Indian Unrest Part 7

Bose had already experienced at Mr. Lyon's hands.

Needless to say that amongst the Indian members it was the politician, and especially the more "advanced" politician, who figured most prominently in the discussions. The more conservative Indians were usually content to listen, with more or less visible signs of weariness, to the facile and sometimes painfully long-winded eloquence of their colleagues. When they did intervene, however, their speeches were usually short and none the less effective. In most of the divisions that were taken they supported the Government, and in no single instance was the Government majority hard pressed. The minority in support of any resolution resisted by Government never reached 20, and generally fluctuated somewhere between 16 and 20. The only resolution which would have certainly combined all the native members in support of it was Mr.

Gokhale's resolution with regard to the position of British Indians in South Africa, but, as it was accepted by Government, it was pa.s.sed _nem.

con._ without a division.

That in these circ.u.mstances the official members who are at the same time heads of the most important administrative and executive departments should be kept in constant attendance during debates in which many of them, are not in any way directly concerned, and that they should thus be detained in Calcutta at a season when their presence would be far more useful elsewhere, const.i.tutes one of the most serious of the many practical drawbacks of the new system for which a remedy will have to be found. It is as if not only the Parliamentary representatives but the permanent officials of our own great public departments were expected to sit through the debates in the House of Commons, without even the facilities which the private rooms of Ministers, the library, and the smoking rooms at Westminster afford for quiet intervals of work between the division bells. Nor is that all. The Council sat during the very months of the short "cold weather," when it is customary and alone practicable for heads of departments to undertake their annual tours of inspection. The _reductio ad absurdum_ is surely reached in the case of the Commander-in-Chief and the Chief of the Staff. Though the Imperial Council is itself debarred from dealing with Army questions, they could be seen any day sitting through the debates merely because their votes might conceivably be required to maintain the official majority, and, except for one or two short excursions in the intervals between the meetings of Council, they were tied to Calcutta when they ought to have been travelling about the country and inspecting the troops. Yet, it is generally admitted that at no period since the Mutiny has it been more important for the Commander-in-Chief to maintain the closest possible contact with the native army--especially when the Commander-in-Chief is as popular with the Indian soldier as Sir O'Moore Creagh.

Another obvious drawback of the present arrangements is the inconvenience to which members of Council from the provinces were subjected by the irregular intervals at which the Council held its actual sittings. Either they had to waste their time at Calcutta during the intervals, to the detriment of their interests at home, or they had to spend days in railway carriages rus.h.i.+ng backwards and forwards from their homes to the capital, for in a country of such magnificent distances there are few journeys that take less than 24 hours, and from Calcutta, for instance, either to Madras or to Bombay takes the best part of 48 hours. Unless arrangements are remodelled so as to enable the Council to transact its business, whether _in pleno_ or in committee, either in one session or in two short sessions, but in any case continuously, many of its most valuable members, who have important business, of their own which they cannot afford to neglect, will cease to attend, and the Council will not only lose much of the representative character, which is one of its best features at present, but will fall inevitably under the preponderating influence of the professional politician. In his closing speech Lord Minto outlined a scheme which would in some measure meet this difficulty, but it is doubtful whether it will prove by any means adequate. Another point which requires consideration is whether it is desirable for the Viceroy to preside himself over the deliberations of the Council. Even if he could properly afford the time for it, it seems hardly expedient that the immediate representative of the King-Emperor should be drawn into the arena of public controversies. Proceedings are bound to grow more and more contentious, and delicate questions of procedure will arise and have to be settled from the chair. These are all matters in which the Viceroy should not be committed to the premature exercise, on the spur of the moment, of his supreme authority.

One of the chief purposes which the creation of the new Councils is intended to achieve is that of enlightening Indian opinion throughout the country by means of the enlarged opportunities given for the discussion of public affairs. But that purpose will be defeated unless the discussions receive adequate publicity. They certainly did not do so this winter. Not only is the art of gallery reporting still in its infancy, but many of the Indian newspapers have still to learn that "it is not cricket" to report only the speeches of their political friends and to omit or compress into a few lines the speeches of their adversaries. A glaring instance of this shortcoming was afforded by the _Bengalee_. The Nationalist organ published Mr. Bupendra Nath Bose's speech on the part.i.tion of Bengal _in extenso_, as he had intended to deliver it, without taking the slightest notice of the fact that he was repeatedly called to order by the Viceroy and had in consequence to drop out whole pa.s.sages of his oration, and it published practically nothing else--though perhaps no other indictment of the Government during the whole session was more successfully refuted, both by the official spokesman, Mr. Lyon, and by other Indian members. Apart, however, from any such deliberate unfairness, the communication of speeches in advance to the Press should be strenuously discountenanced. Many official members showed that they could perfectly well dispense with the doubtful advantage of knowing beforehand exactly what their critics were going to say, and, if once this practice is stopped, newspapers, relieved from the temptation of giving undue preference to easy "copy,"

will learn to cultivate and to rely upon more legitimate methods of reporting. It is to be hoped also that the _Gazette of India_, which publishes the official verbatim reports, will not in future lag so far behind the actual proceedings.

