India Under Ripon: A Private Diary

Instead of the covenanted Civil Service, therefore, there would be an uncovenanted service obtained in the open market, and endowed with no more special privileges than our services at home. The members of this would then be under control and, in a true sense of the word, the servants of the State. Now they are its masters.

That they are its masters has been abundantly proved by the success of their efforts to thwart Lord Ripon’s policy during the last three years. Lord Ripon came out to India on the full tide of the Midlothian victory, and quite in earnest about carrying out Midlothian ideas; nor has he faltered since. But the net result of his viceroyalty has been almost nil. Every measure that he has brought forward has been defeated in detail; and so powerful has the Civil Service been that they have forced the Home Government into an abandonment, step by step, of all its Indian policy. This they have effected in part by open opposition, in part by covert encouragement of the English lay element, in part by working through the English press. When I arrived in India I found Lord Ripon like a schoolboy who has started in a race with his fellows and who has run loyally ahead, unaware as yet that these have stopped, and that all the world is laughing at his useless zeal. The Anglo-Indian bureaucracy had shown itself his master in spite of Midlothian.

But if the covenanted Civil Service is an obstructive and burdensome legacy from the defunct Company, so too is the constitution of the Indian Government in London. In 1858, when the Company came to an end, the India House was replaced by the India Office, and the Board of Directors by the Indian Council: a change which was doubtless intended to signify much, but which in practice has come to signify hardly anything at all. The India Office represents of necessity the traditions of the past, and the Council, which was designed to check it, has proved a more conservative and acquiescent body than even the old Board of Directors, its prototype and model. The reason of this is obvious. The Council, composed as it is almost exclusively of retired civil or military servants, views Indian matters from the point of view only of the Anglo-Indian service. It is even less amenable than this is to the influence of new ideas, and is more completely out of touch with modern native thought. Its experience is always that of a generation back, not of the present day, and it refuses, more persistently even than the younger generation in active service, to admit the idea of change.

Thus the Secretary of State, who is dependent on this blind guide, is in no other position at home than is the Viceroy in India. Ignorant, as a rule, of all things Indian, and dependent for advice on the India Office and his Anglo-Indian Council, he never gets at the truth of things, and blunders blindly on as they direct. It is almost impossible for him, however robust his will, to hold his own as a reformer.

The reforms, therefore, at home and in India which native opinion most strongly and immediately demands are, as regards India, that the active Civil Service should be remodelled, by the abolition of all covenants for lifelong employment, and by the liberal infusion of native blood into the non-covenanted service. It is proposed that as vacancies occur a certain proportion – say a third or a fourth – should be reserved exclusively for men of Indian birth, and that thus by degrees the whole Civil Service, with the exception of the highest posts, should become indigenous. Also, as regards the Government at home, that the Secretary of State for India should have the advice of native as well as Anglo-Indian retired officials on his Council in London. Until this is done they consider that the Government of India will continue to be carried on in the dark, and thus that reform will remain as hitherto, abortive.

It is obvious, however, that such initial changes are a first step only in the direction of reforms infinitely more important. What India really asks for as the goal of her ambitions is self-government – that is to say, that not merely executive but legislative and financial power should be vested in the native hands. At present the legislative authority of each Presidency resides in the Governor in Council, and there is no system whatsoever of popular representation, even of the most limited kind. The Councils are composed wholly of nominees, and, except in very small measure, of English official nominees, and their functions are limited to consultation and advice, for they are without any real power of initiative or even of veto. In each of these Councils a few natives have been given places, but they are in no sense representatives of the people, being, on the contrary, nominees of the Government, chosen specially for their subservience to the ideas of the Governor of the day; and their independence is effectually debarred by the further check that their appointment is for three years only, and reversible at the end of such period by the simple will of the Governor. All the other members – and they form the large majority – are English civil or military officers, who look to appointments on the Councils as the prizes of their service, and who usually represent the quintescence of official ideas. Lord Ripon, indeed, took pains to get together men of a liberal sort in his own supreme Council; but as a rule those who enjoy this position are anxious only to secure reappointment at the end of their three years’ term. Thus, instead of representing the ideas current among the native classes from which they spring, they serve merely as an echo or chorus to the Governor, or to the permanent officials who sway the Governor. This is not a healthy condition of things. The remedy should be, as a first condition, that the native councillors should be elected by the various classes of the community, and that their tenure of office should be made independent of the Governor’s pleasure. I am convinced that the system would work with good results; and if also the number of councillors were increased and their powers of debate and interpellation enlarged, an excellent basis would be laid for what all Indian reformers look to as the ideal of their hopes, provincial parliaments. That India is unfit for local parliamentary institutions of at least a rudimentary kind I cannot at all admit. Indeed it seems to me that few people would profit more rapidly from a public discussion of public affairs than the temperate conservative Hindus. For a while, indeed, it would doubtless be necessary to retain a large English element in their councils, but the Indian mind educates itself with great rapidity, and in another generation they might probably without danger be entrusted with the sole care of their own domestic legislation, and the sole control of their finances.

