BRITISH RULE IN INDIA

A Sketch of the History of India, 1858-1918. By H. Dodwell. (Longmans. 6s.)

The Punjab Peasant in Prosperity and Debt. By M. L. Darling. (Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press. 14s.)

IN the nineteenth century men read about India to trace the process by which the British Raj was extended. They debated whether the steps taken were morally defensible, necessary or justified by results. Those questions had then more than an academic interest, since mutatis mutandis the Indian process had to be repeated elsewhere. But to-day the process has reached its end in India and in Africa, and what happened is seen to be as irrevocable as the European Donquest of America. It no longer appears likely that a

similar process will be applied in Syria, China or elsewhere. Hence we do not now find it easy to grow excited about Hastings's policy, Wellesley's wars or Dalhousie's annexations. 1Vhat interests us now are the questions arising out of India's demand for self-government. What were the causes whence sprang Europe's hegemony in the old world ? Are those causes still operative ? Can we prove inherent political incapacity against India ? Or is there no reason to doubt that with a favourable start India will be able to make a success of Swaraj and develop or revive a distinctive Indian

culture ? What has India profited by the one hundred years of our guardianship ? Have we merely given her one more brief respite in the middle of her. endless rebellions ?

Or have we taught her something of permanent value and laid the foundations of her political and economic welfare too deep to be shaken by the recklessness of adventurers or the selfishness of a ruling class ? Has our Raj mitigated or aggravated the Hindu-Moslem feud ? Will caste survive us ? , Will the outcaste succeed in asserting his claim to human status ? What was the true attitude of the Indian classes and masses towards the British Raj in the different- stages of its development ? Were they hostile, acquiescent or content ?

Here are five new books on India ; let us sec whether they throw any light on queStions such as these. • Mr. Yusuf All sets out- to trace " The. Making of: India-" through the ages-relating Indian history.to world-history and giving due- prominence . to social, economic and religious movemerits without ignoring military and -political history. But; of- course, the thing simply- can't be done within the three' hundred pages which is all the space Mr. Yusuf All has allowed, himself. We get only a history in headlines. The author can give us little -chance of examining the data on which he bases his conclusions. It is a pity he did not take more- room, for here and there he invites us to look at history from

a Mohammedan standpoint, .which .is. new and interesting

to the British reader. We note that he agrees with those who ascribe the European hegemony to the discovery of America, that he refuses to"- regard the rise of the •Marathai as an anti-Moslem movement, and that a Mohammedrui was entrusted with the chief executive command of the Maratha army at Panipat. Mr. Rice, in his Challenge td Asia, touches on many interesting problems. His table of contents is appetizing, but the text is unsatisfactory. There is too much speculation and assertion and too little investigation of the facts. The mixture is too weak and gives little driving power. He never gets to grips with the subjects discussed. So we leave him • for Professor Dodwell's unpretentious-looking Sketch of the History of India, 1858-1918. This is a refreshing change after what has gone before. The task Professor Dodwell has set himself is of manageable proportions. He does not allow himself to be distracted by details. He sees the big problems. He states his conclusions concisely, but he has evidently wrestled with his problems and refused to let go till their nature was pretty well understood. The result is a very just appreciation of the merits and defects of the British Raj. Most of us will accept his verdict that our three chief errors were :—

(1) Failure to define earlier the goal towards which the forces of political growth should be directed.

(2) Over centralization arising from the tendency of the Secretary of State not to govern but to interfere.

(3) Failure to associate Indians earlier with the higher forms of Government coupled with an excessive ten- dency to prefer European to Indian agency in the name of efficiency.