All these are minor points. The dominant feature of the Session was that in spite of wide divergences of views, the proceedings were generally dignified, sometimes even to the verge of dulness, and with one or two exceptions they were marked by good feeling on all sides. It would be unfair not to give to Mr. Gokhale his full share of credit for this happy result. Though often an unrelenting critic of the Administration, he struck from the first a note of studied moderation and restraint to which most of his political friends attuned their utterances. He naturally a.s.sumed the functions of the leader of his Majesty's Opposition, and he discharged them, not only with the ability which every one expected of him, but with the urbanity and self-restraint of a man conscious of his responsibilities as well as of his powers. His was, amongst the Indian members, not only the master mind, but the dominant personality. The European members, on the other hand, showed themselves invariably courteous and good-tempered, and not a few awkward corners were turned by a little good-humoured banter. Nor was it unusual to see the Englishman come and sit down by the side of the Indian member to whose indictment he had just been replying, and in friendly conversation take all personal sting out of the controversy. As Lord Minto aptly put it, the Council-room "has brought people together. Official and non-official members have met each other. The official wall which of necessity to some extent separated them has been broken down. They have talked over many things together." From this point of view, if future sessions fulfil the promise of the first one, the Imperial Council may grow into a potent instrument for good.

Of the deeper significance which underlay the meeting of this remarkable a.s.sembly it is still perhaps premature to speak. But cautious and tentative as was the att.i.tude of all parties concerned, and free as, from beginning to end, the proceedings were from any startling incidents, no one can have watched them without being conscious of the presence of new forces of vast potentiality which must tend to modify very profoundly the relations between the governors and the governed in India itself, and possibly even between India and the Mother Country.

They are the forces, largely still unknown, which have been brought into play by Lord Morley's Const.i.tutional reforms, and though they made themselves naturally more conspicuously felt in the Imperial Council at Calcutta, they were present in every one of the enlarged Legislative Councils of the Provincial Governments.

It is no part of my purpose to recount in detail the long, though generally dispa.s.sionate, controversy to which these reforms gave rise.

We may not all be agreed as to the necessity or wisdom of some of the changes embodied in them, and some may think that we are inclined to travel too fast and too far on a road which Indians have not up to the present shown themselves qualified to tread without danger. But there are few Englishmen either at home or in India who do not recognize the statesmanlike spirit in which Lord Morley, loyally seconded throughout by Lord Minto, has approached the very difficult problem of giving to the people of India a larger consultative voice in administration as well as in legislation without jeopardizing the stability or impairing the supremacy of British control. The future alone can show how far these far-reaching changes will justify the generous expectations of their author, but taken as a whole they undoubtedly represent a constructive work which is fully worthy of the fine record of British rule in India.

How very far-reaching they are the merest indication of their most salient features will suffice to indicate. For the sake of convenience, though they form a h.o.m.ogeneous whole, they may be divided roughly into two categories--those that affect the Executive Councils and those that have remodelled the Legislative Councils. To the former category belong:--

(1) The appointment of an Indian member to the Viceroy's Executive Council. Mr. S.P. Sinha, a Bengalee barrister in large practice, was appointed to be legal member, and the ability and distinction with which he discharged the duties of his high office have gone far to remove the misgivings of many of those who were at first opposed to this new departure. It is the more to be regretted that his services will be lost to the new Viceroy, as he has announced his intention of retiring, for personal reasons, at the end of Lord Minto's Viceroyalty[15].

(2) The appointment of one Indian member to the Executive Councils of the Governors of Madras and Bombay. The Rajah of Bobbili has been appointed in Madras and Mr. M.B. Chaubal in Bombay. An Indian will also be appointed to the Executive Council of the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal as soon as that body has been finally const.i.tuted[16], and similar appointments will be made to the Executive Councils of the chief Indian provinces when the powers taken to create those bodies shall be put into operation.

(3) The appointment of two Indians, one a Hindu and the other a Mahomedan, to be members of the Council of the Secretary of State, generally known as the India Council, in Whitehall. Mr. K.G. Gupta and Mr. Husain Bilgrami were appointed by Lord Morley in 1907. Mr. Bilgrami retired early in 1910 owing to ill-health and his place has been taken by Mr. M.A. Ali Baig.