At the same time, I would not be understood as advocating for India anything in the shape of an Imperial parliament. Empires and parliaments to my mind have very little in common with each other; and India is far too vast a continent, and inhabited by races far too heterogeneous, to make amalgamation in a single assembly possible for representatives elected on any conceivable system. Possibly in the dim future some such thing might be, but not in the lifetime of any one now living, and any attempts of the sort at present would find for themselves the inevitable fate of the Tower of Babel. The Imperial power should, on the contrary, if it is to be effective, remain in the hands of a single man; and instead of weakening the Viceroy’s authority I would rather see it strengthened. But with the provinces and for all provincial affairs, self-government is a growing necessity, and the present age is quite capable of witnessing it in practice.

The crying need of India is economy, and for this the decentralization of finance is the only cure. Each province should have its own budget and its own civil lists, which should be voted annually by the Council of the province. Its civil service should be its own, its police its own, and its public works its own, without any right of interference from Calcutta, or any confusion of provincial with Imperial accounts. At present, from the vastness of the country ruled, and the variety of Imperial services which have their seat at Calcutta or Simla, waste and jobbery receive no adequate check. Places are multiplied, men without local knowledge are employed, and the accounts are confused. Supervision by those who bear the burdens of taxation under such a system is all but impossible, and no one knows precisely how and why the expenses charged in the general budget are incurred. But, were the provincial accounts held strictly separate, and subjected to the inquisition of a local assembly composed of men who, as natives of the province, would know the needs and capabilities of the province, none of the present abuses would have a chance of surviving. With the best will in the world, the heads of departments at Calcutta cannot really control the details of expenditure in Madras or the Punjaub, and as a matter of fact there is everywhere enormous waste and enormous jobbery.

I should like, therefore, to see each province of India entirely self-managed as regards all civil matters, raising its own revenue in its own way, providing for its own needs of internal order, public works, and administration of all kinds, and controlled by the constant supervision of its own provincial assembly. In this way it would be possible to differentiate at once between the various provinces as to their special needs and the composition of their special services. In some the expenditure, and with it the taxation, might be at the outset reduced by the employment almost entirely of native servants; in others the substitution of native for English service would have to be more gradual. In some, large public works might be profitably afforded; in others, economy would have to be the rule. In all there would be an incentive to reduce unnecessary expenditure, seeing that the burden of providing for it would fall directly on the province.

On the other hand it is clear that, as long as India remains under the protection of England, certain charges on the revenue and certain executive and legislative functions would have to remain Imperial. These would be, first, charges and responsibilities in respect of the army and navy; secondly, the diplomatic relations; thirdly, the general debt; and fourthly, the customs.

With regard to the army, there can be no doubt that the charge should be an Imperial one, for though Southern India has little need of troops to preserve order within her borders, she enjoys, in common with the North, that immunity from invasion which the army alone can guarantee, and she should have an equal share of the burden of its cost. To adopt a system of provincial armies would, in my view of the case, be both a mistake of economy, and an injustice to those provinces which lie upon the frontier, as well as a considerable danger from the rivalries they might engender: a mistake of economy, inasmuch as the higher commands would be multiplied, and the less warlike provinces would at an equal cost provide inferior material to the general strength of the empire; an injustice, inasmuch as the North-Western provinces would have to bear nearly the entire burden of defence. Strongly, therefore, as I advocate decentralization in all matters of civil administration, I as strongly advocate centralization in matters military. The Imperial army, according to my ideas, should be under the sole control of the Viceroy, officered, I think, by Englishmen, and composed of the best fighting material to be obtained in India, irrespective of prejudice in favour of this or that recruiting ground. It is manifestly the first condition of an army that it should be efficient, and the second that it should be without political colour, and on both grounds I am inclined to think that Englishmen would prove more useful servants to India in a military capacity than any native class of officers could be. Much as I believe in Indian capacity for civil duties, I accept it as a fact that Englishmen make better commanders of troops, and are worth more even in proportion to their superior pay; while there is no question that they would be exempt, as native officers would not, from religious and caste influences, and thus more reliable as impartial executors of Imperial orders. The Indian Sepoy army, then, as I would see it, should be as distinctly Imperial and English as the civil services should be provincial and native. In saying this I am stating my private opinion only; I believe that native opinion is in favour of native military service. But, as I understand India, the time has not come for that. When India is a nation it will be time enough to think of a national army.

