Greater Britain

CHAPTER XX.

INDIA

“ALL general observations upon India are necessarily absurd,” said to me at Simla a distinguished officer of the Viceroy‘s government; but, although this is true enough of theories that bear upon the customs, social or religious, of the forty or fifty peoples which make up what in England we style the “Hindoo race,” it has no bearing on the consideration of the policy which should guide our actual administration of the Empire.

England in the East is not the England that we know. Flousy Britannia, with her anchor and ship, becomes a mysterious Oriental despotism, ruling a sixth of the human race, nominally for the natives’ own good, and certainly for no one else‘s, by laws and in a manner opposed to every tradition and every prejudice of the whole of the various tribes of which this vast population is composed – scheming, annexing, out-manœuvring Russia, and sometimes, it is to be feared, out-lying Persia herself.

In our island home, we plume ourselves upon our hatred of political extraditions: we would scorn to ask the surrender of a political criminal of our own, we would die in the last ditch sooner than surrender those of another crown. What a contrast we find to this when we look at our conduct in the East! During the mutiny of 1857, some of our rebel subjects escaped into the Portuguese territory at Goa. We demanded their extradition, which the Portuguese refused. We insisted. The offer we finally accepted was, that they should be transported to the Portuguese settlement at Timor, we supplying transports. An Indian transport conveying these men to their island grave, but carrying the British flag, touched at Batavia in 1858, to the astonishment of the honest Dutchmen, who knew England as a defender of national liberty in Europe.

Although despotic, our government of India is not bad; indeed, the hardest thing that can be said of it is that it is too good. We do our duty by the natives manfully, but they care little about that, and we are continually hurting their prejudices and offending them in small things, to which they attach more importance than they do to great. To conciliate the Hindoos, we should spend £10,000 a year in support of native literature to please the learned, and £10,000 on fireworks to delight the wealthy and the low-caste people. Instead of this, we worry them with municipal institutions and benevolent inventions that they cannot and will not understand. The attempt to introduce trial by jury into certain parts of India was laudable, but it has ended in one of those failures which discredit the government in the eyes of its own subordinates. If there is a European foreman of jury, the natives salaam to him, and ask: “What does the sahib say?” If not, they look across the court to the native barristers, who hold up fingers, each of which means 1OOrs., and thus bid against each other for the verdict, for, while natives as a rule are honest in their personal or individual dealings, yet in places of trust – railway clerkships, secretaryships of departments, and so on – they are almost invariably willing to take bribes.

Throughout India, such trials as are not before a jury are conducted with the aid of native assessors as members of the court. This works almost as badly as the jury does, the judge giving his decision without any reference to the opinion of the assessors. The story runs that the only use of assessors is, that in an appeal – where the judge and assessors had agreed – the advocate can say that the judge “has abdicated his functions, and yielded to the absurd opinion of a couple of ignorant and dishonest natives,” – or, if the judge had gone against his client in spite of the assessors being inclined the other way, that the judge “has decided in the teeth of all experienced and impartial native opinion, as declared by the voices of two honest and intelligent assessors.”

Our introduction of juries is not an isolated instance of our somewhat blind love for “progress.” If in the already-published portions of the civil code – for instance, the parts which relate to succession, testamentary and intestate – you read in the illustrations York for Delhi, and Pimlico for Sultanpore, there is not a word to show that the code is meant for India, or for an Oriental race at all. It is true that the testamentary portion of the code applies at present only to European residents in India; but the advisability of extending it to natives is under consideration, and this extension is only a matter of time. The result of over-great rapidity of legislation, and of unyielding adherence to English or Roman models in the Indian codes, must be that our laws will never have the slightest hold upon the people, and that, if we are swept from India, our laws will vanish with us. The Western character of our codes, and their want of elasticity and of adaptability to Eastern conditions, is one among the many causes of our unpopularity.

