Indian Unrest Part 6

It was from Madras that the British power set forth on its unpremeditated course of conquest which was destined ultimately to reach from Tuticorin to the Himalayas. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century the Madras Presidency has been in the fortunate position of having no history. Its northern rivals call it despitefully the "benighted" Presidency. No epithet, however, could be more undeserved, for if its annals for the last hundred years have been unsensational, its record in respect of education, intelligent administration, material prosperity, and all that goes with peaceful continuous progress would ent.i.tle it rather to be called the "Model"

Presidency. The Native States of Southern India, and above all Mysore, which was for many years under direct British administration, will equally bear favourable comparison with any of the Native States of Central or Northern India. From the standpoint of education, Southern India has long held and probably still holds the lead, thanks in a great measure to the large Christian communities which comprise more than two-thirds of the whole Christian population of India. But in the statistics of literacy based on the last census, the Brahmans figure at the head of all the Hindu castes with the very creditable proportion of 578 males and 40 females per mille. The Western-educated cla.s.ses in Southern India, whilst as progressive as in any other part, show greater mental balance than in Bengal, and less reactionary tendencies than in the Deccan. Western education has been a steady and perhaps on the whole a more solid growth in Southern India. It has produced a large number of able and distinguished public servants of unimpeachable loyalty to the British _raj_. The harvest yielded by the ingermination of Western ideas has produced fewer tares. Educated Hindus of the higher castes have played an important part in social reform, and many of them have been a.s.sociated with the moderate section of the Indian National Congress.

The enthusiastic reception given to Mr. Bepin Chandra Pal, during his short crusade at Madras three years ago on behalf of _Swaraj_, showed that, especially amongst the younger generation, there is at least an appreciable minority who are ready to listen to the doctrines of advanced Nationalism, and the existence of inflammable materials was revealed in the riots which occurred not long afterwards at Tinnevelly and Tuticorin, and again a year later at Guntur. But these appear to have been merely sporadic outbreaks which were promptly quelled, and the undisturbed peace which has prevailed since then throughout Southern India, at a time when whole provinces in other parts have been honeycombed with sedition, is one of the most encouraging features of the situation. There is in the Hinduism of Southern India a peculiar element of conservative quietism to which lawlessness in any form seems to be repugnant. Probably also the racial cry of "Arya for the Aryans"

raised in the North of India as the watchword of an anti-British movement is not calculated to rouse the blood of a purely Dravidian population, however powerful the ties created by a common social and religious system.

CHAPTER XI.

REVOLUTIONARY ORGANIZATIONS OUTSIDE INDIA.

It required nothing less than the shock of a murder perpetrated in the heart of London to open the eyes of those in authority at home to the nature of the revolutionary propaganda which has been, and is still being, carried on outside India in sympathy, and often in connivance, with the more violent leaders of the anti-British agitation in India itself. Even now it may be doubted whether they fully realize the importance of the support which the extremists receive from outside India. I am not alluding to the moral countenance which the Hindu reaction has received from eccentric Americans and Europeans on the look out for any novel religious sensation, or which "advanced" politicians have derived from sympathetic members of Parliament and journalists in England[13], but to the secret organizations established in Europe and in America by the Indian extremists themselves as a base for hostile operations against the British _Raj_. However loudly the extremists protest against the importation of Western influences into India they have certainly not been too proud to borrow the methods of Western revolutionists. They have of all Indians been the most slavish imitators of the West, as represented, at any rate, by the Irish Fenian and the Russian anarchist. Their literature is replete with references to both.

Tilak took his "No-rent" campaign in the Deccan from Ireland, and the Bengalees were taught to believe in the power of the boycott by ill.u.s.trations taken from contemporary Irish history. When the informer Gosain was shot dead in Alipur gaol the Nationalists gloried in the deed, which had far excelled that of Patrick O'Donnell, who shot dead James Carey, the approver in the Phoenix Park murders, inasmuch as Gosain had been murdered before he could complete his "treachery,"

whereas the murder of Carey had been only a tardy "retribution" which could not undo the past. The use of the bomb has become the common property of revolutionists all over the world, but the employment of amateur dacoits, or armed bands of robbers, for replenishing the revolutionary war-chest has been directly taken from the revolutionary movement in Russia a few years ago. The annals of the Italian _risorgimento_ have also been put under contribution, and whilst there is no Indian life of Cavour, Lajpat Rai's Life of Mazzini and Vinayak Savarkar's translation of Mazzini's Autobiography are favourite Nationalist text-books of the milder order. European works on various periods of revolutionary history figure almost invariably amongst seizures of a far more compromising character whenever the Indian police raids some centre of Nationalist activity. Hence in the literature of unrest one frequently comes across the strangest juxtaposition of names, Hindu deities, and Cromwell and Washington, and celebrated anarchists all being invoked in the same breath.

Equally foreign in its origin has been the establishment of various centres of revolutionary activity outside of India. In America there appear to be two distinct organizations both having their headquarters in California, and branches in Chicago, New York, and other important cities. The Indo-American a.s.sociation runs an English periodical, _Free Hindustan_, which was originally started in Canada and thence transferred to Seattle when it began to attract the attention of the Canadian authorities. The moving spirits are students, chiefly from Bengal, who have found ready helpers amongst the Irish-American Fenians.

