British India

“ With rare exceptions most of the Westerners who go to India go with the presumption that the people of India belong to an inferior level of society; that they are heathens, worshippers of stocks and stones; that they are hopelessly divided into castes and classes; that these castes and classes are always at each other’s throats; that they have never had a settled or civilised form of government; that the British have for the first time in their history given them a settled government; and that India would go to pieces if British government were to withdraw. ”

“ In the whole civil and military establishment of British India there are but one hundred thousand whites, as against nearly twice that number of natives. How small a numerical force to rule those teeming millions! And yet, year by year the British element grows smaller and the native element larger and more potent in the government of India. ”

“ British India is treated as a political school for Asiatics, in which Europeans are the teachers; and so long as that theory of government is upheld, constitutional reforms in India are practical and possible. ”

“ The people of British India owe them a great debt of gratitude for the moral support they have given to their claim for responsible Government by coming out openly and freely in favour of the proposed advance. We are sure that these Princes will in due time take measures to bring their own territories in line with the British provinces and thus strengthen the ties that bind them to their own peoples as well as to the other people of India. ”

“ In short, the British rule has united India, and the awakened mind of India is rejoicing in the consciousness of the larger existence, and is identifying the ancient glories of certain centres in North India with this new India created by Britain. Never before was there a united India in the modern political sense; never, indeed, could there be until modern inventions brought distant places near each other. ”

“ In Great Britain and the Colonies the British act as they believe, but in India they follow the doctrines of the German professor. The state in India is an authority imposed from without and is therefore distinct from and independent of the people. [22] The state in India is the British people, and therefore the interests of the latter must override those of the Indian people. Everything in India is judged by that standard. ”

“ Not so is it with British India. From no European country is India so remote as from England. The two regions are separated by the ocean, by seas, by deserts, and by some of the most powerful nations. Their sole means of union are found in the leading cause of their separation. England owes her Indian empire to her empire of the sea. India will be hers just so long, and no longer, as she shall be able to maintain her naval supremacy. ”

“ Of all lands, British India is the land of discipline in the best sense of the term, and its component parts, though full of self-help and individuality, are blended into one whole by subordination to a supreme authority. If in times of trouble or danger every proconsul or prefect were to do what is best in his own eyes for his territory without due regard to the central control, then the British Indian empire would soon be as other Asiatic empires have been. A really great Anglo-Indian must be able to command within the limits of his right, and to obey loyally where obedience is due from him. ”

“ It sufficed for them to know that their countrymen were carving an empire there, conquering provinces and bringing millions of alien people under British rule; as it suffices for them to know to-day that they have an empire in India. India brought them wealth and material prosperity. Individuals became fabulously rich and their wealth filtered downward and filled the whole British nation. The nation became rich by the dividends of the East India Company, and by the enormous profits which British manufacturers and British traders made by the fact of British supremacy in India. ”

“ Those who plead that Indians are too hopelessly divided into religions, communities, sects, castes, and languages, to be able to form a government of their own, forget that the English have been in India only for the last century and a half and that{236} before that India governed herself. The India of to-day is in no way happier than it was before pre-British days. The India of Akbar was happier than the England of Elizabeth and even more prosperous. The India of Asoka was infinitely happier and more prosperous than the England of Alfred the Great. ”

“ If at any period in the eighteenth, nineteenth or twentieth centuries these principalities of India could have united themselves together in a common cause and arisen in the might of their power against British rule, England would be driven out of India in ten days’ time. India’s 350,000,000 population represents an enormous mass, but, as long as it remains divided into practically eighty different nations, all of them animated by bitter hatreds and antagonisms, England will experience no trouble in retaining absolute control of her large but very acrimonious Indian family. ”

“ The Indians are not ashamed of that fact. They are proud to be under the British Crown, because they think that England will prove India’s deliverer. The wonder of all wonders seems to be that the Indians, like the favoured nation of the Bible, are irrepressible in spite of centuries of oppression and bondage. And many British writers think that India is under England with her consent. ”

“ Gentlemen, let us descend a little from the generalities into details and see how the policy of the past has worked not only to our detriment, but to the positive weakening of the British rule itself. Let us see what small share we have in the larger life of the Empire. I have already said that we have no share in laying down the policy upon which India is ruled. Have we any share even in the different Services of the country? Are we allowed to serve our own land and the Empire to the best of our capacity and ability? ”

“ If instead of attempting to hold India as a preserve of English destinies, a nursery of British fortunes, we throw it open with the aim of developing India for the Indians, by means of British knowledge and equity, we shall find our own highest advantage, political and material, and may possibly recognize brethren and comrades at length, where we have hitherto perceived only savages, innocents, or foes. ”

