The Political Future of India Part 3

The Russian Revolution first, and then the entry of the United States into the War, brought about a change in the point of view of the British statesmen. For the first time they realized that they could not win the war without the fullest cooperation of the people of India, both in the military and the economic sense and that the fullest cooperation of the United States also required as a condition precedent, quite a radical revision of their war aims. President Wilson's political idealism, his short, pithy and epigrammatic formulas compelled similar declarations by Allied statesmen. The British statesmen, at the helm of affairs, found it necessary to affirm their faith in President Wilson's principles and formulas if they would not let the morale of their own people at home suffer in comparison. In the meantime the situation in India was becoming uncomfortable. The Nationalists and the Home Rulers insisted on a clear and unequivocal declaration of policy on the lines of President Wilson's principles. The British statesmen in charge of Indian affairs, at Whitehall, were still temporizing when the report of the Royal Commission on the causes of the Mesopotamia disaster burst out on the half-dazed British mind like a bombsh.e.l.l. To the awakening caused by the report and its disclosures a material contribution was made by the outspoken, candid and clear-cut speech of a younger statesman, whose knowledge of the working of the Indian Government could not be questioned. When the Parliament, press and platform were all ablaze with indignation and shame at the supposed incompetence of the Indian Government, to whose inefficiency and culpable neglect of duty were ascribed the series of disasters that ended with the surrender of a British force at Kut-el-amara, Mr. Edwin Samuel Montagu, who had been an Under Secretary for India under Lord Morley and was at the time of the Mesopotamia disaster Minister of Munitions, came out with a strong and emphatic condemnation of the system and the form of Government under which the "myriads" of India lived and had their affairs managed. Mr.

Montagu's opinion of the machinery of the Indian Government was expressed as follows:

"The machinery of Government in this country with its unwritten const.i.tution, and the machinery of Government in our Dominions has proved itself sufficiently elastic, sufficiently capable of modification, to turn a peace-pursuing instrument into a war-making instrument. It is the Government of India alone which does not seem capable of transformation, and I regard that as based upon the fact that the machinery is statute-ridden machinery. The Government of India is too wooden, too iron, too inelastic, too antediluvian, to be any use for the modern purposes we have in view. I do not believe that anybody could ever support the Government of India from the point of view of modern requirements. But it would do. Nothing serious had happened since the Indian mutiny, the public was not interested in Indian affairs, and it required a crisis to direct attention to the fact that the Indian Government is an indefensible system of Government."

Regarding the Indian Budget Debates in Parliament, he said:

"Does anybody remember the Indian Budget Debates before the War?

Upon that day the House was always empty. India did not matter, and the Debates were left to people on the one side whom their enemies sometimes called "bureaucrats," and on the other side to people whom their enemies sometimes called "seditionists," until it almost came to be disreputable to take part in Indian Debates.

It required a crisis of this kind to realise how important Indian affairs were. After all, is the House of Commons to be blamed for that? What was the Indian Budget Debate? It was a purely academic discussion which had no effect whatever upon events in India, conducted after the events that were being discussed, had taken place."

He held that the salary of the Indian Secretary of State should be paid from the British Treasury, and then there would be real debates:

"How can you defend the fact that the Secretaries of State for India alone of all the occupants of the Front Bench, with the possible exception of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, are not responsible to this House for their salaries, and do not come here with their Estimates in order that the House of Commons may express its opinion....

"What I am saying now is in the light of these revelations of this inelasticity of Indian government. However much you could gloss over those indefensible proceedings in the past, the time has now come to alter them.

"The tone of those Debates is unreal, unsubstantial and ineffective. If Estimates for India, like Estimates for the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and the Colonial Secretary were to be discussed on the floor of the House of Commons, the Debates on India would be as good as the Debates on foreign affairs. After all, what is the difference? Has it even been suggested to the people of Australia that they should pay the salary of the Secretary of State for the Colony? Why should the whole cost of that building in Charles Street, including the building itself, be an item of the Indian taxpayer's burden rather than of this House of Commons and the people of the country?"