The diplomatic relations, again, of India must of necessity remain Imperial, and their management vested solely in the Viceroy. Indian diplomacy, as at present managed, is a complicated and costly thing; but in the India of the future we may hope this will be much simplified. Two cardinal points of policy might with advantage be observed: the first, to keep wholly apart from foreign intrigues and foreign wars; the second, to keep rigid faith with the still independent native princes within the border. Of foreign wars India has long had enough, and more than enough. The Chinese, the Persian, the Afghan, the Abyssinian, the Egyptian, and now the Soudanese, all these India has been forced to take part in, solely against her interest and her will. Apart from their money loss, there is in these wars a loss of dignity, which the Indian people are beginning to resent. Those who have been educated in the humane literature of Europe find it humiliating that they, a conquered people, should be used as the instrument for conquering others. What quarrel had India with the unfortunate Egyptians? What quarrel has she with the unfortunate Arabs? The educated Indians resent it bitterly, too, that India is made to pay the cost. But these things need no comment. They are but a part of that absolute selfishness which has been the principle of all our past relations with India, and in the new birth of India these too must be changed. The diplomatic relations with the native States have been a tissue of fraud and aggression. In the policy of the future, aggression must be abandoned. There is but one true policy towards the native States; and that is, by giving them the spectacle of a British India more happy than their own to invite their inhabitants to share its advantages. Who can doubt that were India self-governed, prosperous, and happy, the old native principalities would one by one spontaneously be merged in it.

With regard to the Debt, much as we may regret that it was ever incurred, it must remain, I fear, in our new India a charge on the Imperial Government. Its annual interest, like the cost of war and diplomacy, should be apportioned as a fixed charge to each province in proportion to that province’s wealth, except in so far as it relates to the guarantees of railways, which might be made a charge on the provinces served by them. It should, however, be a cardinal point of policy that no further debt should be incurred and no further guarantees given for Imperial works. The provinces henceforth should be charged with all works of communication, irrigation, and improvement, the utility of which they will best appreciate.

Remain the Customs. These too must remain an Imperial matter; and it may be hoped that when, in the future, India’s interest, not England’s, comes to be considered in her government, they may be made to return a fair profit to balance some of the Imperial charges. To India free trade has proved no blessing, and a return to import duties is a first principle of sound finance, which self-governing India will undoubtedly insist on. The majority, I believe, of our English colonies see their advantage in these, and so will India, unless, indeed, some fair equivalent be given. As it is, all the profit is on England’s side, on India’s all the loss.

Such, very briefly and imperfectly given, is my scheme of self-government for India. That it is one possible – I do not say easy – to realize few will doubt who have marked the wonderful success achieved in a case not very dissimilar nearer our own shores. The Empire of Austria, within the recollection of men of the present generation, was a bureaucratic despotism of the harshest and least sympathetic kind. It had got within its rule, by conquest or inheritance, a half score of nations, owning no ties of birth or language, and united only by a common hatred of their oppressors. The Austrian official of 1847 was a byword of arrogance and self-sufficient pride, and while vaunting to the world the virtues of his own method of rule, was preparing the way for a general revolt against the Empire. Few who watched the history of those days believed that Austria was not doomed to perish, and none that she was destined to achieve the love of her people. Yet we have lived to see this. We have lived to see the Hungarians reconciled, and the very Poles who in their despair had filled Europe for fifty years with their denunciations, thanking Austria for her share in their ruin. If this has been possible through the gift of self-government, all things are possible; and India by the same means of honest government, each province for itself, may become happy and thankful, as the Austrian nations have. One principle keeps these together without force, their loyalty to the wearer of the Imperial crown; and fortunately this is a principle we have in India already framed to our hand. There is no question that the Indian populations are possessed with a strong feeling of personal attachment for her Majesty the Queen, and while they grow yearly more and more estranged from their Anglo-Indian masters they yearly look with more and more hope to England and to her who sits upon the English throne. This is a sentiment of the utmost value, and one which may yet prove the salvation of the Indian Empire, in spite of all the Anglo-Indians can do to wreck it. I look to it in the future as the true bond of union which shall retain for us India, not as our inheritance, for it will not be ours to possess, but as a co-heir to our good fortunes. India will not then be lost to England, but will remain to us a far greater glory than now, because it will have become a monument of what we shall have been able to achieve for the benefit of others, not merely for ourselves.