In principle, the introduction of natives of India into these inner lines of the British Executive power undoubtedly const.i.tutes, as Lord Lansdowne has said, a "tremendous innovation," but it may be doubted whether in practice the consequences will be as considerable as those of the changes effected by the India Councils Act of 1909 in the composition and attributions of the Imperial and Provincial Legislative Councils. These changes are of a twofold character. In the first place the total number of members has been very materially increased--e.g., in the Imperial Legislative Council from 21 to a _maximum_ of 60; in the Madras and Bombay Legislative Councils from 24 to a _maximum_ of 50; in the Bengal Legislative Council from 20 to 50, &c. Room has thus been made for the introduction of a much larger number of elected members, of whom there will be in future not less than 135 altogether in the different Legislative Councils, as against only 39 under the old statutes. Still more important than the mere increase in the number of elected members is the radical change in the proportion they will bear to official members. Except in the Imperial Council, where, at the instance of Lord Morley, a small official majority has been retained which Lord Minto himself was willing to dispense with, there will no longer be any official majority. The regulations determining the electorates and the mode of election have been framed with praiseworthy elasticity in accordance with local requirements, and care has been taken to provide as far as possible for an adequate representation of all the most important communities and interests. In view of the manifold and profound lines of cleavage which exist in Indian society, it is extremely improbable that all the elected members will ever combine against the official minority except in such rare and improbable cases as might produce an absolute consensus of Indian opinion, and in such cases it is even more improbable that Government would ignore so striking a manifestation. Nevertheless, as a safeguard against the possibility of factious opposition, the right of veto has been reserved to the Provincial Executives and in the last resort to the Governor-General in Council.

Thus the Indian Councils Act of 1909 cannot be said to have actually modified the position of the Indian Legislatures. With regard to the most important of them--viz., the Imperial Council--Lord Morley was careful to make this perfectly clear in his despatch of November 27, 1908, in which he reviewed the proposals put forward in the Government of India despatch of October 1. "It is an essential condition of the reform policy," the Secretary of State wrote, "that the Imperial supremacy should in no degree be compromised. I must therefore regard it as essential that your Excellency's Council, in its legislative as well as in its executive character, should continue to be so const.i.tuted as to ensure its constant and uninterrupted power to fulfil the const.i.tutional obligation that it owes, and must always owe, to his Majesty's Government and to the Imperial Parliament." The Indian Executive therefore remains, as. .h.i.therto, responsible only to the Imperial Government at home, and the Imperial Council can exercise over it no directly controlling power. The same holds good, _mutatis mutandis_, of the Provincial Executives and their Councils.

Indirectly, however, the Indian Councils Act of 1909 materially modifies the relations between the Legislative Councils and the Executive by giving to elected and non-official members opportunities which they have never enjoyed before of discussing public policy and making their voices heard and their influence felt on both administrative and legislative matters. The revised rules of procedure, under which supplementary questions may be grafted on to interpellations, and resolutions can be moved not only in connexion with the financial statements of Government, but, with certain specified reservations, on most matters of general public interest, are undoubtedly calculated to afford a vastly larger scope than in the past to the activities of Indian Legislatures, and it will depend very much upon the ability and resourcefulness of members themselves to what extent they may utilize these facilities for the purpose of ultimately creating real powers of control. In an extremely interesting and dispa.s.sionate study of the Indian Const.i.tution, and of the effects which the new reforms may have upon it, Mr. Rangaswami Iyengar, a Hindu journalist of Madras, comes to the conclusion that "if the powers now entrusted to the Councils are used with care, wisdom, and discrimination, precedents and procedure a.n.a.logous to those of the House of Commons might gradually grow up, and might serve as a useful means if not of directly controlling the Executive--a power which under the present const.i.tutional arrangement of the Government of India it is impossible that the Council should possess--at least of directing the Executive into correct and proper channels in regard to administrative policy and administrative action." Not the least important of the changes are those made in regard to Budget procedure. Indian Legislatures will no more than in the past have power to vote or to veto the Budget, but they will have henceforth an opportunity of setting forth their views before the Budget has a.s.sumed its final shape. Members will be able to discuss beforehand any changes in taxation, as well as any new loans or additional grants to local governments, and they will be taken into the confidence of Government with regard to the determination of public expenditure. No doubt important heads of revenue are still excluded from the purview of the Councils, but members will have the right of placing on record their views in the form of resolutions on all items not specifically excluded from their cognisance, and the Finance Member will be bound to explain the reasons why Government declines to accept any resolution that may have been pa.s.sed in the first two stages of the Budget. Much will depend upon the reasonable and practical use which members make of these novel opportunities, for, to quote Mr. Iyengar again, "the progress of const.i.tutional government is not dependent so much upon what is expressly declared to be const.i.tutional rights as upon what is silently built up in the form of const.i.tutional conventions."

In the great speech in which Lord Morley gave the House of Lords the first outline of his Indian reforms scheme there was one singularly pregnant pa.s.sage. "We at any rate," he said, "have no choice or option.

