Chapter 382: , Laws of 1889, to read as follows (18)

"The prisoners were taken to the Alipur Gaol, and their trial
was commenced at the Alipur Police Court. I visited the Court
one day—I think it was the seventieth day of the trial—and
marvelled afresh. They were ranged in rows, about 50 men, all
young, all huddled together and squatting on their haunches.
The only man among them with an intellectual face was Arabindo
Ghose, the alleged leader, who sat in a far corner. He has the
face of a dreamer, as indeed he is, and with his long hair and
short beard might very well pass for a certain type of
artistic Frenchman. Whether he be guilty or not is no affair
of mine, but his record excites pity. He went to England with
brilliant gifts and high hopes, and he had a distinguished
career at school and University. But men who profess to know
say that he had more than the ordinary share of the rough and
tumble of juvenile life amidst alien and often thoughtless
comrades, and that those years were made thoroughly unhappy
for him. When at last, after he had passed for the Civil
Service, he was rejected because he could not pass the
horsemanship test, one can perhaps understand that a man of
his temperament returned to India with black rage and despair
at his heart. But his associates seemed to be mere boys,
haggard, wild looking youths of a peculiarly low physical
type."

The trial of the prisoners described above, at Alipur,
resulted in the condemnation of two to death, six to
transportation for life, one to imprisonment for life, and
five to imprisonment for terms ranging from one to ten years.
The remainder, including the alleged leader, Arabindo Ghose,
were acquitted. With the sanction of Lord Morley, the
Secretary for India, summary measures were taken to silence
the seditious journalism and speech which took a terroristic
tone and instigated crime. Loud protests against these
measures were called out in England, and one hundred and
forty-six Liberal, Labor, and Irish Members of Parliament
addressed a note in May last to the Prime Minister, asking his
attention to "the fact that ever since the 8th December last
nine British subjects in India have been deported from their
homes and detained in prison without having been charged with
any offence or informed even of the grounds of suspicion
entertained against them by the Government of India. Some of
them are admitted to be men of high character. None are
alleged to have been previously convicted of any crime. Under
these circumstances," said the writers, "we may venture to
make an urgent appeal to you that they may be either brought
to trial or set at liberty."

In his reply Mr. Asquith said: "Such an appeal is perfectly
natural, and I am not surprised to find that it is widely and
influentially supported. Deportation without trial as a method
of dealing with political agitation must necessarily be
repugnant to Englishmen, and to no one has the necessity of
resorting to such a measure been more repugnant than to Lord
Morley. When, however, I am appealed to on behalf of the
persons so deported, I must ask you and those who are acting
with you to bear in mind that deportation has been resorted to
for the sole purpose of preserving the country from grave
internal commotion. It is a preventive not a punitive measure,
and the responsibility for fixing the period of detention
must, therefore, rest with those who are charged with the
arduous and anxious duty of maintaining order in India.

"The Secretary of State and the Government of India are, I
submit, the only possible judges of the circumstances which
may warrant the release or the further detention of the
persons deported, and the decision is one which, in my
view—and I hope that you and your co-signatories may find
yourselves in agreement with me—may be left with absolute
confidence in their hands.

"It is particularly necessary at a moment when a great
extension of popular representative elements in Indian
administration has just been sanctioned by Parliament that
none of the various forms of anarchical violence should be
tolerated, and that no lawful instrument for suppressing them
should be discarded."

One of the trials for seditious journalism which caused most
excitement throughout India did not arise from publications in
Bengal, but in Bombay. The accused was Bal Gangadhar Tilak, a
Brahmin, professor of law and mathematics, who conducted a
native paper called the _Mahratta_. The specific charge
against him was that in his newspaper he had urged the people
to demand the restoration of the old Shiwaji religious
festivals and, if it was refused, to throw bombs until it was
granted. The government contended that he had not incited the
people to violence in overt words, but by subtle insinuations
and unmistakable innuendo. At his trial in July, 1908, he
spoke in his own defence, with great ability, for five days.
He was convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for six years.

INDIA: A. D. 1907-1908.
Mortality Statistics and Birth Rate.

See (in this Volume)
PUBLIC HEALTH.

INDIA: A. D. 1907-1909.
The recent Movements of Discontent.
Their Character, Causes, and Meaning.
Hindu and Moslem feeling.
English attitude.
The Past of British Government and its Fruits.
Neglect of Education and Political Training.
Slight Organization of Local Self-Government.
The Governed not taken into the confidence of the Government.
Is Democracy forbidden to Asiatic peoples?

The political disaffection in India which has been expressing
itself violently within the last few years, not only in
seditious speech and print, but in the manner of the Russian
terrorists, with bombs and other instruments of anarchy and
assassination, was not started by the Bengal Partition and the
resentments which that measure gave rise to, but those gave a
fresh and strong impulse to feelings that had been in
fermentation for some time. Behind that immediate impulse was,
undoubtedly, a much stronger one, which came from the
startling revelation of the Russo-Japanese War, that one
Asiatic people, at least, could outfight one, at least, of the
proud and domineering Powers of Europe, and outdo them all in
a practical handling of the boasted "Science of the West."
Torpid energies and sleeping ambitions were pricked in India
by the amazing triumph of the Japanese, as they were elsewhere
throughout the East; and it is since 1905 that the demand of
the Hindus for a political life of their own has taken a tone
which commands the ear of all open-minded and generous
Englishmen, like John Morley, and draws from them the response
they are now trying to make.