They have also been able to make not a few converts amongst the unfortunate British Indian immigrants who suffered heavily from the anti-Asiatic campaign along the Pacific slope, and some of these converts, being Sikhs and old soldiers, were of special value, as through them direct contact could be established with the regiments to which they had belonged, or, at any rate, with the cla.s.ses from which an important section of the native army is recruited. Large quant.i.ties of seditious leaflets, circulated broadcast three years ago amongst Sepoys, were printed in America. The other organization, called the Young Indian a.s.sociation, with "head centres" and "inner" and "outer circles" that have a genuine Fenian ring, is even more "extreme," and is connected with the "Indian Red Flag" in India, to which Khudiram Bose, who murdered Mrs. and Miss Kennedy at Muzafferpur, and other young fanatics of the same type belonged. The Young Indian a.s.sociation seems to devote itself chiefly to the study of explosives and to smuggling arms into India. In Anglo-Indian official circles extreme reticence is naturally observed in these matters, but from other sources I have seen evidence to show that both these a.s.sociations were in frequent communication with the seditious Press all over India, in the Deccan as well as in Bengal and in the Punjab.

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

The most dangerous organization outside India was unquestionably that which had its headquarters at the "India House" at Highgate. It was there that Dinghra appears to have concocted the plot which resulted in the murder of Sir W. Curzon Wyllie and Dr. Lalcaca, and though the London correspondent of the _Kal_, Vinayak Savarkar, who was arrested this year in London to take his trial on the gravest charges at Bombay, magnified the success of the plot by describing its chief victim as "the eyes of the Secretary of State through which he saw all Indian affairs,"

there is some reason to believe that Dinghra expected to find at the reception another Anglo-Indian official whom the "extremists" were particularly anxious to "remove," and only in his absence struck at Sir W. Curzon Wyllie. There is reason, too, to believe that it was from this "India House" also that came both the idea of murdering Mr. Jackson and the weapons used by the murderer. Though students from all parts of India were enticed into the "India House," the organization seems to have been controlled by Deccan Brahmans, and in the first instance by Shyamji Krishnavarma, who founded scholarships in connexion with it to honour the Indian "martyrs" executed for murderous outrages in India.

When the authorities in London very tardily awoke after the murder of Sir W. Curzon Wyllie to the dangerous nature of this organization, to which _The Times_ first drew attention in the spring of 1908, it was still controlled from the Continent by Krishnavarma, who had retreated to Paris long before, leaving his lieutenants to carry on his campaign amongst the young Indian students. The _Indian Sociologist_ itself continued to be openly published in London and to advocate a.s.sa.s.sination until the tragedy at the Imperial Inst.i.tute led the authorities to take woefully-belated action in prosecuting successively two printers of the sheet, which was then transferred to Paris.

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

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

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

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

We know that the hero possessed Browning pistols. Now these pistols are not manufactured in India, but in Europe.

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

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

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

It is not only in regard to the introduction of poisonous literature or of weapons into India that the activity of these organizations deserves to be closely and continuously watched. One of their main objects, as the _Bande Mataram_ points out, is to gain over young Indians who go abroad, especially those who go abroad for purposes of study. The India Office has recognized the necessity of establishing some organization in London to keep in touch with them and to rescue them from unwholesome influences, political and other. This is a step in the right direction, but much more will require to be done, and not only in London.

Committees should be formed in other centres, and public-spirited Englishmen abroad could not do more useful work than by social service of this kind. If we want to do any real and permanent good we must spread our nets as wide as the revolutionists have spread theirs. In Paris, for instance, Krishnavarma has set up, since he migrated to the other side of the Channel, an organization for waylaying and indoctrinating young Indians on their way to England, so as to induce them to hold aloof from those who would wish to be their friends when they arrive in London. The number of Indian students abroad is bound to go on increasing, especially with the growing demand for scientific and technical education for which the provision hitherto made in India is regarded as inadequate. Indian parents and Indian a.s.sociations that ought to know better are apt to think that, if they can only provide for a youth's travelling expenses, he will somehow be able afterwards to shift for himself. It is not infrequently the misery and distress to which he thus finds himself reduced abroad that drive the young Indian into political recklessness, or, at least, render him peculiarly liable to temptation. British manufacturers might also render valuable a.s.sistance. Indian parents complain that, owing to the resentment which crimes like the murder of Sir W. Curzon Wyllie have provoked there is great reluctance now on the part of British firms to admit Indians as apprentices to their works, and that in consequence they are compelled to go to other countries where they are treated with less suspicion.

This reluctance is perhaps in reality more often due to the fear lest young Indians should afterwards turn their knowledge to too good an account, as the j.a.panese have often done, in the promotion of competing industries in their own country. However that may be, the results are certainly regrettable. For, if there is one thing that has impressed itself on me during my last visit to India, it is that, if we want to retain our hold, not only upon the country, but upon the people, we must neglect no opportunity of arresting the estrangement which is growing up between us and the younger generation of Indians. It is upon this estrangement that the revolutionary organizations outside of India chiefly rely for the success of their propaganda, and nothing helps them more than the bitterness with which young Indians who come abroad often return to India ready for any desperate adventure[14].