As an ill.u.s.trious member of this House once said, we are watching a great and stupendous process, the reconstruction of a decomposed society. What we found was described as a parallel to Europe in the fifth century, and we have now, as it were, before us in that vast congeries of people we call India, a long, slow march in uneven stages through all the centuries from the fifth to the twentieth. Stupendous indeed, and to guide that transition with sympathy, political wisdom, and courage, with a sense of humanity, duty, and national honour, may well be called a glorious mission." Whether we succeed in that mission must depend largely upon the loyal a.s.sistance we receive from those Indians who claim, in virtue of their superior education, to represent this twentieth century. Lord Morley has fulfilled in no n.i.g.g.ardly spirit his pledge to a.s.sociate the people of India with the Government far more closely than has. .h.i.therto been the case in the work of actual day-to-day administration as well as in the more complex problems of legislation.

It rests now with the Indian representatives both in the Executive and Legislative Councils to justify Lord Morley's expectations by using the new machinery which he has placed in their hands not for purposes of mere destructive criticism and malevolent obstruction, but for intelligent and constructive co-operation with the British rulers of India, to whom alone, whatever may be their shortcomings, India owes it that the spirit of the twentieth century has spread to her sh.o.r.es.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE DEPRESSED CASTES.

The only cla.s.ses in British India for whom no real representation has been devised in the enlarged Indian Councils are the millions of humble toilers who const.i.tute what are known as the "depressed castes." Under present social conditions in India, this was probably inevitable.

Though, rather unreasonably, the vast majority of them go to swell the numbers of the Hindu population in the census upon which Hindu representation ought, according to Hindu politicians, to be based, those politicians have certainly not as yet shown any t.i.tle to speak on their behalf. For there is no more striking contrast to the liberal and democratic professions of a body which claims, as does the Indian National Congress, to represent an enlightened, progressive, and national Hinduism than the fact that in the course of its 25 years'

existence it has scarcely done anything to give practical effect to its theoretical repudiation of a social system that condemns some 50 millions out of the 300 millions of the Hindu population of India to a life of unspeakable degradation. For a long time to come, the depressed castes will probably find, as in the past, their truest friends and best qualified representatives among the European members of Council, who, just because they are aliens, are free from all the influences, whether of interest or of prejudice, which tend to divide Hindu society into so many watertight compartments. Let any one who has any doubts on this point read some of the doc.u.ments published in the Blue-books on the reforms--pet.i.tions from low-caste communities imploring Government not to commit the defence of their interests to the Hindu Brahman, but to continue to them the direct and unselfish protection which they have hitherto enjoyed at the hands of British administrators.

The "depressed cla.s.ses" of whom we generally speak as Pariahs, though the name properly belongs only to one particular caste, the Pareiyas in Southern India, include all Hindus who do not belong to the four highest or "clean" castes of Hinduism, and they are therefore now officially and euphemistically designated as the Panchamas--i.e., the fifth caste.

Many of the Panchamas, especially in Southern India, are little better than bonded serfs; others are condemned to this form of ostracism by the trades they ply. Such are not only the scavengers and sweepers, but also the workers in leather, the Chamars and Muchis of Northern and Central India, and the Chakilians and Madigas of Southern India, who with their families number 14 or 15 million souls; the washermen, the _tadi_-drawers and vendors of spirituous liquors, the pressers of oil, and, in many parts of the country, the cowherd and shepherd castes, &c.

They are generally regarded as descendants of the aboriginal tribes overwhelmed centuries ago by the tide of Aryan conquest. Some of those tribes, grouped together in the Indian Census under the denominational rubric of "Animists" and numbering about 8-1/2 millions, have survived to the present day in remote hills and jungles without being absorbed into the Hindu social system, and have preserved their primitive beliefs, in which fetish wors.h.i.+p, and magic are the dominant elements.

Low as is their social _status_, it is but little lower than that of the Panchamas who have obtained a footing on the nethermost rung of the social ladder of Hinduism without being admitted to any sort of contact with its higher civilization or even to the threshold of its temples.

Hinduism with all its rigidity is, it is true, sufficiently elastic to sanction, at least tacitly, a slow process of evolution by which the Panchama castes--for there are many castes even amongst the "untouchables"--gradually shake off to some extent the slough of "uncleanness" and establish some sort of ill-defined relations even with Brahmanism. For whilst there is on the one hand a slowly ascending scale by which the Panchamas may ultimately hope to smuggle themselves in amongst the inferior Sudras, the lowest of the four "clean" castes, so there is a descending scale by which Brahmans, under the pressure of poverty or disrepute, sink to so low a place in Brahmanism that they are willing to lend their ministrations, at a price, to the more prosperous of the Panchamas and help them on their way to a higher _status_. Thus probably half the Sudras of the present day were at some more or less remote period Panchamas. Again, during periods of great civil commotion, as in the 18th century, when brute force was supreme, not a few Panchamas, especially low-caste Mahrattas, made their way to the front as soldiers of fortune, and even carved out kingdoms to themselves at the point of the sword. Orthodox Hinduism bowed in such cases to the accomplished fact, just as it has acquiesced in later years when education and the equality of treatment brought by British rule have enabled a small number of Panchamas to qualify for employment under Government.