The old-school Hindoos fear that we aim at subverting all their dearest and most venerable institutions, and the free-thinkers of Calcutta and the educated natives hate us because, while we preach culture and progress, we give them no chance of any but a subordinate career. The discontent of the first-named class we can gradually allay, by showing them the groundlessness of their suspicions; but the shrewd Bengalee baboos are more difficult to deal with, and can be met only in one way – namely, by the employment of the natives in offices of high trust, under the security afforded by the infliction of the most degrading penalties on proof of the smallest corruption. One of the points in which the policy of Akbar surpassed our own was in the association of qualified Hindoos with his Mohammedan fellow-countrymen in high places in his government. The fact, moreover, that native governments are still preferred to British rule, is a strong argument in favor of the employment by us of natives; for, roughly speaking, their governmental system differs from ours only in the employment of native officers instead of English. There is not now existent a thoroughly native government; at some time or other, we have controlled in a greater or less degree the governments of all the native States. To study purely native rule, we should have to visit Caboul or Herat, and watch the Afghan princes putting out each other‘s eyes, while their people are engaged in never-ending wars, or in murdering strangers in the name of God.

Natives might more safely be employed to fill the higher than the lower offices. It is more easy to find honest and competent native governors or councilmen than honest and efficient native clerks and policemen. Moreover, natives have more temptations to be corrupt, and more facilities for being so with safety, in low positions than in high. A native policeman or telegraph official can take his bribe without fear of detection by his European chief; not so a native governor, with European subordinates about him.

The common Anglo-Indian objections to the employment of natives in our service are, when examined, found to apply only to the employment of incompetent natives. To say that the native lads of Bengal, educated in our Calcutta colleges, are half educated and grossly immoral, is to say that, under a proper system of selection of officers, they could never come to be employed. All that is necessary at the moment is that we should concede the principle by appointing, year by year, more natives to high posts, and that, by holding the civil service examinations in India as well as in England, and by establishing throughout India well-regulated schools, we should place the competent native youths upon an equal footing with the English.

That we shall ever come to be thoroughly popular in India is not to be expected. By the time the old ruling families have died out, or completely lost their power, the people whom we rescued from their oppression will have forgotten that the oppression ever existed, and as long as the old families last, they will hate us steadily. One of the documents published in the Gazette of India, while I was at Simla, was from the pen of Asudulla Muhamadi, one of the best-known Mohammedans of the Northwest Provinces. His grievances were the cessation of the practice of granting annuities to the “sheiks of noble families,” the conferring of the “high offices of Mufti, Sudr’-Ameen, and Tahsildar,” on persons not of “noble extraction,” “the education of the children of the higher and lower classes on the same footing, without distinction,” “the desire that women should be treated like men in every respect,” and “the formation of English schools for the education of girls of the lower order.” He ended his State paper by pointing out the ill effects of the practice of conferring on the poor “respectable berths, thereby enabling them to indulge in luxuries which their fathers never dreamt of, and to play the upstart;” and declared that to a time-honored system of class government there had succeeded “a state of things which I cannot find words to express.” It is not likely that our rule will ever have much hold on the class that Asudulla represents, for not only is our government in India a despotism, but its tendency is to become an imperialism, or despotism exercised over a democratic people, such as we see in France, and are commencing to see in Russia.

We are leveling all ranks in India; we are raising the humblest men, if they will pass certain examinations, to posts which we refuse to the most exalted of nobles unless they can pass higher. A clever son of a bheestie, or sweeper, if he will learn English, not only may, but must rise to be a railway baboo, or deputy-collector of customs; whereas for Hindoo rajahs or Mohammedan nobles of Delhi creation, there is no chance of anything but gradual decline of fortune. Even our Star of India is democratic in its working: we refuse it to men of the highest descent, to confer it on self-made viziers of native States, or others who were shrewd enough to take our side during the rebellion. All this is very modern, and full of “progress,” no doubt; but it is progress toward imperialism, or equality of conditions under paternal despotism.

Not only does the democratic character of our rule set the old families against us, but it leads also to the failure of our attempt to call around us a middle class, an educated thinking body of natives with something to lose, who, seeing that we are ruling India for her own good, would support us heart and soul, and form the best of bucklers for our dominion. As it is, the attempt has long been made in name, but, as a matter of fact, we have humbled the upper class, and failed to raise a middle class to take its place. We have crushed the prince without setting up the trader in his stead.

