogether uniform. The essence is in all cases the maintenance of their administrative autonomy under their own dynastic rulers whose hereditary rights and privileges are permanently guaranteed to them, subject to their loyalty to the British Crown and to reasonably good government. The Princes and Chiefs who rule over them--some well, a few rather badly, most of them perhaps indifferently; some Hindus, some Mahomedans; some still very conservative and almost mediaeval, some on genuinely progressive lines; some with a mere veneer of European modernity--are all equally jealous of their rights and their dignity.

The Native States cannot, however, live wholly in water-tight compartments. They must be more or less directly affected by what goes on in British India just across their own often very artificial boundaries. Their material interests are too closely bound up with those of their British-Indian neighbours. In many matters, _e.g._ railways, posts, telegraphs, irrigation, etc., they are in a great measure dependent upon, and must fall into line with, British India. Their peoples--even those who do not go to British India for their education or for larger opportunities of livelihood--are being slowly influenced by the currents of thought which flow in from British India.

Political unrest cannot always or permanently be halted at their frontier, though His Exalted Highness the Nizam of Hyderabad, whose ways are still largely those of the Moghuls, has not hesitated, albeit himself a Mahomedan Prince, to proscribe all _Khilafat_ agitation within his territory. The Extremist Press has already very frequently denounced ruling Princes and Chiefs as obstacles to the democratic evolution of a _Swaraj_ India which will have to be removed, and if the Nagpur Congress p.r.o.nounced against extending its propaganda to the Native States, it did so only "for the present" and on grounds of pure and avowed expediency.

Apart from the menace of Indian Extremism, there must obviously be a fundamental conflict of ideals between ruling Chiefs bent on preserving their independent political ent.i.ty and the aspirations towards national unity entertained by the moderate Indian Nationalists whose influence is sure to predominate over all the old traditions of Indian governance if the new reforms are successful. Some Princes are wise enough to swim with the current and have introduced rudimentary councils and representative a.s.semblies which at any rate provide a modern facade for their own patriarchal systems of government. But all are more or less conscious that their own position is being profoundly modified by const.i.tutional changes in British India, which must, and indeed are intended to, alter the very character of the Government representing the Paramount Power to whose authority they owe their own survival since the beginning of British rule. Their survival has indeed always been an anomaly, though hitherto, on the whole, equally creditable to the British _Raj_ that preserved them from extinction in the old days of stress and storm and to the rulers who have justified British statesmanship by their fine loyalty. But in a democratised and self-governing India it might easily become a much more palpable anomaly.

How was this new situation to be dealt with? Some of the ruling Princes and Chiefs whose views appear to have prevailed with the Secretary of State and the Government of India, came to the conclusion that they should combine together and try to secure as a body a recognised position from which their collective influence might be brought more effectively to bear upon the Government of India, whatever its new orientation may ultimately be under the influence of popular a.s.semblies in British India. Some, doubtless, believed that once in such a position they would be able to oppose a more effective because more united front to interference from whatever quarter in the internal affairs of their States. Circ.u.mstances favoured their scheme for the loyalty displayed by all the Native States, and the distinguished services rendered in person by not a few Chiefs inclined Government to meet their wishes without probing them too closely, and in the first place to relax the control hitherto exercised by its political officers on the spot--often, it must be confessed, on rather petty and irritating lines. The leading Princes were encouraged to come to Delhi during the winter season, and those who favoured a policy of closer combination amongst themselves were those who responded most freely to these official promptings. Conversations soon a.s.sumed the shape of informal conferences, and, later on, of formal conferences convened and presided over by the Viceroy. The hidden value of these conferences must have been far greater than would appear from the somewhat trivial record of the subjects under discussion, for it is out of these conferences that the new Chamber of Princes has been evolved as a permanent consultative body for the consideration of questions affecting the Native States generally, or of common concern to them and to British India and to the Empire generally.

The conception is in itself by no means novel and appeals to many upon whom the picturesqueness and conservative stability of the Native States exercise a strong attraction. It can be traced back at least as far as Lord Lytton's Viceroyalty over forty years ago, and the steadily growing recognition of the important part which the Native States play in the Indian Empire culminated during the war in the appointment of an Indian Prince to represent them specially at the Imperial War Conferences held in London during the war, and again, after the war was over, at the Paris Peace Conference.

