India in Ferment
I
WE Americans have a vein of sentimentalism which leads us almost intuitively to sympathize with any people that strives for self-rule. The living traditions of our own struggle for independence account in part, no doubt, for that tendency. We ask no questions; we consider no facts; we merely give our approval on the general principle that it is good to be free. We greeted China, free of the Manchus, with glad acclaim; we shouted joyfully over Russia, free of the Romanoffs; those of us who were not making our living or our political capital out of the troubles of Ireland sighed with relief when the ‘treaty’ secured the ‘Irish Free State.’ That the real tribulations of the Irish had only just begun we were gloriously unaware.
To-day, just as our wearied sympathies seem relieved of the burden of Ireland, they are set all quivering again by the report that India is aflame with revolution. Men who claim to be the representatives of three hundred and fifteen millions of people, of one fifth of the inhabitants of the globe, declare that those mute masses are trembling with desire to be free from British rule. Here in America, a certain section of the press is spreading, among millions of ignorant American readers, stories of British misrule — in most cases utterly without foundation. Imported agitators appear on the platform. We are told that the Malabar tragedy in India was caused by an English officer putting poison gas in the car with the imprisoned moplas, a yarn which even the most lurid agitator in India never thought to invent.
This unique situation in India, without a parallel in the history of the world; the opportunity to study the new creation by the British Government of the Indian Legislative Assembly, a Parliament in embryo; and the promise of a friend that ‘every door in India’ would be open, tempted me to go and see the situation for myself.
Of India, the great continent, with its many races, religions, and castes, with its varied climates, soils, and products, a lifetime does not suffice to gain fullness of knowledge; but if there is value in a survey at a moment when political agitation has touched the masses of Indian peoples, for perhaps the first time in their long history, it may not be overbold to assume that the results of the survey are worthwhile.
II
India challenges the world’s attention as never before. Great and inevitable changes are going on there, beyond the power of any viceroy to check or even to retard. The political tides of the world are sweeping the Indian people on to goals unseen, perhaps to rocks and shoals they know not of. It is a most pathetic situation. Indians, great and good men, yearn for self-rule — swaraj — as it is called. Spiritually, as they insistently claim, the educated classes might be ready for it; but practically, the outlook is very dark. If it came suddenly, to-morrow, as Gandhi would have it, all logic suggests chaos, invasion, famine, plague, internecine war; and yet it can be argued that the very habits of peace and order which the British have given India, the very lessons of sanitation and hygiene which their régime has taught, might tide the experiment over to a better day. The risk is great, the goal most alluring. High-spirited, impatient Indians, with no fortune to lose, wish to dare all; cautious, judicious, conservative men, with worldly goods and social positions to be risked, urge delay.
When I saw the ‘squalid splendor’ of Benares, and passed down to the river bank through throngs of pilgrims who parted timidly before me when my guide (a miserable little rat who would have passed unnoticed alone) shouted, ‘Make way for the Sahib,’ I said to myself, Can this timid cowering herd ever hope to win and maintain self-rule? But later, at His Excellency’s dinner at Government House in Lucknow, I walked among nawabs and rajahs and talukdars, glorious fellows, proud of carriage, with full-orbed glistening eyes, dark sleek skins, black haughty moustaches, who dressed in long, closefitting coats of smooth velvet, ornamented with gold chains, and whose fine heads were wrapped in rich dark turbans. I wondered, as I saw that stunning sight, whether my former doubts were justified. Again, at Viceregal Lodge at Delhi, as I sat at the state dinner in honor of the Prince of Wales, and looked with admiration at the noble forms and aristocratic bearing of rajahs and maharajahs, and famous Indian ministers of state, and noted their strong, dark faces, and recalled from the previous day the long columns of splendid Punjabi soldiers, I began to waver and to admit that the problem of India has many aspects.