{316}

So far as it is a demand for an Independent Indian Empire,
with the whole fabric of British rule swept away, it comes
manifestly from nothing that has weight or force in India
itself. Probably no Hindu who could make intelligent use of
political freedom ever dreams of the present possibility of a
nationalized India, in which the 200,000,000 of his own race
and creed and the 60,000,000 of Mohammedans (saying nothing of
the added millions of other lineages and other faiths) would
be peaceful fellow citizens, administering the institutions of
self-government in harmony together. The Moslems, at least,
are under no illusion as to what would happen if the
incongruous elements of the enormous population of India were
left politically to themselves, under the conditions that now
exist. In 1908, when that idea seemed to be growing in Hindu
thought, they organized an "All-India Moslem League,"
avowedly, as declared by the Nawab of Dacca, "to save
themselves from being submerged by an enormous and noisy
majority of the other race." "The safety of the Mohammedans,"
said the president of the conference, "lay in loyalty to the
government; they must be prepared to fight for the government
if necessary." Thus British rule in its present form has the
Moslem dread of Hindu ascendency to give it a substantial
support, even though the Hindus outnumber the Moslems by more
than three to one. In thinking power, the Hindu is perhaps the
higher type of man; but the blood of the Afghan and Mongol
conquerors of Hindustan must have transmitted more of
political as well as military energy to the Moslems of the
present day. The Hindu mind is too mystically metaphysical for
the politics of a world that is dominated by its least
metaphysical minds.

But the higher intelligence of the Hindus appears to agree
with that of the Moslems in understanding that India is in no
present condition for taking its political fortunes into its
own hands. The really intelligent classes have been making it
plain, however, that they do want a more effective
participation in the management of their own affairs than has
been allowed to them hitherto, and it is the claim of that
class which Lord Morley and his colleagues in the British
Government are acknowledging and aiming to satisfy. It seems
to have been generally and fairly represented in the great
conventions assembled annually for many years past, under the
name of the "Indian National Congress," an unofficial
Congress, possessing no authority, but exercising an influence
that has increased. Its character was described a few years
ago in one of the American reviews by a writer who said that
he had watched it from its birth:

"The Indian National Congress," he wrote, "is avowedly
national in its name and scope. The Provincial Congresses
which meet in every province for the discussion of provincial
matters, unite together in a National Congress, which is
annually held at a chosen centre, for the furtherance and
discussion of national interests. A Congress consists of from
five hundred to one thousand of the political leaders of all
parts of India, comprising representatives of noble families,
landowners, members of local Boards and municipalities,
honorary magistrates, fellows of universities, and
professional men, such as engineers, bankers, merchants,
shopkeepers, journalists, lawyers, doctors, priests and
college professors. The delegates are able to act in concert
and to declare in no uncertain accents the common public
opinion of the multitude of whom they are the mouthpiece. They
are as representative in regard to religion as to rank and
profession; Hindus, Parsis, Mohammedans and Christians have in
turn presided.

"The deliberations are marked by acumen and moderation. The
principal items of their propaganda constitute a practical
programme displaying insight and sagacity, and covering most
of the political and economic problems of the Indian Empire. I
take it upon myself to say, as a watchful eye-witness from its
birth, that the Indian National Congress has discharged its
duties with exemplary judgment and moderation."

_Sir Henry Cotton,
The New Spirit in India
(North American Review, November, 1906)._

The meeting of this Indian Congress in 1908 was held at Madras
on the 27th of December, not long after Lord Morley had
explained his plan for the enlargement of the Legislative
Councils in India and for the election of a certain number of
their members by popular vote. In the address of the President
of the Congress, Dr. Rash Bihari Ghose, the proposed reforms
were discussed at length, and welcomed with warmth, as going
near, apparently, to satisfying the claims of the majority of
those represented in the Congress. "We are now," said the
speaker, "on the threshold of a new era. An important chapter
has been opened in the history of the relations between Great
Britain and India—a chapter of constitutional reform which
promises to unite the two countries together in closer bonds
than ever. A fair share in the Government of our own country
has now been given to us. The problem of reconciling order
with progress, efficient administration with the satisfaction
of aspirations encouraged by our rulers themselves, which
timid people thought was insoluble, has at last been solved.
The people of India will now be associated with the Government
in the daily and hourly administration of their affairs. A
great step forward has thus been taken in the grant of
representative government for which the Congress had been
crying for years. … We do not know what the future destiny of
India may be. We can see only as through a glass darkly. But
of this I am assured, that on our genuine co-operation with
the British Government depend our future progress and the
development of a fuller social and political life. Of this
also I am assured, that the future of the country is now in a
large measure in our own hands."

