India's Problem, Krishna or Christ Part 2

The unit of government in India is the District. The whole of India is divided into 235 Districts. At the head of a District is placed an officer known as Collector, Senior Magistrate, or Deputy Commissioner, who is practically ruler of that division. He is the administrative representative of the government. In each District there is also a District Judge and a few other officers at the head of various departments. These Districts vary in size and population, covering areas from 14,000 to 1,000 square miles, and containing from 3,000,000 to 250,000 population. The average population of a District is 800,000.

Nothing impresses the careful observer more than the large amount of responsibility and the multifarious duties which devolve upon these District officers. During recent years, however, authority has been withheld increasingly from Collectors and centralized in the Provincial Governments; for at the head of every Province also there is a government patterned somewhat after the Supreme Government in Calcutta.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Maharajah Of Travancore.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Rajah Of Ramnad.]

No greater mistake can be made than to think that India is either crudely or poorly governed. Owing to the great poverty of the land it is extremely difficult to maintain so costly and elaborate a regime as the present one; and many claim that for the support of so expensive a luxury the people are taxed beyond their ability and resources. The taxation imposed by a government on its people is rightly considered, both in its extent and character, as a measure of the wisdom of the State. The critics of the Indian government are p.r.o.ne to dwell upon the alleged injustice of its taxes. It is, however, difficult to understand why this matter should be pressed unless it be on the ground, apparently maintained, that the poverty of the people should exempt them from _any_ of the burdens of taxation-a theory beautifully generous to the people but fatal to the maintenance of any government. The salt tax does certainly seem cruel in its severe pressure upon the very poor; and yet it is the only one whereby this very large part of the community can be reached at all, and made to contribute its mite to the State which protects it.

Comparing present taxes with those of the past, we should certainly expect heavier imposts now, because the government furnishes today, as an equivalent of protection and blessing, infinitely more than former dynasties did. And yet Sir W. Hunter has ably shown from a comparison of taxes levied by the present government and by the Moghul government that the modern Hindu is vastly better off than was his ancestor of two and three centuries ago. Today, five and one half per cent. is collected in land tax; under the Moghul rule they had to pay from thirty-three per cent. to fifty per cent. Besides this, the Mohammedan imposed various other taxes, many of them upon non-Mohammedans as a religious penalty. Nor were the Hindu governments one whit better off; and even today the native states are much harder upon the people than is the British Raj.

The famine commission is the highest authority on the subject. In its exhaustive report of 1880 it writes:-"In the majority of native governments the revenue officer takes all he can get, and would take treble the revenue we should, if he were strong enough to exact it."

If we pursue the comparison to that of European peoples, Indian taxation would seem but a trifle. Placing even English taxes side by side with India's, we shall find instruction. The average income in the United Kingdom is 40, while the tax a.s.sessed is 44_s_, or five and one-half per cent. In India, alas, the average income is only 36_s_. But then the tax is only 1_s_, 9_d_ per capita which is a trifle smaller per capita than that for England. Here again we are impressed with the reasonableness of the tax imposed.

The opium and liquor traffic in India is one which has drawn forth much criticism. From the moral standpoint the critics have a very strong case.

The evil which the opium traffic of India has inflicted upon China-against her will too-has been enormous. The large army of opium eaters which it has created, only to destroy with a terrible death, has long been an argument to which no nation of England's position and pretensions can render satisfactory reply.

In like manner, the State monopoly of the drink traffic is neither honourable nor wise. It not only gives unwonted and unwarrantable dignity to a disreputable business, it also involves the State in the business of making a large army of drunkards in the land. To take up a traffic like this, for the revenue there is in it, is to trifle with the higher interests of the subjects and to become instrumental in the corruption and misery of the people whom it is bound to protect. It is questionable whether any other civilized government has involved itself in such unworthy means of creating a revenue. Doubtless, opium and drink represent, morally, the weakest part of this government. Of course, the all important defense lies in the revenue thus acquired. These two items of revenue flow more easily than any others into the depleted treasury of State. To give these up in behalf of what is termed sentiment, would necessitate the imposition of other heavy taxes. This is an aspect of the question which too easily silences and secures the acquiescence of the people of India. But, its evil is great and is spreading.

The drink curse is rapidly becoming one of the trying problems of India.