The chapter on " Education and Employment " is specially illuminating. Those on " Political Sentiments " and " The Riney of Reform " are good so far' as they go, but we feel the need of more material to help us to estimate the political and military capacity of the new Indian educated class. We turn therefore to Sir Surendrinath Banerjea's A Nation 'in Making. This is an autobiography. Its importance can be gauged when we recall Sir Surendranath's career. He was one of the first Indians to compete successfully in the Indian Civil Service Examination. That was in 1869. In 1874 he was dismissed the service on very insufficient grounds. He then took to schoolmastering, politics and journalism, saw Indian aspirations deflected from their old goals in Government service towards representative institu- tions and Parliamentary government, helped the infant Indian National Congress to find its voice, served in the expanded Bengal Legislative Council from 1892 onwards, headed the agitation against the partition of Bengal, preached boycott, was placated by the reversal of the partition, sup- ported the Montagu reforms, took office as the first Bengali Minister, and lived to be defeated by the Swarajists in the second Indian General Election. He was a great orator, but unluckily great orators are not at their best when writing books. His autobiography tells us far less than we hoped to learn. We see how English education united the educated class in the different provinces and encouraged them to challenge a self-satisfied bureaucracy. We see, too, traces of the development in Bengal of a local nationalism based on the vernacular. We see Bengal's capacity for popular agitation, but there is little to show whether a Bengali Government could hope to draw from any quarter the strength, required to put through unpopular but necessary measures: The inference to be drawn from what Sir Surendranath. tells us ofthe progress of social reform can hardly be favour- able. On the other hand, the conversion of Bengal's champion agitator into a cautious and conservative Minister reminds us that the Indian temperament is naturally moderate, a fact which ought to prove a source of political strength. No one of these four authors has been able to spare much. space to deal with the life of the Indian village and the needs

and desires of the small farmer, though these :.

, are the founda tion's on which every' Indian Raj must rest. The gap Is filled by Mr. Darling's book, which in its class is as- satisfying) as Mr: Dodwell'i. We get new and exact statistics of the' ihdebtedness of the Punjab peasant with a ' careful ' and' instructive analysis of the causes which have plunged him so deep in debt. We see that the moneylender has very generally come to play the part which used to be played by the - land- revenue in swallowing up the whole of the small-

farmer's surplus above what village opinion regards as a minimum subsistence allowance. This result is brought about by the improvidence of the peasant. Munro was wrong in supposing that agricultural prosperity and content- ment could be secured by merely reducing the land revenue so as to leave a surplus in the peasant's pocket. Even new irrigation works, fertilizing millions of desert acres, will be insufficient to save the peasant unless he is brought up in a thrifty tradition. In some districts and in some castes such a tradition is found, but traditions of improvidence or extravagance are more widely prevalent and they give the moneylender a power which once threatened to become absolute. We see how a masterful Indian civilian might come honestly to abhor the idea of the rule of the educated Indian, believing that it would in practice be the rule of the moneylender who is the lawyer's paymaster. But the rule of the Indian Civil Service has not availed to prevent, though it may have restricted, the growth of the money- lender's influence. Effective protection cannot come from without. There are signs, Mr. Darling says, that it is coming from within. The War brought the Punjab peasant into contact with Europe. He has begun to think for himself and to demand education, the kind of education that is suited to his needs, that will fit him to co-operate with his neighbour in order to satisfy common wants and to take advantage of the advice which the Agricultural Department offers him.

The peasant's future is not yet assured and a study of Mr. Darling's book raises the old question whether instead of introducing the representative and Parliamentary institu- tions of the West, we should not rather have developed the self-governing capacity of the villages under the supervision of a carefully selected bureaucracy, Indian or European. Mr. Dodwell would apparently have preferred another line of advance, for he regrets the failure of Canning's scheme for making the great Indian landholders into agents of Government similar to the old English justices of the peace. The scheme, he thinks, caught a chill and died because John Lawrence and others poured cold water upon the activities of those who should have been encouraged. If they had been encouraged would the policy have borne fruit ? The question is interesting. It is arguable that the political weakness of pre-British India can be traced to the failure of Indian States to produce an hereditary landed aristocracy with a tradition of loyalty to the central authority. Was the Indian temperament incapable of that kind of loyalty, or was it only accident that prevented the development of such an aristocracy ?

But regrets are vain. It is too late now to found an Indian constitution on a territorial aristocracy or on the village system. Western representative institutions and Parlia- mentary government have been introduced. They suit the English educated class and will therefore remain—so long, that is, as the peace of India is preserved. That seems to be the message of Sir Surendranath Banerjea's book, which shows us that the educated class draws strength from union, being bound together by common interests and a common outlook, and must therefore predominate unless and until some madness revives that ancient Indian institution— Ordeal by Battle.