The new spirit in India

Although politics are not the only subject of this book, it may be of assistance if I summarize very briefly the chief political events of the few years preceding the winter of 1907-8 when I was in India.

No hard-and-fast line can be drawn in history, but the arrival of LORD CURZON AS VICEROY on December 30th, 1898, marks a fairly strong and natural division. He had previously been Under-Secretary for India (1891-92), and Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs (1895-98), and he was well known for the distinction of his Oxford career and for his travels in Central Asia, Persia, and the Far East. In the House of Commons he had further won a high reputation for industry, knowledge, and self-reliance.

The first year of his office (1899) was marked by a change in the CURRENCY, by which a gold standard was introduced, gold and currency reserves instituted, and a permanent rate of exchange fixed at sixteen pence to the rupee, or fifteen rupees to the pound sterling—a higher value than the rupee had reached in the fluctuations of the five previous years. Before the closing of the mints, it had sunk to 13·1 pence.

In the same year Lord Curzon began his policy of efficiency by reducing the CALCUTTA MUNICIPALITY from seventy-five to fifty, cutting out twenty-five of the elected members, in spite of strong protests on the part of the Indian electors.

He also began to earn an enviable unpopularity among certain classes of Anglo-Indians for his characteristic vigour in denouncing a British battalion, some privates of which were believed to have outraged a native woman to death in RANGOON and remained undetected.

The year 1900 was a season of terrible FAMINE, especially in the Central Provinces. About 5,500,000 people came on relief works, and famine was followed by cholera.[1] At the same time the Punjab LAND ALIENATION ACT was passed, forbidding the transference of land to any but agriculturists, the intention being to prevent the expropriation of peasants by money-lenders.

LORD WELBY’S COMMISSION on Indian Expenditure issued their reports, but the majority report suggested no important changes of taxation beyond the transference of charges amounting to £293,000 a year to the Imperial Exchequer. Their recommendation that England should contribute £50,000 to the expenses of the India Office was not carried out.

In 1901 the NORTH-WEST FRONTIER PROVINCE was created, and in the following year LORD KITCHENER was appointed Commander-in-Chief, the Education Commission, presided over by Sir Thomas Raleigh, published its Report (Sir Guru Das Banerjee writing a Note of Dissent), and the POLICE COMMISSION began to sit under Sir Andrew Fraser (afterwards Lieut.-Governor of Bengal).

In the same year Lord Curzon increased his unpopularity among the class of Anglo-Indians above mentioned, by punishing the 9TH LANCERS, because at Sialkot two privates were believed to have beaten to death a native cook who refused to procure a native woman for them; they remained undetected.

The next year (1903) opened with a great DURBAR AT DELHI, the estimated cost of which was £180,000, and the real cost probably at least £200,000, apart from the local expenses of provinces and Native States. The TIBET expedition started in the same year.

More important than either of these events for the history of India was the REDUCTION OF THE SALT TAX, or more properly, the reduction of the price of salt under the Government monopoly. Between this year and 1907 it was reduced from 2 rupees 8 annas per maund to 1 rupee (a maund = 82·29 lbs.).[2]

Lord Curzon’s office was now renewed for a further uncertain term, believed to be two years. But before his departure for six months’ leave in 1904, he had already reduced his popularity among the educated classes of India. By the OFFICIAL SECRETS ACT, he extended the Acts of 1889 and 1897 so as to include information upon civil affairs and matters of fact among the offences, as well as military secrets and newspaper criticism, “likely to bring the Government or constituted authority into suspicion or contempt.” As the burden of proof was thrown on the accused, and it was unnecessary to establish criminal intention for conviction, this Act limited newspapers to the supply of such information as the Government pleased.

In the same year an attempt was made to raise the standard of higher education by the UNIVERSITIES ACT. The main object was to induce the five Universities of Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Lahore, and Allahabad to undertake instruction and supervision as well as examination, to which their function had been limited at first. It was laid down that all students at a University must be members of an affiliated college, and changes were introduced into the constitution of the Senates, which were now to be largely composed of the Chancellor’s nominees and ex-officio members—High Court Judges, Bishops, members of Executive Councils, the provincial Directors of Public Instruction, and professors of Government and missionary colleges. It was complained that these provisions destroyed the independence of the Universities, and, owing to the increased expense, much reduced the number of students able to compete for degrees. On the other hand, it is maintained, and I believe justly, that the standard of learning in its higher branches has been considerably advanced since the Act among the affiliated colleges.