Can and does the House of Commons control the India Office? Here is Mr.

Montagu's answer.

"It has been sometimes questioned whether a democracy can rule an Empire. I say that in this instance the democracy has never had the opportunity of trying. But even if the House of Commons were to give orders to the Secretary of State, the Secretary of State is not his own master. In matters vitally affecting India, he can be overruled by a majority of his Council. I may be told that the cases are very rare in which the Council has differed from the Secretary of State for India. I know one case anyhow, where it was a very near thing, and where the action of the Council might without remedy have involved the Government of India in a policy out of harmony with the declared policy of the House of Commons and the Cabinet. And these gentlemen are appointed for seven years, and can only be controlled from the Houses of Parliament by a resolution carried in both Houses calling on them for their resignations. The whole system of the India Office is designed to prevent control by the House of Commons for fear that there might be too advanced a Secretary of State. I do not say that it is possible to govern India through the intervention of the Secretary of State with no expert advice, but what I do say is that in this epoch now after the Mesopotamia Report, he must get his expert advice in some other way than by this Council of men, great men though, no doubt, they always are, who come home after lengthy service in India to spend the first years of their retirement as members of the Council of India.

"Does any Member of this House know much about procedure in the India Office? I have been to the India Office and to other offices. I tell this House that the statutory organization of the India Office produces an apotheosis of circ.u.mlocution and red tape beyond the dreams of any ordinary citizen."

His own idea of what should be done at that juncture was thus expressed:

"But whatever be the object of your rule in India, the universal demand of those Indians whom I have met and corresponded with, is that you should state it. Having stated it, you should give some instalment to show that you are in real earnest, some beginning of the new plan which you intend to pursue, that gives you the opportunity of giving greater representative inst.i.tutions in some form or other to the people of India....

"But I am positive of this, that your great claim to continue the illogical system of Government by which we have governed India in the past is that it was efficient. It has been proved to be not efficient. It has been proved to be not sufficiently elastic to express the will of the Indian people; to make them into a warring Nation as they wanted to be. The history of this War shows that you can rely upon the loyalty of the Indian people to the British Empire--if you ever before doubted it! If you want to use that loyalty, you must take advantage of that love of country which is a religion in India, and you must give them that bigger opportunity of controlling their own destinies, not merely by Councils which cannot act, but by control, by growing control, of the Executive itself. Then in your next War--if we ever have War--in your next crisis, through times of peace, you will have a contented India, an India equipped to help. Believe me, Mr.

Speaker, it is not a question of expediency, it is not a question of desirability. Unless you are prepared to remodel, in the light of modern experience, this century-old and c.u.mberous machine, then, I believe, I verily believe, that you will lose your right to control the destinies of the Indian Empire."

The quick and resourceful mind of Premier Lloyd George at once grasped the situation. He lost no time in deciding what was needed. Probably over the head of his Tory colleagues, possibly with their consent, he gave the Indian portfolio to Mr. Montagu, and told him quietly to set to business. Mr. Montagu's first step was the announcement of August 20, 1917. On that date he made in the House of Commons the following memorable statement:

"The policy of His Majesty's Government, with which the Government of India are in complete accord, is that of the increasing a.s.sociation of Indians in every branch of the administration and the gradual development of self-governing inst.i.tutions with a view to the progressive realisation of responsible government in India as an integral part of the British Empire. They have decided that substantial steps in this direction should be taken as soon as possible, and that it is of the highest importance as a preliminary to considering what these steps should be that there should be a free and informal exchange of opinion between those in authority at home and in India. His Majesty's Government have accordingly decided, with His Majesty's approval, that I should accept the Viceroy's invitation to proceed to India to discuss these matters with the Viceroy and the Government of India, to consider with the Viceroy the views of local Governments, and to receive with him the suggestions of representative bodies and others.