CHAPTER XII.

THE INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS.

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

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

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

An earlier generation of Hindus had fully recognized the urgency of social problems, like that of the "depressed" castes, and had realized that, until Indians had brought their own customs and beliefs to some extent into line with the social customs and beliefs of the West, they could not hope to raise their political life on to the Western plane.

The Indian National Congress, unfortunately, succ.u.mbed to the specious plea put forward in an evil hour many years ago by a distinguished Hindu, afterwards a Judge of the Bombay High Court, Mr. K.T. Telang, who was himself unquestionably an enlightened social reformer, that the "line of least resistance" was to press for political concessions from England where they had "friends amongst the garrison," instead of fighting an uphill battle for social reforms against the dead-weight of popular ignorance and prejudice amongst their own people. That many members of the Congress take part also in social reform conferences and are fully alive to the importance of social reform cannot alter the fact that, by turning its corporate back upon the cause they have at heart, the Indian National Congress has arrested instead of promoting one of the most promising movements to which Western education had given birth.

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

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

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

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

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

Though the majority of the Congress probably glided unconsciously or without any deliberate purpose from, its earlier att.i.tude of remonstrance and entreaty into violent denunciation of Government and all its works, there had always been a small group determined to drive or to manoeuvre their colleagues as a body into an att.i.tude of open and irreconcilable hostility. That group was headed by Tilak, the strongest personality in Indian politics, who was gradually making recruits among the more ardent spirits all over India. On one occasion, as far back as 1895, when the Congress held its annual session in his own city of Poona, he had attempted to commit it to the aggressive doctrines which he was already preaching in the Deccan, but he soon discovered that the temper of the majority was against him. He was, however, far too tenacious ever to accept defeat. He bided his time. He knew he had to reckon with powerful personal jealousies, and he remained in the background. His opportunity did not come till ten years later when he pulled the strings at the two successive sessions held in 1905 at Benares and in 1906 at Calcutta. It was then that the Congress pa.s.sed from mere negative antagonism into almost direct defiance of Government.

It must have been a proud moment for Tilak when the very man who had often fought so courageously against his inflammatory methods and reactionary tendencies in the Deccan, Mr. Gokhale, played into his hands, and from the presidential chair at Benares got up to commend the boycott as a political weapon used for a definite political purpose. A year later, it is true, Mr. Gokhale and the "moderate" party in the Congress, who had seen in the meantime to what lawlessness the boycott was leading, were anxious to undo or to mitigate at the Calcutta session what they had helped to do at Benares. But again, by dint of lobbying and even more by threatening to break up the Congress, Tilak carried the day, and a resolution was pa.s.sed in the form upon which he insisted to the effect that the boycott movement was legitimate. It was not till the following year at Surat, after the preaching of lawlessness had begun to yield its inevitable harvest of crime, that the "moderates" recoiled at last from the quicksands into which the "extremists" were leading them.

Tilak, however, carried out his threat, and he and his friends wrecked that session of the Congress amidst scenes of disgraceful riot and confusion.

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

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

CHAPTER XIII.

CONSt.i.tUTIONAL REFORMS.

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

The tall burly frame of the Kuvar Sahib of Patiala was only more conspicuous than that of the Maharajah of Burdawan because the former wore the many-folded turban and brocaded dress of his Sikh ancestry, whereas the latter, like most Bengalees of the upper cla.s.ses, has adopted the much more commonplace broadcloth of the West. The bold, hawk-like features of Malik Umar Hyat Khan of Tiwana in the Punjab were as characteristic of the fighting Pathan from the North as were the Rajah of Mahmudabad's more delicate features of the Mahomedan aristocracy of the erstwhile kingdom of Oudh. The white _swadeshi_ garments affected by Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, from the United Provinces--who opened the last meeting of the Indian National Congress at Lah.o.r.e with a presidential address which lasted for two hours and a quarter, and wound up with an apology for its brevity on the ground that he had had no time to prepare it--testified, at any rate more loudly, to the sternness of his patriotic convictions than the equally _swadeshi_ homespun, cut at least in European fashion, of another "advanced"

politician, Mr. Bhupendranath Bose, of Bengal. More worthy of attention was the keen, refined, and intellectual face of Mr. G.K. Gokhale, the Deccanee Brahman with the Mahratta cap, who, by education, belongs to the West quite as much as to the East, and, by birth, to the ruling caste of the last dominant race before the advent of the British _Raj_.

The red fez worn by the majority of Mahomedan members showed that their community had certainly not failed in this instance to secure the generous measure of representation which Lord Minto spontaneously promised to them three years ago at Simla. The peculiar glazed black headdress of the Pa.r.s.ee and the silk kerchief of the Burman in turn indicated the racial catholicity of the a.s.sembly in which Sir Sa.s.soon David, of Bombay, worthily represents, by his authority as a financier, the small Jewish community of India.

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

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

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