At about the same time the All-India Moslem League held its
meeting at Amritsar, and gave an equally hearty welcome to the
principle of the proposed reforms, but appealed against the
mode of election contemplated, which might be to the
disadvantage of the Moslem minority. In the address of the
President, Mr. Ali Imam, he said: "It is impossible for
thoughtful men to approach the subject without regard to the
pathetic side of the present situation.
{317}
It is the liberalism of the great British nation that has
taught Indians, through the medium of English education, to
admire democratic institutions, to hold the rights of the
people sacred above all rights and to claim for their voice
first place in the government of the country. The mind of
close upon three generations of the educated classes in the
land has been fed on the ideas of John Stuart Mill, Milton,
Burke, Sheridan and Shelley, has been filled with the great
lessons obtainable from chapters of the constitutional history
of England and has been influenced by inexpressible
considerations arising out of the American War of
Independence, the relation of Great Britain with her Colonies,
and last, though not least, the grant of Autonomy to the Boers
after their subjugation at an enormous sacrifice of men and
money. The bitterest critic of the educated Indian will not
hold him to blame for his present state of mind. It is the
English who have carefully prepared the ground and sown the
seed that has germinated into what some of them are now
disposed to consider to be noxious weed. It will be a dwarfed
imagination however that will condemn the educational policy
of the large-hearted and liberal-minded Englishmen who laid
its foundation in this country. Those who inaugurated it aimed
at raising the people to the level where co-operation and good
understanding between the rulers and the ruled are possible.
Under the circumstances, the desire of the educated Indian to
take a prominent part in the administration of his country is
neither unnatural nor unexpected. …

"The best sense of the country recognizes the fact that the
progress of India rests on the maintenance of order and
internal peace, and that order and internal peace in view of
the conditions obtaining in our country at present and for a
very long time to come, immeasurably long time to come, spell
British occupation. British occupation not in the thin and
diluted form in which Canada, Australia and South Africa stand
in relation to England, but British occupation in the sense in
which our country has enjoyed internal peace during the last
50 years. Believe me that as long as we have not learnt to
overcome sectarian aggressiveness, to rise above prejudices
based on diversity of races, religions and languages, and to
alter the alarming conditions of violent intellectual
disparity among the peoples of India, so long British
occupation is the principal element in the progress of the
country. The need of India is to recognize that true
patriotism lies in taking measure of the conditions existing
in fact, and devoting one’s self to amelioration. … The creed
of the All-India Muslim League is cooperation with the Rulers,
coöperation with our non-Muslim countrymen and solidarity
amongst ourselves. This is our idea of United India."

These expressions from prominent leaders of the two principal
races of India are quite in accord with the judgment of
liberal-minded Englishmen, as to the present duty of their
government to the people of this great Asiatic Dependency.
They are quite in accord with the judgment that has dictated
the measure undertaken by the present British Government. They
recognize that the relation which England bears to India,
however unjustifiable in its origin it may be, is one that
cannot be suddenly changed without great danger and certain
harm. As Goldwin Smith has said:

"To attempt to strike the balance between the advantages and
disadvantages of British rule in India would be to enter into
a boundless controversy. Foreign rule in itself must always be
an evil. India was rescued by Great Britain from murderous and
devastating anarchy. Though at the time she was plundered by
official corruption of a good deal of the wealth which, being
poor though gorgeous, she could ill afford to lose, she has
since enjoyed general peace and order; both, we may be sure,
to a far greater extent than she otherwise would have done.
The deadly enmity between her races and religions has been
controlled and assuaged. …

"It does not appear that there is any considerable migration
from the provinces directly under British dominion to those
which are under native rule. The people, no doubt, are
generally fixed to their habitations by poverty and difficulty
of movement; still, if they greatly preferred the native rule,
a certain amount of migration to it there would probably be.
That the masses of India in general are miserably poor cannot
be denied. The question is, whether under the Mogul Emperors
they were better off. … The population has vastly increased,
and its increase may in some measure account for dearth. With
regard to fiscal and commercial questions, it may safely be
said that, at all events in late years, there has been no
disposition on England’s part to do anything but justice to
India.

"India’s complaints, speaking generally, seem to be of things
inseparable from foreign rule, the withdrawal of which would
be the only remedy. But suppose British rule withdrawn from
India, what would follow? Is there anything ready to take its
place? would not the result be anarchy, such as prevailed when
England came upon the scene, or a struggle for ascendency
between the Mahometan and the Hindoo, with another battle of
Paniput? Suppose the Mahometan, stronger in spirit though
weaker in numbers, to prevail, would his ascendency be more
beneficial and less galling to the Hindoo than is that of the
English Sahib?"

_Goldwin Smith,
British Empire in India
(North American Review, September 7, 1906)._

Of the ultimate possibilities of a nationalized unification of
the mighty masses of population in the vast peninsula, there
can, perhaps, be as much or more said hopefully as against the
hope. A writer who believes that there may be an independent
India has put an outline of the argument, pro and con, in
these few following words:

"India, we are almost tired of hearing, is as large as Europe,
putting aside Russia and Scandinavia, with as great a
population, as many diverse and heterogeneous nationalities,
differing from each other in language, in custom, in religion,
and in everything that makes for individuality; and we might
as well speak of the Indian nation as the European nation. …
To this contention Young India opposes the most emphatic
contradiction. India is a nation, a people, a country: its
interests and aspirations are one and unique. Railways,
telegraphs, post-office, the Press, education, knowledge of
English, have welded into one harmonious whole all the
manifold centrifugal forces of its vast area.
{318}
Young India will quote Switzerland as an example of a country
with several languages and two conflicting religions, and yet
undoubtedly constituting a nation. If the only tongue in which
the Madrassi and the Bengali can communicate is English, so
let it be. It is sufficient that a medium of communication
exists. And it does exist. The educated Indian speaks and
writes in English as easily as in his own mother-tongue. It is
in English that the most vehement tirades against British
rule, whether printed, spoken, or dealt with in private
correspondence, are hurled across the land. Politically
speaking, Lahore is a suburb of Calcutta. The fact cannot be
gainsaid and must be reckoned with. India, as a whole, as a
political unit, has found a voice. There is a national India,
as there is not a national Europe."