As I sat in the great canopied space before the noble hall of audience of the old Delhi Fort, where, on a peacock throne, the Mogul Emperors had once ruled, and saw the barbaric splendor, the gleam of jewels, and the riot of color in the dresses of forty Indian princes ranged on either side of the raised dais where sat the Prince of Wales and the Viceroy of India during the great Durbar; as I looked below them to the members of the Legislative Assembly and the Council of State sitting at their feet, it was startling to reflect that all over India the subjects of these absolute despots, of these princes sitting there covered with dazzling jewels, whose price had been wrung from their poor peasantry, were giving unquestioning obedience; while, throughout British India, the people for whom the British had lately devised a representative system, which was intended to give them a share in their own government, were seething with discontent, and dreaming if not actually practising ‘civil disobedience’ against the laws enacted by the Viceroy in Council with this legislative body before me. Was all the Indian unrest based after all on race hatred, and not at all on unsatisfied political aspirations?
It would require a thick volume and a patient reader if we should attempt to trace all the causes of the present Indian ferment. One might go back to the famous Indian Mutiny, or further, to find the source of that trickling stream of discontent which has now become the swollen torrent of race hatred and passion for nationalism. The formation of the Indian National Congress, as long ago as 1885, and its evolution from a fairly conservative organization — led at times by men who are today the chief supporters of the Government — to a body now wholly in the hands of extremists, would seem an essential part of the story. I have read of it in books, I have heard it from the suave lips of the sweet-spoken Pundit Maliviya, President of Benares Hindu University, one of the three or four greatest Indian leaders, who has, in my opinion, the best brains of them all. He is sane enough to keep out of jail, though a minister of state at Delhi assured me that the Pundit was a very viper in his hate of the English, and that for twenty years he had been at ‘the bottom of all political deviltry in India, but concealed his part under a cultivated exterior.’ Maliviya, I should add, asserted solemnly to me that he did not hate the English, that he would ‘ be ashamed to hate any human being.’ I heard the story very differently told by His Excellency, Sir George Lloyd, Governor of Bombay, sitting with legs curled up in an easy-chair, and his head thrown hard back as if to relieve a nerve-strain. There in his office, whose windows looked out over the Arabian Sea, he told me with perfect frankness his Tory political background, his original lack of sympathy with the aims of the Government of India Act, but his present perfect loyalty to its purposes.
This slight man, of medium height, with thin, keen, alert face, black hair, brown eyes whose lids almost close as he talks earnestly, and whose voice grows thin and falsetto as he becomes earnest, is a most interesting ruler of men. His mind is alert, incisive, positive. He graces his speech with apt literary quotations. Indeed he has the face and delicate emotions of a poet, but the clear decisive action of a ruler — as he is, of 22,000,000 people, and the protector of 20,000,000 more. He is always courteous, but unyielding; ‘a definite, determined, little fighter,’ as a friend said of him. With a slight drawl that hastens on to a rapid-fire utterance as he grows intense, he soon convinces you that he feels what he says. You would take his word if a kingdom were at stake, but you would admit that he might see clearly only one side.
I have sketched him at some length because he has handled very ably one of the most difficult situations in India during the past few months, and I have every reason to believe that he and Lord Willingdon, Governor of the Madras Presidency, have been the determining forces that led to the final arrest of Mr. Gandhi. For his seizure, indeed, Sir George takes full responsibility. Neither have liked the policy of drift and ‘watchful waiting.’
III
The history of the growth of the Indian Congress, and of the processes of education by which the British Government carefully trained the body of Indian agitators, which seeks to overthrow it, is not within the scope of this article. I cannot tell here even the fascinating story of the early stages of the Government of India Act, as it was told me at the fireside in the office of Sir William Marris, Governor of Assam. Sir William described the early discussions of this subject in the ‘Round Table’ group, the great influence of Lionel Curtis, the discussions with the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, and the criticisms of Sir Sankaran Nair, Indian member in the Viceregal Council — all of which preceded Lord Montagu’s taking a hand, and the ultimate Montagu-Chelmsford report upon which the Government of India Act (1919) was founded. In that Act the British Parliament tried to provide the Indian people with legislative machinery that would enable them at once greatly to influence, if not wholly to control, their own government, and led them to expect from time to time further grants of power leading ultimately to full self-government. It was made plain to the Indians that, if they should prove faithful over a few things, they might ultimately be made rulers over many things.