But these exceptions are so rare and the evolutionary process is so infinitely slow and laborious that they do not visibly affect the yawning gulf between the "clean" higher-caste Hindu and the "unclean"

Panchama. The latter may have learned to do _puja_ to s.h.i.+va or Kali or other members of the Hindu Pantheon, but he is not allowed within the precincts of their sanctuaries and has to wors.h.i.+p from afar. Nor are the disabilities of the Panchama merely spiritual. In many villages he has to live entirely apart. He is not even allowed to draw water from the village well, lest he should "pollute" it by his touch, and where there is no second well for the "untouchables," the hards.h.i.+p is cruel, especially in seasons of drought when casual water dries up. In every circ.u.mstance of his life the vileness of his lot is brought home to the wretched pariah by an elaborate and relentless system of social oppression. I will only quote one or two instances which have come within my own observation. The respective distances beyond which Panchamas must not approach a Brahman lest they "pollute" him differ according to their degree of uncleanness. Though they have been laid down with great precision, it is growing more and more difficult to enforce them with the increasing promiscuity of railway and street-car intercourse, but in more remote parts of India, and especially in the south, the old rules are still often observed. In Cochin a few years ago I was crossing a bridge, and just in front of me walked a respectable-looking native. He suddenly turned tail, and running back to the end of the bridge from which we had both come, plunged out of sight into the jungle on the side of the road. He had seen a Brahman entering on to the bridge from the other end, and he had fled incontinently rather than incur the resentment of that high-caste gentleman by inflicting upon him the "pollution" of forbidden proximity as the bridge, though a fairly broad one, was not wide enough for them to pa.s.s each other at the prescribed distance. In the native State of Travancore it is not uncommon to see a Panchama witness in a lawsuit standing about a hundred yards from the Court so as not to defile the Brahman Judge and pleaders, whilst a row of _peons_, or messengers, stationed between him and the Court, hand on its questions to him and pa.s.s back his replies.

No doubt the abject ignorance and squalor and the repulsive habits of many of these unfortunate castes help to explain and to perpetuate their ostracism, but they do not exculpate a social system which prescribes or tolerates such a state of things. That if a kindly hand is extended to them, even the lowest of these depressed can be speedily raised to a higher plane has been abundantly shown by the efforts of Christian missionaries. They are only now beginning to extend their activities to the depressed castes of Northern India, but in Southern India important results have already been achieved. The Bishop of Madras claims that within the last 40 years, in the Telugu country alone, some 250,000 Panchamas have become Christians, and in Travancore another 100,000.

During the last two decades especially the philanthropic work done by the missionaries in plague and famine time has borne a rich harvest, for the Panchamas have naturally turned a ready ear to the spiritual ministrations of those who stretched out their hands to help them in the hour of extreme need. Bishop Whitehead, who has devoted himself particularly to this question, a.s.sures me that, in Southern India at least, the rate at which the elevation of the depressed castes can be achieved depends mainly upon the amount of effort which the Christian missions can put forth. If their organizations can be adequately strengthened and extended so as to deal with the increasing numbers of inquirers and converts, and, above all, to train native teachers, he is convinced that we may be within measurable distance of the reclamation of the whole Panchama population. What the effect would be from the social as well as the religious point of view may be gathered from a recent report of the Telugu Mission, which most lay witnesses would, I believe readily confirm:--

If we look at the signs of moral and spiritual progress during the last 40 years, the results of the mission work have been most encouraging. It is quite true that naturally the Panchamas are poor, dirty, ignorant, and, as a consequence of many centuries of oppression, peculiarly addicted to the more mean and servile vices. But the most hopeful element in their case is that they are conscious of their degradation and eager to escape from it. As a consequence, when formed into congregations under the care of earnest and capable teachers, they make marked progress materially, intellectually, and morally. Their gross ignorance disappears; they become cleaner and more decent in their persons and homes; they give up cattle poisoning and grain stealing, two crimes particularly a.s.sociated with their cla.s.s; they abstain from the practice of infant marriage and concubinage, to which almost all cla.s.ses of Hindu society are addicted; they lose much of the old servile spirit which led them to grovel at the feet of their social superiors, and they acquire more sense of the rights and dignity which belong to them as men. Where they are able to escape their surroundings they prove themselves in no way inferior, either in mental or in moral character, to the best of their fellow-countrymen. Especially is this the case in the Mission Boarding Schools, where the change wrought is a moral miracle. In many schools and colleges Christian lads of Panchama origin are holding their own with, and in not a few cases are actually outstripping, their Brahman compet.i.tors.

... In one district the Hindus themselves bore striking testimony to the effect of Christian teaching on the pariahs, "Before they became Christians," one of them said, "we had always to lock up our storehouses, and were always having things stolen. But now all that is changed, We can leave our houses open and never lose anything."

In the heyday of the Hindu Social Reform Movement, before it was checked by the inrush of political agitation, the question of the elevation of the depressed castes was often and earnestly discussed by progressive Hindus themselves, but it is only recently that it has again been taken up seriously by some of the Hindu leaders, and notably by Mr. Gokhale.