“ Their one-voiced demand to be foremost in the conflict has touched my heart, and has inspired to the highest issues the love and devotion which, as I well know, have ever linked my Indian subjects and myself. I recall to mind India's gracious message to the British nation of goodwill and fellowship, which greeted my return in February, 1912, after the solemn ceremony of my Coronation Durbar at Delhi, and I find in this hour of trial a full harvest and a noble fulfilment of the assurance given by you that the destinies of Great Britain and India are indissolubly linked. ”

“ India, in short, is governed, under the terms of a code of law based upon Indian custom, by a small number of picked British officials, only about 3,000 in all, among whom highly-trained Indians are increasingly taking their place, and who work in detail through an army of minor officials, nearly all Indians, and selected without respect to race, caste, or creed. She is a self-contained country, whose resources are devoted to her own needs. She is prospering to a degree unexampled in history. She has achieved a political unity never before known to her. ”

“ On the contrary, both in Britain and among the best of the British administrators in India, it was increasingly held that the only ultimate justification for the British power in India would be that under its guidance the Indian peoples should be gradually enabled to govern themselves. ”

“ Before putting forward our recommendations we turn to deal with the relationship of the Indian States to British India. It is quite clear that with the attainment of independence by British India, whether inside or outside the British Commonwealth, the relationship which has hitherto existed between the Rulers of the States and the British Crown will no longer be possible. Paramountcy can neither be retained by the British Crown nor transferred to the new Government. ”

“ We must content ourselves with a very brief analysis of the character and results of the British dominion.
What, then, has the establishment of British power meant in India? Until the British power was established, India had in all her long history never known political unity. She had seen nothing but an almost uninterrupted succession of wars, an endless series of conquests and evanescent dominions. ”

“ To whatever party he may belong, every Englishman in England, who studies Indian affairs and the relation of India to the rest of our Empire, feels that our rule should be so conducted as to prepare India for ultimate self-government and a place in the future councils of a British confederation among the other units of the Empire. ”

“ And India—the true India—must be grateful for these mercies! Sometimes I think the irony is too sharp between the true gifts given, unnoticed, by Englishmen working sincerely for the good of our people, and the false gifts proclaimed from the house-tops, filling loyal Indians with bewilderment and fear. I have had letters from scores of these, because I am known to believe that loyal allegiance to British government gives India the best chance for peaceful progress she is likely to have for many generations. ”

“ If India has not yet been fit for free institutions, it is certainly not her fault. If, after one and a half centuries of British rule, India remains where she was in the Middle Ages, what a sad commentary must it be upon the civilizing influences of that rule! When the English came to India, this country was the leader of Asiatic civilization and the undisputed center of light in the Asiatic world; Japan was then nowhere. ”

“ 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 preëminently 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. ”

“ Politically there are.........two Indias, British India, governed by the Crown according to the statutes of Parliament and enactments of the Indian Legislature, and the Indian States under the suzerainty of the Crown and still for the most part under the personal rule of the Princes. Geographically India is one and indivisible, made up of pink and yellow. The problem of statesmanship is to hold the two together. ”

“ But since Great Britain achieved dominion over India the main issue between rulers and ruled has been how far on the one hand British rulers should devolve on to their Indian subjects a share in the government and administration of the country, and how far on the other hand their Indian subjects could hasten such devolution by various forms of pressure. ”

“ For there is in India a grander interest still than that of the British political organisation, namely, the peaceful gradual transformation of the thoughts and feelings, the hopes and fears, of each individual of the millions of India. ”

“ THE BRITISH SWAY IN INDIA.—British sway by degrees extended itself over India. The fall of the Mogul empire left the country in a state of anarchy. Strife arose with one tribe after another, until the authority of England came to be acknowledged as far north as the Himalayas. The English advance was made with the help of native auxiliaries, and could not have been made without it. It was quite as much an internal revolution as a foreign conquest. As the British enlarged their dominion, and came into conflict with the French, the appetite for supremacy grew. ”

“ Politically, India is that country which, throughout the length and breadth of these, its natural limits, is more under paramount British dominion than any English country; for, throughout its extent, the will and the word of its British rulers are, in point of fact, law. Socially, India is a population of two hundred millions of men, the vast majority of whom have for ages been indissolubly knit together by a common religion and common traditions,—by common laws, and common civil and municipal institutions,—by common castes, rites, observances, and manners ”

“ 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 English-speaking people of India are a mere bagatelle compared with the enormous population, being only 238,499; but with the army they have been able to hold the country in subjection. The British government takes a fatherly interest in the native states, and they have been loyal without exception in later years, though the history of India will show that not all of them have always been so. ”