The Act provided that in the Government of India at Delhi, the new capital, the Viceroy’s Executive Council was hereafter to have three Indian members out of a total of eight; and in the Secretary of State’s Council, in Whitehall, there were to be three Indian members. A Legislative Assembly in Delhi was to have a large majority of its members freely elected by Indian constituencies having as broad a franchise as conditions permitted. An upper house, the Council of State, was also to have a good majority of Indian members, some elected, some nominated, a few ex officio. The Government of India was not, it is true, to be responsible to these Indian-dominated legislative bodies, but to the Secretary of State in London, and through him to Parliament, itself responsible, of course, to the British electorate. Nevertheless, though the Governor-General in Council cannot be overthrown by an adverse vote, and though he may override his legislature, ‘certifying’ that items which it may have refused are essential to the welfare of India, the fact remains that this power has not been exercised. The men who govern India will scarcely run the risk of wrecking the new scheme by creating a direct conflict between the Assembly and the Government.
More important, perhaps, are the provisions as to the provincial governments under the Government of India Act. The Act provides for a ‘ devolution ’ — an unfolding of powers formerly rolled up in the attributes of the provincial Governor in Council. In Bengal, Bombay, Madras, and five other divisions of British India, Indian ministers, acting with the Governor, acquire control of certain matters subject only to the approval of a Legislative Council wherein there is a large Indian nonofficial majority. These subjects — education, sanitation, public works — are called ‘transferred subjects’ as against the ‘reserved subjects’ concerned with peace, order, and good government which are still vested, as of old, in the Governor, now assisted by one Indian and one British member of Council. This curious device, the last resort of ingenious minds driven to desperation by a baffling problem, is called ‘dyarchy.’ Sir William Marris, who has one of the ablest and most interesting minds in India, admitted to me that it was an effort to poise government, like Mahomet’s coffin, between heaven and earth. ‘Dyarchy,’ he said, ‘rests on the assumption that some departments are more concerned with essentials than others. I believe there is more error than truth in that assumption.’ He had proposed departments which would be placed under one councilor (an Englishman), and one minister (an Indian); the councilor to interfere, as does the British resident, in a native state, only in case of absolute necessity.
Finally, the makers of the Act tried to change the eternal laws of political science and to divide sovereignty, which after all was no greater task than was attempted by the makers of the Federal Constitution in the Philadelphia Convention in 1787. This division of sovereignty includes both the arrangements which seems to make Government responsible to the Indian people, when it is actually responsible to the British electorate ultimately, and the division of the functions of provincial government into reserved and transferred subjects. One other peculiarity, almost incomprehensible to the American mind obsessed by the idea of proportional representation, is the plan of communal representation, by which certain Indian minorities, the Sikhs in the Punjab, the Parsis in the Bombay presidency, the non-Brahmans in the province of Madras, the Mohammedans in various parts of India, the European business-interests everywhere, receive a representation in the legislative bodies wholly out of proportion to their numbers. In a word, nervous and clamorous interests, castes, or religious sects are given representatives, because it is assumed that candidates known to belong to that group, caste, or sect would have no chance of being elected in a contest where a simple majority of the electorate determines the contest. It is as if the Baptists and Methodists of an American congressional district, and the representatives of the automobile industry, regardless of their proportionate numbers in the whole body of citizens, should be entitled to elect some one of their number to go and represent their interests in the national government. The arrangement is only one of the many evidences of the great part that religion plays in Indian politics. There has not dev eloped in India that sense of common citizenship which territorial electorates assume to exist.
IV
Anyone who imagines that India is ready for our democratic ideas of rule by a majority should read the addresses presented to the Montagu Commission by the farmers of the Deccan, by the zamindars or great landholders, by the depressed classes, by European business men, by Mohammedans, by Indian Christians, and by interests of various kinds, pleading that in the new representative system to be set up they should not be left at the mercy of any mere numerical majority. It is as if the Christian Scientists, the Scandinavians, the Jews, the tobaccogrowers, the Greek shoeblacks of the United States should protest against their minority interests being left to the mercy of a majority decision in the American Congress.
Those who devised the Government of India Act frankly say that their purpose was to give the Indians experience in self-government while providing, during the immediate future, against any foolish or inconsidered action injurious to Indian or to British interests. The doctrine of letting them learn by suffering was seriously considered at one time, but then abandoned. It would be leaving to their own devices those who feel the shoe-pinch but least know how to ease it, said the opponents. The answer was, ‘Indians may not do things well at first, but they can learn only by trying. They will find out how to do things well by suffering the discomforts caused by doing them badly.’
