TOPICS OF THE DAY.
BRITISH RULE IN INDIA.
WE have noticed elsewhere Sir Bampfylde Fuller's able book on " Indian Life and Sentiment." Here we desire to set forth what in our opinion should be the attitude of the British people towards India. In the first place, they must not be pessimistic about India. It is the fashion of the moment to talk of British rule in India as a miracle, a miracle which we have no right to expect will continue, and so forth. This is the merest nonsense. Our presence and power in India are only a. miracle in the sense that almost all things human are miracles. Imagine a long plank nine inches broad stretched across a roaring waterfall. If a man has the full use of his legs, a steady bead, and some practice in the business, he may quite safely pass and repass along that plank, and even turn round in the middle Ind survey the cataract that is raging beneath him and splashing him with spray. Friends on the bank with a vein of sentiment and rhetoric may declare that it is a miracle that he has not fallen off and been dashed to pieces. But in truth being able to keep on the plank is no more a miracle than is walking along a strip nine inches broad marked out on the drawing-room carpet. As long as he attends to the work before him, and determines that he will not be such a fool as carelessly to make a false step, he is as secure on the plank as on the carpet. One thing, however, he must not do,—begin when in the middle of the plank to think how perilous is his position, and to wonder whether after all the sentimental and rhetorical gentlemen on the bank who are shouting their feverish comments are not right in saying that his performance is a miracle. Such considerations, especially if they are tinged by the recollection of aphorisms like "Miracles do not happen," may easily unman him,—may produce a rush of blood to the head which will cause a catastrophe. Nevertheless the fact remains that it is rubbish to talk about the crossing being a miracle. If he perishes, he will only have himself to thank for his folly. Besides reminding the British people that there is no miracle about our rule in India, but only a demonstration of courage, steady nerves, and common-sense, we would ask them to remember that we are in India because in the last resort, and when we have analysed the thing to the bottom, we are needed. If we were not needed we should not be there. We cannot now give in detail the reasons why we are needed in India, but they are shortly as follows. The vast tract of country which goes by that name is peopled by races and creeds so heterogeneous and so incapable of common action that the choice is between external rule and anarchy. There is not even the possibility of solving the problem by breaking the country up into a series of small governments. And for this reason. Speaking generally, every part of India is inhabited by people of different creeds, and even of different races, who live side by side. And the proportions of the mixture are never the same. For example, though the Mohammedans are in a marked minority in India taken as a, whole, there are plenty of districts where they have either a local majority, or, at any rate, are half, or nearly half, the population. Further to complicate the question, the major part of the total Indian population—the Hindus—are socially and politically broken in pieces by the caste system,—a system which shows no sign of yielding, but is in many ways spreading and intensifying. If, indeed, one were forced to answer in one word the question, " Why are we in India ? " that word would be " caste." The next point to remember is that while we remain in India we must not share our control of affairs with the natives. If we do, we shall bring our rule to an end. But mark the word " control." When we say that we must rule India without sharing the control with the natives, we do not mean that we must not use them as instruments of government. On the contrary, we cannot possibly rule India without making use of such instruments. Subject to the maintenance of our control—that is, to our saying the final word on all subjects of government—we ought to use native instruments as largely as possible.
These are the terms on which we must rule India. If the creeds and races of India will not accept these terms, let them turn us out. They could easily do so if they were enough in earnest to unite. If they cannot, as they certainly cannot, unite for that purpose, it is a proof that they are unable to get on without us. What we must not do is to hand over our trusteeship to any one section of the people. It is a case of carrying out our trust fully or of resigning it altogether. We have spoken of laying down our trust when the peoples of India, unanimously or with a virtual unanimity, demand it. But nothing is clearer than that at the moment they make no such demand. On the contrary, a vast majority of the population practise an acquiescence in our rule which is equivalent to a demand to us to stay. They may not like us individually or racially, but at any rate they want us to rule. As Thiers said of the Republic, ours is the form of government which divides them least, and gives them the internal security and happiness and peace which they desire, but can obtain in no other way.
