India
The Future of India
BY SIR FRANCIS YOUNGIIUSBAND.
andia is in all our minds this week : we have not hesitated to devote extra space to publishing both Sir Francis Young-
husband's plea that we should do now and quickly what we might well have done a year ago ' • and Sardar trjjal Singh's review of the difficulties which confront the members of his race.—ED. Spectator.] LORD SANKEY spoke of Mr. MacDonald having planted a seed two months ago and of his watching the tender growth of the plant then sown. And a famous cartoonist has depicted the scene as the mango trick. All this is almost mischievously misleading. The seed of self-government for India was not sown two months ago and was not sown here. It was sown a century and a half ago, and it was sown in India. And we are not now witnessing the growth of the plant. Before our eyes the bud is bursting into flower. It is the flowering of the seed that was sown by Carey and Duff that the Lord Chancellor was looking at.
But if we are to indulge in horticultural metaphors, the operation of grafting would be far more suitable. On the ancient stock of India we grafted the vigorous young shoot of English culture. We bound them tightly together till the sap flowed freely from the one to the other. From Great Britain there has steadily been flowing into India for more than a century the idea of freedom and eventual self-government. And not merely dreamy visionaries in England have inculcated the idea, but men with hard practical experience in India—men like Munro, and Elphinstone,' and Henry Lawrence, and Herbert Edwardes. All these have foreseen and worked for the time when India should govern herself. It is no new idea.
And the whole trend of formal State action has been in the same direction. The India Act of 1883 laid down that no native of India should be debarred by race, colour, or religion from holding any office whatsoever under the British 'Government. Queen Victoria, in her Proclamation of 1858, expressed her will that her subjects, of whatever race or creed, be freely and impartially admitted to offices in her service, the duties of which they might be qualified by their education, ability and integrity duly to discharge. In 1801, for purposes of legislation, not less than six or more than twelve Indians were added by nomination to the Governor- General's Council. In 1892 the number was increased and greater scope was given to them. In 1909 the Legislative Councils were further enlarged and their functions extended, the system of direct election of members introduced, and non-official majorities were established in the Provincial Councils. Then in 1917 came the historic pronouncement that the goal of British policy was responsible government in India as an integral part of the British Empire. What has been happening ever since is the gradual transference of responsibility from the shoulders of the British Parliament to the shoulders of the Indian Parliament, which is gradually being built up to bear the burden.
.Dominion never was our object in going to India. We went there for trade. And ever since dominion was forced upon us, as the only means of securing peace and order for our trade, we had growing up within us the idea of an India governing herself as soon as it was possible. To have per- sisted in attempting to govern India from a distance of six thousand miles a moment longer than the necessity for it existed would be not merely futile, but wicked.
Our main interest is a friendly India. An India strong, self-reliant, prosperous and friendly as Japan is all our interests demand. If such an India could work with us as an integral part of the British Empire, that would be all the better—the better for India as for us. But the creation of a united, free, and friendly India is what we must con- centrate our minds upon. The rest must follow of its own accord.
As we approach the final stages of our long endeavour we shall have to tune our faculties to the highest pitch. For it will be the most difficult stage of all. At one moment the greatest caution will be needed. At another we must be prepared to throw all caution to the winds, run every
risk, launch out boldly into the deep, and be prepared to act with decision on the instant. Safeguards will be necessary. Safeguards for ultimate order, safeguards for defence, safe- guards for finance, safeguards for minorities. Every kind and sort of safeguard. Yet if either we or the Indians allow ourselves to be obsessed with the idea of safeguards we shall lose the very thing we are trying to save.
We must get our minds fixed on the end. Here is India surging with new life. Through the impetus she has received from our Own culture, through the example of Japan, and through the force of the whole world-movement since the Great War, she is alive as she has never been before. Whether we call it nationality or not, there is pulsing through India a feeling for India. Whether they are Punjabis or Madrasis, Hindus or Moslems, high caste or low caste, Indians are feeling themselves Indians. They have their divisions and dissensions, but they are united in their passionate desire to control their own destiny. And this feeling is not confined to a few intelligentsia. It may have originated with thein. But for thirty years it has been spreading and deepening ; and now it is permeating the whole life of India, villagers as well as the townsmen, and the women as well as the men. All want the future of India to be in their own hands. And this desire springs from a deep spiritual stirring in the very soul of the people. This is the great main fact which has to be faced.
Indians have their eyes on a glorious land of the future, when they are free to develop their own culture in their own way, and India can stand among the nations of the world proud and erect, letting flow out on humanity those streams of spirituality for which she has ever been famed.
We have to bend our whole energies to helping Indians to create such an India. We have to be positive and con- structive. Where they have dissensions we must not stand listlessly by with folded arms telling them we can do nothing until they have settled their differences for themselves. We must be active. We must make full use of our peculiar position to help them compose their dissensions. And we shall have to stop telling them they are not able to govern themselves or to defend themselves. For they can. Great portions of India are already governed by Indian rulers ; and in many places thoroughly well governed. Moreover, for the defence of India against Afghans and Afridis there is ample military material, even if for some time to come, like Canada and Australia, India has to depend upon the Empire as a whole for defence against attack by a military power of the first order.
The Conference has shown the high ability of the foremost Indians. It has shown the great part women are already taking. And intercourse with these Delegates has shown the grace of their culture and the charm of their manners. The life of the country they speak for is a swift and vivid life. It is eager to get on. We must let it. We must hasten our procedure. We must be equal to the pace. The danger lies in being too slow. We are none the better for doing in 1931 what we might well have done in 1930. Now that we have made up our • minds to grant responsibility at the centre, let us bring it into effect with a will and a grace, and look forward to the time when Indians are governing themselves with full peace and contentment, and then all that social and cultural life which must necessarily be blighted by the dominating presence of an alien power will come to the full flower of its promise. Already buds are beginning to appear. The time is drawing nigh when Indian culture will burst into bloom and flood the whole world with its glory. Then will be the time of our reward. Our grafting will have been a success.
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