At one stage the idea of extending the states of native princes, and turning the rule of British India over to them was considered; but Indian protest was as bitter then as it was recently when a desperate British publicist suggested that solution of the Indian problem. Indeed, the governor of a great province told me that in many cases where Indian princes had claimed territory of British India which formed an enclave into their dominions, he had offered to yield the claim if, by plebkcite, the people dwelling there would express a desire to become subjects of the prince. In every case the people voted against a transfer of their allegiance. It was admitted during the discussion of the new plan of government that, under the native princes, Government was less efficient than under the British rule; but the reply was that, under the latter régime, ‘law and order was almost too perfect for India; the high standard of public life almost too good for it.’ Finally, however, the present scheme, with all its imperfections on its head, was put through all the perils of a parliamentary debate and, with a provision for progressive revision from time to time, was made a law. In February of 1921, the Duke of Connaught inaugurated, at Delhi, the new Legislative Assembly — ‘worthy daughter of the Mother of all Parliaments,’as a proud Indian orator christened it.
There was a strong effort by the Extremists, the ‘Noncoöpcrators,’ to make a farce of the Government of India Act by getting the Indian electors to stay away from the polls. It was urged that, nothing had been given that was worth while, that it was a hateful thing, not to be touched. They were only partially successful in keeping voters away, and not at all so in preventing a very respectable body of representatives from being elected to the provincial councils and to the Legislative Assembly and Council of State at Delhi. Their main accomplishment was the prevention of a complete trial of the new plan, because the members are chiefly moderates, the Gandhi radicals having stayed out. They might greatly have increased the troubles of Government.
While attending a number of sessions of the councils in the United Provinces, and in Bengal, and spending about ten days with the Legislative Assembly in Delhi, I became convinced that every effort is being made by the British Government to carry out the Government of India according to the spirit of its best wishes. ‘Dyarchy’ had in fact become, in most cases, a unitary government in which the Governor sat in Council with all of his ministers, those responsible for the ‘transferred’ subjects as well as those concerned with the ‘reserved.’ In the main, Government’s action was determined by the views of the majority. Though the Governor might ‘certify’ items in the budget and insist upon his views prevailing, he had in fact refused to place himself in opposition to the will of his Council.
Lord Ronaldshay, Governor of Bengal, managed with great adroitness a situation which developed over a bill concerning the salaries of the Calcutta police. Though seemingly almost compelled to ‘certify’ the bill and go ahead, he induced the Legislative Council to pass the once negatived bill after he, with great tact, gave them a way to save their faces. His whole régime in Bengal was a masterly exhibition of statesmanship.
Agitators complained to me that when Indians became ministers they went over body and soul to Government; but ministers assured me that when they became responsible they saw things in a very different light from when they stood outside and were in opposition to Government. Agitators complained that Government knew how, by showing social favors and by granting flattering titles, to win over even elected Indians to do its will; but when I suggested, in a meeting of some twenty ‘nationalists,’ that they get the Council to pass a resolution forbidding Indians to accept titles, they protested that such a resolution would not pass because so many hoped to get titles!
All I could answer to that was that they must pray for Roman virtues. The opposition argued that Indians had gained only negative power; but as I read the Government of India Act, I would ask nothing better, if I were an Indian, than to seize the opportunity there offered to bring Government to a standstill when it asks for new taxes. The British at least have the grace to be sensitive to the world’s opinion, and I doubt if any British minister, in order to meet such a situation, would repeal the Government of India Act and go back to the old methods of absolutism. He would be far more likely to grant concessions to Indian demands and ask in return Indian votes which would set Government in motion again.
Moreover, the mere passage of the Government of India Act has wrought a change in the attitude of Government, Provincial and General. No longer being able to rely upon the ‘wicked old system’ of the ‘official block’ — which arrogantly carried all Government measures over opposition — Government has become more careful of expenditures. Under the old conditions, with the best intentions in the world, if Government thought anything ought to be done, it went ahead; but now it takes thought of the criticism of a jealous council or assembly.