It was slanderously remarked some years ago that if the English then left that country the only monuments left behind of their life would have been broken whiskey bottles! There is indeed ground today for the fear that if England were to abandon the land, it would leave, as the saddest monument of its past, an immensely increasing army of drinkers; and this evil is further enhanced by the mean ideal of life which the ordinary Englishman sets before Hindus by his pa.s.sion for the cup. Half a century ago an Englishman died while on duty in the jungles in South India, and his body was there buried in the wilderness. The natives soon erected a shrine over his grave and, for a long time, offered, in true sobriety, whiskey and cheroots to appease his thirsty and unsatisfied spirit! It is not strange that the natives should recognize a continuity of spirit-taste in the here and the hereafter of the Sahib!

The recent utterance of the Archbishop of Canterbury on this subject should be heeded by the State. "The true principle of morals," he says, "is to have nothing whatever to do with that which is shown to be necessarily productive of evil. The English nation caused the opium evil in China and we are responsible for that evil. I also protest against the principle of raising revenue by temptations to evil. It might be right for a government to pause before interfering with private trade; but, in this case we ourselves are carrying on the evil trade. Such a thing on the part of a great government is, I think, without a parallel in the whole world."

The Army in India is a necessary but great evil in the expense which it involves to the government, no less than in the evil life which it leads among, and the evil example which it sets, the native community. Its influence is deplorable. It is the most vulnerable to attack of all departments of government, both on the score of expense and character.

"Tommy Atkins" is the greatest trial to the Hindu, and brutally rides rough-shod over all his sensibilities. If he could only be left at home with safety to British interests in the land, it would help largely to improve the situation between the two races. It would also save England from the terrible disgrace of immorality which the army is instrumental in carrying as a plague wherever it goes. Awful indeed is the prevalence of the social vice in the native community itself; but the English Army spreads the demoralization in a most disgraceful way.

Considering the government as a whole, then, it is wonderful, both in the extent of its operation and in its numberless activities and agencies. Its purpose is generally n.o.ble, and its wisdom, both in the framing of laws and in general administration, has been most marked. The occasion of most of its failings and weaknesses is the poverty of the people whereby the government has, at times, been driven to subterfuges to avoid bankruptcy.

8. The Mission of Great Britain in India.

The British people are only today beginning to realize fully the wonderful mission which, under G.o.d's providence, they are called to fulfill in that great land of the Vedas. For nearly a century the commercial motive was not only paramount but was practically the only motive which impelled the Anglo-Saxon in his contact with India. Everything Indian had value in his eyes in proportion as it added to his revenues. For many years he excluded the Missionary of the Cross from his domains in the East, lest that good man should, by teaching the people, disturb the revenue of the Honourable East India Company. As the domains of this great company extended and its powers multiplied, the English nation gradually came to realize their own responsibility as a people to the land; and the Indians thus were brought within their influence. This contact and communion of interests became to them the voice of responsibility and of obligation to impart their blessings to them as well as to take their material resources from them.

The dawn of the new altruistic sense towards its subject people, though long deferred, rapidly grew into full daylight; and Great Britain today feels, as no country has felt before, its privilege and duty to bestow upon its dependency in the East the highest and best which it can furnish.

The difficulty of England's mission in India is greatly enhanced by the difference which amounts almost to a contrast between her own people and the inhabitants of India. The striking difference of type and character existing between the Anglo-Saxon and the Hindu facilitates all sorts of misunderstanding between them, and aids perceptibly in making the path of the British Raj a very th.o.r.n.y one in the land. It would perhaps be impossible to find two peoples who are farther removed from each other in temperament and training-whose nature and antecedents are more irreconcilable at all points. While the Anglo-Indian is bold, frank and just, even to harshness, the Hindu is subtle, affable, practiced to dissimulation, with ready susceptibilities to temporize and to barter justice for expediency. On the one side, we see the Westerner haughty, unyielding and unwilling to conciliate; on the other we behold the Oriental willing to be trampled upon when it seems necessary, and to smile with apparent grat.i.tude under the process; but, withal, possessed of a large inheritance of ineradicable prejudices, which make a contact with his too domineering Western lord an unceasing trial to him.

There is another point at which the two races are antipodal. The Briton is progressive to the core. He only needs to be a.s.sured that a certain course is right and for the best interests of the community, in order to adopt it. His face ever looks upward and his ambition is ever to go forward.

But, in India he lives among a race whose chief divinity is custom and the gist of whose decalogue is, "Hold fast to the past." As they approach a proposed enterprise their first and last question concerning it is not whether it is right and best, but whether it is in a line with the past and would be approved by their ancestors. The whole country has been anch.o.r.ed for the last twenty-five centuries to a code of social laws and customs which are more unyielding than the laws of the Medes and Persians.