_E. C. Cox,
Banger in India
(Nineteenth Century, December, 1908)._

This view recognizes, as was recognized in the address of the
President of the All-India Moslem League, quoted above, that
English rule and English influence have done much towards
preparing both the country and the people for the
self-government to which the latter are now beginning to
aspire. It must be said, however, that most of this
preparation has been casually consequent on policies that had
no such deliberate intent. Until quite late years there is
little sign to be seen in British Indian policy of a thought
of developing opportunity and capability in the people to
become more than valuable customers and docile wards. While
India was in the hands of a commercial company it was managed,
naturally, like an imperial estate, with strictly economic
objects in view. Even then there was wisely economic
consideration given to the general welfare of the people; but
it was welfare as seen from the estate-owners' standpoint. The
proprietary government did many things for its subjects and
servants; bettered their conditions in many ways; added
greatly to the equipment of their lives; but it did very
little, if anything, toward putting them in the way of
bettering things for themselves. It contemplated nothing for
India but the perpetuity of its management as an imperial
estate, entailed in the possession of a proprietary race.

The taking of this imperial estate from company management
into national management has not seemed hitherto to alter the
business nature of its administration very much. Its many
millions of inhabitants have been better governed and better
cared for, without doubt; but the idea of benevolence to them
has never been much enlarged beyond the idea of an honestly
good overseeing care. Institutions have been provided or
encouraged for the educating of a class among them which could
be of useful assistance in the caretaking of the mass; but
common education for the mass, to qualify them better for the
care of themselves, received scant attention till 25 years
ago. In the very explanation that is often given of the
present discontent in India there is an impeachment of the
past treatment of the country by its able and powerful
masters. It is said that the educated Hindus find no
satisfying career for themselves outside of the service of the
government, and that an increasingly large class in excess of
the openings which that service can afford has been educated
in recent years; that, consequently, the swelling crowd of
disappointed place-seekers, whose intelligence and ambition
have been whetted in the higher schools and colleges of the
Indian Empire, are the disturbers of public content. After a
century and a half of supreme British influence and power in
India, there ought to have been more and better openings of
opportunity for educated young Hindus than through the doors
of public office. There would have been if the development of
country and people had been conducted with more reference to
their benefit, and with less close attention to the interests
of British trade.

Since 1882-1883 there has been more endeavor to establish and
assist native primary schools; but the percentage of
population that they reach is small. The statistics given in
an official "Statement exhibiting the Moral and Material
Progress and Condition of India during the year 1905-1906"
make the following showing:

Provinces. Number of Number of
Institutions Pupils
Bengal 43,996 1,232,278
United Provinces 15,708 576,336
Punjab 3,762 211,464
Burma 20,996 385,214
Central Provinces 3,090 209,680
Eastern Bengal and Assam 21,790 722,371
Coorg 116 4,666
North West Frontier Province 1,087 28,496
Madras Presidency 28,258 918,880
Bombay and Sind Presidency 13,865 736,209
Total 152,668 5,025,594

Except in the Punjab and in Eastern Bengal and Assam these
figures include both public and private institutions of
education, of all grades, from primary schools to colleges.
All institutions in which the course of instruction conforms
to standards prescribed by the Department of Education or by
the University, and which either undergo inspection by the
Department or present pupils at public examinations, are
classed as "public," but may be under either public or private
management. While the schools and colleges seem numerous, it
will be seen that they average but 33 pupils each, and give
teaching to a slender fraction of the children of the
294,000,000 of people under British rule. In the report from
which we quote the proportion of pupils to the estimated
population of school-going age is given as 28.4 per cent. of
boys and 2.9 per cent. of girls in Bengal; 8.06 per cent. of
boys and 0.96 per cent. of girls in the United Provinces; 21.8
per cent. of boys and 1.8 of girls in the Central Provinces;
28.2 per cent, of boys and 2.9 per cent. of girls in Eastern
Bengal and Assam; 29 per cent. of boys and 5.4 per cent. of
girls in Madras; 31.8 per cent. of boys and 6 per cent of
girls in Bombay. The total expenditure on education, from all
sources, including fees, was £735,043 in Bengal (increased to
£830,415 in 1907-1908); £441,421 in the United Provinces
(increased to £491,723 in 1907-1908); £331,038 in the Punjab;
£218,445 in Burma; £145,389 in the Central Provinces; £318,788
in Eastern Bengal and Assam; £624,602 in the Madras Presidency
(increased to £712,740 in 1907-1908); £685,444 in the Presidency
of Bombay (increased to £756,168 in 1907-1908). Total in 1905-1906,
£3,500,170. Education in British India cannot be made wide or
deep on expenditure of this scale.