We have spoken above of the folly of stopping in the middle of the plank over the cataract to wonder whether a, miracle is not being wrought. To give up sophistries about miracles is, however, not the only necessary condition of British rule in India. Another is to observe the schoolboy maxim: " I'll stand by you if you'll stand by me." There are thousands, or rather millions, of people in India who are anxious and ready to stand by us. But if once the disenchanting whisper goes round that we are not going to stand by them, the allegiance which they so ardently offer to us will be in danger of being withdrawn. The first thing desired by those who wish our rule ill is to inspire our friends in India with the notion that we are going to desert them. Therefore, beyond everything else, we must proclaim that we will stand by those who stand by us. Unfortunately the Whig temperament which rightly possesses and inspires the ordinary Englishman does not tend to make this plain. The moderation of language and tone which goes with the Whig temperament inclines the subordinate to think that his chief is a half-hearted sort of person who cannot be depended upon to make sacrifices at a moment of peril. But though our words in public may not seem very encouraging to men to whom the suggestion of desertion is being made in a thousand shapes, the Englishman's private life and character happily tell all the other way. The native must know that though he may talk strangely and tepidly, the Englishman is a good person to be with in a tight place. He does not act then as a calculator or a logician or a philosopher, but sticks to his guns, helps his friends, " goes for " his enemies, and is not afraid of responsibility. The truth is, and the fact is well brought out in Sir Bampfylde Fuller's book reviewed by us to-day, that in India we hold all the trump cards in our hands. If we will only take the trouble to play them properly, we cannot help winning. Indeed, we will go so far as to say that if our rule comes to an end, it will only be through what Bacon called " niceness and satiety." Personally we see no signs of such "niceness and satiety," though we do see a certain foolish affectation of these two defects of our qualities. The Abbe Dubois stated better perhaps than anybody else has ever done what is the real danger to our rule in India. But before we note what he said we should perhaps remind our readers who he was. The Abbe was a Roman Catholic missionary who went to India in the year 1792. He dressed and lived like an Indian ascetic, and obtained an extraordinary knowledge, not only of the languages of the South of India, but of every detail in the life of the people. After some twenty-five years of wandering and watching, he published a book entitled "Hindu Manners, Customs, and Ceremonies," which still remains from many points of view the most striking record of the life lived by the natives of India. A new edition of this work was published in 1906 (The Clarendon Press, 6s. net). The two most notable things in his book are the picture he paints of the Brahmins, the Pharisees of the Indian world—we use the word as descriptive, not as vituperative, for the Brahmin, like the Pharisee, is a man who is devoted to the maintenance of ceremonial purity—and the impression he conveys of the necessity for British rule in the interests of the mass of the population. In his preface, which is indeed the only directly political section of his work, he points out that the people of India have always been accustomed to government from above, and " have always displayed mere indifference towards those who have forced them to it Little cared they whether the princes under whom they groaned were of their own country or from foreign lands." [The Abbe's most recent editor supports this by quoting the familiar proverb : " What matters it whether Rama reigns or the Rakshasa reigns ? "] The Abbe goes on to declare in a very remarkable passage that " the European Power which is now established in India is, properly speaking, supported neither by physical force nor by moral influence." That is a truth too often forgotten. " Under the supremacy of the Brahmins the people of India hated their government, while they cherished and respected their rulers ; under the supremacy of Europeans they hate and despise their rulers from the bottom of their hearts, while they cherish and respect their government. And here I would remark that the rule of all the Hindu princes, and often that of the Mahomedans, was, properly speaking, Brahminical rule, since all posts of confidence were held by Brahmins." The Abbe then attacks what was in his time, as it is now, the great Indian problem :— " It has been asserted that any great power based neither on a display of force nor on the affection and esteem of subject races is bound sooner or later to topple under its own weight. I am far from sharing this opinion altogether. The present Govern- ment occupies a position in which it has little or nothing to fear from extraneous disturbance. True it is that like all empires it is subject to possible chances of internal dissension, military revolt, and general insurrection. But I firmly believe that nothing of this sort will happen to it so long as it maintains amongst its troops the perfect discipline and the sense of comfort which at present exist, and so long as it does all in its power to make its yoke scarcely perceptible by permitting its subjects every freedom in the exorcise of their social and religious practices."
These are words which, in our opinion, might well be written in letters of gold over the doors of the India Office and of Government House at Calcutta.
Before we leave the subject we should like to offer one conclusion which is, in our opinion, to be drawn from the Abbe Dubois's book, and indirectly from that of Sir Bampfylde Fuller. The Brahmins are the parasites of Indian social and political life. They and their system are the ivy which is always climbing up every tree planted in Indian soil. To begin with the ivy may seem unimportant, or even an ornament to the tree, but in the end it strangles it. That is the lesson of Indian history. The selfish, Pharisaical rule of the Brahmins destroyed the Empire of the Moguls, as it did that of the indigenous rulers of India, and even of such predatory Powers as the Mahrattas. The reason is not far to seek. Brahminical rule and administration were never conceived in the interests of the people of India as a whole, but only of the sacred dominant caste,—a strange and sinister religious imperium in imperio. Now what is really happening at this moment is not anything in the nature of an uprising of the peoples and races of India in order to obtain self-govern- ment. What we are witnessing in the " unrest in India " are the phenomena of what might be called a Brah- minical plot. We will:not ourselves call it a Brahminical plot, because that would be to beg the question,—for our purposes "movement " is the better word. The Brahmins, like the keen and intelligent politicians they are, use every instrument in their power to accomplish their design. They will work with Mohammedans, with men who have cast off Hinduism, with English visionaries and Christians whom they loathe and despise, as long as they can further their own aspirations. From their point of view that is wise and sensible- enough, and we have no right to com- plain, and do not complain. All we want to do is to make the British. people understand that what is happening is what we have described, and not the beginnings of some movement like that of " Italia Irredenta " or the revolt of the Slays of South-Eastern Europe. The Brahmins are trying to "squeeze" us,—to force us to surrender a larger share of power into their hands. They have no doubt a perfect right from their point of view to try to play the game which they played so successfully with every other conqueror of India ; but at any rate do not let us be so foolish as to yield. to them blindly. If we are going to allow them to have their own way, and to turn our rule, as they turned other rules, into Brahminical rule, in fact though not in name, let us do it with our eyes open.
• If once the British people can be made to understand the fundamental fact which we have just stated, we believe that they will have common-sense enough to say :—" Either we will leave India altogether, or we will stay there as supreme and independent rulers. We will not become a kind of corporate Great Mogul, and in our weakness and supineness allow the Brahmins to exploit our system of government for the benefit, not of the people of India, but of their own caste."
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