One of the utterances that has produced the greatest impression in Hindu circles is a speech made last year by the Gaekwar of Baroda, a Hindu Prince who not only professes advanced Liberal views, but whose heart naturally goes out to the depressed castes, as the fortunes of his own house were made in the turmoil of the eighteenth century by a Mahratta of humble extraction, if not actually of low-caste origin. His Highness does not attempt to minimize the evils of the system.

The same principles which impel us to ask for political Justice for ourselves should actuate us to show social justice to each other.... By the sincerity of our efforts to uplift the depressed cla.s.ses we shall be judged fit to achieve the objects of our national desire.... The system which divides us into innumerable castes claiming to rise by minutely graduated steps from the pariah to the Brahman is a whole tissue of injustice, splitting men equal by nature into divisions high and low, based not on the natural standard of personal qualities but on accidents of birth. The eternal struggle between caste and caste for social superiority has become a constant source of ill-feeling.... Want of education is practically universal amongst the depressed cla.s.ses, but this cannot have been the cause of their fall, for many of the so-called higher cla.s.ses in India share in the general ignorance. Unlike them, however, they are unable to attend the ordinary schools owing to the idea that it is pollution to touch them. To do so is to commit a sin offensive alike to religion and to conventional morality. Of professions as a means of livelihood these depressed cla.s.ses have a very small choice. Here, too, the supposed pollution of their touch comes in their way. On every hand we find that the peculiar difficulty from which they suffer, in addition to others that they share with other cla.s.ses, is their "untouchableness."

After a powerful argument against the theory of "untouchableness" and against priestly intolerance, the Gaekwar urges not only upon Hindus, but upon Government the duty of attacking in all earnestness this formidable problem.

A Government within easy reach of the latest thought, with unlimited moral and material resources, such as there is in India, should not remain content with simply a.s.serting the equality of men under the common law and maintaining order, but must sympathetically see from time to time that the different sections of its subjects are provided with ample means of progress. Many of the Indian States where they are at all alive to the true functions of government, owing to less elevating surroundings or out of nervousness, fear to strike out a new path and find it less troublesome to follow the policy of _laisser faire_ and to walk in the footsteps of the highest Government in India, whose declared policy is to let the social and religious matters of the people alone except where questions of grave importance are involved. When one-sixth of the people are in a chronically depressed and ignorant condition, no Government can afford to ignore the urgent necessity of doing what it can for their elevation.

Can the Government of India afford to disregard so remarkable an appeal?

The question is not merely a social and moral question, but also a political one. Whilst some high-caste Hindus are beginning to recognize its urgency, the more prosperous of the socially depressed castes themselves are showing signs of restlessness under the ostracism to which they are subjected. From almost all of these castes a few individuals have always emerged, who acquired wealth and the relative recognition that wealth brings with it, and the numbers of such individuals are increasing. In some cases a whole caste has seen its circ.u.mstances improve under new economic conditions entirety beyond its own control--like the Namasudras of Bengal, who, as agriculturists, have had their share of the growing agricultural prosperity of that region.

They are materially better off than they used to be, and so they are no longer content with their old social _status_ of inferiority. Not only Christian but Mahomedan missionaries have been at work amongst them, and though the vast majority remain Hindus, they note, like the Panchamas all over India must note, the immediate rise in the social scale of their fellow-caste-men who embrace either Christianity or Islam. For it is one of the anomalies of this peculiar conception that the most untouchable Hindu ceases to be quite as untouchable when he becomes a Christian or a Mahomedan. The Bengalee politician was quick to see the danger of losing hold altogether of the Namasudras, and he set up a propaganda of his own, which I have already described, with the object of winning them over to his side and to his methods of agitation by promising them in return a relaxation of caste stringency. The question with which we are confronted is whether we shall ourselves take a hand in the elevation of the depressed castes or whether we shall leave it to others, many of whom would exploit them for their own purposes. Is not this an opportunity for the Government of India to respond to the Gaekwar's invitation and depart for once from their traditional policy of _laisser faire_? In the Christian Missions they have an admirable organization ready to hand which merely requires encouragement and support. Though there are manifold dangers in giving official countenance to proselytizing work amongst the higher cla.s.ses of Indian society, none of those objections can reasonably lie to co-operating in the reclamation of whole cla.s.ses which the orthodox Hindu regards as beyond the pale of human intercourse. From the religious point of view, this is a matter which should engage the earnest attention of the great missionary societies of this country. The hour seems to be at hand when a great and combined effort is required of them. From the moral and social point of view they may well claim in this connexion the sympathy and support of all denominations and no-denominations that are interested in the welfare and progress of backward races. From the political point of view the conversion of so many millions of the population of India to the faith of their rulers would open up prospects of such moment that I need not expatiate upon them.

CHAPTER XV.

THE NATIVE STATES.