With them conservatism is the acme of piety and propriety. All progress has been practically forced upon the country from without, and in the teeth of their most sacred inst.i.tutions and their most earnest protestation and opposition. Thus the great difference between the two peoples has been a serious hindrance to the realization of British designs in that land.

Notwithstanding all this, Great Britain has patiently, persistently and doggedly carried on her work and pursued her highest ideals for India.

And what have been the ideals and blessings which she is seeking to achieve for that great land?

The first is that of Western culture and civilization. In these two particulars, England has introduced into India a perpetual conflict.

Western ideas, processes of thought, points of aspect and ideals of beauty and of life have been gradually supplanting the very different ones of the East. Western life in India today is a constant challenge to the people to study, admire and appropriate its many features of thought and conduct; and India is not insensible to this call. The railroads and hospitals, the schools and sanitary projects which have been introduced by the West into that land are markedly transforming the sentiment and the life of the people. The contrast between the people of India today and of a century ago is all but complete in this respect. While the educational inst.i.tutions of the land are revolutionizing the thought, the more material elements of civilization are transforming the outer life of the people.

England also is imparting to India the Anglo-Saxon conception of right, of law and of justice. In order to know how widely apart the East and West were in this respect, one should live in India a few years. The idea of equal rights to all the people, of freedom of speech, of liberty of conscience and of other similar rights which are regarded as elementary and fundamental in the West, was all but foreign to India when England established her power there. That the government itself should treat high and low, the poor ryot and the wealthy rajah, the ignorant Pariah and the cultured Brahman as one in their claim for right and protection, for justice and for favour, seemed to the Hindu absurd. It is one of the best commentaries on British justice and administration in India, that the people have now come not only to regard it with satisfaction, but also as an indispensable condition of their life.

The blessings of peace also are among the greatest which England has conferred upon India. "Pax Britanica" is equally known and loved today in India and in the British Isles. From time immemorial India had been torn asunder, not only by internecine wars, but also by numerous attacks from the peoples of other countries. India has always been a prey both to the decimating wars of her own unjust and ambitious tyrants, and mutually antagonistic castes and tribes; she has also been the easy victim of any hardy, enlightened, ambitious people who sought to invade her. The presence of Great Britain in India has been a voice commanding peace to its troubled and exhausted people. With a strong hand she has put down injustice of tribe against tribe and made impossible inter-tribal wars and raids. She has brought rest such as India never before enjoyed and has given safety to the most harmless and innocent cla.s.ses, as she has peace to the most warlike and aggressive in the land. This great land of the East has thus had opportunities to grow and to develop in many of the most essential characteristics of individual and national progress. These blessings would have been impossible apart from the peace which Great Britain a.s.sured and wrought out for the land.

In connection with this we need to emphasize the various forms of progress which are an essential part of British blessing to India. We have seen that India was a stagnant land, that its people were preeminently unprogressive and ultra-conservative. England has helped her to break down many of these barriers of the past. Though India is obstinately slow in her acceptance of the spirit and blessings of progress, England has thrust upon her many of the conditions, and compelled her to enter into some of the paths of progress which will bring inestimable benefits into her life.

In like manner, the mission of England has been and is a religious one.

Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, upon a.s.suming authority in the land, issued a proclamation to the effect that under her reign all the inhabitants of India should enjoy perfect right to wors.h.i.+p as they please and whom they please. It is true that too many of the representatives of the British Government in India today are so impressed with the importance of a government that is absolutely neutral in religious matters, that they have both ceased themselves to manifest any religious preference in their life and are scrupulously careful to see to it that Christians get just a little less of right and of protection than the adherents of other faiths.

This they consider to be true altruism added to breadth of religious sentiment!

Notwithstanding this, nothing is more manifest in India today than that the very fact of the rulers of the land being nominally Christians adds to the prestige of Christianity in the land. The people naturally come to regard it as the State religion. What is more significant, however, is the fact that, at the basis of modern laws in that land and of the multiplying inst.i.tutions of the country, distinctively Christian principles are universally recognized. Should the government of India resolve to be _absolutely_ neutral in all religious matters, it would have to renounce those laws and inst.i.tutions which have furnished it with all its success in the land and which today crown its efforts with largest usefulness. To the government, and unconsciously to the ma.s.ses of the people, Christian thought and truth and method necessarily characterize most of the laws, inst.i.tutions and processes of India. They are all a part of the work of Great Britain in that land and such a part as she could not dispense with if she would. It is a part of her unconscious Christian heritage.