The wide-spread hatred of the English does not prove that they are bad rulers; it is merely the hatred that Easterns always bear their masters; yet masters the Hindoos will have. Even the enlightened natives do not look with longing toward a future of self-government, however distant. Most intelligent Hindoos would like to see the Russians drive us out of India, not that any of them think that the Russians would be better rulers or kinder men, but merely for the pleasure of seeing their traditional oppressors beaten. What, then, are we to do? The only justification for our presence in India is the education for freedom of the Indian races; but at this moment they will not have freedom as a gift, and many Indian statesmen declare that no amount of education will ever fit them for it. For a score of centuries the Hindoos have bribed and taken bribes, and corruption has eaten into the national character so deeply, that those who are the best of judges declare that it can never be washed out. The analogy of the rise of other races leads us to hope, however, that the lapse of time will be sufficient to raise the Hindoos as it has raised the Huns.

The ancients believed that the neighborhood of frost and snow was fatal to philosophy and to the arts; to the Carthaginians, Egyptians, and Phœnicians, the inhabitants of Gaul, of Germany, and of Britain were rude barbarians of the frozen North, that no conceivable lapse of time could convert into anything much better than talking bears – a piece of empiricism which has a close resemblance to our view of India. It is idle to point to the tropics and say that free communities do not exist within those limits: the map of the world will show that freedom exists only in the homes of the English race. France, the authoress of modern liberty, has failed as yet to learn how to retain the boon for which she is ever ready to shed her blood; Switzerland, a so-called free State, is the home of the worst of bigotry and intolerance; the Spanish republics are notoriously despotisms under democratic titles; America, Australia, Britain, the homes of our race, are as yet the only dwelling-spots of freedom.

There is much exaggeration in the cry that self-government, personal independence, and true manliness can exist only where the snow will lie upon the ground, that cringing slavishness and imbecile submission follow the palm-belt round the world. If freedom be good in one country, it is good in all, for there is nothing in its essence which should limit it in time or place: the only question that is open for debate is whether freedom – an admitted good – is a benefit which, if once conferred upon the inhabitants of the tropics, will be maintained by them against invasion from abroad and rebellion from within; if it be given bit by bit, each step being taken only when public opinion is fully prepared for its acceptance, there can be no fear that freedom will ever be resigned without a struggle. We should know that Sikhs, Kandians, Scindians, Marattas, have fought bravely enough for national independence to make it plain that they will struggle to the death for liberty as soon as they can be made to see its worth. It will take years to efface the stain of a couple of hundred years of slavery in the negroes of America, and it may take scores of years to heal the deeper sores of Hindostan; but history teaches us to believe that the time will come when the Indians will be fit for freedom.

Whether the future advent of a better day for India be a fact or a dream, our presence in the country is justifiable. Were we to quit India, we must leave her to Russia or to herself. If to Russia, the political shrewdness and commercial blindness of the Northern Power would combine to make our pocket suffer by loss of money as much as would our dignity by so plain a confession of our impotence; while the unhappy Indians would discover that there exists a European nation capable of surpassing Eastern tyrants in corruption by as much as it already exceeds them in dull weight of leaden cruelty and oppression. If to herself, unextinguishable anarchy would involve our Eastern trade and India‘s happiness in a hideous and lasting ruin.

If we are to keep the country, we must consider gravely whether it be possible properly to administer its affairs upon the present system – whether, for instance, the best supreme government for an Eastern empire be a body composed of a chief invariably removed from office just as he begins to understand his duty, and a council of worn-out Indian officers, the whole being placed in the remotest corner of Western Europe, for the sake of removing the government from the “pernicious influence of local prejudice.”

India is at this moment governed by the Indian Council at Westminster, who are responsible to nobody. The Secretary of State is responsible to Parliament for a policy which he cannot control, and the Viceroy is a head-clerk.