"I would add that progress in this policy can only be achieved by successive stages. The British Government and the Government of India, on whom the responsibility lies for the welfare and advancement of the Indian peoples, must be judges of the time and measure of each advance, and they must be guided by the co-operation received from those upon whom new opportunities of service will thus be conferred and by the extent to which it is found that confidence can be reposed in their sense of responsibility.

"Ample opportunity will be afforded for public discussion of the proposals which will be submitted in due course to Parliament."

It is obvious that the content of the second sentence of paragraph two in the above announcement is in fundamental opposition to the right of every nation to self-determination, a principle now admitted to be of general application (including, according to the British Premier, even the black races inhabiting the Colonies that were occupied by Germany before the War, within its purview). The people of India are not on the level of these races. Even if it be a.s.sumed that they are not yet in a position to exercise that right, fully and properly, it is neither right nor just to a.s.sume that they shall never be in that position even hereafter. The qualifications implied in that sentence are, besides, quite needless and superfluous. As long as India remains "an integral part of the British Empire" she cannot draft a const.i.tution which does not meet with the approval of the British Parliament and the British Sovereign. It is to be regretted that the British statesmen could not rise equal to the spirit of the times and make an announcement free from that spirit of autocratic bl.u.s.ter and racial swagger which was entirely out of place at a time when they were making impa.s.sioned appeals to Indian manhood to share the burdens of Empire by contributing ungrudgingly in men and money for its defence. This att.i.tude is somewhat inconsistent with the statements in paragraph 179 of the Montagu-Chelmsford Report, wherein, after referring to the natural evolution of "the desire for self-determination," the distinguished authors of the Report concede that "the demand that now meets us from the educated cla.s.ses of India is no more than the right and natural outcome of the work of a hundred years."

In spite of this uncalled for reservation in the announcement, it is perfectly true that "the announcement marks the end of one epoch and the beginning of a new one." What makes the announcement "momentous,"

however, is not the language used, as even more high-sounding phrases have been used before by eminent British statesmen of the position of Warren Hastings, Macaulay, Munroe, Metcalf and others, but the fact that the statement has been made by the Secretary of State for India, as representing the Crown and the Cabinet who, in their turn, are the const.i.tutional representatives of the people of Great Britain and Ireland. The statement is thus both morally and legally binding on the British people, though it will not acquire that character so far as the people of India are concerned, unless it is embodied in a Statute of Parliament. Is it too much to hope that when that stage comes the second sentence of the second paragraph might be omitted or so modified as to remove the inconsistency pointed out above?

We have no doubt, however, that the language of the announcement notwithstanding, the destiny of India remains ultimately in the hands of the Indians themselves. It will be determined, favorably or unfavorably, by the solidity of their public life, by the purity and idealism of the Indian public men to be hereafter entrusted with the task of administration, by the honesty and intensity of their endeavor to uplift the ma.s.ses, both intellectually and economically, by the extent to which they reduce the religious and communal excuses that are being put forth as reasons for half-hearted advance, and by the amount of political unity they generate in the nation. The well known maxim that those who will must by themselves be free, is as good today as ever. They will have to do all this in order to persuade the British Parliament to declare them fit for responsible Government. Once they show their fitness by deeds and by actual conduct, no one can keep them in leading-strings.

Coming back to the announcement itself, would it not be well to bear in mind that what differentiates this announcement from the statutory declarations of the Act of 1833 and the Royal proclamation of 1858 is not the language used but the step or steps taken to ascertain Indian opinion, to understand and interpret it in accordance with the spirit of the times and the frankness and fairness with which the whole problem is stated in the joint report of the two statesmen, who are the present official heads of the Government of India. Nor can it be denied that the announcement and the report have received the cordial appreciation of the Indian leaders.

We, that is, the Indian Nationalists, have heretofore concerned ourselves more with criticism of the British administration than with the problem of construction, though our criticism has never been merely destructive. We have always ended with constructive suggestions.