One of the chief features of the original scheme of const.i.tutional reforms submitted to the Secretary of State by the Government of India was the creation of an Imperial Advisory Council composed of ruling chiefs and territorial magnates. The proposal gave rise to a variety of objections, the most serious one being the difficulty of adjusting the relations to the Government of India of a Council in which the most conspicuous members could have had no definite _locus standi_ in regard to the internal affairs of British India--i.e., of the larger part of our Indian dependency under direct British administration. The difficulty was evaded by dropping the proposal. But to evade a difficulty is only to postpone it. Though the const.i.tutional reforms are confined, in their immediate application, to British India, measures of such far-reaching importance must react more or less directly upon the whole of our Indian Empire. Is it therefore politic, or, indeed, possible, to leave out of account the Native States, which occupy altogether about one-third of the total area of India and have an aggregate population of over 68 millions, or to ignore the rulers charged with their administration?

The Native States of India vary in size and importance from powerful princ.i.p.alities like the Nizam's State of Hyderabad, with an area of 82,000 miles--nearly equal to that of England and Wales and Scotland--- and a population of over 11 millions, down to diminutive chiefs.h.i.+ps, smaller than the holdings of a great English landlord. Distributed throughout the whole length and breadth of the peninsula, they display the same extraordinary variety of races and creeds and castes and languages and customs and traditions as the provinces under the immediate governance of the Viceroy, and their rulers themselves represent almost every phase and aspect of Indian history. The Princes of Rajputana, headed by the Maharana of Udaipur, with genealogies reaching back into the mythical ages, have handed down to the present day the traditions of Hindu chivalry. In the south of India, the rulers of Mysore and Cochin and Iravancore, who also claim Rajput blood, still personify the subjection of the older Dravidian races to the Aryan invaders from the north. Mahratta chiefs like Scindia and the Gaekwar date from the great uplifting of the Mahratta power in the eighteenth century, whilst the Maharajah of Kolhapur is a descendant of s.h.i.+vaji, the first Mahratta chieftain to stem the tide of Mahomedan conquest more than a century earlier. The great majority of the ruling princes and chiefs are Hindus, but besides the Nizam, the most powerful of all, there are not a few Mahomedan rulers who have survived the downfall of Moslem supremacy, just as the Sikh chiefs of Patiala, Nabha, and Kapurthala, in the Punjab, still recall the great days of Ranjit Singh and the Sikh confederacy. In some of the Native States the ruling families are neither of the same race nor of the same creed as the majority of their subjects. The Nizam is a Sunni Mahomedan, but most of his subjects are Hindus, and of the Mahomedans some of the most influential are s.h.i.+as. The Maharajah of Kashmir, a Hindu Rajput, rules over many Mongolian Buddhists, whilst there are but few Mahrattas in Gwalior or Indore, though both Holkar and Scindia are, Mahratta Princes.

In all the Native States the system of government is more or less of the old patriarchal or personal type which has always obtained in the East, but in its application it exhibits many variations which reflect sometimes the idiosyncrasies of the ruler and sometimes the dominant forces of inherited social traditions. In Cochin and Travancore, for instance, the ancient ascendency of the Northern Brahmans over the Dravidian subject races survives in some of its most archaic forms.

Udaipur and Jaipur have perhaps preserved more than any other States of Rajputana the aristocratic conservatism of olden days, whilst some of the younger Rajput chiefs have moved more freely with the times and with their own Western education. The Gaekwar has gone further than any other ruling chief in introducing into his State of Baroda the outward forms of what we call Western progress, though his will is probably in all essentials as absolute as that of Scindia, another Mahratta chief, whose interest in every form of Western activity is displayed almost as much in his physical energy as in his intellectual alertness. Some no doubt abandon the conduct of public affairs almost entirely to their Ministers and prefer a life of easy self-indulgence. Others, on the contrary, are keen administrators, and insist upon doing everything themselves. As masterful a ruler as any in the whole of India is a lady, the Begum of Bhopal, a Mahomedan Princess of rare attainments and character. The Nizam, on the other hand, though an absolute ruler, has recently placed it on record that he attributes the peaceful content and law-abiding character of his subjections to the liberal traditions he has inherited from his ancestors. "They were singularly free from all religious and racial prejudices. Their wisdom and foresight induced them to employ Hindus and Mahomedans, Europeans, and Pa.r.s.ees alike, in carrying on the administration, and they reposed entire confidence in their officers whatever religion and race they belonged to." To those principles his Highness rightly claims to have himself adhered.