V
To an American, an Indian legislative body is very entertaining, and the most picturesque parliament in the world. The provincial councils I will let pass, but the Legislative Assembly at Delhi must be described. It was disappointing to find not over one third of the members present. It was overrun with absentees, to use an Hibernian phrase. Some had offered a resolution against Government and then become alarmed; some did not wish to commit themselves on a vote that would make them unpopular; some refused to sacrifice private business to public interests; and others, I was told, were disgusted with the whole affair and thought it not worth the candle.
I first noted the superficial aspects. Dark Indian faces greatly predominated; some black with white moustaches, some black with white beards, others just plain. There were eight white turbans, one gold embroidered,
one red fez, two black ones, and one dark red and gold. One had a gold and red and white scarf, and near him was a Hindu with a large V-shaped caste mark on his forehead. Circulating among them were men-pages, chiprassis, whose red robes were gold-trimmed and whose turbans were white and gold. Most prominent on the Government benches were Sir William Vincent, home member, and Malcolm Hailey, finance member. With them sat Sarma and Sapru, Indian members.
Presiding over them all, and with a bemedaled, black-and-gold liveried sergeant standing behind him, sat Sir Frederick Whyte. With all the dignity of the Speaker of the House of Commons, he sat in black alpaca robe, trimmed with dark red silk, a white cravat hanging six or eight inches from the white collar. A gray judge’swig framed Sir Frederick’s strong, handsome face, always dignified, but on occasion lighted up with a shrewd smile which often preceded a dryly humorous comment upon his ruling. Always fair and just, and sure of his House of Commons precedent, his rulings are accepted with the best grace possible by a House pleased to a man with the admirable equity, mastery, and high purpose with which Sir Frederick has guided the early faltering steps of the Assembly. Ranga-chariar, one of the most notable members, said of him, ‘He maintains the dignity of the House with watchful and unswerving impartiality, with an austerity that is not oppressive, and an accessibility that cannot be presumed upon.’ His clear, strong, firm voice, and his serene mind, always cool and unperturbed, compel confidence in his decisions. He has drilled and disciplined tins embryo parliament in the best traditions of the House of Commons. It will ever be indebted to him for bending the twig in the way that any parliamentary tree might take pride in being inclined.
As one listens to the debates carried on, with few exceptions, in English, — the only tongue which all can understand, — certain peculiarities come to the fore. Although the Government benches represent an irremovable executive on the one side, faced by a large constitutionally irresponsible Indian majority on the other, there is manifest, an eagerness to explain fully the Government’s aims, and a strong desire to meet the opposition desires if it be politically possible. Indeed, to my knowledge, there has been no direct ignoring of the will of the majority since the new régime opened. The Indian members who at first came half-fearful to the Legislative Assembly, doubting as they came from the elections whether they really did have anything, have begun to gain confidence, to lose their apologetic frame of mind, and to assail Government from every side. One of the first speeches I heard was from the eloquent Ranga-chariar, twitting Government for maintaining an army to protect it against its own people. Indeed, army expenditure is so constantly assailed that one suspects that the eagerness of the Indians to reduce the army has back of it the desire to weaken the military force until it. can be overthrown. I had expected to find the clashes chiefly between the Indianelected members and the representatives of Government, backed by the European members; but the bitterest debate I heard was between Mohammedans and Hindus on the resolution to withdraw martial law from the Malabar region. The Indians were afterward plainly chagrined at this exhibition of their lack of real unity. Three or four debaters were masters of relevant, cogent, and moderate argument, showing debating talent of high order. Some were unable to do more than read monotonously speeches which, one suspected, were written by their baboo secretaries. Such efforts soon emptied the House. The Madras members showed the highest debating talent, with Bombay next, and Bengala low third, though in the Bengal Council I had heard Sir Surendranath Banerji make the most compelling speech that I heard in India.
Yet brilliant as was some of the oratory, and subtle as was some of the thought displayed by the members of the Assembly, I should not like the task of having to pick an Administration out of the body. They will need years of experience and drill before they can give the concentrated attention, the ceaseless watchfulness, the devotion to details, the tireless hour after hour, day in and day out attention which makes an efficient Administration. The English bring new blood constantly from the invigorating air of England. They, too, would lose force and vigor if they were to stay generation after generation in India.