India can be governed in two ways; either in India or in London. Under the former plan, we should leave the bureaucracy in India independent, preserving merely some slight control at home – a control which should, of course, be purely parliamentary and English; under the other plan – which is that to which it is to be hoped the people of England will command their representatives to adhere – India would be governed from London by the English nation, in the interests of humanity and civilization. Under either system, the Indian Council in London would be valuable as an advising body; but it does not follow, because the Council can advise, that therefore they can govern, and to delegate executive power to such a board is on the face of it absurd.

Whatever the powers to be granted to the Indian Council, it is clear that the members should hold office for the space of only a few years. So rapid is the change that is now making a nation out of what was ten years ago but a continent inhabited by an agglomeration of distinct tribes, that no Anglo-Indian who has left India for ten years is competent even to advise the rulers, much less himself to share in the ruling, of Hindostan. The objection to the government of India by the Secretary of State is, that the tenant of the office changes frequently, and is generally ignorant of native feelings and of Indian affairs. The difficulty, however, which attends the introduction of a successful plan for the government of India from London is far from being irremovable, while the objection to the paternal government of India by a Viceroy is that it would be wholly opposed to our constitutional theories, unfitted to introduce into our Indian system those democratic principles which we have for ten years been striving to implant, and even in the long run dangerous to our liberties at home.

One reason why the Indian officials cry out against government from St. James‘s Park is, because they deprecate interference with the Viceroy; but were the Council abolished, except as a consultative body, and the Indian Secretaryship of State made a permanent appointment, it is probable that the Viceroy would be relieved from that continual and minute interference with his acts which at present degrades his office in native eyes. The Viceroy would be left considerable power, and certainly greater power than he has at present, by the Secretary of State; – that which is essential is merely, that the power of control, and responsible control, should lie in London. The Viceroy would, in practice, exercise the executive functions, under the control of a Secretary of State, advised by an experienced Council and responsible to Parliament, and we should possess a system under which there would be that conjunction of personal responsibility and of skilled advice which is absolutely required for the good government of India.

To a scheme which involves the government of India from at home, it may be objected that India cannot be so well understood in London as in Calcutta. So far from this being the case, there is but little doubt among those who best know the India of to-day, that while men in Calcutta understand the wants of the Bengalee, and men in Lahore the feelings of the Sikh, India, as a whole, is far better understood in England than in any presidency town.

It must be remembered, that with India within a day of England by telegraph, and within three weeks by steam, the old autocratic Governor-General has become impossible, and day by day the Secretary of State in London must become more and more the ruler of India. Were the Secretary of State appointed for a term of years, and made immovable except by a direct vote of the House of Commons, no fault could be found with the results of the inevitable change: as it is, however, a council of advice will hardly be sufficient to prevent gross blundering while we allow India to be ruled by no less than four Secretaries of State in a single year.

The chief considerations to be kept in view in the framing of a system of government for India are briefly these: – a sufficient separation of the two countries to prevent the clashing of the democratic and paternal systems, but, at the same time, a control over the Indian administration by the English people active enough to insure the progressive amelioration of the former; the minor points to be borne in mind are that in India we need less centralization, in London more permanence, and, in both, increased personal responsibility. All these requirements are satisfied by the plan proposed, if it be coupled with the separation of the English and Indian armies, the employment of natives in our service, and the creation of new governments for the Indus territories and Assam. Madras, Bombay, Bengal, Assam, the Central Provinces, Agra, the Indus, Oude, and Burmah would form the nine presidencies, the Viceroy having the supreme control over our officers in the native States, and not only should the governors of the last seven be placed upon the same footing with those of Madras and Bombay, but all the local governors should be assisted by a council of ministers who should necessarily be consulted, but whose advice should not be binding on the governors. The objections that are raised against councils do not apply to councils that are confined to the giving of advice, and the ministers are needed, if for no other purpose, at least to divide the labor of the Governor, for all our Indian officials are at present overworked.