I dare not, however, dwell too much upon this prospect. I know the huge perils which surround the birth of every new thing in the political world, and I know the unscrupulous rage of vested interests threatened. The interests of the Anglo-Indians stand stoutly in our way, and the interests of an ever more hungry commerce and an ever more pitiless finance. Commerce and finance find their gain in the present system. Manchester must be appeased before India can hope to live, and to stop suddenly the career of Indian extravagance would injure trade in many a North of England town. Debt in India unfortunately means dividends in Lombard Street; and so I dare not hope. I am tempted rather to quote as only too likely to prove true certain desponding words which I once heard uttered by General Gordon when, speaking of the prospect of reform in India, he told me, “You may do what you will. It will be of no use. India will never be reformed until there has been there a new revolt.” But what will that revolt be, and how will it leave our power of reformation?21

APPENDIX I

THE MOHAMMEDAN UNIVERSITY

Scheme for a University, forwarded to the Nizam, January 24, 1884

The lamentable decline, during the last forty years, of the Mohammedan community of India in wealth and social importance, while at the same time it has been numerically an ever-increasing body, makes it a matter of anxious consideration with those who love their religion to consider by what means best to avert the danger attending such a condition of things, and to restore prosperity to the community and its activity as a living and beneficial influence in the progress of the Empire.

It is acknowledged that the evil has been principally brought about by the changed condition of the country. From a ruling and favoured race, the Mohammedan community has become only one of many bodies unfavoured by the State; and the fall from their high station was at the time accompanied by a corresponding collapse of energy; while, later, accidental circumstances, such as the change of the official language from Persian and Urdu to English, still further aggravated their misfortunes.

These, though they may regret them, the Mohammedans now know that it is useless to complain of. They have ceased to look for any reversal of the political settlement of India as a British province; and accepting the fact, they are fully aware that a new departure is necessary for them in correspondence with their new circumstances. Nor is this conviction lessened by the consideration that it would seem to be the tendency of the age to put every year more and more administrative power back into native hands, so that in the future there may be expected to be an ever-increasing competition between the various sections of Indian society for advantage under the imperial rule.

Again, it is no less acknowledged that, in the modern conditions of Indian life, that which principally conduces to the advantage of each community is its superiority in education. The force of natural character is no longer a sufficient element of success, and acquired intelligence is daily asserting itself more strongly as the condition of all participation in public life. Instruction in the arts and sciences of the Western world is at the present day an absolute necessity for high success; and even in the lower walks of life a certain knowledge of these things has become desirable for all perhaps but the lowest class bound to agricultural labour. Certainly no large community, such as is the Mohammedan in India, could hope to hold its own without a general increase of learning; and it is no longer contended by any section of the community that secular knowledge can be dispensed with, or that it is, if rightly directed, at all opposed to the best interests of religion.

On the other hand, it is equally certain that the vast majority of those who profess the faith of Islam look upon that faith as the most precious inheritance bequeathed them by their fathers, and decline to put it in peril for the sake of any worldly advantage. They consider that, in seeking the general good of a Mohammedan community, the first and absolute essential to be considered is the good of the Mohammedan religion; and this is their first thought, too, when the practical question of individual education comes before them. All Mohammedan fathers are desirous that, before everything else, their sons should inherit their own gift of faith in the one true God and the teaching of His apostle.

Thus, then, it happens that, while recognizing fully the necessity there is for worldly knowledge, the mass of respectable Mohammedans have held back, and still hold back, from the purely secular education afforded in Government schools and colleges to Hindus and Christians with themselves. They look with suspicion on the teaching, and with more than suspicion on the teachers. They refuse to believe that any education can be a sound one which is without a religious basis. They see that neither history nor philosophy nor Western literature can be taught by unbelievers in the divine mission of their Prophet without serious risk of undermining their pupils’ faith; and they find no institution in India in which these necessary branches of human learning are taught to Mohammedans wholly by Mohammedans. Neither the Indian University, nor the Calcutta Madraseh, nor the Hooghly College, nor even the College of Aligarh entirely fulfil this condition. In the Indian University there is at the present moment no single Mohammedan professor. At the Madraseh, the president and many of the professors are Englishmen; and at Aligarh also the principal is an Englishman, and there are English and Hindu teachers. In none of them is there the certainty that religious influence other than Mohammedan shall not be brought to bear upon the students.

Lastly – and this is the most important consideration of all to the leaders of the Mohammedan community of India – they find in all the Empire, no central school of religious thought such as is to be found in other Mohammedan lands. Although their population is the largest of any now existing in the world, they are without a recognized seat of learning which can claim for them to be the fountain head of orthodox opinion. They have no central body of Ulema, whose teaching and discussion should serve to keep alive the intellectual activity of the religious teachers and so give its tone to the whole mass. They feel this to be the most serious want of all of their situation in presence of the growing intelligence of other religious bodies around them.