But the creation of a Chamber of Princes at this particular juncture raises very difficult issues. In the first place, though it has been engineered with great skill and energy by a small group of very distinguished Princes, mostly Rajput, it is viewed with deep suspicion by other chiefs who, not being Rajputs, scent in it a scheme for promoting Rajput ascendancy, and it has received no support at all from other and more powerful Princes such as the Nizam of Hyderabad, the Gaikwar of Baroda, the Maharajah of Mysore. Some have always held aloof from the Delhi Conferences and have intimated plainly that they have no desire to see any alteration introduced into their treaty relationships with the Paramount Power. Without their partic.i.p.ation no Chamber of Princes can pull its full weight, and even if most of them considered themselves bound out of loyalty to the Sovereign to attend an inaugural ceremony performed by the Duke of Connaught in the name of the King-Emperor himself, it would be premature to infer that their opposition has been permanently overcome. The Supreme Government has of course reiterated the pledges already embodied in the treaties that there shall be no interference with the ancient rights and privileges of the Native States and their rulers, but its eminent right to interfere in cases of extreme urgency has not and cannot be surrendered. It has been exercised very rarely, and only when administration and government have fallen flagrantly short of certain standards, established by usage and generally understood and accepted, which it is perhaps easier to describe negatively than positively. Misrule cannot be tolerated when it amounts to a public scandal or takes the form of criminal acts. The whole question has always bristled with difficulties, and still does.

The tendency, since Lord Curzon's time, has been to relax the control of the Supreme Government even in matters of slighter moment on which it had been accustomed to tender advice not always distinguishable from commands. That some of the Native States, and not the least powerful, are badly governed is of common notoriety. But if the Supreme Government has been sometimes inclined to turn a blind eye in such cases, and even to forget that it has moral obligations towards the subjects as well as towards the rulers of the Native States, it has been free hitherto to obey considerations of political expediency which may conceivably not weigh so much in the future. For the same forces that have obtained the surrender of the autocratic principle in British India, may demand with equal insistency its surrender throughout the Native States. Should the more irresponsible chiefs rely on the solidarity of a Chamber of Princes to secure for them greater immunity than ever from the just consequences of misgovernment, they would merely hasten a conflict which undoubtedly most of their caste have begun to dread between their own archaic methods and the democratic spirit which the Government of India Act of 1919 has quickened in British India.

There are many other th.o.r.n.y points. Obviously there could be no room for all the seven or eight hundred ruling chiefs, great and small, in any a.s.sembly reasonably const.i.tuted to represent the Native States. Nor have they ever enjoyed any uniform status or received any uniform treatment.

Some of them, the most important, have maintained direct relations with the Government of India; the majority only indirect relations through the Provincial Governments within whose sphere their territories are situated. The creation of the Chamber of Princes has necessitated a new cla.s.sification of major and minor States, the former ent.i.tled to direct, the latter only to indirect representation, which has naturally caused a vast amount of jealousy and heartburning. Another consequence still under discussion is the subst.i.tution in most cases of direct relations with the Government of India for those in which the smaller Native States now stand to provincial governments. Such transfer must involve innumerable difficulties and complications, especially in a Presidency like Bombay, within whose boundaries there are over 300 Native States inextricably bound up with it by common interests and even by common administrative needs. Many of them are at first sight inclined to welcome such a transfer as enhancing their prestige; some of them, remembering the old saying that "Delhi is a long way off," hope that it will lessen the prospect of outside interference in their own administration, however bad it may be or become. But these are hardly arguments to justify a transfer which can only import a new element of confusion into an already sufficiently confused situation.

The Chamber of Princes was opened with all the glitter of oriental pomp and magnificence, but it only held a few meetings and the proceedings were veiled in secrecy. Only enough transpired to show that personal jealousies and clan rivalries were rife even at that early stage. Its very const.i.tution denies it the a.s.sistance for which the Indian Councils and the Indian Ministers have been wise enough to look from the co-operation with them of British elements, whose authority in government and administration is still maintained by statute and so far undisputed. To the Chamber of Princes the Viceroy alone is in a position to give guidance, and to shape that ill.u.s.trious a.s.sembly to useful purposes is one of the many difficult tasks in front of Lord Reading.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] At the "stabilised" rate of exchange a crore, or ten million rupees = one million gold pounds sterling. One hundred lacs make a crore.