This is not the place for the suggestion of improvements in the details of Indian government. The statement that all general observations upon India are necessarily absurd is not more true of moral, social, educational, and religious affairs than of mere governmental matters: “regulation system” and “non-regulation system;” “permanent settlement” and “thirty years’ settlement;” native participation in government, or exclusion of natives – each of these courses may be good in one part of India and bad in another. On the whole, however, it may be admitted that our Indian government is the best example of a well-administered despotism, on a large scale, existing in the world. Its one great fault is over-centralization; for, although our rule in India must needs be despotic, no reason can be shown why its despotism should be minute.

The greatest of the many changes in progress in the East is that India is being made – that a country is being created under that name where none has yet existed; and it is our railroads, our annexations, and above all our centralizing policy that are doing the work. There is reason to fear that this change will be hastened by the extension of our new codes to the former “non-regulation provinces,” and by government from at home, where India is looked upon as one nation, instead of from Calcutta, where it is known to be still composed of fifty; but so rapid is the change, that already the Calcutta people are as mistaken in attempting to laugh down our phrase “the people of India,” as we were during the mutiny when we believed that there was an “India” writhing in our clutches. Whether the India which is being thus rapidly built up by our own hands will be friendly to us, or the reverse, depends upon ourselves. The two principles upon which our administration of the country might be based have long since been weighed against each other by the English people, who, rejecting the principle of a holding of India for the acquisition of prestige and trade, have decided that we are to govern India in the interest of the people of Hindostan. We are now called on to deliberate once more, but this time upon the method by which our principle is to be worked out. That our administration is already perfect can hardly be contended so long as no officer not very high in our Indian service dares to call a native “friend.” The first of all our cares must be the social treatment of the people, for while by the Queen‘s proclamation the natives are our fellow-subjects, they are in practice not yet treated as our fellow-men.

CHAPTER XXI.

DEPENDENCIES

WHEN, on my way home to England, I found myself off Mocha, with the Abyssinian highlands in sight, and still more when we were off Massowah, with the peaks of Talanta plainly visible, I began to recall the accounts which I had heard at Aden of the proposed British colony on the Abyssinian table-lands, out of which the home government has since been frightened. The question of the desirability or the reverse of such a colony raises points of interest on which it would be advisable that people at home should at once take up a line.

As it has never been assumed that Englishmen can dwell permanently even upon high hills under the equator, the proposition for European colonization or settlement of tropical Africa may be easily dismissed, but that for the annexation of tropical countries for trade purposes remains. It has hitherto been accepted as a general principle regulating our intercourse with Eastern nations, that we have a moral right to force the dark-skinned races to treat us in the same fashion as that in which we are treated by our European neighbors. In practice we even now go much further than this, and inflict the blessings of Free Trade upon the reluctant Chinese and Japanese at the cannon‘s mouth. It is hard to find any law but that of might whereby to justify our dealings with Burmah, China, and Japan. We are apt to wrap ourselves up in our new-found national morality, and, throwing upon our fathers all the blame of the ill which has been done in India, to take to ourselves credit for the good; but it is obvious to any one who watches the conduct of our admirals, consuls, and traders in the China seas, that it is inevitable that China should fall to us as India fell, unless there should be a singular change in opinion at home, or unless, indeed, the Americans should be beforehand with us in the matter. To say this, is not to settle the disputed question of whether in the present improved state of feeling, and with the present control exercised over our Eastern officials by a disinterested press at home, and an interested but vigilant press in India and the Eastern ports, government of China by Britain might not be for the advantage of the Chinese and the world, but it is at least open to serious doubt whether it would be to the advantage of Great Britain. Our ruling classes are already at least sufficiently exposed to the corrupting influences of power for us to hesitate before we decide that the widening of the national mind consequent upon the acquisition of the government of China would outweigh the danger of a spread at home of love of absolute authority, and indifference to human happiness and life. The Americans, also, it is to be hoped, will pause before they expose republicanism to the shock that would be caused by the annexation of despotically-governed States. In defending the Japanese against our assaults, and those of the active but unsuccessful French, they may unhappily find, as we have often found, that protection and annexation are two words for the same thing.