The chief weaknesses of the Legislative Assembly as a whole are the failure to organize a strong political party in spite of Mr. Gour’s vigorous efforts to that end, and the manifest unwillingness of the Indians to assume political responsibility. Nevertheless, Sir Frederick Whyte left the chair on the last day of the first session ‘a confirmed optimist.’ The fact that created in my mind the greatest doubt of the success of the new venture, was the poor attendance and the nature of the motives which one was driven to believe had kept the Indians away. Nevertheless, men whose judgment I value and whose knowledge was far greater than mine were not so pessimistic.
VI
The judgments passed on the Government of India Act are as varied as the endless varieties of people that pass one daily in an Indian city. The young Englishmen regard the Act, with its promise of rapid Indianization of the services, as the death knell of all their hopes and ambitions. They blame Lord Montagu for it and hate him accordingly. As they see it, they have trained for a career which seems doomed to vanish. All the old promises of good pay, high pensions, polo ponies galore, have gone glimmering.
‘ If a real estate agent had put out such a blue-sky advertisement,’ I have heard them say, — referring to the Government when it lured them into the services,—‘he would have been fined and imprisoned for fraud.’ Government has no sympathy with them, they declare. It does n’t tax as it ought, and salaries are utterly inadequate. The Indian Civil Service is robbed of all its charm. In the old days a man was independent, acted with confidence, did his best, and expected backing; but to-day there is constant criticism — one is always worried lest there be criticism from above. It was all an awful mistake, they hold. Like the unlucky hero in the Arabian Nights, Montagu has let the monstrous evil genie out of the bottle, and not all the political magic in the world can get it back in again. They cannot see that Government must ignore the assumed rights of these hopeful young men if it is to do a manifest justice to the three hundred and fifteen millions of Indians.
Aside from the young men, the official class in general looks with favor on the Act, and all are loyal to it. A few look upon it, said Sir Frederick Whyte, as the Duke of Wellington looked upon the Reform Bill, ‘ready to take the damned thing and let it pass, because the King’s Government must be carried on.’ Such think more of British capital and the future of British officialdom in India than of the future of its brown masses of humanity.
There is a saying at Calcutta, where the Scotch merchants predominate, that India is a country conquered by the Irish to the end that the English might govern it for the benefit of the Scotch. That epigram is too clever to be taken seriously, but it cannot be denied that many English and Scotch merchants and manufacturers have little sympathy with the Government of India Act, and they dispose of it with impatient denunciations as ‘all d—d nonsense’; but I must say that I found American business and professional men in India just as eager to preserve the old British régime, and just as intolerant of any suggestion that the Indians can rule themselves. Their watchword in the present troubled times is, ‘sit tight on the valve.’ That section of the Indian press which most assiduously represents the opinion of the European commercial and manufacturing interests, complains the loudest against the democratic tendencies in India. These journalistic Cassandras, who can write better than they can think, cry aloud in the street, filling the ear with the mournful strain: ‘Melancholy, indeed, is the state of India. She stands at the brink of a great catastrophe. The air is heavy with coming disaster, and the material progress of the last century is threatened with destruction.’ Indian society is ‘rotten,’ the ‘new Indian is a bastard monstrosity and there is no truth in him.’ Every evil that visits India now is laid to ‘new and popular government.’
An Englishman who has had immense influence on India, but whose reply to the protest of capitalists was given me in confidence, said: ‘If British capital were sunk in India in a belief that the country was always going to maintain the same form of government, and with the same power of Hukim (command) to a vegetable population, then the capitalist acted with a lack of foresight which characterizes the British capitalist in almost every country of the world. If Indians have made statements which show that they are hostile to British industry, then the fault largely lies with the Anglo-Indian community which has held itself aloof from their desires, which has been contemptuous of the life of the country in which it lives, which has taken no steps to identify Indian interests wit hits own. ’ This struck me as rather acrid, and while I was in India I did not find this type of man in the saddle. He may regain power if reaction sets in, and that would seem to me a great misfortune. British rulers are heading into a stormy sea, thick with disaster, if they follow those who stubbornly insist upon autocratic rule, to the end of time, for those mysterious millions who, in the past, have bent to their will. It means breasting the democratic tide which is sweeping the whole world on to a destiny none can see. Not even British pluck can carry on against that current.