A few sentences may be quoted from Lord Curzon’s BUDGET SPEECH in March of this year (1904), as showing his general attitude towards educated Indians and their demands:—

“I sympathize most deeply with the aspirations of the Indians towards greater national unity, and with their desire to play a part in the public life of the country. But I do not think that the salvation of India is to be sought on the field of politics at the present stage of her development.... The highest ranks of civil employment in India must as a general rule be held by Englishmen, for the reason that they possess, partly by heredity, partly by up-bringing, and partly by education, the knowledge of the principles of government, the habits of mind, the vigour of character, which are essential for the task, and that, the rule of India being a British rule, and every other rule being in the circumstances of the case impossible, the tone and standard should be set by those who have created and are responsible for it.”[3]

He further went on to maintain that on salaries of £800 a year and upward, 1263 government servants were Europeans, 15 Eurasians, and 92 Indians; while on salaries between £60 and £800, there were 5205 Europeans, 5420 Eurasians, and 16,283 Indians. These figures were, however, severely analysed by Mr. Gokhale in his Budget speech of 1905.

It was held by educated Indians that a Government Resolution of May 24, 1904, carrying this statement of policy into effect, tended to exclude Indians from the higher branches of the service, and stood in contradiction to QUEEN VICTORIA’S PROCLAMATION for India in 1858, in which occur the following two clauses:—

“We hold ourselves bound to the natives of our Indian territories by the same obligations of duty which bind us to all our other subjects; and those obligations we shall faithfully and conscientiously fulfil.

“And it is our further will that, so far as may be, our subjects, of whatever race or creed, be freely and impartially admitted to offices in our service, the duties of which they may be qualified, by their education, ability, and integrity, duly to discharge.”

Accordingly, at the meeting of the National Congress in Bombay at the end of this year, the first resolution was in protest against the EXCLUSION OF INDIANS from the higher grades of the Service. The other resolutions, showing the tendency of the time, included protests against the increasing military expenditure, especially upon the Tibet expedition, and demands for wider education, technical schools, a Permanent Land Settlement, police reform in accordance with the Commission of 1903, the separation of judicial and executive functions throughout the Civil Service, simultaneous examinations for the Service in England and India, and part payment by England of the cost of the India Office in Whitehall. SIR HENRY COTTON, Chief Commissioner of Assam from 1896 to 1902, was President of the Congress that year, and he was deputed to lay the resolutions before the Viceroy in person. But Lord Curzon refused to receive him.

On February 11, 1905, Lord Curzon addressed the CONVOCATION OF CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY with a dissertation upon truthfulness and other virtues—

“I hope I am making no false or arrogant claim,” he said, “when I say that the highest ideal of truth is to a large extent a Western conception. I do not thereby mean to claim that Europeans are universally or even generally truthful, still less do I mean that Asiatics deliberately or habitually deviate from the truth. The one proposition would be absurd, the other insulting. But undoubtedly truth took a high place in the moral codes of the West before it had been similarly honoured in the East, where craftiness and diplomatic wile have always been held in much repute. We may prove it by the common innuendo that lurks in the words ‘Oriental diplomacy,’ by which is meant something rather tortuous and hypersubtle. The same may be seen in Oriental literature. In your epics truth will often be extolled as a virtue; but quite as often it is attended with some qualification, and very often praise is given to successful deception practised with honest aim.”

The Viceroy, addressing his Bengali audience, went on to say that “he knew no country where mare’s-nests were more prolific than here”; and he warned them especially against flattery and vituperation, and afterwards against eloquence.

“In India,” he said, “there are two sets of people, the reticent and the eloquent. I dare say you know to which class the people in this part of the country belong. I am sometimes lost in admiration at the facility with which they speak in a foreign language, and I envy the accomplishment. All I say to you is, do not presume upon this talent.”

Towards the conclusion of the speech, he introduced the following sentences:—

“Learn that the true salvation of India will not come from without, but must be created within. It will not be given you by enactment of the British Parliament, or of any Parliament at all.... Be true Indians—that is the prompting of nationality.... In India I see the claim constantly advanced that a man is not merely a Bengali, or an Uriya, or a Mahratta, or a Sikh, but a member of the Indian nation. I do not think it can yet be said that there is any Indian nation, though in the distant future some approach to it may be evolved. However that may be, the Indian is most certainly a member of the British Empire.”[4]

Neither these contradictory remarks on nationality, nor the Viceroy’s well-intentioned exposition of the national tendency to deceit, were received by the audience and their friends in a properly chastened spirit. But the Amrita Bazar Patrika, next to the Bengalee, perhaps the most influential Indian paper in Calcutta, contented itself with the following extract from Lord Curzon’s book, called “Problems of the Far East” (p. 155 of the edition quoted), where, writing of his conversation with the President of the Korean Foreign Office, he said:—