Henceforth, if the spirit of the announcement is translated into deeds it will be our duty to cooperate actively in constructive thought. Not that we refused cooperation in the past, but the conditions and the terms on which we were asked to cooperate made it impossible for us to make an effective response.

Several British critics of the Indian Nationalists have from time to time charged them with lack of constructive ability. They ignore the fact that political conditions in India were an effective bar to any display of ability.

The first attempt at const.i.tution making was made by the Congress in 1915, and as such was bound to be rather timid and half-hearted. The situation since then has considerably improved and the discussions of the last twelve months have enabled the Secretary for India and the Viceroy to claim that, in certain respects, at least, their scheme is a more effective step towards responsible Government than the scheme promulgated jointly by the Congress and the Muslim League. How far that claim can be substantiated remains to be seen. This much is, however, clear: come what may, along with the rest of the world, India cannot go back to the pre-war conditions of life. The high functionaries of the British Government in India are also conscious of that fact, as one of them, the present Lieutenant Governor of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, a member of the Indian bureaucracy, remarked only recently in a speech at Allahabad:

"Nothing will ever be the same," said Sir Harcourt Butler; "this much is certain, that we shall have to shake up all our old ideals and begin afresh ... we have crossed the watershed and are looking down on new plains. The old oracles are dumb. The old shibboleths are no more heard.

Ideals, const.i.tutions, rooted ideas are being shovelled away without argument or comment or memorial.... Our administrative machine belongs to another age. It is top-heavy. Its movements are c.u.mbrous, slow, deliberate. It rejoices in delay. It grew up when time was not the object, when no one wanted change, when financial economy was the ruling pa.s.sion of Governments, imperial and provincial. Now there are the stirrings of young national life, and economic springtime, a calling for despatch, quick response, bold experiment. Secretariats with enormous offices overhang the administration. An eminent ecclesiastic once told me that Rome had, by centuries of experience, reduced delay to a science; he used to think her mistress of postponement and procrastination, but the Government of India beat Rome every time. Only ecclesiatics could dare so to speak of the Government of India. I, for one, will not lay audacious hands on the chariot of the sun."

Coming, as it does, from a member of the Anglo-Indian bureaucracy, this statement means much more to the Indian people than even the words of the British Premier. If this statement is not mere camouflage, but represents a genuine change of heart on the part of the British bureaucracy in India, then it is all the more inexplicable to us why the new scheme of the Secretary for India and the Viceroy should breathe so much distrust of the educated cla.s.ses of India. Any way, we have nothing but praise for the spirit of frankness and fairness which generally characterizes the report. However we might disagree with the conclusions arrived at, it is but right to acknowledge that the a.n.a.lysis of the problem and its const.i.tuting elements is quite masterly and the attempt to find a solution which will meet the needs of the situation _as understood by them_ absolutely sincere and genuine. This fact makes it all the more necessary that Indian Nationalists of all cla.s.ses and all shades of opinion should give their best thought to the consideration of the problem in a spirit of construction and cooperation, as distinguished from mere fault-finding. Nor should it be forgotten for a moment that Mr. Montagu and Lord Chelmsford were all the time, when drawing their scheme, influenced by considerations of what, under the circ.u.mstances, is practicable and likely to be accepted, not only in India by the Anglo-Indian bureaucracy and the non-official European community, but by the _conservative_ British opinion at home. It is the latter we have to convince and win over before the scheme has a ghost of a chance of being improved upon. When we say _conservative_ opinion we include in that expression the Liberal and Labour Imperialists also. We should never forget that it is hard to part with power, however idealistic the individual vested with power may be, and it is still harder to throw away the chances of profit which one (and those in whom one is interested) have gained by efforts extending over a century and a half, and in the exercise of which one sees no immediate danger. I am of the opinion that hitherto Indian representation in England has been extremely meagre, spasmodic and inadequate to the needs of the situation. Outside England, India's voice has been altogether unheard.