{319}

Education in the literary meaning, then, was tardily
undertaken and is very limited yet in its extent. Quite as
tardy, and quite as scant in the measure until John Morley got
the handling of it, has been the political training that
England,—greatest of political teachers as she has been for
the world at large,—has allowed her Indian subjects to
receive. It must not be understood that nothing of
self-government has been conceded hitherto to these people.
The exact measure of their participation in the management of
their own public affairs, and the period within which they
have exercised it, are described in the official "Statement
exhibiting the Moral and Material Progress and Condition of
India" from which the above exhibit of educational
institutions is taken. The following is quoted partly from the
"Statement" of 1905-1906 and partly from the later one of 1907-1908:

"Local self-government, municipal and rural, in its present
form, is essentially a product of British rule. Beginning in
the Presidency towns, the principle made little progress until
1870, when it was expressly recognised by Lord Mayo’s
Government that ‘local interest, supervision, and care are
necessary to success in the management of funds devoted to
education, sanitation, medical charity, and local public
works.’ The result was a gradual advance in local
self-government, leading up to the action taken by Lord
Ripon’s Government in 1883-1884, and to various provincial Acts
passed about that time, which form the basis of the provincial
systems at present in force. Municipal committees now exist in
most places having any pretension to importance, and have
charge of municipal business generally, including the care and
superintendence of streets, roads, fairs and markets, open
spaces, water supply, drainage, education, hospitals, and the
like. Local and district boards have charge of local roads,
sanitary works, education, hospitals, and dispensaries in
rural districts. A large proportion of their income is
provided by provincial rates. Bodies of port trustees have
charge of harbour works, port approaches, and pilotage. There
is also a smaller number of non-elective local bodies
discharging similar duties in towns other than constituted
municipalities, and in cantonments.

"The municipal bodies exist, raise funds, and exercise powers
under enactments which provide separately for the special
requirements of each province and of the three presidency
capitals, Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras. In the municipalities
as a whole about half of the members are elected by the
townsfolk under legal rules; in every town some, and in a few
minor towns all, of the members are appointed by the
Government. In almost every municipal body one or more
Government officials sit as members. The number of Indian and
non-official members, however, in every province, largely
exceeds the number of Europeans and officials. The municipal
bodies are subject to Government control in so far that no new
tax can be imposed, no loan can be raised, no work costing
more than a prescribed sum can be undertaken, and no serious
departure from the sanctioned budget for the year can be made,
without the previous sanction of the Government; and no rules
or bye-laws can be enforced without similar sanction and full
publication.

"There were 746 municipalities at the end of 1907-1908,
containing within their limits over 16 million people or 7 per
cent. of the total population. Generally speaking, the income
of municipalities is small. In 1907-1908 their aggregate income
amounted to £3,910,000, excluding loans, sales of securities,
and other extraordinary receipts. About 40 per cent. of the
total is provided by Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, and Rangoon. …

"The interest in municipal elections, and in municipal affairs
generally, is not usually keen, save in a few cities and large
towns; but, as education and knowledge advance, interest in
the management of local affairs gradually increases. In most
provinces municipal work is fairly well done, and municipal
responsibilities are, on the whole, faithfully discharged,
though occasional shortcomings and failures occur. The
tendency of local bodies, especially in the smaller towns, is
to be slow in imposing additional taxes, in adopting sanitary
reforms, and in incurring new expenditure. Many members of
municipal bodies are diligent in their attendance, whether at
meetings for business or on benches for the decision of petty
criminal cases."

The elected members of these municipal committees number less
than five thousand. This, therefore, is the extent of the
class in the whole of British India, which now receives an
elementary political training. Nothing more is needed for
proving that India cannot possibly be prepared for independent
self-government.

In a memorable speech made by Lord Macaulay in 1833 he
predicted a time when England’s Indian subjects might demand
English institutions, and exclaimed: "Whenever the day comes
it will be the proudest in English history." The day has come,
and it does not bring pride to England; because her wards in
India have not been made ready for what they ask. It will need
time to repair the long neglect; but there is no grander fact
in recent history than the beginning of the labor of repair.
It is to be a work of education, not for the people of India
alone, but for Englishmen as well. They are to learn, and have
begun to learn, the mistake of egotism and self-sufficiency in
their government of these people. Some months ago there was
published in _The Times of India_, at Bombay, a number of
articles on the causes of the existing discontent, some by
English writers, some by Hindus, some by Mohammedans, all
seriously and frankly studying the situation, and most
suggestive in their thought. The cause emphasized most by one
of the English writers is that which always has worked and
always will work when one self-complacent and self-confident
people undertakes to be an overruling providence for another
people, by making laws for it and managing its affairs. The
more consciousness there is on the ruling side of just
intention and superior knowledge, the less likely it is to
satisfy the ruled; because the satisfying of its own judgment
of what is good for the latter is assumed to be enough.

During the last half century, at least, the British Government
has endeavored, without a doubt, to do good to its Indian
subjects, and it has done them great good; but everything has
been done in its own way, from its own points of view and upon
its own judgment of things needful and good and right. And
this is why its Indian subjects not only feel wronged, but are
wronged.

{320}

As the writer in _The Times of India_ reminds his
countrymen, "right is a relative term," and not, he says, "as
we Islanders would have it, an absolute one. A thing that is
right for us, with our past training and traditions, may not
only seem, but really be, a grave wrong to those whose
environment differs from our own." He cites instances of grave
mistakes in well-intended legislation that would have been
avoided, if the makers of the laws had counseled sufficiently
with natives of experience in the matters concerned. One
example is in a land alienation act, for the Punjab, which was
framed with purely philanthropic motives, being intended to
free the native peasantry—the ryots—from thraldom to money
lenders, but which, by making the recovery of debts difficult,
has trebled the rate of interest to the ryot, who borrows just
as much, and mortgages himself instead of mortgaging his land.
Alluding to this and to another act of excellent intention but
irritating effect, the writer says: "When these worthy aims of
government were debated in the Bombay and Punjab legislatures,
who was there, among the officials, in touch with Indian
feeling and sentiment? Who among the senators ever suggested
the possibility that the evil of mortgage and borrowing was
not intrinsically an evil in India, but that legislation—our
own past legislation—had made it so? Was there no officer of
government who could advise the authorities that every Hindoo,
almost, is at heart a money lender; that it is second nature
to him; that indebtedness in itself is neither reproach nor
handicap in his eyes; and that if you take from him his
freedom of barter you do take his life?"