Thus the work of Great Britain in India has been attended with a large degree of success; it has lifted the land out of a condition of semi-savagery and placed it among the civilized nations of the world. It has cut it asunder from its anchorage to the past and brought it almost abreast of the times. There is still much to be done and much to be desired. We shall be glad to see the day when radical steps in progress shall be taken voluntarily by the people and through the initiative of their own leaders, rather than that they should wait to have them thrust upon them, as in the past, by the progressiveness of the foreigner among them.

The people, on the whole, appreciate the blessings of British supremacy in the land. If they are not demonstratively loyal to the government, they certainly do rest satisfied in the progress which has been achieved for them.

The well known political leader of Bengal, Babu Surendra Nath Banerji, recently expressed, in the following eloquent words, the sentiment of the most thoughtful and influential natives of the country.

"Our allegiance to the British rule," he says, "is based upon the highest considerations of practical expediency. As a representative of the educated community of India-and I am ent.i.tled to speak on their behalf and in their name,-I may say that we regard British rule in India as a dispensation of Divine Providence. England is here for the highest and the n.o.blest purposes of history. She is here to rejuvenate an ancient people, to infuse into them the vigour, the virility and the robustness of the West, and so pay off the long-standing debt, acc.u.mulating since the morning of the world, which the West owes to the East. We are anxious for the permanence of British rule in India, not only as a guarantee for stability and order, but because with it are bound up the best prospects of our political advancement. To the English people has been entrusted in the Councils of Providence the high function of teaching the nations of the earth the great lesson of const.i.tutional liberty, of securing the ends of stable government, largely tempered by popular freedom. This glorious work has been n.o.bly begun in India. It has been resolutely carried on by a succession of ill.u.s.trious Anglo-Indian statesmen whose names are enshrined in our grateful recollections. Marvellous as have been the industrial achievements of the Victorian era in India, they sink into insignificance when compared with the great moral trophies which distinguish that epoch.

Roads have been constructed; rivers have been spanned; telegraph and railway lines have been laid down; time and s.p.a.ce have been annihilated; Nature and the appliances of Nature have been made to minister to the wants of man. But these are nothing when compared to the bold, decisive, statesmanlike measures which have been taken in hand for the intellectual, the moral and the political regeneration of my countrymen. Under English influences the torpor of ages has been dissipated; the pulsations of a new life have been communicated to the people; an inspiriting sense of public duty has been evolved, the spirit of curiosity has been stirred and a moral revolution, the most momentous in our annals, culminating in the transformation of national ideals and aspirations, has been brought about."

Great Britain has not been, and is not now, without failings in her work in India; and her line of progress is studded with many errors. But she has been faithful to her trust and has carried it out in no selfish way.

The warm and deep loyalty of India bears testimony to this; for native sentiment everywhere reveals marked appreciation.

Chapter II.

THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA.

India is the mother of religions. No other land has been so prolific in religious thought or has founded faiths which have commanded the allegiance of so large a portion of the human race. While the Aryans of the West have been content to borrow their faith from the Hebrews; Indo-Aryans have produced the most wonderful and mighty ethnic religion (Brahmanism) and also one of the three great missionary religions of the world (Buddhism). A third of the human race today cling with devotion to these two products of the fertility of the mind, and the spirituality of the heart, of India.

India's toleration for other religions has been marked. For twelve centuries she has been the asylum of Zoroastrianism. Nearly nine-tenths of the followers of that ancient cult of Persia found and still enjoy a hospitable home in India. There are more of the narrow, bigoted followers of Mohammed among these tolerant people than are found in any other land-even in the wide domains of the Sultan. Christians also have lived, practically unmolested, in this great land almost from Apostolic days.

Thus not a few of the great Faiths of the world are at present represented, and are struggling either for existence or dominance, in the land of the Vedas.

The princ.i.p.al faiths of the land, with their adherents, were as follows, according to census of 1891:

Hindu 207,731,727 Sikh 1,907,838 Jain 1,416,638 Buddhist(5) 7,131,361 Pa.r.s.ee 89,904 Mohammedan 57,231,164 Jewish 17,000 Christian(6) 2,284,000

Let us consider these faiths briefly. It will be seen that Christianity has, as its followers, only one per cent. of the whole population of the land.