But the distrust of the liberality of the Government of India Act comes not alone from Europeans and Americans. Many of the native princes shake their heads dubiously over it and the Maharajah of Alwar thinks the English are mad to have entered upon such a plan. I was immensely impressed with Alwar, who had the most brilliant Indian mind I found. He invited me to come to his ‘camp’ in which he lived during the Prince of Wales’s visit to Delhi. There I found several large tents and a number of small ones, commonplace enough outside but most amazing once I had entered. The walls and ceilings were hung with rich silks; the floors were spread with beautiful Oriental rugs, and the chairs and sofas were sumptuously upholstered in the richest materials. Carved tables and screens there were, as in a settled abode, and scattered about were charming objets d’ art, as if the prince had settled there for a year instead of a short week. The Maharajah invited me to go on a two weeks’ tour of his domains, and said this splendid camp would be moved from place to place as was his custom. Except for his palatial exteriors, Aladdin could have done no more with his magic lamp. When His Highness had motioned me to a seat at one end of a narrow sofa, and had seated himself at the other, an obsequious, richly clad but barefooted servant brought cigarettes, and I settled down to an hour-and-a-half’s enjoyment of the most amazing monologue to which I ever listened. In vain I wished again and again that I could place a dictaphone before those tightly drawn yet sensuous lips, speaking the most perfect English, with an exquisite sense for the exact word to express the most exalted thought. As I studied this scion of an ancient royal family, descended from the Solar dynasty, I noted first his caste mark, token that with all his education and European culture he is still an orthodox Hindu. His fine, serious eyes seemed to have looked deeply and cynically into life’s mysteries, and induced perhaps the knitted brow and reluctant smile. The brow was well forward of the ears and perfectly moulded. The dark face looked a little careworn. They say he has his troubles. He is not a 21-gun maharajah, though his titles are like those of Monsieur Beaucaire which it took a strong man two days to pronounce.
He rules some three thousand miles, and in mentality only can he rival his fellow princes. A polished, quick, crafty ruler, he brings the methods of Solomon into the twentieth century and, in his small domain, makes the laws, executes them, and sits in judgment on all disputes. He said to me that the personal element had gone out of modern government quite too much and at the great cost of real and quick justice. Law, men had now, but not justice. His Highness is quite contemptuous of the reformer class which has come to the top in India, and though not at all eager for intimacy with Europeans, he is quite convinced that the British rule is best for him and all small princes. I can recall only the outline of his argument, not the charm of his diction, the range of his thought, the wealth of his illustration. The British Government, he declared with conviction, is engaged in an impossible undertaking, trying to set up democratic institutions, perfected by generations of struggle under English conditions, in India where caste is the very basis of the Hindu religion. The caste system is one which attempts to regulate dharma, or the dominant sense of duty, by establishing fixed groups to do the various tasks of life. It creates satisfied groups of people willing to do their duty within their own sphere. The democracy which the British seek to set up, Alwar declared, would destroy all the foundations of caste and with them the Hindu religion. In a word, if caste remains, democracy will fail; if democracy succeeds, caste falls and with it the Hindu religion. Such a political system would fail because it would have no basis in religion, the only firm foundation of any civilization. One could not substitute, within a generation, a new basis of civilization, a new religion.
‘Can you tell me,’ Alwar asked dramatically, ‘anywhere in the East where democratic institutions have been engrafted upon Oriental life and been a success? Not in Egypt, not in Arabia, not in Persia, nor China, nor, if carefully analyzed, in Japan.’
I remember but one of Alwar’s beautiful illustrations and of that only the frame. He said the British folly was like his own when, years ago, as part of a great irrigation scheme, he had planted certain needed kinds of trees, in a certain order and under scientifically favorable conditions. In spite of every care, the plan failed and in disgust he hedged the area about and left it to itself. It grew up, in time, a natural jungle of fine trees, serving the same purposes which he originally had in view; but Nature had her own way, as she always will in the long run. It was this natural growth that he hoped for in India. Here the two peoples were side by side — British and Indians; the one stressing the material side of life, the other stressing the spiritual side, and brought together by Providence, which moves in inscrutable ways, to the end that the most perfect civilization which the world has known may be evolved. The British qualities must predominate on the political side, and the Indian qualities on the religious side. Each will complement and be indispensable to the other, and there should be no envy, no race hatred. Each is superior in its own way; both are needful for a perfect, civilization.