"We have failed," says this writer, "to avail ourselves of the
material we ourselves have trained." That, undoubtedly, is the
cardinal mistake that the English in India have made. Until
now, they have not taken the best of India into their
confidence and their counsels.

Another of the writers referred to above gave another
characterization of the British rule as the natives more
generally feel it, in which a deeper working of more subtle
irritations can be seen. He wrote:

"Personal rule, the will of the king, God’s anointed and
therefore invested with quasi-divine sanction, is the only
rule to which the East has been used, which it can like and
respect. The people can understand, even while they suffer
under, the most extravagant individual caprices; and when the
tyranny becomes too intolerable, they always had in the last
resort an excellent chance of being able to overthrow it. But
they cannot and probably never will understand, still less
appreciate, the cold, implacable, inhuman impersonality of the
English government. They might as well be governed by a
dynamo, without human bowels or passions. It cannot be humanly
approached; it has no human side; its very impeccability is
exasperating; and the exactitude with which it metes out its
machine-made justice, according to inflexible rules and
formulae into which no human equation enters, chills and
repels the Eastern mind, and its strength is commensurate with
its remorselessness."

"They might as well be governed by a dynamo!" That, in this
connection, is a powerfully expressive phrase. The dynamo and
everything of a dynamic nature—every mechanical motor-working
of forces, whether material or political, are naturally
congenial to the man of the Western world—understandable by
him, serviceable to him—and they are not so to the man of the
East. Somewhere in the process of their evolution the one got
an aptitude for projecting work outwardly from the worker—
action at some remove from the actor—shuttle throwing, for
example, carried out from the weaver to the arms and fingers
of a machine, and government from the personally governing
will to an organic political system—while the other did not.
In this, more than in anything else, perhaps, the radical
difference of nature between the Occidental and the Oriental
peoples is summed up. The one is endowed with a self-enhancing
power to act through exterior agencies, of mechanism in his
physical labors, of representative institutions in his
government, of systems and organisms in all his doings, which
the other lacks.

This might have seemed a generation ago to set an
insurmountable barrier against the passing of democracy and
democratic institutions into Asia; but we have little right
to-day to imagine that anything can stop their march.

INDIA: A. D. 1908.
American Mission Schools.

See (in this Volume)
EDUCATION: INDIA.

INDIA: A. D. 1908-1909.
Passage of the Indian Councils Bill by the British Parliament.
Popular Representation in the Legislative Councils introduced.
Lord Morley’s explanations of the Measure.
Appointment of a native member of the
Viceroy’s Executive Council.

The great project of reform in the Government of India which
Lord Morley, as Secretary for India in the British
Administration, brought before Parliament in December, 1908,
embodied fundamentally in what was known during the discussion
of it as the Indian Councils Bill, had its origin more than
two years before that time, not in the councils of the British
Ministry, but in those of the Government of India. The facts
of its inception and preliminary consideration were indicated
in a British Blue Book of 1908 (Cd. 4426), which contained
proposals on the subject from the Government of India, dated
October 1, 1908, and the reply of Lord Morley to them,
November 27. More recently the early history of the reform
project was told briefly by the Viceroy of India, the Earl of
Minto, in a speech in Council, on the 28th of March, 1909. He
said:

"The material from which the Councils Bill has been
manufactured was supplied from the Secretariat at Simla, and
emanated entirely from the bureaucracy of the Government of
India. It was in August, 1906, that I drew attention in
Council in a confidential minute to the change which was so
rapidly affecting the political atmosphere, bringing with it
questions we could not afford to ignore, which we must attempt
to answer, pointing out that it was all-important that the
initiative should emanate from us, that the Government of
India should not be put in the position of appearance of
having its hands forced by agitation in this country or by
pressure from home, and that we should be the first to
recognize the surrounding conditions and place before his
Majesty’s Government the opinion which personal experience and
close touch with the everyday life of India entitle us to
hold.
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I consequently appointed the Arundel Committee. That minute
was the first seed of our reforms sown more than a year before
the first anarchist outrage sent a thrill of shocked surprise
throughout India—the attempt to wreck Sir Andrew Fraser’s
train in December, 1907. The policy of the Government of India
in respect to reforms has emanated from mature consideration
of political and social conditions, while the administrative
changes they advocated, far from being concessions wrung from
them, have been over and over again endangered by the
commission of outrages which could not but encourage doubts as
to the opportuneness of the introduction of political changes,
but which I steadfastly refused to allow to injure the
political welfare of the loyal masses in India."