Again, though the relations.h.i.+p of the Supreme Government to all these rulers is one of suzerainty, it is governed in each particular case by special and different treaties which vary the extent and nature of the control exercised over them. In some of its aspects, the principles of our policy towards them were admirably set forth in a speech delivered in November, 1909, by Lord Minto at Udaipur. "In guaranteeing their internal independence and in undertaking their protection against external aggression, it naturally follows that the Imperial Government has a.s.sumed a certain degree of responsibility for the general soundness of their administration, and would not consent to incur the reproach of being an indirect instrument of misrule. There are also certain matters in which it is necessary for the Government of India to safeguard the interests of the community as a whole, as well as those of the Paramount Power, such as railways, telegraphs, and other services of an Imperial character." At the same time the Viceroy wisely laid great stress on the fact that, in pursuance of the pledges given by the British Crown to the rulers of the Native States, "our policy is with rare exceptions one of non-interference in their internal affairs," and he pointed out that, as owing to the varying conditions of different States "any attempt at complete uniformity and subservience to precedent" must be dangerous, he had endeavoured "to deal with questions as they arose with reference to existing treaties, the merits of each case, local conditions, antecedent circ.u.mstances, and the particular stage of development, feudal and const.i.tutional, of individual princ.i.p.alities." It is obviously impossible to enforce a more rigid control over the feudatory States at the same time as we are delegating larger powers to the natives of India under direct British administration. This is a point which Lord Minto might indeed have emphasized with advantage. For there seems to be a growing tendency, probably at home rather than in India, to ignore our responsibilities towards the ruling chiefs, and to regard them as more or less negligible quant.i.ties in the const.i.tutional experiments we are making in our Indian Empire. When an emergency arises such as a frontier war or a military expedition in the Sudan or in China, we appeal unhesitatingly to the loyalty of the Princes of India, and so far they have cheerfully borne their share in these Imperial enterprises though they were never drawn into consultation beforehand, and their own material interests were not directly involved. On the other hand, questions which do involve their material interests, questions which necessarily affect the well-being of their States quite as much as that of British India, questions of tariff and of currency that react upon the economic prosperity of the whole of India are settled between Whitehall and Government House at Calcutta without their opinion being even invited. Sometimes even decisions are taken without their knowledge on matters that directly affect their own exchequers, as in the matter of the opium trade with China. Some of the native States are the largest producers of the Indian poppy, and in order to satisfy the susceptibilities, very meritorious in themselves, of our national conscience, we lightheartedly impose upon them, without consultation or prospect of compensation, the sacrifice, which costs us nothing, of one of the most valuable products of their soil and chief sources of revenue. Can they do otherwise than draw unfavourable comparisons between the harsh measure meted out to them in this matter and the generous treatment of the West Indies by the Mother Country when 20,000,000 were voted out of the Imperial Exchequer towards compensation for the material losses arising out of the abolition of slavery?

How important it is to a.s.sociate the Princes of India with the purposes of our Indian policy has seldom been more clearly shown than during these last troublous years when the forces of disaffection have revealed themselves as a serious public danger. The principle of authority cannot be attacked in British India without suffering diminution in the Native States. They are not shut up in watertight compartments and sedition cannot be preached on one side of a border, which in most cases is merely an administrative boundary line, without finding an echo on the other side. The prestige of an Indian Prince in his own land is great. It is rooted in most cases in ancient traditions to which no alien rulers can appeal. Nevertheless some of the most experienced and enlightened of the ruling chiefs showed a much earlier and livelier appreciation of the subversive tendencies of Indian unrest than those responsible for the governance of British India. Some of them, like the Maharajahs of Kolhapur and of Patiala, have been brought face to face with the same violent, and even with the same criminal, methods of agitation as the Government of India has had to deal with in provinces under British administration. The Maharajah of Jaipur and Maharajah Scindia felt themselves constrained just about a year ago to enact vigorous measures on their own account against sedition and against the importation into their States of seditious literature which was still allowed to circulate with impunity in British India, whilst the State of Bikanir was the first to introduce an Explosive Substances Act immediately after the epidemic of bomb-throwing had broken out in Bengal. Other States have also taken strong preventive measures, but many have fortunately been spared so far any serious trouble within their own borders, and their rulers have been able to study the problem merely as interested observers and from the point of view of the general welfare of the country.

On August 65 1909, the Viceroy took the unusual step of communicating direct with all the princ.i.p.al ruling Princes and Chiefs of India on the subject of the Active unrest prevalent in many parts of the country, and invited an exchange of opinions "with a view to mutual co-operation against a common danger." Some doubts were then expressed as to the wisdom of such a course, on the ground that it might create in the protected States an impression of exaggerated alarm. 'But the tone and substance of the replies which his Excellency's communication elicited showed that there was no reason for any such apprehensions. The Ruling Chiefs, on the contrary, appreciated and reciprocated the confidence reposed in them, and their replies, indeed, const.i.tute an exceptionally interesting and instructive set of doc.u.ments; for the very diversity of origin and traditions and influence gives peculiar weight to the position a.s.sumed by the rulers of the Native States towards the forces of active unrest in India. Had those forces merely been engaged in a legitimate struggle for the enlargement of Indian rights and liberties, it is scarcely conceivable that the Ruling Princes and Chiefs should have pa.s.sed judgment against them with such overwhelming unanimity.