LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
[Letters of the length of one of our leading paragraphs are often more read, and therefore more effective, than those which fill treble the space.]
THE MONTAGU REPORT.
Pro ems EDITOR OP TEM " SPECTATOR.")
Sra,—The spirit in which Mr. Montagu and Lord Chelmsford approach the question of Constitutional Reform in India is well illustrated by the following extract, quoted, with apparent approval, "from an official report." The rural population, says the writer, have
"sunk into a condition of lethargic content. . . . Hitherto they have regarded the official as their representative in the councils of Government; and now we have to tear up this faith by the roots, to teach them that in future they must bring their troubles to the notice of an elected representative. . . . We have to bring about the most radical revolution in the people's traditional ideas of the relation between ruler and ruled; and it will be a difficult and even dangerous business, for it is neither safe nor easy to meddle with traditional ideas in India. Unless the political changes now in contemplation are accompanied by an educational campaign directed to awakening in all classes alike, but especially in this particular class, a sense of citizenship, disaster will certainly result."
It certainly will, and the writer who, in his zeal for Constitu- tional reform, is prepared to face calamity which can only be averted if the Indian peasantry develop "a sense of citizenship" cannot be denied the courage of his opinions. In the same strain Mr. Montagu and Lord Chelmsford (Report, p. 120) write: "We believe profoundly that the placid, pathetic contentment of the masses is not the soil on which Indian nationhood will grow, and that in deliberately disturbing it we are working for her highest good." And again (p. 124): "Without it [self-government within the Empire] there can be no fullness of civic life, no satisfaction of the natural aspirations which fill the soul of every self-respecting man," and they go on to speak of "the desire of the people 'if India so to govern themselves."
The argument seems to be that the vast majority of the "people of India" are lethargically, placidly, pathetically content with the government under which they live and have prospered, and that though only a minute fraction of the population, as the Report elsewhere admits, desires political changes in the direction of self-government, it is our duty to stir up the contented masses and awake the "natural aspirations which fill the soul of every self-respecting man."
The Indian peasantry have many admirable qualities and a
civilization of their own which is very far from despicable. The beat, if not, indeed, the bulk of them, are by no means deficient in self-respect; but they are not politically minded, and it is most unlikely, even if it were desirable, that they will become so within any measurable peisiod. It is true that I have spent a good many years in India as a District Officer, and have thus incurred the reproach of being a mere "sun-dried bureaucrat "; but to me it does seem that the notion underlying the Montagu-Chelmsfor I Report that
"by the [vote] Only, the Nations shall be great and free" is Constitutionalism run mad.—I am, Sir, &c., H. C. I.
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