The Indian Councils Bill was printed on the 20th of February,
1909, and its second reading in the House of Lords was moved
by Lord Morley in an explanatory speech on the 23d. A
prefatory memorandum accompanying the text of the Bill was as
follows:

"The object of this Bill is to amend and extend the Indian
Councils Acts, 1861 and 1892, in such a way as to provide:

"(i.)For an enlargement of the Legislative Council of the
Governor-General and of the existing Provincial Legislative
Councils;

"(ii.) For the election of a certain proportion of their
members by popular vote; and

"(iii.) For greater freedom to discuss matters of general
public interest and to ask questions at their meetings, and
more especially for the discussion of the annual financial
statements.

"The Executive Councils of the Governments of Madras and
Bombay are enlarged, and powers are taken to create Executive
Councils in the other Provinces of India, where they now do
not exist. Provision is also made for the appointment of
Vice-Presidents of the various Councils.

"The details of the necessary arrangements, which must vary
widely in the different Provinces, are left to be settled by
means of regulations to be framed by the Government of India
and approved by the Secretary of State."

In his speech on moving the second reading of the Bill, Lord
Morley said: "I invite the House to take to-day the first
definite and operative step in carrying out the policy which I
had the honour of stating to your lordships just before
Christmas, and which has occupied the active consideration
both of the Home Government and of the Government of India for
very nearly, if not even more than, three years. The statement
was awaited in India with an expectancy that with time became
almost impatience, and it was received in India—and that,
after all, is the point to which I looked with the most
anxiety—with intense interest and attention and various
degrees of approval, from warm enthusiasm to cool assent and
acquiescence. So far as I know … there has been no sign in any
quarter, save possibly in the irreconcilable camp, of
organized hostile opinion among either Indians or
Anglo-Indians. …

"There are, I take it, three classes of people that we have to
consider in dealing with a scheme of this kind. There are the
extremists, who nurse fantastic dreams that some day they will
drive us out of India. In this group there are academic
extremists and physical force extremists, and I have seen it
stated on a certain authority—it cannot be more than guessed—
that they do not number, whether academic or physical force
extremists, more than one-tenth, I think, or even 3 per cent.,
of what are called the educated class in India. The second
group nourish no hopes of this sort, but hope for autonomy or
self-government of the colonial species and pattern. And then
the third section of this classification ask for no more than
to be admitted to co-operation in our administration, and to
find a free and effective voice in expressing the interests
and needs of their land. I believe the effect of the reforms
has been, is being, and will be to draw the second class, who
hope for colonial autonomy, into the third class, who will be
content with being admitted to a fair and full co-operation."

As to the objections raised by the Mahomedans of India, to the
plans of the measure for their representation in the Councils,
Lord Morley announced the readiness of the Government to yield
to them. "We," he said, "suggested to the Government of India
a certain plan. We did not prescribe it, we did not order it,
but we suggested and recommended this plan for their
consideration—no more than that. It was the plan of a mixed or
composite electoral college, in which Mahomedans and Hindus
should pool their votes, so to say. The wording of the
recommendation in my dispatch was, as I soon discovered,
ambiguous—a grievous defect, of which I make bold to hope I am
not very often in public business guilty. But, to the best of
my belief, under any construction the plan of Hindus and
Mahomedans voting together in a mixed and composite electorate
would have secured to the Mahomedan electors, wherever they
were so minded, the chance of returning their own
representative in their due proportion. The political idea at
the bottom of that recommendation which has found so little
favour was that such composite action would bring the two
great communities more closely together, and this idea of
promoting harmony was held by men of very high Indian
authority and experience who were among my advisers at the
India Office. But the Mahomedans protested that the Hindus
would elect a pro-Hindu upon it, just as I suppose in a mixed
college of say 75 Catholics and 25 Protestants voting together
the Protestants might suspect that the Catholics voting for
the Protestant would choose what is called a Romanizing
Protestant and as little of a Protestant as possible. … At any
rate, the Government of India doubted whether our plan would
work, and we have abandoned it. I do not think it was a bad
plan, but it is no use, if you are making an earnest attempt
in good faith at a general pacification, out of parental
fondness for a clause interrupting that good process by
sitting too tight.

"The Mahomedans demand three things. I had the pleasure of
receiving a deputation from them and I know very well what is
in their minds. They demand the election of their own
representatives to these councils in all the stages, just as
in Cyprus, where, I think, the Mahomedans vote by themselves.
They have nine votes and the non-Mahomedans have three, or the
other way about.
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So in Bohemia, where the Germans vote alone and have their own
register. Therefore we are not without a precedent and a
parallel for the idea of a separate register. Secondly, they
want a number of seats in excess of their numerical strength.
Those two demands we are quite ready and intend to meet in
full. There is a third demand that, if there is a Hindu on the
Viceroy’s Executive Council—a subject on which I will venture
to say a little to your lordships before I sit down—there
should be two Indian members on the Viceroy’s Council and that
one should be a Mahomedan. Well, as I told them and as I now
tell your lordships, I see no chance whatever of meeting their
views in that way to any extent at all."