We have so far displayed an almost unpardonable simplicity in failing to recognise that the world is so situated these days that public opinion in one country sometimes reacts quite effectively on public opinion in another. It is our duty, therefore, to increase our representation in England and to keep our case before the world with fresh energy and renewed vigour, not in a spirit of carping denunciation of the British Government of India, but with a desire to educate and enlist liberal and right-minded opinion all over the world in our favor. In the following pages an attempt is made to examine the Montagu-Chelmsford report in a spirit of absolute candour and fairness, with practical suggestions for the improvement of the scheme in the light of Indian and British criticism thereupon.

II

DEMOCRACY IN INDIA

A nation that can sing about its defeat is a nation which is immortal.

DAVID LLOYD GEORGE

"Serbia." Speech delivered at the Serbian Lunch (Savoy Hotel), August 8, 1917.

Before we take up the report of the Secretary for India and the Viceroy we intend to clear the ground by briefly meeting the almost universal impression that prevails in educated circles in the West, that democratic inst.i.tutions are foreign to the genius of the Asiatic peoples and have never been known in India before. The latest statement to this effect was made by Mr. Reginald Coupland of the _Round Table Quarterly_, in an article he contributed to the _New Republic_ (September 7, 1918) on "Responsible Government in India." We have neither the time nor the desire to go into the question as it relates to other Asiatic countries, though we might state, in general terms, that an impartial study of Asiatic history will disclose that in the centuries preceding the Reformation in Europe, Asia was as democratic or undemocratic as Europe.

Since then democracy has developed on modern lines in Europe. While Asia has gradually disintegrated and fallen under foreign domination, Europe has progressed towards democracy. As regards India, however, we intend to refer briefly to what historical evidence is available.

Firstly, we wish to make clear what we understand by "democracy." There is no desire to enter into an academic discussion of the subject nor to burden this book with quotations from eminent thinkers and writers. In our judgment, the best definition of democracy so far has been furnished by Abraham Lincoln, viz., "the government of the people, by the people and for the people," regardless of the process or processes by which that government is const.i.tuted. One must, however, be clear minded as to what is meant by "the people." Does the expression include all the people that inhabit the particular territory to which the expression applies, regardless of s.e.x, creed, color and race, or does it not? If it does, we are afraid there is little democracy even in Europe and America today. Until recently half of the population was denied all political power in the State by virtue of s.e.x. Of the other half a substantial part was denied that right by virtue of economic status or, to be more accurate, by lack of economic status considered necessary for the exercise of political power. Even now the Southern States of the United States, Amendment XV to the American Const.i.tution notwithstanding, effectively bar the colored people from the exercise of the franchise supposed to have been accorded to them by the amendment. In Europe, religious and social bars still exist in the const.i.tutions of the different states. As Great Britain is supposed to be the most democratic country in Europe, we cannot do better than take the history of the growth of public franchise in that country as the best ill.u.s.tration of the growth of democracy in the terms of President Lincoln's formula.

Travelling backwards, the earliest democratic inst.i.tutions known to Europe were those of Greece and Rome. In applying the term "democratic"

to the city republics of Greece and Rome it is ignored that these "republics" were in no sense democratic. "Liberty," says Putnam Weale, "as it was understood in those two celebrated republics of Athens and Sparta meant abject slavery to the vast ma.s.s of the population, slavery every whit as cruel as any in the Southern States of the American Union before the war of Liberation.... In neither of these two republics did the freemen ever exceed twenty thousand, whilst the slaves ran into hundreds of thousands, and were used just as the slaves of Asiatics were used.[1] Thus the Greek republics were simply cities in which a certain portion of the inhabitants, little qualified to exercise them, had acquired exclusive privileges, while they kept the great body of their brethren in a state of abject slavery."[2] Discussing the nature of Roman citizenship Putnam Weale remarks (p. 25) that "in spite of the polite fiction of citizenship, the destinies of scores of millions were effectively disposed of by a few thousands." This was true not only with regard to the outlying parts of the Empire but even as to Italy itself.