This was a maharajah’s view. The princes are loyal supporters of the British régime. It is their shield and buckler. The Gaekwar of Baroda, one of the most advanced of all the Indian rulers, talked to the same end. I did wonder why he quizzed me for an hour, while we were at tea, as to the causes of the American Revolution; but perhaps he only wished to know how to head off such cataclysms, or, even more likely, he was trying to be polite to his guest. The princes Bikanir and Patiala took the same loyal attitude, and one maharajah, a Maratha, whose ancestral home is the Deccan, said that his wise old father counseled him on his death bed, ‘Stick to the English to the last; but if they ever fail you, fly to the Deccan’ — in other words, to his own people.
Alwar’s dream was a very different reading of the hand of Fate from that given me by Gandhi and his followers; different, indeed, from all the factional Indian views. Although I had found many shades of opinion, all might be grouped into conservative, moderate, nationalist, and ‘noncoöperating’ factions. Even the Conservatives had national pride, and dreamed of some far-off day when great masses of Indian people should have been trained to political experience and when the task might with safety be taken over wholly by India’s best political talent. But they fully realized the magnitude of the undertaking to raise over three hundred millions of people from the depths of mediæval ignorance and superstition to a degree of civilization fairly commensurate with that dominant in those parts of the world where democracy is a success.
The second group, the Moderates, like Sir Surendranath Banerji, Sir Narayan Chandavarkar, and Lord Sinha, were often found in high Government positions or had a large stake, economic or social, which curbed their eagerness for swaraj (self-rule). Nevertheless, they wished the march to go on apace. They hoped in their own lives to see the Promised Land. The Government of India Act was very good for a start, but more must come. They uttered many complaints against the British raj (rule), but thought it the only safe one at present. They had more confidence in their own people than was shown by the Conservatives, but it was not boundless. The ‘grand old man of Bengal,’ as his friends called him, Ananda Chandra Roy, said sadly:
‘ It will be long before my people will be ready to take up the burden of their own government. With very few exceptions they have not shown capacity to manage big business. But government is big business. Indians must learn to take responsibility for big things in business before they try to manage a vast country with hundreds of languages, hundreds of different states, with great rivalry between Hindu and Mohammedan, with caste distinctions and other conditions that make for disorder. Only the Tatas — and they are Parsis — have shown marked capacity. In Bengal, the zamindars (great landholders), in spite of their big incomes, are all bankrupt.’ Similar confessions were made to me daily by high-minded and sincere Indians whose patriotism I could not doubt.
But there were two other classes of Indian leaders, Nationalists and ‘Noncoöperators,’who aimed at the same thing, but would attain the goal by different means. The Nationalists, bitterly denouncing the Government of India Act as utterly inadequate, would nevertheless enter the Legislative Assembly or the provincial councils and, fighting the British by constitutional methods, force further concessions. The Gandhi followers would refuse to have anything to do with the Government of India Act, and by noncoöperation with Government bring it to a standstill. Both wanted swaraj at once. Some would keep the British, some would drive them out; but both would have them give up their claim to the right to determine when the Indians were ready for swaraj. ‘ We are as competent as they to decide that question,’ the Indians bitterly asserted. Some would admit that they would be glad to profit for a time by the British experience in governing. Many had the curious idea that the British would give them naval and military protection while surrendering political control. The British, in a word, were to ‘keep the ring’ while the Indians played at politics, serenely free of the ultimate responsibility of governors. When I asked what motive the British Government would have for assuming such a burden, they seemed surprised at my cynical ignorance of altruism. Besides, they explained, we would protect British capital and interests in return for the security they would give us. ‘You expect, then,’ I said, ’that all of the British people will assume a military burden and expense in order that a very few may have their Indian property protected.’ Our Filipino fellow citizens I found entertaining like ideas. But there are other Indians of the Extremist factions who, like Mahatma Gandhi, their leader, are ready to wash their hands, if need be, of all British contracts. It is they and their leader who most challenge the world’s attention.