Turning to a much criticised feature of the projected
remodelling of Indian Government—namely, the announced
intention of the Government to name an Indian member of the
Viceroy’s Executive Council—the Secretary reminded the House
that this was not touched by the pending bill, for the reason
that the appointment of that Council lies already within the
province of the Crown. In meeting the objections raised to
this part of the reform project, he amused the House greatly
by remarking: "Lord MacDonnell said the other day: ‘I believe
you cannot find any individual native gentleman who has
enjoyed the general confidence who would be able to give
advice and assistance to the Governor-General in Council.’ It
has been my lot to be twice Chief Secretary for Ireland, and I
do not believe I can truly say I ever met in Ireland a single
individual native gentleman who ‘enjoyed general confidence.’
And yet I received at Dublin Castle most excellent and
competent advice. Therefore I will accept that statement from
the noble lord. The question is whether there is no one of the
300 millions of the population of India who is competent to be
the officially-constituted adviser of the Governor-General in
Council in the administration of Indian affairs. You make an
Indian a Judge of the High Court, and Indians have even been
acting-Chief Justices. As to capacity, who can deny that they
have distinguished themselves as administrators of native
States, where far more demand is made on their resources,
intellectual and moral? It is said that the presence of an
Indian member would cause restraint in the language of
discussion. For a year and a half I have had two Indians at
the Council of India, and I have never found the slightest
restraint whatever."

Debate on the Bill in the House of Lords was resumed on the
4th of March, and it was amended by striking out a clause
which gave power to constitute provincial executive councils
in other provinces than Madras and Bombay, where they were
already existing. It then passed through Committee, and on the
11th of March it was read a third time and passed by the Upper
House.

A fortnight later, Lord Morley brought into exercise the
authority possessed by the Crown, to appoint on its own
judgment a native member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council.
His choice fell on a distinguished Hindu lawyer, Mr. Satyendra
Prasanna Sinha, of whom the London _Times_, on announcing
the appointment, said: "Mr. Sinha now fills the office of
Advocate-General of Bengal, to which he was not long ago
promoted, and he will succeed Sir Henry Richards as Legal
Member of Council. Of his fitness to discharge the
departmental duties of his new position we make no question.
Lord Morley has doubtless satisfied himself that the
qualifications of his nominee in this respect will not
discredit the experiment on which he has ventured. But,
however high those qualifications, and however well they may
stand the test of experience, gifts and attainments of another
order are needed for the post to which Lord Morley has named
him. A member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council is much more
than a departmental chief. … For him there are no State
secrets and no confidential documents. He has a right to know
and to debate the _imperii arcana_. The most delicate
mysteries of diplomacy, the most carefully guarded of military
precautions, are trusted to his faith and to his discretion.
Breadth of political knowledge and of judgment, insight into
men and things, a sure sense and grasp of realities, coolness,
courage, and rapid decision in emergencies, absolute
impartiality between native races, creeds, and classes, and an
instinctive devotion to England, to her traditions and to her
ideals, are amongst the qualities which have been deemed the
best recommendations for so immense a trust. Mr. Sinha may
possess them all, but they are rare amongst the men of any
race, and some of them are notoriously uncommon amongst
Orientals."

This expresses the English opinion that objects to the
admission of Indians to the Executive Councils of Indian
Government, even while assenting to their representation in
the Legislative Councils of the dependency. It is to be hoped
that Mr. Sinha will help to weaken that opinion. Reports from
India on the appointment were to the effect that it had given
great general satisfaction.

On the return of the Councils Bill to the Commons the clause
which the Lords had stricken out was restored, but in a
modified form. Authority to extend the creation of provincial
executive councils was given, but with the reservation to the
House of Lords as well as to the House of Commons of a veto
upon the establishment of such councils in any new provinces,
except Bengal. As thus amended the clause was accepted by the
Upper House and became law, May 25, 1909.

The following are the essential provisions of the Act:

"I.
(1) The additional members of the councils for the purpose of
making laws and regulations (hereinafter referred to as
Legislative Councils) of the Governor-General and of the
Governors of Fort Saint George and Bombay, and the members of
the Legislative Councils already constituted, or which may
hereafter be constituted, of the several Lieutenant-Governors
of Provinces, instead of being all nominated by the
Governor-General, Governor, or Lieutenant-Governor in manner
provided by the Indian Councils Acts, 1861 and 1892, shall
include members so nominated and also members elected in
accordance with regulations made under this Act, and
references in those Acts to the members so nominated and their
nomination shall be construed as including references to the
members so elected and their election.

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"(2) The number of additional members or members so nominated
and elected, the number of such members required to constitute
a quorum, the term of office of such members and the manner of
filling up casual vacancies occurring by reason of absence
from India, inability to attend to duty, death, acceptance of
office, or resignation duly accepted, or otherwise, shall, in
the case of each such council, be such as may be prescribed by
regulations made under this Act:

"Provided that the aggregate number of members so nominated
and elected shall not, in the case of any Legislative Council
mentioned in the first column of the First Schedule to this
Act, exceed the number specified in the second column of that
schedule.

" 2.
(1) The number of ordinary members of the councils of the
Governors of Fort Saint George and Bombay shall be such number
not exceeding four as the Secretary of State in Council may
from time to time direct, of whom two at least shall be
persons who at the time of their appointment have been in the
service of the Crown in India for at least twelve years.

"(2) If at any meeting of either of such councils there is an
equality of votes on any question, the Governor or other
person presiding shall have two votes or the casting vote.

"3.
(1) It shall be lawful for the Governor-General in Council,
with the approval of the Secretary of State in Council, by
proclamation, to create a council in the Bengal Division of
the Presidency of Fort William for the purpose of assisting
the Lieutenant-Governor in the executive government of the
province, and by such proclamation—

"(_a_) to make provision for determining what shall be
the number (not exceeding four) and qualifications of the
members of the council; and