"Roman liberty," continues Putnam Weale, "though an improvement on Greek conceptions, was like all liberty of antiquity confined really to those who, being present in the capital, could take an active part in the public deliberations. It was the liberty of city and not of a land. It was therefore exactly similar in practise, if not in theory, to the kind of liberty, which has always been understood in advanced Asiatic states--the system of Government by equipoise and nothing else. The idea of giving those who lived at a distance from the capital any means of representing themselves was never considered at all; and so, it was the populace of the capital (or only a part of it), aided by such force as might be introduced by the contesting generals or leaders, which held all the actual political power. _Representative Government_--the only effective guarantee of liberty of any sort--_had therefore not yet been dreamt of_." [The italics are ours.]

Alison in his _History of Europe_, Vol. I, says: "The states of Florence, Genoa, Venice and Pisa were not in reality free; they were communities _in which a few individuals had usurped_ the rights, and disposed of the fortunes, of the great bulk _of their fellow citizens, whom they governed as subjects or indeed as slaves_. During the most flourishing period of their history, the citizens of all Italian republics did not amount to 20,000, and these privileged cla.s.ses held as many million in subjection. The citizens of Venice were 2500 and those of Genoa 4500, those of Pisa, Siena, Lucca and Florence taken together, not above 6000." [Italics ours.] Coming to more modern times we find it stated by Morse Stephens in his _History of Revolutionary Europe_ that "the period which preceded the French Revolution and the era of war from the troubles of which Modern Europe was to be born may be characterised as that of the benevolent despots. The State was everything, the nation nothing." Speaking of the eighteenth-century conditions in Europe, Stephens remarks that "the great majority of the peasants of Europe were throughout that century absolute serfs"; also that "the ma.s.s of the population of Central and Eastern Europe was purely agricultural and in its poverty expected naught but the bare necessaries of existence. The cities and consequently the middle cla.s.ses formed but an insignificant factor in the population." These quotations reveal the real character of the European democracy in ancient and mediaeval and even in early modern Europe up to the end of the eighteenth century, or, to be more accurate, to the time of the French Revolution. Compare this with the following facts about the political inst.i.tutions of India, during the ancient and mediaeval times:

(1) First we have the testimony of ancient Brahmanic and Buddhistic literature, preserved in their sacred books, about the right of the people to elect their rulers; the duty of the rulers to obey _the law_ and their obligation to consult their ministers as well as the representatives of the public in all important affairs of State.

The Vedic literature contains references to non-monarchial forms of Government,[3] makes mention of elected rulers and of a.s.semblies of people, though the normal as distinguished from universal form of Government according to Professor Macdonald was by Kings, "a situation which, as in the case of the Aryan invaders of Greece and of the German invaders of England, resulted almost necessarily in strengthening the monarchic element of the const.i.tution."[4]

In the _Aitreya Brahmana_ occur terms which are translated by some as representing the existence of "self-governed" and "kingless" states.

These authorities have been collected, translated and explained by K. P.

Jayas Wal and Narendranath Law in a series of articles published in the _Modern Review_ of Calcutta.

The _Mahabharata_, the great Hindu epic, makes mention of kingless states or oligarchies. "In fact," says Mr. Banerjea, "all the Indian nations of these times possessed popular inst.i.tutions of some type or other."[5]

Professor Rhys Davids has said, in his _Buddhist India_, that "the earliest Buddhist records reveal the survival side by side with more or less powerful monarchies, of republics with either complete or modified independence." He names ten such republics in Northern India alone. In regard to the system of Government effective within one of the tribes that const.i.tuted a republic of their own, the same scholar observes: "The administrative and judicial business of the clan was carried out in public a.s.sembly, at which young and old were alike present in their common Mote Hall. A single chief--how and for what period chosen we do not know--was elected an officeholder, presiding over the sessions, or, if there were no sessions, over the State. He bore the t.i.tle of _Raja_, which must have meant something like the Roman Consul or the Greek Archon."[6] There is no evidence of the existence of slaves or serfs in these communities. Evidently all were freemen.